Invincible ignorance is a punishment for sin.
St. Thomas Aquinas (De Infid. q. x., art. 1.)
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Amen I say to you,
there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist:
yet he that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from
the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. For all
the prophets and the law prophesied until John: And if you will receive it, he
is Elias that is to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Matthew 11:11-15
Both personally and by
his disciples, Abbot William’s mission was to infuse into the kingdom of
Sicily, then in process of formation, that element of sanctity upon which every
Christian nation must necessarily be based.
In southern, just as in northern Europe, the Norman race had been
providentially called in to promote the reign of Jesus Christ. Just at this moment, Byzantium, powerless to
protect against Saracen invasion the vestiges of her possessions in the West,
was anxious nevertheless to hold the Churches of these lands fastbound in that schism into which she had recently been
drawn by the intrigues of Michael Cerularius. The Mohammedans had been forced to recoil
before the sons of Tancred and Hauteville; and now,
in its turn, Greek perfidy had been outwitted and unmasked by the rude
simplicity of these men, who quickly learnt to oppose no other argument to
Byzantine knavery than the sword… All through this period, as has ever been the
case since the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost was directing every event for
the ultimate good of the Church. He it
was who inspired the Normans to give solidity to their conquests by declaring
themselves vassals of the Holy see, and thus fixing themselves on the apostolic
rock.
Dom Gueranger,
The Liturgical Year, Feast of St. William, Abbot
Julian the Apostate was most anxious to count them amongst his
confidants; with this view, he made use of every entreaty; nor does it appear
that he even made the renouncing of Jesus Christ a condition. Well then, it may be retorted, why not yield
to the imperial whim? Could they not do
so without wounding their conscience? Surely too much stiffness would be calculated
to ill-dispose the prince, perhaps even fatally: whereas to listen to him would
very likely have a soothing effect upon him; and might even bring him round to
relax somewhat of those administrative trammels unfortunately imposed upon the
Church by his prejudiced government. For
aught one knew, the possible conversion of his soul, the return of so many of
the misled who had followed him in his fall, might be the result! Should not such things as these deserve some
consideration? Should they not impose,
as a duty, some gentle handling? Such reasoning as this would doubtless appear
to some people as wise policy. Such
preoccupation for the apostate’s salvation could easily have had nothing in it
but what was inspired by zeal for the Church and for souls; and indeed the most
exacting casuist could not find it a crime for John and Paul to dwell in a
court where nothing was demanded of them contrary to the divine precepts. Nevertheless the two brothers resolved otherwise;
to the course of soothing and reserve-making, they preferred that of the frank
expression of their sentiments, and this boldness infuriated the tyrant and
brought about their death. The Church
has judged their case, and she considers they did well; hence, it is unlikely
that the former path would have led them to a like degree of sanctity in God’s
sight.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year,
Feast of Ss. John and Paul, Martyrs
O Florinus,
this teaching is not that transmitted to us by the ancients, the disciples of
the apostles. I used to behold thee at
the side of Polycarp; though shining at court thou didst none the less seek to
be pleasing unto him. I was then but a
child, yet the things that happened at that time are more vivid in my recollection
than those of yesterday; for indeed childhood’s memories form, as it were, a
part of the very soul; they grow with her.
I could point out the very spot where sat blessed Polycarp while he
conversed with us; I could describe exactly his bearing, his address, his
manner of life, his every feature, and the discourses he made to the
crows. Thou rememberest
how he used to tell us of his intercourse with John (the Apostle) and the rest
of those that had seen the Lord, and with what a faithful memory he repeated
their words; what he had learnt from them respecting our Lord, his miracles,
his doctrine, all these things Polycarp transmitted to us, as having himself
received them from the very men that had beheld with their eyes the Word of
life; all of what he told us was conformable to the Scriptures. What a grace from God were these
conversations of his! I used to listen
so eagerly, noting everything down, not on parchment, but on my very heart; and
now, by the grace of God, I still live on it all. Hence, I can attest before God, if the blessed
apostolic old man had heard discourses such as thine
he would have stopped his ears, saying, as was his wont: “O God most good, to
what sort of times hast thou reserved us!”
Then would he have got up quickly, and would have fled from that place
of blasphemy.
St. Irenaeus,
Bishop and Martyr, letter to win Florinus from heresy
to the true Faith
The loss of faith being
the most radical and the deepest of all causes of estrangement from God, it is
not surprising to observe the horror which heresy inspired in those day, when
union with God was the one treasure longed for by all conditions and ages of
life. The name Irenaeus
signifies peace; … Nevertheless, Irenaeus
himself relates with regard to his master Polycarp, how, when being asked by
the heretic Marcion if he knew him, he replied: ‘I
know thee to be the first-born of Satan.’
He also tells us that St. John, hearing that Cerinthus
was in the same public edifice into which he had just entered, fled
precipitately, for fear, as he said, that because of this enemy of truth the
wall of the building would crumble down upon them all: ‘so great,’ remarks the
bishop of Lyons, ‘was the fear the apostles and their disciples had of
communicating, even by word, with any one of those who altered truth.’
Dom Gueranger,
The Liturgical Year, Feast of St. Irenaeus,
Bishop, Martyr, Father of the Church
The tribute of death was unknown to Levi; this dower of blood was never
exacted of Aaron by Jehovah: for who is it that would die for a slave? The Synagogue was no bride! Love is the sign which distinguishes this age
of the new dispensation from the law of servitude. Powerless, sunk in cringing fear, the Jewish
priest could but sprinkle with the blood of victims substituted for himself the
horns of the figurative altar. At once
both Priest and Victim, Jesus expects more of those whom he calls to a
participation in the scared prerogative which makes him Pontiff for ever
according to the order of Melchisesech. “I will not now call you servants: for the
servant knoweth not what his lord doth.” Thus saith he to these men whom he raised above angels at the
Last Supper; “but I have called you friends, because all things whatsoever I
have heard of my Father, I have made known to you. As the Father hath loved me, I also have
loved you. Abide in my love.”
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year,
Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul
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).
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.
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
Feast of the
Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Seven Offerings of the Precious Blood
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the propagation and exaltation of my dear
Mother the Holy Church, for the safety and prosperity of her visible Head, the
Holy Roman Pontiff, for the cardinals, bishops and pastors of souls and for all
the ministers of the sanctuary.
Glory be, etc... Blessed and
praised forevermore be Jesus Who hath saved us by His Precious
Blood!
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the peace and concord of nations, for the
conversion of the enemies of our holy Faith, and for the happiness of all
Christian people.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the repentance of unbelievers, the
extirpation of all heresies and the conversion of sinners.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all my relations, friends and enemies,
for the poor, the sick, and those in tribulation, and for all those for whom
You will that I should pray, or know that I ought to pray.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all those who shall this day pass to
another life that You may preserve them from the pains of Hell and admit them
the more readily to the possession of Your Glory.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all those who are lovers of this Treasure
of His Blood, and for all those who join
with me in adoring and honoring It, and for all those who try to spread
devotion to It.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Eternal Father, I offer You the
merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus,
Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all my wants, spiritual and temporal, for
the holy souls in Purgatory and particularly for those who in their lifetime
were most devoted to this Price of our Redemption and to the sorrows and pains
of our dear Mother, Mary most holy.
Glory be... Blessed and
praised...
Blessed and exalted be the Blood of Jesus, now and always, and through all
eternity! Amen.
Prayer to
Our Lady of Perpetual Help
O Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke thy most
powerful name, which is the safeguard of the living and the salvation of the
dying. O Purest Mary, O Sweetest Mary, let thy name henceforth be ever on my
lips. Delay not, O Blessed Lady, to help me whenever I call on thee, for, in
all my needs, in all my temptations I shall never cease to call on thee, ever
repeating thy sacred name, Mary, Mary.
O what consolation, what sweetness, what confidence, what emotion fill
my soul when I pronounce thy sacred name, or even only think of thee. I thank
God for having given thee, for my good, so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a
name. But I will not be content with merely pronouncing thy name: let my love
for thee prompt me ever to hail thee, Mother of
Perpetual Help.
When the perennial philosophy is abandoned,
the mind is muddled and prey to any absurdity of
thought!
Hermeneutics of
Continuity/Discontinuity..... 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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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 30th 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
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
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
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
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
Dogma
- The Proximate Rule of Faith, the Formal Object of Divine & Catholic Faith
Now, first of all, let us see what is dogma. In the mouth of the world
it means some positive, imperious, and overbearing assertion of a human
authority, or of a self-confident mind. But what does it mean in the mouth of
the Church? It means the precise enunciation of a divine truth, of a divine
fact, or of a divine reality fully known, so far as it is the will of God to
reveal it, adequately defined in words chosen and sanctioned by a divine
authority.
It is the precise enunciation of a divine truth or of a divine reality;
for instance, the nature and the personality of God, the Incarnation, the
coming of the Holy Ghost, and suchlike truths and realities of the mind of God,
precisely known, intellectually conceived, as God has revealed or accomplished
them. Every divine truth or reality, so far as God has been pleased to reveal
it to us, casts its perfect outline and image upon the human intelligence. His
own mind, in which dwells all truth in all fulness
and in all perfection, so far as He has revealed of His truth, is cast upon the
surface of our mind, in the same way as the sun casts its own image upon the
surface of the water, and the disc of the sun is perfectly reflected from its
surface. So, in the intelligence of the Apostles, when, by the illumination of
the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, the revelation of God was cast upon the
surface of their intellect, every divine truth had its perfect outline and
image, not confused, nor in a fragmentary shape, but with a perfect and
complete impression. For instance, that God is One in nature; that in God there
are Three Persons, and one only Person in Jesus Christ. Next, it is not enough
that a truth should be definitely conceived; for if a teacher know the truth,
and is not able to communicate it with accuracy, the learner will be but little
the wiser. And therefore God, who gave His truth, has given also a perpetual
assistance, whereby the Apostles first, and His Church from that day to this,
precisely and without erring declare to mankind the truth which was revealed in
the beginning; and in declaring that truth the Church clothes it in words, in
what we call a terminology: and in the choice of those terms the Church is also
guided. There is an assistance, by which the Church does not err in selecting
the very language in which to express divine truth. For who does not see that,
if the Church were to err in the selection of the words, the declaration of
truth must be obscured? We are conscious every day that we know with perfect
certainty what we desire to say, but, from the difficulty of finding or
choosing our words, we cannot convey our meaning to another. The Church is not
a stammerer as we are. The Church of God has a divine
assistance perpetually guiding it, to clothe in language, that is, in adequate
expression, the divine truth which God has committed to her trust. Therefore a
dogma signifies a correct verbal expression of the truth correctly conceived
and known. But, lastly, it is not sufficient that it be clearly understood in
the intellect and accurately expressed in words, unless the authority by which
it is declared shall be divine; because without a divine authority we cannot
have a divine certainty; without a divine authority we can have no such
assurance that the doctrine which we hear may not be erroneous. The Apostles
were such a divine authority, for they spoke in the Name of their Master. Their
successor to this day is the Church, which, taken as a whole, has been, by the
assistance of the Holy Ghost, promised by our Divine Lord and never absent from
it, perpetually sustained in the path of truth, and preserved from all error in
the declaration of that truth. Therefore ‘He that heareth
you heareth Me’ is true to this day. He that hears
the voice of the Church hears the voice of its Divine Head, and its authority
is therefore divine. This, then, is a dogma: a divine truth clearly understood
in the intellect, precisely expressed in words and by a divine authority. There
are many things which follow from this. First, it proves that the Church of God
must be dogmatic: and that any body which is not
dogmatic is not the Church of God. Any body or
communion that disclaims a divine, and therefore infallible, authority cannot
be dogmatic, because it is conscious that it may err. And therefore the-
Catholic Church alone, the Church which is one and undivided throughout the
world, united with its centre in the Holy See,—this, and this alone, is a
dogmatic Church (as the world reproachfully reminds us), and on that I build my
proof that it alone is the Church of God. A teaching authority which is
dogmatic and not infallible is a tyranny and a nuisance: a tyranny, because it
binds the consciences of men by human authority, liable to err; and a nuisance,
because as it may err, in the long-run it certainly will, and ‘if the blind
lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?’ We see, then, what
dogma means. The Holy Catholic Church always has been and always must be
dogmatic. In this, and in no other sense, is it dogmatic; for it delivers
nothing to us to be believed except upon divine authority, and that which it so
delivers was revealed by God.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart
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
“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
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
Planned
Parenthood pledges $1.5 million to protect pro-abortion Pennsylvania governor
LifeSiteNews | PENNSYLVANIA | June 21, 2018 – Planned Parenthood has announced
it intends to spend heavily to ensure that pro-abortion Democrat Tom Wolf
remains the Governor of Pennsylvania.
“With nearly 75% of the
Pennsylvania legislature opposed to safe and legal abortion, Governor Tom Wolf
is critical to Planned Parenthood’s survival,” Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania
Advocates & PAC declares in its solicitation for online donations. The
group plans to spend $1.5 million toward his reelection this fall, the
Tribune-Review reports.
The money will also support other
pro-abortion candidates in the state, and finance door-knocking, phone calls,
text messages, direct mail campaigns, and digital advertising.
Wolf “is a brick wall against
efforts to roll back health care access and rights of Pennsylvanians,” Sari
Stevens, the PAC’s executive director, said. Republicans control both chambers
of the Pennsylvania legislature, meaning the fate of pro-life legislation
currently rests entirely with the governor.
Wolf and his wife Frances are both
former Planned Parenthood volunteers, and the governor has dutifully continued
to serve the abortion giant in office.
He has used his veto pen to block legislation
that would have banned late-term and dismemberment abortions, and has promised
to veto legislation banning abortions that target Down syndrome children and
abortions on babies with detectable heartbeats.
Pro-lifers have also hit Wolf for
refusing to hold the abortion industry accountable for its treatment of women,
noting that he praised a Planned Parenthood facility which has repeatedly
failed state health inspections, and nominated for Virginia Secretary of State
Pedro Cortes, a man who failed to take action against notorious Philadelphia
abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell
while holding the same office in a previous administration.
In 2015, the government data
analysis site InsideGov named Wolf the most liberal
governor in America, as well.
“It's no surprise that Tom Wolf is
setting records for donations taken from special interests. He is bought and
paid for by those filling up his campaign coffers,” Andrew Romeo, a spokesman
for Wolf’s Republican challenger Scott Wagner, responded.
The Pennsylvania Pro-Life
Federation says Wagner, currently a state senator, holds a 100% pro-life voting
record. Wagner sponsored the late-term abortion ban Wolf vetoed, as well as
legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. As “governor he would continue to
fight for the rights of the unborn, which would include supporting the
heartbeat bill,” Romeo said last month.
Current pro-life laws in
Pennsylvania include requiring parental consent for abortion, a 24-hour waiting
period, informed consent requirements including fetal development and abortion
risks and alternatives, and abortion facility standards and inspections enacted
in the wake of the Gosnell scandal.
Remember in your charity the following pray requests:
Please remember our expectant mothers: Victoria Dimmel,
Erika Zepeda, and Carmen Carrol,
Charles Muldowney, who is terminally ill,
Luis Rafael
Zelaya, for his conversion,
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 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,
For the health and welfare of Kolinsky and Sorace families,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for the health and
spiritual welfare of Brian Abramowitz,
Thomas Schiltz family, in grateful appreciation for their contribution to
the beauty of our chapel,
Welfare of Bishop
Richard Williamson, for strength and courage in the greater battles to
come,
Angelina
Montesano family & Helen Snyder, for their health and spiritual welfare,
Michael J.
Brigg & his family, who have helped with the needs of the Mission,
The conversion of David Keithley and the welfare of the
Nathaniel Miller family, are the petitions of Gene Peters,
For the conversion of Ben & Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf,
Eckhard Ebert, and Fahnauer
family,
Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX who has been ill,
and for Fr. Thomas Blute,
For the health and welfare of Kathryn Lederhos, the aunt of
David Drew,
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,
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)
“It is a sin to believe there is salvation
outside the Catholic Church!”
Blessed Pope Pius IX
PREVIOUS
BULLETIN POSTS BELOW THAT REMAIN TIMELY:
“The
True Challenge of the Pontiff is the Heresy of Homosexuality”
“The Holy Father has confirmed that which everyone had known for many
years. I think that the wall of omertà that has existed for a long time is destroyed. But now, how to demolish that other wall of omertà that exists inside the seminaries? Who is concerned
with the revolution of Benedict XVI who forbade the ordination of homosexual
priests? The problem of the gay lobby in
the Vatican is important, but marginal.
The true challenge of the Pontiff is the heresy of homosexuality, what I
call the ‘homoheresy’, that is, the rejection of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, whose
defenders are in favor of priesthood for gays. The Holy Father must combat this
heresy that has spread throughout the Church.
Who, in Italy, is interested in the current situation of the seminaries? And there is where the future of the Church
is decided! The only way forward is to continue the revolution of Ratzinger, who wished to ‘free’ the seminaries from gay
educators and homosexual seminarians.” ...
Fr. Dariusz Oko,
theology professor, Pontifical University John Paul II, Krakow, who has
denounced the gay lobby in the Vatican
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.
The Love of God is Conditional Upon Believing His Revealed
Truth and Keeping His Commandments!
Everyone knows that John himself, the
Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his
followers the new commandment ‘Love one another,’ altogether forbade any
intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt form of Christ’s
teaching: ‘If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not
into the house nor say to him: God speed you.’ (II John 10).
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, Jan. 6, 1928
Consecration
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus composed by St. Margaret Mary
Adorable Heart of my most loving Jesus, what good have You found in me
to make You love me without limit, even though my heart, stained by a thousand
faults, was so cold and indifferent toward You?
The great proofs of love which You have shown me, even when I did not
love You, give me hope that You will now find acceptable the proofs of my
love. Receive then, my loving Savior, my
desire to consecrate myself entirely to the honor and glory of Your Sacred
Heart; accept the gift of all that I am.
I consecrate to You my person, my life, my actions, my pains and
sufferings, desiring to be in the future a victim consecrated to You glory, on
fire at this moment, and one day to be entirely consumed by the holy flames of
Your love. I offer You then, my Lord and
my God, my heart with all its desires, that during my whole life it may be
perfectly conformed to Yours. I belong,
then, wholly to Your Heart, I am entirely Yours. O my God, how great are Your mercies toward
me!
My adorable Savior, accept my consecration also in reparation for the
offenses which I have not ceased to commit against You until now, by
corresponding so badly to You love. I am
giving You very little, I know, but at least I wish to give You all that is in
my power and all You wish, for that You desire from me; therefore, by
consecrating my heart to You, I give it to You never to take it back.
Teach me, O loving Savior, perfect forgetfulness of self, for that is
the one way by which I can enter Your adorable Heart; and since in the future I
shall do everything for You, grant that all I do may be worthy of You. Teach me what I must do to arrive at the
purity of Your love, but also give me this love, give me a most ardent,
generous love. Give me that profound humility
without which no one can be pleasing to You, and accomplish in me all Your holy
will.
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.
Modernists
are Deconstructionalists - the deny the
intentionality of words and thus destroy the ability of language to convey
truth! They are our modern "sophists." They attack the revelation of
God at its very source.
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 pseudorealities 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, 1974
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
If
men are “obligated” to a “right faith” then “Religious Liberty” is lie!
That by Divine
Law Men are obliged to a Right Faith
As sight by the bodily eye is the principle of the bodily passion of
love, so the beginning of spiritual love must be the intellectual vision of
some object of the same. But the vision of that spiritual object of
understanding, which is God, cannot be had at present by us except through
faith, because God exceeds our natural reason, especially if we consider Him in
that regard under which our happiness consists in enjoying Him.
a.) The divine law directs man to be entirely subject to God. But as
man’s will is subjected to God by loving Him, so his understanding is subjected
to Him by believing Him,—but not by believing anything false, because no
falsehood can be proposed to man by God, who is the truth: hence he who
believes anything false does not believe God.
b.) Whoever holds an erroneous view about a thing, touching the essence
of the thing, does not know the thing. Thus if any one were to fix on the
notion of irrational animal, and take that to be man, he would not know man.
The case would be otherwise, if he was mistaken only about some of the
accidents of man. But in the case of compound beings, though he who errs about
any of the essentials of a thing does not know the thing, absolutely speaking,
still he knows it in a sort of a way: thus he who thinks man to be an
irrational animal knows him generically: but in the case of simple beings this
cannot be,—any error shuts out entirely all knowledge of the thing. But God is
to the utmost degree simple. Therefore whoever errs about God does not know
God. Thus he who believes God to be corporeal has no sort of knowledge of God,
but apprehends something else instead of God. Now as a thing is known, so is it
loved and desired. He then who errs concerning God, can neither love Him nor
desire Him as his last end. Since then the divine law aims at bringing men to
love and desire God, that same law must bind men to have a right faith
concerning God.
Hence it is said: Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb.
xi, 6); and at the head of all other precepts of the law there is prescribed a
right faith in God: Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one Lord (Deut. vi. 4).
St. Thomas Aquinas, Of God and
His Creatures
The
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
Prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi
“Act bravely, my brethren; take courage and
trust in the Lord. 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 obey the true Supreme Pontiff and the Roman Church with
loyal ears 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….
“Those who persevere in their fervor 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…
“Some preachers will keep silent 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.”
St. Francis of Assisi, Works of the
Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, published in 1882 by the London-based
Catholic publishing house R. Washbourne, 1882, pp.
248-250.
“Vatican II was a pastoral
council by its teachings, that is, its doctrines. In a word, Vatican II was pastoral by being
doctrinal.”
Fr. John O’Malley, Jesuit “historian and
theologian,” author of What Happened at
Vatican II, speaking at Caritas International Conference, “Vatican II,
Remembering the Future: Ecumenical, Interfaith and Secular Perspectives on the
Council's Impact and Promise.” The event was co-hosted by Georgetown, Marymount
University in Arlington, Va., and the Washington National Cathedral.
COMMENT: This is a
remarkable admission of the necessary relationship between Catholic doctrine
and Catholic practice. It is a Truth of
our Faith that has been constantly denied by the Modernists since Vatican II
because, if this Truth had been admitted, no one would have accepted the
Council’s novel teachings which were imposed by a corruption of practice. Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission
has affirmed that every Catholic possesses a right to the immemorial traditions
of our Church because we have a duty imposed by God to profess our faith openly
and publicly which these traditions perfectly signify. And thus, these immemorial traditions
constitute necessary attributes of the Faith because without them, the Faith
cannot be known or communicated to others.
And now, those who have foolishly adopted the novel practices
dictatorially imposed after Vatican II are to understand that they in fact do
signify a new doctrine, that “Vatican II was pastoral by being doctrinal.” The
Modernists want the new doctrines to be professed that the new practices
signify. No Catholic is bound by any
novel doctrine, therefore, no Catholic is bound by any novel practice which signifies
these new doctrines. The only reason that Fr. O’Malley is now admitting this
Catholic truth is to impose formally the novel doctrines which the Novus Ordo practice signifies.
The Church again is victimized by homosexual clerics and
their lobby!
Pedophilia, Clergy abuse victims settle with US diocese
The church of St. Paul and Minneapolis will deliver $210 million to 450
people sexually abused by members of the clergy. Money to be placed in a trust
fund for the claimants
vatican insider staff | turin | June 1,
2018
Record compensation
was provided by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the United
States, which announced a 210 million dollars settlement for about 450 victims
of clergy sexual abuse. This is the second largest reparation for the scandal
that has shaken the Catholic Church of the United States, after that of 2007
when the archdiocese of Los Angeles liquidated cases of clergy sexual abuse of
508 victims paying 660 million dollars.
Most of the funds,
about $170 million, will come from insurance companies, the rest from parishes,
a pension fund and the sale of real estate.
The victim's
lawyer, Jeff Anderson, said that the money - a total of $210,290,724 - will go
in a trust fund for the claimants, survivors of the abuses perpetrated by
several priests in past decades. During the conference the lawyer also showed
the sole of his shoes where the phrase "Rise up and claim the truth"
was written.
"The victims
of the abuses will have their payments made as soon as the court approves the
plan", Archbishop Bernard Hebda assured, from
2016 at the head of the diocese hit by the scandals, which in 2015 filed for
bankruptcy.
The prelate said he
was "grateful to all those who courageously presented themselves to
denounce what had happened". "The Church", he added, "has
disappointed you and I am very sorry: the abuses have stolen so much from you,
from your childhood, from your innocence, from your security, from your trust
and in many cases from your faith".
The Homo-Lobby is so deeply imbedded it can only be
removed by persecution!
Chile, the Pope’s words on gays and Wojtyla’s
forgotten directives
The Chilean case demonstrates the existence - not only in the South
American country - of serious problems of discernment in vocations in
seminaries, and in the processes of episcopal
nomination
Vatican Insider | andrea
tornielli | vatican city | May 31, 2018
The case of
Chile and the emergence of new scandals, following the renunciation of the
entire episcopate who has placed their fate in the hands of the Pope, shows how
deeply rooted is the disease that afflicts the Chilean Church and not only.
Yet, it also shows how much the teachings of the Popes, published in recent
decades, have been considered dead letters by the bishops.
Last week, speaking
behind closed doors with the General Assembly of the Italian Episcopal
Conference, Pope Francis, though expressing all his concern for the decline in
priestly vocations, had invited the bishop to focus more on the quality of
future priests than with quantity, citing the case of homosexual
persons who wish to enter the seminary: “If you have even the slightest doubt,
it is better not to let them in”. Francis spoke in the wake of two documents
published in recent years by the Holy See: the first is of 2005, at the
beginning of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the second is of 2016 and was
promulgated during the pontificate of Bergoglio. In
both, while deeply respecting the people in question, it is argued that it is
not possible to admit to seminary and sacred orders “those who practice
homosexuality” or “have deeply rooted homosexual tendencies”.
In a note of the document given by Pope
Francis to the Chilean bishops who arrived in Rome, one could read a criticism
for having entrusted the leadership of the seminaries to “priests suspected of
practicing homosexuality”. The existence of branched and organized networks of
priests who lured their prey via the web, as well as cases of abuse of minors
involving eminent priests, clearly indicate that the criteria of discernment
were not well applied.
Already in 1992,
therefore more than ten years before the 2005 publication of the Instruction of
the Congregation for Catholic Education on the theme “Criteria for the
discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in
view of their admission to the seminary and to holy orders”, and more than
twenty years before the publication of the Ratio Fundamentalis
of the Congregation for the Clergy entitled “The Gift of the Presbyteral Vocation” (these are the two documents that
invite those who have a deeply rooted homosexual tendency or practice
homosexuality not to enter the seminary), John Paul II made known the apostolic
exhortation Pastores dabo vobis on “the formation of priests in the circumstances of
the present day”.
In that document,
we read: “Since the charism of celibacy, even when it
is genuine and has proved itself, leaves one’s affections and instinctive
impulses intact, candidates to the priesthood need an affective maturity which
is prudent, able to renounce anything that is a threat to it, vigilant over
both body and spirit, and capable of esteem and respect in interpersonal
relationships between men and women. A precious help can be given by a suitable
education to true friendship, following the image of the bonds of fraternal
affection which Christ himself lived on earth”.
Pope Wojtyla also affirmed: “Human maturity, and in particular
affective maturity, requires a clear and strong training in freedom, which
expresses itself in convinced and heartfelt obedience to the “truth of one’s
own being, to the “meaning” of one’s own existence, that is to the “sincere
gift of self” as the way and fundamental content of the authentic realization
of self. Thus understood, freedom requires the person to be truly master of
oneself, determined to fight and overcome the different forms of selfishness
and individualism which threaten the life of each one, ready to open out to
others, generous in dedication and service to one’s neighbor”.
The problem that
has emerged from recent scandals is not only that of pedophilia: in many cases
it is the abuse of children who have already entered adolescence. The widest
and deepest problem to which no adequate answer has yet been given concerns the
affective immaturity of candidates for the priesthood, who, if they are not men
mature in their affectivity - whether heterosexual or homosexual - will be
conditioned by their affective immaturity in relations with others. […….]
READ CARFULLY: Benedict/Ratzinger
does not possess the power to alter what Christ established!
Completeness or not of Fatima message is beside the point: what matters
is that what is known is unfolding
Roberto de Mattei
| Corrispondenza Romana |
May 25, 2016
The centenary year of Fatima was
opened on Pentecost Sunday to news that caused quite a sensation.
The German theologian Ingo Dollinger revealed to the “OnePeterFive”
site that after the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima, Cardinal Ratzinger had confided to him: “Das ist
noch nicht alles!”, “We didn’t publish everything”. The Vatican Press
Office intervened with an immediate denial in which it stated: “Pope emeritus
Benedict XVI declares never to have spoken with Professor Dollinger
about Fatima’, clearly affirming that the remarks attributed to Professor Dollinger on the matter ‘are pure inventions, absolutely
untrue’, and he confirms decisively that ‘the publication of the Third Secret
of Fatima is complete.”
The denial doesn’t convince those
like Antonio Socci who had always sustained the
existence of an undisclosed part of the secret, which would refer to the
abandonment of the faith by a part of the Church’s hierarchy. Other scholars
like Dr. Antonio Augusto Borelli Machado, think the secret disclosed by the
Vatican is complete and tragically eloquent. On the basis of the information at
our disposal, today we cannot affirm with absolute certainty, either the
entirety of the Third Secret text nor its incompleteness. What appears
absolutely certain is that the prophecy of Fatima is unfulfilled and that its fulfilment concerns an unprecedented crisis in the Church.
Regarding this, an important
hermeneutic principle needs to be borne in mind. The Lord, through revelations
and prophecies, which add nothing to the deposit of the faith, at times offers
us some “spiritual direction” to guide us through the darkest periods of
history. Yet if it’s true that the Divine words cast light on dark times, the
opposite is also true: historical events, in their dramatic unfolding, help us
to understand the significance of prophecy.
On
July 13th 1917, when Our Lady announced at Fatima that if humanity didn’t
convert Russia would have spread its errors throughout the world, these words
appeared incomprehensible. It was the historical facts that revealed their
significance. After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, it was clear that
the expansion of Communism was the instrument God wanted to use as a punishment
to the world for its sins.
Between 1989 and 1991, the evil
empire of the Soviet Union apparently crumbled, but the disappearance of its
political packaging allowed for the diffusion all over the world of Communism,
which has its ideological nucleus in philosophical evolution and moral
relativism. The “philosophy of praxis” which according to Antonio Gramsci sums up the Marxist cultural revolution, has become
the theological horizon of the new pontificate, outlined by theologians like
the German Cardinal, Walter Kasper and the Argentinean Archbishop, Victor
Manuel Fernàndez, inspirers of the Apostolic
Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
In this sense it’s not the Fatima
Secret we need to start from in order to understand the reality of a tragedy in
the Church, but from the crisis in the Church[itself]in order to understand the
ultimate meaning of the Fatima Secret. A crisis which goes back to the 1960s,
but with Benedict XVI’s abdication and Pope Francis’ pontificate, has seen a
shocking acceleration.
While the Vatican Press Office was
making haste to defuse the Dollinger case, another
bomb exploded with an even greater impact. During the presentation of Prof. Don
Roberto Regoli’s book, Oltre
la crisi della Chiesa. Il pontificato di Benedetto XVI (Lindau, Turin, 2016) held in the auditorium at the
Gregorian Pontifical University, Monsignor Georg Gänswein highlighted Pope Ratzinger’s act of renunciation with these words:
“From
February 11th 2013, the papal ministry is not the same as before. It is and
remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; and yet it is a foundation that
Benedict has profoundly and lastingly transformed by his exceptional
pontificate”.
According to Archbishop Gänswein,
the Pope’s resignation is “epochal” as it introduced into the Catholic Church
the new institution of “Pope emeritus” transforming the concept of munus petrinum - “the petrine ministry”. “Before and after his abdication,
Benedict intended and intends his task as a participation in a “petrine ministry” such as this. He left the Papal Throne
and yet with his step on February 11th 2013, he did not entirely abandon this
ministry. Rather he integrated the personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a shared ministry (...). From the
election of his successor, Pope Francis—on 13 March 2013—there are not then two
Popes, but de facto an enlarged ministry with an active and a contemplative
member. For this reason, Benedict has not renounced either his name or his
white cassock. For this reason, the correct title with which we must refer to
him is still “Holiness.” Furthermore, he has not retired to an isolated
monastery, but [has retired]within the Vatican, as if he had simply stepped
aside to make space for his Successor, and for a new stage in the history of
the Papacy.(...). With this act of extraordinary boldness he has instead
renewed the office (even against well-meaning and undoubtedly competent
advisors) and in a last endeavour has strengthened it
(as I hope). This certainly will only be demonstrated by history. However, in
the history of the Church, 2013 will remain the year that the renowned
Theologian on the Throne of Peter became the first “Pope Emeritus” in history.”
This discourse is of an explosive
nature, and, by itself, demonstrates how we are not “over” the crisis in the
Church but more than ever in it. The Papacy is not a ministry that can be
“enlarged”, since it is an “office” given personally by Jesus Christ to a sole
Vicar and a sole successor of Peter. What distinguishes the Catholic Church
from every other church or religion is precisely the existence of a unitary and
indissoluble principle in the person of the Supreme Pontiff. Monsignor Gänswein’s discourse(it is difficult to understand where he
wants to go with it) suggests a two-headed Church and adds confusion to a
situation already far too confusing.
One sentence connects the second
and third part of the Fatima Secret: “In Portugal the dogma of the faith will
always be kept.” Our Lady is talking to three little Portuguese shepherds and
assures them that their country will not lose the faith. But where will the
faith be lost? It has always been thought that Our Lady was referring to the
apostasy of entire nations, but today is seems increasingly clearer that the
greatest loss of faith is occurring among churchmen.
A “bishop dressed in white” and
“various other bishops, priests and religious” are at the centre of the Third
Secret, in a setting of death and ruin, legitimate to imagine as not only
material, but spiritual. Before writing the Third Secret, the revelation that
Sister Lucia had at Tuy on January 3rd 1944 confirms
this, and is hence indissolubly linked to it. After the vision of a terrible
cosmic catastrophe, Sister Lucia recounts that she had heard in her heart “a
soft voice that said: ‘in time, one faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy
Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity Heaven!’!”
These words represent a radical
negation of any form of religious relativism which the heavenly voice
contradicts with the exaltation of Holy Mother Church and the Catholic Faith.
In history the smoke of Satan can invade the Church, but whoever defends the
integrity of the Faith against the powers of hell will see, in time and in
eternity, the triumph of the Church and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
definitive seal of the dramatic but fascinating Fatima prophecy.
Land of the Lemmings
Ireland votes to legalize abortion: ‘a tragedy of historic proportions’
LifeSiteNews | IRELAND | May 26, 2018 – Irish citizens voted to legalize abortion
on Friday, ending Ireland’s legacy as one of the world’s most pro-life nations.
The votes are still being officially counted, but the pro-abortion
campaign is declaring victory and pro-lifers are calling this a “tragedy of
historic proportions.”
“The 8th amendment did not create a right
to life for the unborn child – it merely acknowledged that such a right exists,
has always existed, and will always exist,” the pro-life Save the 8th campaign
said in a statement. “What Irish voters did yesterday is a tragedy of historic
proportions. However, a wrong does not become right simply because a majority
support it.”
Ireland has one of the lowest maternal
mortality rates in the world. The Eighth Amendment of its Constitution
guaranteed equal rights for pre-born babies and their mothers.
Repealing the Eighth Amendment was a
decades-long goal of the abortion movement. The Irish voted by 67 percent to
add the Eighth Amendment to their constitution in 1983, making the Emerald Isle
a uniquely safe place for pre-born babies in contrast to the rest of the West’s
liberal abortion regimes.
There have been five previous votes on
repealing the Eighth Amendment, all of which failed. One was in 1983, three
were in 1992, and one was in 2002.
More people in Dublin, where the majority
of residents supported the “repeal” campaign, voted in this referendum than in
2015 on same-sex “marriage” and in their general election.
One students’ union in Dublin created a
safe space-like “chill zone” where students could “de-stress” as the results
were counted. It became apparent that abortion advocates had won and only 14
students utilized the room, The Guardian reported. Exit polls showed around 87
percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted for abortion.
In early 2018, the Irish government
approved putting the Eighth Amendment to a vote in May with the promise that if
passed, legislation allowing abortion on demand would be introduced. The
proposed legislation – which may be introduced next week – is expected to be
abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy for healthy babies
and later throughout pregnancy for nebulous “health” reasons, for babies with
disabilities, and babies conceived in rape.
Pro-life activists responded to the
referendum with a massive canvassing and public awareness campaign about how
many lives have been saved by the Eighth Amendment, how one in five babies in
England is aborted, the fact that abortion kills a living human being, and the
many harms to women and society that come with legalizing it.
“The unborn child no longer has a right to
life recognised by the Irish state,” the Save the
8th’s defeat statement continued. “Shortly, legislation will be introduced that
will allow babies to be killed in our country. We will oppose that legislation.
If and when abortion clinics are opened in Ireland, because of the inability of
the Government to keep their promise about a GP led service, we will oppose
that as well. Every time an unborn child has his or her life ended in Ireland,
we will oppose that, and make our voices known.”
The country once known for its strong
Catholic heritage and identity voted in 2015 to amend its constitution to
permit same-sex “marriage.” Despite Ireland’s move toward secularism and
approval of redefining marriage, polls on how the Eighth Amendment vote would
go were extremely close toward the end of the abortion vote.
In 2012, a woman named Savita
Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died of
sepsis (blood poisoning) at Galway University Hospital. Three official
investigations found that the 31-year-old died of a blood infection caused by
“extremely virulent bacteria,” E. coli ESBL. Under Ireland’s abortion laws, the
woman would have been permitted an abortion had doctors realized how sick she
was when she came to the hospital. They didn’t, and her death was due to
medical negligence, not lack of abortion, official investigations revealed.
According to the Health Information and Quality Authority, which investigated
her death, doctors missed 13 opportunities to save her life. Irish abortion activists exploited Savita's case and lied about her death, culminating in
Friday’s vote.
COMMENT: Ireland, forever to be known as the
land of the Lemmings, ranks close to the bottom for intelligence of all the
nations of Europe:
https://iq-research.info/en/average-iq-by-country
This vote to introduce legalized abortion,
which naturally follows fast upon their legalization of homosexual “marriage”
three years ago, confirms these findings, for whom, after seeing the
demographic destruction of Italy, Spain, France, England and Germany, all who
have so decimated their populations by abortion that they cannot replace their
own and must import Muslim workers who will soon dominate and destroy their
native cultures, would follow them in their national folly? Yet Ireland is
the only country to legalize these perversions by popular vote. The nations of Poland and Hungry are far more
intelligent and possessing a clearer moral sense are moving to restrict as much
as possible this satanic crime. They had
abortion imposed upon them by Communism and are working to reverse this policy
of national suicide. But Ireland has no
excuse. Having kept the faith through
hundreds of years of persecution they have now returned to their Druid past
where ritual murder including that of children was part of the routine worship,
for abortion in the end is a form of ritual murder. The dog that returns to its vomit is far different
than one trying to restore their Catholic culture after years of communist
rule. Ireland is through and will suffer
a punishment that will make its inhabitants pine for the good old days of
imposed English famine. All of this is
no problem for the Catholic Novus Ordo Irish Church
that has been so thoroughly infiltrated by homosexual clergy that it can only
wonder how they will establish ecumenical relations with their Druid
counterparts.
A patron in high places at last!
Medjugorje, the Pope appoints Hoser as permanent
visitor
The Polish archbishop had carried out a pastoral survey on behalf of
the Pontiff. Now he will be in charge of accompanying the faithful on a
permanent basis but without entering into matters relating to the authenticity
of the apparitions
Vatican Insider | andrea
tornielli | vatican city | May 31, 2018
There is
still no pronouncement regarding the supernatural nature of the Marian
apparitions that have followed one another over decades, but a significant
decision that shows Francis’ priorities: the accompaniment of the many faithful
who go to Medjugorje from all over the world.
On
31 May 2018 Pope Bergoglio appointed Monsignor Henryk Hoser, Archbishop Emeritus
of Warszawa-Prague in Poland, as “ special apostolic visitor to the parish of Medjugorje, for an indefinite period and ad nutum Sanctae Sedis”,
that is, at the disposal of the Holy See.
The
Vatican Press Office informs that it is an “exclusively pastoral task, in
continuity with the mission of the Holy See’ special envoy of the parish of Medjugorje, entrusted to Monsignor Hoser
on 11 February 2017 and concluded by him in recent months”.
“The
mission of the apostolic visitor - the communiqué concludes- is to ensure a
stable and continuous accompaniment of the parish community of Medjugorje and of the faithful who go there on pilgrimage,
whose needs require special attention”.
The
director of the Vatican Press Office Greg Burke stressed the “pastoral, not
doctrinal” character of Hoser’s mission and
therefore, today’s decision “does not enter into the doctrinal questions”
concerning the truthfulness of the Marian apparitions of Medjugorje.
The appointment therefore represents “not the conclusion” of the Medjugorje affair, “but the next step” to Hoser’s first mission. The prelate, moreover, “will have
residence in Medjugorje, for a tighter collaboration
with the bishop and the local Franciscans”.
It
is well known that Monsignor Hoser, who was not in
charge of overseeing the apparitions as such, but of the pastoral care of the
faithful, was personally very much in favor of the recognition of the
apparitions. [.....]
COMMENT: The apparitions on
demand to the visionaries at Medjugorge are not from God. Either they are demonic, from the demented, or
a mere financial scam or a combination of all three. They have been going on since 1981 and the
show is from time to time taken on the road.
The messages have contained heretical judgments since the
beginning. The alleged apparitions have
been investigated by the local bishop and the national bishops conferences
numerous time and have never been approved as from heaven. In Pope Francis they
find a patron for Dogma means nothing to him and the messages are sympathetic
to his world vision.
Pope Francis tells gay man: 'God made you like this'
Juan Carlos Cruz, who was sexually abused, says pontiff told him God
did not mind that he was gay
The Guardian | Stephanie Kirchgaessner |
Rome | May 20, 2018
Juan
Carlos Cruz said some of Chile’s bishops had sought to depict him as a pervert
as they accused him of lying about abuse.
A
survivor of clerical sexual abuse has said Pope Francis told him that God had
made him gay and loved him, in arguably the most strikingly accepting comments
about homosexuality to be uttered by the leader of the Roman Catholic church.
Juan
Carlos Cruz, who spoke privately with the pope two weeks ago about the abuse he
suffered at the hands of one of Chile’s most notorious paedophiles, said the
issue of his sexuality had arisen because some of the Latin American country’s
bishops had sought to depict him as a pervert as they accused him of lying
about the abuse.
“He
told me, ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this
and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You
have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz told Spanish newspaper El País. [.....]
Pope Francis,
an ideologue for the "new barbarians."
As Russell Kirk
wrote, ideology is political religion. And the dogmas of the political religion
by which we are increasingly ruled have displaced the teachings of Christianity
and tradition.
Since the
Stonewall Riot of 1969, homosexual relationships have gone from being seen as
indecent and immoral, to being tolerated, to being accepted, to being on the
same plane as traditional marriage, to being a constitutional right.
And if you do
not accept the new morality, you are a deplorable bigot. And if you act on your
disbelief in the equality of homosexuality, you will be ostracized and
punished.
The truths
being jettisoned built the greatest civilization known to man. Will the
invented truths of our new egalitarianism survive the arrival of the new
barbarians? It’s not looking all that good right now.
Pat Buchanan,
Can the Pope Change Moral Truth?
All Chilean bishops offer their resignation over sexual abuse cover-up
It is not yet clear whether Pope Francis will accept resignations of 34
bishops
Guardian | Harriet Sherwood | May 18, 2018
The scandal has damaged the credibility
of the church in Chile. Photograph: Vincenzo Pinto/AP
Chile’s
bishops have offered to resign en masse over a sexual abuse and cover-up
scandal that has embroiled Pope Francis and has been highly damaging to the
Catholic church.
Thirty-one
serving bishops and three retired bishops signed a letter of resignation on
Friday. “We have put our positions in the hands of the Holy Father and will
leave it to him to decide freely for each of us,” they said. “We want to ask
forgiveness for the pain caused to the victims, to the pope, to God’s people
and to our country for the serious errors and omissions we have committed.”
There
was no immediate indication of whether the pope would accept their
resignations.
The
bishops’ move came after Francis said the Chilean church hierarchy was
collectively responsible for “grave defects” in handling sexual abuse cases and
the resulting loss of credibility suffered by the church.
He
accused them of destroying evidence of sexual crimes, putting pressure on
investigators to downplay abuse accusations and showing “grave negligence” in
protecting children from paedophile priests.
“No
one can exempt himself and place the problem on the shoulders of the others,”
Francis said in a letter to the bishops.
Francis
summoned the bishops to a three-day emergency summit in Rome after he was
forced to admit he had made “grave errors in judgment” in the case of Juan
Barros, a bishop who had been accused of covering up alleged abuse by a Chilean
priest, Fernando Karadima, in the 1980s and 90s.
The
Chilean church has been rocked by the allegations of abuse by Karadima and
others, and by claims that senior figures knew about or even witnessed what was
going on.
Now
87 and living in a nursing home in Child, Karadima has always denied the allegations.
Barros has said he was unaware of any wrongdoing.
Francis
strongly defended Barros during a visit to Chile in January, accusing
Karadima's accusers of slander, in remarks that shocked Chileans and others
around the world. “There is not one piece of evidence against [Barros]. It is
calumny,” he said.
Francis’s
comments were seen as highly damaging to his reputation, compounding a
widespread view that he has failed to take a robust stance on the issue of
clerical sexual abuse since becoming pope.
The
Vatican later sent two expert on sexual crimes to investigate claims of
widespread abuse and cover-up in Chile. They delivered a 2,300-page report.
In
a 10-page letter commenting on the report, which was handed to the Chilean
bishops at the start of the summit, the pope said the church authorities had
minimised “the absolute gravity of their [priests’] criminal acts, attributing
to them mere weakness or moral lapses.”
Priests
accused of abuse were moved but “were then welcomed into other dioceses, in an
obviously imprudent way, and given … jobs that gave them daily contact with
minors.”
Francis
said he was “perplexed and ashamed” by the report’s evidence that pressure was
put on church officials tasked with investigating sexual crimes, “including the
destruction of compromising documents on the part of those in charge of
ecclesiastic archives”.
He
said: “The problems inside the church community can’t be solved just by dealing
with individual cases and reducing them to the removal of people, though this –
and I say so clearly – has to be done.
“But
it’s not enough, we have to go beyond that. It would be irresponsible on our
part to not look deeply into the roots and the structures that allowed these
concrete events to occur and perpetuate.”
In
an attempt to limit the damage caused by his comments in January defending
Barros, the pope met and apologised to three Chilean abuse survivors at his
Vatican residence, the Casa Santa Marta.
The Fruits of Vatican II - the apostasy extends to
Ireland
Ireland votes to legalize abortion: ‘a tragedy of historic proportions’
LifeSiteNews | IRELAND | May 26, 2018 –
Irish citizens voted to legalize abortion on Friday, ending Ireland’s legacy as
one of the world’s most pro-life nations.
The
votes are still being officially counted, but the pro-abortion campaign is
declaring victory and pro-lifers are calling this a “tragedy of historic
proportions.”
“The
8th amendment did not create a right to life for the unborn child – it merely
acknowledged that such a right exists, has always existed, and will always
exist,” the pro-life Save the 8th campaign said in a statement. “What Irish
voters did yesterday is a tragedy of historic proportions. However, a wrong
does not become right simply because a majority support it.”
Ireland
has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. The Eighth
Amendment of its Constitution guaranteed equal rights for pre-born babies and
their mothers.
Repealing
the Eighth Amendment was a decades-long goal of the abortion movement. The
Irish voted by 67 percent to add the Eighth Amendment to their constitution in
1983, making the Emerald Isle a uniquely safe place for pre-born babies in
contrast to the rest of the West’s liberal abortion regimes.
There
have been five previous votes on repealing the Eighth Amendment, all of which
failed. One was in 1983, three were in 1992, and one was in 2002.
More
people in Dublin, where the majority of residents supported the “repeal”
campaign, voted in this referendum than in 2015 on same-sex “marriage” and in
their general election.
One
students’ union in Dublin created a safe space-like “chill zone” where students
could “de-stress” as the results were counted. It became apparent that abortion
advocates had won and only 14 students utilized the room, The
Guardian reported. Exit polls showed around 87 percent of 18- to
24-year-olds voted for abortion.
In
early 2018, the Irish government approved putting the Eighth Amendment to a
vote in May with the promise that if passed, legislation allowing abortion on
demand would be introduced. The proposed legislation – which may be introduced
next week – is expected to be abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of
pregnancy for healthy babies and later throughout pregnancy for nebulous
“health” reasons, for babies with disabilities, and babies conceived in rape.
Pro-life
activists responded to the referendum with a massive canvassing and public
awareness campaign about how many lives have been saved by the Eighth
Amendment, how one in five babies in England is aborted, the fact that abortion
kills a living human being, and the many harms to women and society that come
with legalizing it.
“The
unborn child no longer has a right to life recognised by the Irish state,” the
Save the 8th’s defeat statement continued. “Shortly, legislation will be
introduced that will allow babies to be killed in our country. We will oppose
that legislation. If and when abortion clinics are opened in Ireland, because
of the inability of the Government to keep their promise about a GP led service,
we will oppose that as well. Every time an unborn child has his or her life
ended in Ireland, we will oppose that, and make our voices known.”
The
country once known for its strong Catholic heritage and identity voted in 2015
to amend its constitution to permit same-sex “marriage.” Despite Ireland’s move
toward secularism and approval of redefining marriage, polls on how the Eighth
Amendment vote would go were extremely close toward the end of the abortion
vote.
In
2012, a woman named Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died of
sepsis (blood poisoning) at Galway University Hospital.
Three
official investigations found that the 31-year-old died of a blood infection
caused by “extremely virulent bacteria,” E. coli ESBL. Under Ireland’s abortion
laws, the woman would have been permitted an abortion had doctors realized how
sick she was when she came to the hospital.
They
didn’t, and her death was due to medical negligence, not lack of abortion,
official investigations revealed. According to the Health Information and
Quality Authority, which investigated her death, doctors missed 13
opportunities to save her life.
Irish
abortion activists exploited Savita's case and lied about her death,
culminating in Friday’s vote.
COMMENT: Ireland, the land of the Lemmings,
ranks close to the bottom for intelligence of all the nations of Europe.
https://iq-research.info/en/average-iq-by-country
This vote to introduce legalized abortion,
which naturally follows fast upon their legalization of homosexual
"marriage" two years ago, confirms these findings, for whom, after
seeing the demographic destruction of Italy, Spain, France, England and
Germany, all who have so decimated their populations by abortion that they
cannot replace their own and must import Muslim workers who will soon dominate
and destroy their native cultures, would follow them in their national
folly? Yet
Ireland is the only country to legalize these perversions by popular vote. The nations of Poland and Hungry are
far more intelligent and possessing a clearer moral sense are moving to
restrict as much as possible this satanic crime. They had abortion imposed upon them by
Communism and are working to reverse this policy of national suicide. But Ireland has no excuse. Having kept the faith through hundreds of
years of persecution they have now returned to their Druid past where ritual
murder including that of children was part of the routine worship, for abortion
in the end is a form of ritual murder.
The dog that returns to its vomit is far different than one trying to
restore their Catholic culture after years of communist rule. Ireland is through and will suffer a
punishment that will make its inhabitants pine for the good old days of imposed
English famine. All of this is no
problem for the Catholic Novus Ordo Irish Church that has been so thoroughly
infiltrated by homosexual clergy that it is looking forward to establishing ecumenical relations with their
Druid counterparts.
The Same
Standard Applies to Conciliar Heretics!
Before
answering the accusation (that Popes Liberius and Honorius were heretics and
formally taught heresy), we must once more remind our opponents that, in order
to overturn our thesis (of papal infallibility), they must prove not merely
that Liberius or Honorius has spoken or written what is contrary to faith, or
denied it, but that he did so as Pope, teaching in matters of faith or morals,
and thereby binding the Universal Church.
If they cannot prove this, they prove nothing, for the fallibility would
then be only personal and private, and would no more affect the infallibility
of the Pope as Universal teacher, than the denial of Peter in the Court of the
High Priest injured his infallibility as Prince of the Apostles. They must, then, first produce good,
historical evidence of the fact; secondly, they must prove that it was a
definition or teaching contrary to truth in matters of faith; and, thirdly,
that the Pope intended, by his teaching, to bind the Universal Church to
believe it.
Rev. F. X.
Weninger, S.J., D.D., On the Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope,
when teaching the faithful, and on his relation to a General Council
Vatican and Cardinal Dolan participates in Catholic
mockery
Pro-LGBT Vatican advisor Fr. James Martin: They called me ‘sexy’ at Met
Gala
LifeSiteNews | NEW YORK, New York
| May 10, 2018 – Fr. James Martin, a Vatican advisor and Jesuit priest
who has established himself as an 
advocate
of LGBT causes, tweeted from the Met Gala on Monday that a fellow attendee told
him “I love that you got dressed up as a sexy priest.”
Martin
listed other comments he received, including, “Funky outfit,” “I love your
costume,” and “Is that, like, for real?” in reference to his priestly suit
and collar.
Martin
also “praise[d]” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York City, for
attending the event, opining that it “was wonderful that the local ordinary
supported this historic exhibit on Catholicism.”
The
Jesuit priest has made a name for himself in recent years by making repeated
public statements undermining the Catholic Church’s doctrines on sexual
morality, particularly with regard to homosexual relations, which the Church
condemns as “intrinsically disordered.”
Martin
has spoken positively of homosexual relationships and claims that gay couples
should be able to kiss each other during the sign of peace at Mass. He claims
the Bible has been “taken out of context” in its condemnation of homosexual
acts, and has re-tweeted a complaint that Catholic priests can’t bless same-sex
unions. Hispanics condemned him in 2017 for re-tweeting an immodest image
that seemed to parody Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The
Met Gala is an annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's
Costume Institute in New York City. Numerous celebrities attend every year
dressed in often immodest and sexually provocative costumes corresponding to
that year’s theme.
This year, the Met Gala’s theme was
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, and included a
number of women’s outfits in the style of bishops’ liturgical vestments or
sporting sacred symbols of the Catholic faith.
Pop
star Rihanna dressed in a sexually-provocative outfit made to look like papal
vestments, and Madonna Ciccone wore a dress with a cross shape carved in front
of it to reveal her chest.
The
exhibit included a sadomasochistic bondage mask covered in rosaries.
But
rather than condemning the event, the Vatican supplied vestments for an accompanying
clothing exhibit, and sent the boy’s choir of the Sistine Chapel to sing for
partygoers. Cardinal Timothy Dolan called it a “great evening”
and “the social event of the year.” He later denied that the event
was blasphemous.
However,
many Catholics condemned the event for blaspheming and insulting the Catholic
religion, as well as for its poor taste. Among them was the British journalist
and fallen-away Catholic Piers Morgan, who asked, “What the hell was the
Vatican thinking?” Others included Raymond Arroyo, Ross Douthat, Laura
Ingraham, and Matthew Schmitz at First Things.
Joseph
Sciambra, an ex-gay and former porn star who returned to the Catholic faith of
his youth, said that Martin’s apparent desire for attention is “sad and
desperate.”
“Something
very sad and desperate going on here,” wrote Sciambra on his Facebook page.
“James Martin, this doesn’t mean anything. Every time I outreach in the gay
community, I get hit on and hear meaningless compliments. But I’ve never felt
the need to reveal that fact; except now. That someone said such a thing to
Martin is not important, that he recounts the incident in detail - is very
telling.”
“Who
didn’t hug Martin when he was a boy?” asked Sciambra, who added, “It seems he
needs constant praise and reassurance – for now, he has found a deep well in
the Catholic LGBT community. . . . Too bad whatever is going on inside his mind
had to play out on the world-stage. Sometimes, I just feel kind of sorry for
him.”
“Anyone
shocked that James Martin was mixed-up in the whole Met Gala?” asked Sciambra
in another Facebook post. “That's part of the plan, and has been for a long
time - get a few gullible and greedy Bishops to mix with wealthy/well-connected
members of the LGBT community at $30,000 a pop cocktail parties - meet the
same-sex partner, listen to how uncharitable the RCC is to gay couples, approve
the dissident ministry, go back to the chancery feeling good about yourself. We
just changed the Church. It worked with Cardinal Schonborn. Easy.”
Sciambra
lamented the loss of the sense of the sacred in the Catholic Church, and
believes that this has brought about an inversion of the sacred and the
secular.
“When
the RCC [Roman Catholic Church] lost a sense of the sacred, the secular world,
in a desperate need to experience transcendence - made the sacred into
something profane. I've noticed this for many years in the gay community,” said
Sciambra.
Once in our
culture, common knowledge - “None is good
but God alone.” (Luke 18-19)
There is no wisdom
in sneering at him who truly studies words. Words, even the idlest, are signs,
and signs of things, realities, which things, realities, are to be come at only
through the signs. The term God and the adjective good, are one and the same
word; and from this we learn that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called by one and
the same name, the supreme being, and that which it is proper to be, to desire,
to do, or to possess. Therefore, say our wise modern philosophers, our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors believed that the supreme being is good; thus proving
that Balaam’s ass, or rather that Balaam himself, yet liveth and speaketh. Say,
rather, therefore, they believed and incorporated into their every-day speech,
the great truth, the foundation and spring of all heroism, that nothing is
proper to be sought after, to be done, or possessed, which is not Godlike, or
divine. They found not God in good; but good in God. What shall I be? A
God-man, God-like. What shall I do? That which is God-like. What shall I prize?
A God-ly soul. They did not conceive of Good, independent of God,—make that
conception the standard, and bring God to it, as before a tribunal, to
ascertain whether he conformed to it, or not; but they regarded God himself as
the standard, and whatever conformed to him, they called good, and said, That
be, do, possess, live for, die for,—nothing else is worth a wish or a thought.
Orestes
Brownson, The Present State of Society
The Times of St. Athanasius:
De Mattei: The religious war of the IV Century and of our times
Roberto de Mattei | Corrispondenza
Romana | April 25, 2018
The
Church advances through history forever victorious, in accordance with the
marvelous plans of God. The first three centuries reached their peak under
Emperor Diocletian (284-305). All appeared to be lost. Discouragement was a
temptation for many Christians and among them there were those who lost the
faith. But those who persevered had the immense joy, not many years later, of
seeing the Cross of Christ blazing on the banners of Constantine at the Battle
of Saxa Rubra (312). This victory changed the course of history. The
Milan-Nicomedia Edict of 313, granting liberty to Christians, overturned Nero’s
senatus consultum, which had proclaimed Christianity a “superstitio
illicita”. The public Christianization of society had its beginnings in a
climate of enthusiasm and fervor.
In
325, The Council of Nicaea, would seem to mark the doctrinal rebirth of the
Church, with the condemnation of Arius, who denied the Divinity of the Word. At
Nicaea, thanks to the decisive role of the Deacon, Athanasius ( 295-373),
subsequently Bishop of Alexandria, the doctrine of the “consubstantiality” of
the nature among the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity was defined.
In
the years that followed, between the orthodox position and the Arian heretics a
“third party” made its way in: that of the “Semi-Arians”, in turn divided
amongst themselves into various currents, which acknowledged a certain analogy
between the Father and the Son, but denied that He had been “begotten, not
made, of one Being with the Father” as was affirmed in the Nicene Creed.
They substituted the word omousios, which means “of the same
substance” with the term omoiusios, which means “of similar substance”.
The
heretics, the Arians and the Semi-Arians, had understood that their success
would be dependent on two factors: the first was to remain inside the Church;
the second to obtain the support of the political powers, hence of Constantine
and afterwards his successors. And indeed it happened so: a crisis, until then
unprecedented, inside the Church which lasted for more than sixty years.
Nobody
has described it better than Cardinal Newman in his book The Arians of
the IV Century (1833), wherein he gathered all the doctrinal nuances of the
question. An Italian scholar, Professor Claudio Pierantoni has recently
outlined an enlightening parallel between the Arian controversy and the present
debate on the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris laetitia. * However, even in 1973,
Monsignor Rudolf Graber (1903-1992), Bishop of Regensburg, when recalling the
figure of St. Athanasius, on the XVI centenary of his death, had compared the
crisis of the IV century to that following the Second Vatican Council
(Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit: zu seinem 1600 Todestag, Kral
1973).
Athanasius
was harshly persecuted even by his confreres for his fidelity to orthodoxy, and
between 336 and 366 was five times forced to abandon the city in which he was
Bishop, thus spending long years in exile and strenuous combat in defense of
the Faith. Two assemblies of bishops, at Caesarea and Tyre (334-335) condemned
him for rebellion and fanaticism. Further, in 341, while a Council of fifty
bishops in Rome had proclaimed Athanasius innocent, the Council at Antioch, in
which more than ninety bishops took part, ratified the Acts of the Synods of
Caesarea and Tyre and put an Arian in the place of Athanasius as bishop.
The
subsequent Council of Serdica, in 343, ended with a scission: the Western
Fathers declared the deposition of Athanasius illegal and reconfirmed the
Council of Nicaea: those from the East condemned not only Athanasius, but also
Pope Julius I, (afterwards canonized), who had supported him. The Council of
Sirmium in 351, sought a middle ground between Catholic orthodoxy and Arianism.
At the Council of Arles in 353, the Fathers, including the legate representing
Liberius, who had succeeded St. Julius I as Pope, signed a new condemnation
against Athanasius.
The
bishops were forced to choose between the condemnation of Athanasius and exile.
St. Paulinus, Bishop of Trier, was almost the only one in the battle for
the Nicene Creed and was exiled to Phrygia, where he died following
mistreatment at the hands of the Arians. Two years later, at the Council of
Milan, (355), more than three hundred bishops of the West, signed the
condemnation of Athanasius and another orthodox Father, St. Hilary of Poitiers,
was banished to Phrygia for his intransigent fidelity to orthodoxy.
In
357, Pope Liberius, overcome by the sufferings of exile and at the insistence
of his friends, but also driven by “a love for peace”, signed the Semi-Arian
formula of Sirmium and broke communion with St. Athanasius, declaring him
separated from the Roman Church, for his use of the term “consubstantial” as is
testified in four letters transmitted to us by St. Hilary (Manlio
Simonetti, La crisi ariana del IV secolo, Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum,
Roma 1975, pp. 235-236).
Under the pontificate of the same Liberius,
the Councils of Rimini (359) and Seleucia (359), which constituted a Great
Council, representative of the West and the East, abandoned the term
“consubstantial” of Nicaea and established an equivocal “middle way” between
the Arians and St. Athanasius. It seemed as if rampant heresy had
conquered the Church.
The
Councils of Seleucia and Rimini are not numbered by the Church today in the
eight ecumenical councils of antiquity: there were, nonetheless, as many as 560
bishops present, almost the totality of the Fathers of Christianity, who were
defined as “ecumenical” by their contemporaries. It was then that St.
Jerome coined the phrase wherein "the whole world groaned and woke
astounded to find itself Arian” (Dialogus adversus Luciferianos, n. 19, in PL,
23, col. 171).
What
is important to underline is that it wasn’t about a doctrinal dispute limited
to some theologian, nor a simple clash between bishops where the Pope had to
act as an arbiter. It was a religious war in which all Christians were
involved, from the Pope down to the last faithful. Nobody closed
themselves up in a spiritual bunker, nobody stood looking out the window, a
mute spectator of the drama. Everyone was down in the trenches fighting on both
sides of the battle-lines.
It
wasn’t easy at that time to understand whether your own bishop was orthodox or
not, but the sensus fidei was the compass to orient oneself. Cardinal Walter
Brandmüller while speaking in Rome on April 7th 2018, recalled how “the ‘sensus
fidei’ acts as a sort of spiritual immune system, through which the faithful
instinctively recognize or reject any error. Upon this ‘sensus fidei’ rests
then – apart from the Divine promise – also the passive infallibility of the
Church, or the certainty that the Church, in Her totality, shall never be able
to incur a heresy.”
St.
Hilary writes that during the Arian crisis the ears of the faithful who
interpreted in an orthodox sense the ambiguous affirmations of the Semi-Arian
theologians were holier than the hearts of the priests. The Christians who for
three centuries had resisted emperors, were now resisting their own Shepherds,
in some cases even the Pope, guilty, if not of open heresy, but to say the
least, of grave negligence.
Monsignor
Graber refers to the words of Joseph von Görres (1776-1848), in his book
Athanasius (1838) written at the time of the arrest of the Archbishop of
Cologne, but it is even today of extraordinary veracity: “The earth is shaking
under our feet. We can foresee with certainty that the Church will emerge
unscathed from such ruin, but nobody can say and conjecture who and what will
survive. We, then, in advising, in recommending and raising our hands, would
like to impede the evil by showing its signs. Even the mules who carry the
false prophets, bristle, pull-back and with human language throw back the
injustice in the face of those striking them; those who do not see the
sword drawn (by God) which closes off the way to them (Numbers, XXII, 22-35).
Work then while it is day, since at night nobody can. It serves nothing to
wait: waiting has done nothing more than aggravate things.”
There
are times when a Catholic is obliged to choose between cowardice and heroism,
between apostasy and holiness. This is what happened in the IV century and it
is what is happening even today.
“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
The Communist Party now owns the Church in China
OnePeterFive | May 3, 2018 – On March 22, the Chinese Communist Party
announced that all "religious affairs" in China would henceforth
be supervised by a shadowy Party office called the "United Front Department."
The former government agency responsible for Catholic and other believers – the
State Administration of Religious Affairs bureau (SARA) – has been summarily
abolished.
The reorganization attracted little
attention outside of China, but it is certain to have unpleasant repercussions
for Chinese believers. I believe that this move means that the persecution of
Catholics and other believers is about to get much more intense, perhaps rising
to levels not seen since the dark days of the 1950s.
The change also means that, in all
probability, the draft agreement between the Vatican and Beijing that has been
under discussion for years is now a dead letter. In fact, signing it now would
mean more than surrendering papal authority over the appointment of bishops to
the Chinese state, as bad as that would be. Signing it now would be a betrayal
of the faithful into the hands of a new Red Emperor who seems to have a
particular animus towards Christians, especially Catholics, and who seems
determined to suffocate and extinguish the faith throughout his empire. [.....]
Penance then is
as it were, a salutary weapon placed in the hands of the soldiers of Christ,
who wish to fight for the defense of and restoration of the moral order in the
universe. It is a weapon that strikes
right at the root of all evil, that is, at the lust of material wealth and the
wanton pleasures of life. Be means of
various works of penance, the noble-hearted Christian subdues the base passions
that tend to make him violate the moral order.
But if zeal for the divine law and brotherly love are as great in him as
they should be, then not only does he practice penance for himself and his own
sins, but he takes upon himself the expiation of the sins of others, imitating
the saints who often heroically make themselves victims of reparation of the sins
of whole generations, imitating even the divine Redeemer, Who became the Lamb
of God, 'Who taketh away the sins of the world,' (1 john 1:29).... The divine
Heart of Jesus cannot but be moved at the prayers and sacrifice 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'
(Matthew 15:28).
Pope Pius XI,
Caritate Christi
“But
it did not last long.”
I saw many pastors cherishing dangerous ideas against the Church. . . .
They built a large, singular, extravagant church which was to embrace all
creeds with equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, and all denominations, a
true communion of the unholy with one shepherd and one flock. There was to be a
Pope, a salaried Pope, without possessions. All was made ready, many things
finished; but, in place of an altar, were only abomination and desolation. Such
was the new church to be, and it was for it that he had set fire to the old
one; but God designed otherwise.
Blessed Anna Katherine Emmerich
I saw also the relationship between the two popes.... I saw how baleful would
be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics
of every kind came into the city of Rome. The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I
saw a great darkness... Then, the vision seemed to extend on every side. Whole
Catholic communities were being oppressed, harassed, confined, and deprived of
their freedom. I saw many churches close down, great miseries everywhere, wars
and bloodshed. A wild and ignorant mob took to violent action. But it did not
last long.
Blessed Anna Katherine Emmerich, May 13, 1820
Pope Francis
Kisses Hand of, and concelebrates Novus Ordo with, Notorious Homosexual
Activist Priest - some sample quotations from this degenerate:
Today the Church's
attitude to homosexuals is strict, inhuman and has caused much suffering by
claiming that homosexuality is sin. Some church people say, “It
is acceptable to be gay, but they must not have any relationships, they cannot
love each other”! The maximum is
hypocrisy. This is like talking to a plant, and saying, 'you cannot
bloom, you may not bear fruit.' (sic)
Don Michele De Paolis,
Interview with LGBT group Bethel of Genoa, Italy.
In the holy
Church of God, not everyone is suffering from homophobia. Those who want
to make you “heterosexuals,” as it is called, would be force you to act
contrary to nature and to make you unhappy psychopaths. We
need to put into our heads that God our Father wants us, his children, to be
happy, by making fruitful the gifts that He has placed us in our “nature”! [.....] You have the right to go looking for a partner. And be quite unconcerned: where agape is, is God. Live your love with joy. And with our mother Church we must have patience.
Her attitude to homosexuals will change. In this sense numerous initiatives have already been
engaged.
Don Michele De Paolis,
Addressing gathering of homosexual activists
We must liberate our
thinking from a risk: fundamentalism, that is, to take literally what the Bible
says. The new obedience to the gospel is free, responsible and
conscious. Instead of wasting energy in endless religious polemics,
it aims to a new Christian spirituality of joyful acceptance of yourself
forming gratitude to God, knowing that homosexual love is His gift, which is
not less than the heterosexual.
Don Michele De Paolis,
Essay
In like manner, the
ceremonies of the Old Law prefigured Christ as having yet to be born and to
suffer; whereas our Sacraments signify Him as already born and having
suffered. Consequently, just as it would
be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that
Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and
truthfully; so too, it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies
which the fathers of old accomplished with devotion and fidelity. Such is the teaching of St. Augustine.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Human beings
are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of this
to save their souls. The other things on
the face of the earth are created for human beings, to help them in working
toward the end for which they are created.
From this it follows that I should use these things to the extent that
they help me toward my end, and rid myself of them to the extent that they
hinder me. To do this, I must make
myself indifferent to all created things, in regard to everything which is left
to my freedom of will and is not forbidden.
Consequently, on my own part I ought not to seek health rather than
sickness, wealth rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long life
rather than a short one, and son in all matters. I ought to desire and elect only the thing
which is more conducive to the end for which I am created.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual
Exercises
Catholic Mass attendance in U.S. plunges under Francis pontificate
LifeSiteNews | April 20, 2018 – The Catholic
Church is seeing its biggest decline in Mass attendance in the U.S. in decades
that started between the papacies of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, a new
Gallup poll says.
"From 2014 to
2017, an average of 39% of Catholics reported attending church in the past
seven days. This is down from an average of 45% from 2005 to 2008 and
represents a steep decline from 75% in 1955," the poll found.
Francis became Pope
in 2013. [.....]
Francis-appointed cardinal: ‘The church is moving on the question of
same-sex couples’
LifeSiteNews | VILLANOVA, Pennsylvania,
April 18, 2018 – The Catholic Church is “moving” on the issue of couples
living in homosexual relationships, a
prominent Francis-appointed U.S. cardinal said.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin
said that LGBT-identifying persons’ place in the Church is not an easy subject
for some Church leaders, but they must contend with it.
“I think it’s a
very difficult question,” Tobin said in response to a question on the firing of
LGBT individuals from Catholic institutions while speaking at Villanova
University last Thursday.
“The Church is
moving on the question of same-sex couples,” Tobin said, although not as
swiftly as some would like.
St. Peter Damian,
an 11th century Italian Catholic reformer and Doctor of the Church, described
homosexuality in his famous Book of Gomorrah as a “diabolical” corruption of
God’s plan for sexuality between a man and a woman. Basing itself on
Sacred Scripture, the Church teaches that homosexual acts are “acts of grave
depravity” and are “intrinsically disordered” since they are “contrary to the
natural law” in that they “close the sexual act to the gift of life.” “Under no
circumstances can they be approved,” States the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.
The cardinal’s
opening address of last week’s Villanova conference centered on the fifth
anniversary of the Francis pontificate. It was covered in a report from
Jesuit-run America Magazine.
“Francis, a Voice
Crying Out in the World: Mercy, Justice, Love, & Care for the Earth,” ran
April 12-15, and gathered a list of high-level Francis advisors and
confidantes.
Aside from Tobin,
the speaker roster included among others editor of La Civiltà
Cattolica Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez
Maradiaga, a member of Francis’s advisory council of nine Cardinals, Columbia
University economist Jeffrey Sachs and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
President Margaret Archer.
Spadaro, often
referenced as the pope’s “moouthpiece,” recently re-tweeted a call for EWTN to
be put under interdict “until they get rid of Raymond Arroyo,” after a February
World Over segment with a discussion critical of a speech he’d made. Spadaro
has been critical of the cardinals who raised the dubia resting clarification
from Pope Francis on Amoris Laetitia, and others who’ve questioned the
exhortation as well. And he had co-authored an article charging conservative
Catholics and Evangelicals in the U.S. as with forming an “ecumenism of hate”
in their opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Cardinal Maradiaga
has also been critical of the four dubia cardinals.
Sachs, well known
for his support for abortion and population control, has been a presenter at a
number of Vatican conferences on climate change.
Appointed president
of the PASS in 2014, Archer had endorsed the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 despite their containing language calling for
“universal sexual and reproductive health rights,” and denounced a
representative of Centre for Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) for
raising criticism about the Vatican’s invitation to abortion proponents for a
2015 climate change conference.
The conference by
all accounts was a glowing salute to Francis, with a Crux article headline on
the event stating, “Pope’s biggest fans celebrate five years of Francis at
Villanova.”
“This pope is
electric,” Spadaro is reported to have said at the conference, re-tweeting
papal biographer Austen Ivereigh’s quoting him saying that around the pope
"there are fields of attraction and repulsion." He is squeezing out
bad spirit, outside as well as within the Church, as happens in Spiritual
Exercises.
Sachs had said at
the conference, “there is no voice more important in the world than Pope
Francis in the fight for justice, peace, and decency.”
“The church in
recent decades has been somewhat marginalized by many for what they see as a
preoccupation with sexual ethics,” Cardinal Tobin said in his opening address.
“The church cannot reverse itself on its sexual ethics, but Pope Francis has
shown that there are other issues on which the church and world can work
together. This, too, is a step in the trajectory that leads back to Vatican
II.”
Tobin used the term
“paradigm shift” to refer to both Amoris Laetitia and the Second Vatican
Council, the America Magazine report said.
Vatican Secretary
of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin had described Amoris Laetitia as a “paradigm
shift” in January, further confirming the exhortation’s controversial standing
for opening the door to Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics and
others in non-marital unions.
The term paradigm
shift has been used by Cupich to describe Amoris Laetitia as well, and prompted
criticism from Catholics mindful that the Church doesn't change its doctrine for
the world.
Tobin voiced this
mindset with his conference comments, stating of Amoris Laetitia, “As with all
paradigm shifts, especially after some ecumenical councils, it provoked
controversy.” [.....]
“Love
Cannot Be Silenced”? - With a decline of 73% since Vatican II and an average
age of 76 years, and this was more than five years ago, we will soon be
entertained by the silence of the grave!
The Vanishing of the Nuns
Michael Winerip | December 2, 2012
In 1965, when the average age of a baby boomer
was 10, there were 180,000 nuns in the United States. Today there are about
56,000. But even more dramatic than this decline is the age of the average
Roman Catholic sister — 74 years old.
Will there even be nuns in the church by
the time the millennials reach middle age? Will the boomers be the last
generation to know nuns as a large and powerful force in American Catholicism?
Sister Kathy Sherman of LaGrange Park,
Ill., at 60, a young nun by today’s standards, came of age during the Vietnam
War, playing antiwar protest songs on her guitar. These days, Sister Sherman —
whose voice sounds a lot like Judy Collins — has become known for a protest
song she’s written (Love Cannot Be
Silenced), aimed at the Vatican’s efforts to rein in American nuns.
Pope
Francis coddles the Homosexual Lobby - Is this pay back or is he a bona fide
member?
And, just days ago, the astounding
installation of Juan Barros as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Osorno, Chile,
despite substantial credible evidence, presented to Francis, that Barros both
witnessed and later covered up the homosexual predations of boys by his close
friend Rev. Fernando Karadima. Although the statute of limitations had
run on Karadima’s crimes, the Vatican found him guilty of sexual abuse
in 2011, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penitence” (an order he has
flouted). The outrageous elevation of
Barros to the office of bishop was greeted by massive protests against his
installation by members of the laity, who literally tried physically to prevent
it.
Christopher Ferrara, director of American
Catholic Lawyers Association and writer, April 10, 2015
Fall of the Tower of Babel
Fruits
of Vatican II - Why is it that their “disease” always makes us sick?
Update on Msgr. Edward Arsenault : Press Release
We [Saint Luke Institute] have learned that Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault,
former president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute, was sentenced today in New
Hampshire after pleading guilty to misappropriating funds from the Diocese of
Manchester, the Catholic Medical Center in New Hampshire and the estate of a
priest.
This did not involve Saint Luke Institute funds. [....] This has been a
very painful situation. We ask everyone to keep all those affected in their prayers.
COMMENT: FYI - The rest of the story: What
Saint Luke Institute neglected to report in this press release is that the
embezzled money was used by Msgr. Edward Arsenault to obtain sexual services
from a young man by the name of Luke Parkin, a homosexual “performer.” The money given to Mr. Parkin was not
recovered. He was not charged in the
crime because he did not known the money was stolen. Saint Luke Institute is owned by the Diocese
of Washington, D.C. and advertises itself as a “healing ministry” that is
committed to “providing... quality psychological therapy, spiritual support and
physical wellness... in healing from anxiety, addiction, depression, substance
abuse, boundary issues, interpersonal problems, sexual issues or other
challenges” afflicting Catholic religious.
It is the most frequently used resource by U.S. bishops for the
treatment of religious with “boundary issues” of sexual perversions. Msgr. Arsenault followed in the same mold as
the former CEO and founder of Saint Luke Institute, Fr. Michael Peterson, a
priest-psychiatrist, homosexual and drug abuser who died of AIDS in 1987 at 44
years of age. But, don't worry that Fr.
Peterson may have died un-mourned. Fr.
Peterson was given an all star send-off to the grave with a “Mass of Christian
Burial” officiated by Cardinal James Hickey and attended by 188 priests and 7
bishops, including Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio, as well as a
large contingent of nationally recognized homosexual activists. Fr. Peterson is remembered as the one who
framed the sex-abuse scandal in the Church as a problem of pedophilia and not,
as it in fact is, a problem of homosexual pederasty in more than 90% of all
cases. The Saint Luke Institute, whose
cliental are for the most part Catholic religious with sexual perversions, is
notorious for two particularly egregious sins: They counsel and promote
techniques that directly violate natural law and corrupt Catholic norms of
sexual morality; and, they have declared notorious homosexual pederasts “cured”
and fit for return to active ministry that have abused other adolescent
boys. Since the Institute holds that
sexual perversions are genetic, they do not explain how they are “cured.” As Msgr. William Lori (the current Archbishop
of Baltimore), who was at the time Cardinal Hickeys Chancellor, said in a press
release, the “sexual abuse of minors was ... a terrible disease.”
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
The
OBJECT of the Faith and Heresy is the SAME - DOGMA
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
On
the "Character of Our Lord Jesus Christ" - The "New
Evangelization" is clueless
We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of
the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and
man.... As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion
in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to
mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and
His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of
men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on
earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love,
motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace
and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness,
He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to
His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and
that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did
not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He
loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them.
Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and
suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality.
Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a
dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst
His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also
arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God,
against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the
authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without
putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He
reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the
beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an
offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future
society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished;
but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness
which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal
way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to
one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently
social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite
different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.
St. Pius X, Notre Charge
Apostolique
Intercommunion, 7 German bishops write to the Holy See
After the German Bishops Conference’s proposal, the former Holy Office
was asked to express their views on the admission of non-Catholic spouse to the
Eucharist
Vatican Insider | andrea tornielli |
vatican city | 05/04/2018
Is it possible for a Protestant faithful to
participate in the Eucharist of the Catholic spouse? Last February the German Bishops’
Conference approved by a qualified majority of two thirds, a draft open-ended
document, which provided for this possibility “in certain cases”. On 22 March
seven bishops from Germany, among whom also the Cardinal of Cologne, Rainer
Maria Woelki, wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to
the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, asking for a pronouncement of the
Holy See and general criteria valid for the whole Church and not only for one
of its regions. [.....]
Think carefully before contributing to any 'official'
Catholic charity
‘Alarming’:
Archbishop withholds Development and Peace donations over pro-abortion funding
LifeSiteNews | EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada |
April 6, 2018 – A Canadian
archbishop is withholding funding from Canada’s official Catholic development
agency after an internal review by the bishops found as many as 40 of its
grantees are in violation of Church teaching. Edmonton Archbishop
Richard Smith issued the following pastoral letter this week explaining the
decision to deny funding to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development
and Peace. LifeSiteNews
has reported extensively for years on Development and Peace’s funding of
pro-abortion, pro-contraception, and pro-LGBT groups in the developing world.
An Uprising of the Cardinals Has Stopped (For Now) The Bergoglian
Heresy on Hell. The Staged Denial and the Risk of Impeachment.
Antonio Socci | April 1, 2018
The falling plaster
which fell from the ceiling of St. Peter’s Basilica on
Good Friday seems like a symbol of the disastrous Easter 2018 of Pope
Bergoglio and his declining pontificate. After months of incidents and
slip-ups, now we have the eruption of a new thriller — the interview with
Scalfari on hell.
It was supposed to
be a high-profile attempt to recover the consensus that Francis is a
“revolutionary pope” (he loves to define himself this way), but instead it
became a serious misstep. He understood this on Thursday morning when
he received a certain very difficult phone call (as we shall see below) and ran
for cover.
The Ignored Denial
But on
Saturday the Vaticanist website “Il Sismografo” lamented that despite the
“denial” of the “alleged sentence attributed to the Pope — something like ‘Hell
does not exist’— already now for 48 hours it has caused an avalanche on the
web, in every language.”
In fact it made a
big splash abroad, but not in the Italian press. And above all — two days after
the Vatican “denial” — “Repubblica” has not even mentioned it, as if it was
non-existent. Why? Was it not unusual behavior? And why did Italian news
outlets keep silent? So as not to step on the feet of the Vatican and
“Repubblica”? It’s strange. In fact, this story made the specter of impeachment
for heresy hover (and perhaps it still is hovering) over Bergoglio, which could
cost him the papacy. Just as there is also hovering a sort of public
moral-professional delegitimization over the “lay pope” of the Italian press,
Bergoglio’s friend and confidant Eugenio Scalfari. Who is really telling the
truth?
Either One or the
Other
There are only two
possibilities: either Bergoglio did make the explosive heretical affirmations
which “The Times” carried with the headline “Pope Francis Abolishes Hell”, or
else Scalfari made it all up and thus committed an unheard of professional
gaffe which undermines the credibility of “Repubblica”, a very “loud” mistake
to make at a time when every day they are decrying “fake news.”
If it’s true that
Bergoglio said this, we are looking at the most colossal error in the 2000 year
history of the papacy. If it’s not true that he said this, the supposed scoop
of “Repubblica” would be the fake news of the century.
One or the other is
true. Tertium non datur. There was only one possible third
explanation that could have patched the hole at best, but in the Vatican they
did not choose to make it. In fact — assuming that Scalfari did not render a
sound account of their discussion about Hell — the matter could be finished if
the press office had admitted that the two spoke about eschatological themes
but that Scalfari completely misunderstood what the Pope said.
It would have been enough if the Pope, through his spokesman, restated
his firm and convinced refutation of the heretical statements and his clear and
explicit adherence to the Creed of the Church, adding that there was a colossal
misunderstanding.
That would have
made Scalfari very wrong and appear totally incompetent, but it would have
closed the case. But that is not what the Vatican “denial” said.
They Are Telling Us The Truth
In fact the Vatican
did not deny that the two spoke on this topic, and they did not say that
Scalfari misunderstood, but only affirmed that Scalfari’s text was “the fruit
of his reconstruction” in which “the actual words [of the Pope] were not
recorded.”
But what were the actual words? Why won’t they reveal them?
Every published
interview is a reconstruction. The Vatican should tell us if
Bergoglio disavows and rejects the statement that was attributed to him or not (that
unrepentant souls “are not punished…there is no hell, only the disappearance of
sinful souls”). Why hasn’t it done that? Authentic
Catholic intellectuals in America have also asked the same thing: Why hasn’t the Vatican denied the substance of what was said?
The little story of
the way Scalfari does his interviews informally without notes is old: it was
already put in place by the preceding papal spokesman, Fr. Lombardi, after the
first two interview-chats between Scalfari and Bergoglio.
All of the Vatican efforts
to distance the pope from what Scalfari wrote were dissolved by the decision of
the pope to republish those interviews in a book and thus endorse them.
Furthermore, on Thursday Scalfari said that he met Bergoglio for the
umpteenth time “by his own invitation.”
“The Times” Believes Scalfari
Why did Bergoglio
invite him to speak if he knew there was the risk that Scalfari would make one
of his “explosive” non-authorized retellings of their conversation, attributing
huge ideas to the pope which he doesn’t really think? Do they want to
make us believe that once again, for the umpteenth time, Francis fell for it
without wanting it to happen?
There is much that
is doubtful. Such as, it is doubtful that “Repubblica” prints any of these
interviews without some form of approval by the interested party.
“The Times” talked
to an expert who said that on these interviews he “tends to believe Scalfari
more than the Vatican,” because if you know that someone distorts your words,
“you don’t continue to invite him.”
There is thus a game being played by Scalfari and Bergoglio for over
five years now, in which the Argentine pope consents to a sort of double Magisterial track. When he speaks to Catholics he
expresses himself a certain vague and theologically ambiguous way. He avoids
explicit statements and thus little by little demolishes
doctrine (the tactic of boiling frogs slowly).
Meanwhile, he
speaks through Scalfari to the secular world, making known his true ideas,
which are so totally modern, in order to build up his “revolution” and to have
popularity among non-Catholics and the media.
It is no accident
that “The Times” article, published on Friday on the front page,
accredited Bergoglio’s words as substantially authentic and praised the pope,
because with this “suggestion” on the non-existence of Hell he would be seeking
“to reconcile the eternal truths with the customs and mentality of modern
times.”
Already Stated By Cardinal Martini
As a matter of fact
this idea about Hell has been a well known part of progressive theology.
Cardinal Martini —who is considered one of the great precursors of this
pontificate — in his final months wrote something of the sort in his
book/testament:
“I nourish the hope
that sooner or later everyone will be redeemed. I am a great optimist…. My hope
is that God welcomes everyone, that He is merciful, and becomes ever stronger.
On the other hand, naturally, I cannot imagine how people like Hitler or an
assassin who abused children can be close to God. It seems easier for me to
think that these sort of people are simply annihilated…”
With these ideas,
progressive theology wants to be more merciful than God and than
Jesus Himself, who in the Gospel describes with terrible words the
punishments of Hell. This is the meaning of Bergoglian mercy: to improve the
mercy of Jesus.
On Hell, he had
allowed Scalfari to scout it out before him. Three times in “Repubblica” in the
last few years, Scalfari has already attributed this statement to Bergoglio,
without giving a direct quote. The Vatican has never denied it. It drew no
reaction from the confused and annihilated Church. And so this time somebody
thought that the moment had arrived to put these Bergoglian concepts inside
quotation marks. When the interview was published on Thursday morning,
there was no denial from the Vatican. Until at 3:00 pm, after several
hours of delay, a statement was issued. Why? What happened?
The Revolt
It appears that
this time – in the face of a direct quotation from Bergoglio stating two
explicit heresies, contradicting two fundamental dogmas of the Church – an
important cardinal (non-Italian) was outraged, called several of his colleagues
and then, also in their name, directly sought to find out from the pope exactly
what this interview could mean – because professing explicit heresy is
one of the four reasons the Petrine ministry can be lost.
Bergoglio then
consulted with the Sostituto [of the Secretariat of State] Msgr. Becciu and
decided to quickly run for cover through his spokesman, while Scalfari, who is
in on the game to this very moment, was given a heads-up.
This explains why
“Repubblica” made no mention of the “denial” and did not respond to it. But
where is this whole thing going to end?
Antonio Socci
On
the Doctrinal Authority of Vatican II Council
Let's sum up the facts of
the case. We're not dealing with interpretations, or opinions but FACTS
regarding the Vatican II. It rests
purely on human authority since the Council refused to engage the Church's Attribute
of Infallibility, it is nothing more than churchmen teaching by their grace of
state. It is nothing more the most
extra-ordinary engagement of the authorized ordinary magisterium teaching by
their grace of state. Every Catholic is
free to disregard or actively oppose any heretical novelty produced by the
council.
1. CANON LAW SUPPORTS THE VIEW
THAT V2 WAS NOT INFALLIBLE, IN ANY WAY.
Canon Law 749 says that if something is not EXPRESSLY SAID to be infallible,
then it's not:
*§3 No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is
manifestly demonstrated. *
2. VATICAN II'S OWN DOCUMENTS ADMIT IT WAS NOT INFALLIBLE.
From V2's footnotes:
In view of the conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present
Council, this sacred Synod defines matters of faith or morals as binding on the
Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so.
My note: As a matter of fact, nowhere in the council documents does the
Synod openly declare that such and such a doctrine is being defined.
3. POPE PAUL VI ADMITTED PUBLICLY THAT VATICAN 2 WAS NOT INFALLIBLE --
THREE TIMES!
“Today
we are concluding the Second Vatican Council. [...] But one thing must be noted
here, namely, that the teaching authority of the Church, even though not
wishing to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements, has made thoroughly
known its authoritative teaching on a number of questions which today weigh
upon man's conscience and activity, descending, so to speak, into a dialogue
with him, but ever preserving its own authority and force; it has spoken with
the accommodating friendly voice of pastoral charity; its desire has been to be
heard and understood by everyone; it has not merely concentrated on
intellectual understanding but has also sought to express itself in simple,
up-to-date, conversational style, derived from actual experience and a cordial
approach which make it more vital, attractive and persuasive; it has spoken to
modern man as he is.”
(Address during the last general meeting of the Second Vatican Council,
December 7, 1965; AAS 58; http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6tolast.htm)
---
" There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification ,
the council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing
solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's infallible teaching
authority. The answer is known by those who remember the conciliar declaration
of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964. In view of the pastoral nature
of the Council , it avoided proclaiming in any extraordinary manner and dogmas
carrying the mark of infallibility."
(General Audience , December 1, 1966 published in L'Oservatore Romano
1/21/1966)
---
"Differing from other councils , this one was not directly dogmatic, but
disciplinary and pastoral."
(General audience August 6, 1975.)
4. MANY, MANY OTHERS IN ROME HAVE SAID IT IS NOT INFALLIBLE.
Cardinal Ratzinger stated:
"Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolates Vatican II
and which provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it , which give
the impression that from Vatican II onward, everything has changed , and what
preceded it has no value or, at best , has value in the light of Vatican
II..... The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and
deliberately chose to remain on a modest level , as merely a pastoral
council."
( Address to the Chilean Episcopal Conference , II Sabato 30/7 5/8/1988
---
Cardinal Felici elaborated on this to Archbishop Lefebvre († 1991), who
narrated his experience.
“These events I was involved in. It is I who carried the signatures to Mgr.
Felici, the Council Secretary, accompanied by Mgr. de Proenca Sigaud,
Archbishop of Diamantina: and I am obliged to say there occurred things that
are truly inadmissible. I do not say this in order to condemn the Council; and
I am not unaware that there is here a cause of confusion for a great many
Catholics. After all, they think the Council was inspired by the Holy
Ghost. “Not necessarily. A non-dogmatic, pastoral council is not a recipe
for infallibility." When, at the end of the sessions, we asked Cardinal
Felici, “Can you not give us what the theologians call the “theological note of
the Council?”” he replied, “We have to distinguish according to the schemas and
the chapters those which have already been the subject of dogmatic definitions
in the past; as for the declarations which have a novel character, we have to
make reservations.”
(An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, By His Grace Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre,
Chapter 14, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church.”, p. 107)
---
John Cardinal Heenan of England stated as follows.
“It deliberately limited its own objectives. There were to be no specific
definitions. Its purpose from the first was pastoral renewal within the Church
and a fresh approach to the outside.” (Council and Clergy, 1966)
---
Bishop Butler of England publicly spoke to the matter twice.
“Not all teachings emanating from a pope or Ecumenical Council are infallible.
There is no single proposition of Vatican II – except where it is citing
previous infallible definitions – which is in itself infallible.” (The Tablet
26,11,1967)
---
Bishop Rudolf Graber wrote as follows.
“Since the Council was aiming primarily at a pastoral orientation and hence
refrained from making dogmatically binding statements or disassociating itself,
as previous Church assemblies have done, from errors and false doctrines by
means of clear anathemas, many questions took on an opalescent ambivalence
which provided a certain amount of justification for those who speak of the
spirit of the Council.” (Athanasius and the Church of Our Times, 1974)
---
Bishop Thomas Morris expressed his relief on the matter.
“I was relieved when we were told that this Council was not aiming at defining
or giving final statements on doctrine, because a statement of doctrine has to
be very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council documents as
tentative and likely to be reformed.” (Catholic World News 1,22,1997)
5. POPE PAUL VI REQUIRED "RELIGIOUS SUBMISSION" TO V2, WHICH IS
CONDITIONAL ONLY
Paul VI gave the theological note of the revolutionary Council in his Apostolic
Brief for its closing, “In Spiritu Sancto”(December 8, 1965), which was read at
the closing ceremonies of that day by Archbishop Felici, the General Secretary.
Paul VI had already stated in his address concluding the Council the day before
that the Council had not “wish[ed] to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements”
and therefore was not infallible; Felici went on to explain that Paul VI was
making the Council a matter of religious submission, which is the assent given
to non-infallible material, as we shall see.
“And last of all it was the most opportune, because, bearing in mind the
necessities of the present day, above all it sought to meet the pastoral needs
and, nourishing the flame of charity, it has made a great effort to reach not
only the Christians still separated from communion with the Holy See, but also
the whole human family. […] We decided moreover that all that has been
established synodally is to be religiously observed by all the faithful, for
the glory of God and the dignity of the Church and for the tranquillity and
peace of all men. […] Given in Rome at St. Peter’s, under the [seal of the]
ring of the fisherman, Dec. 8, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, the year 1965, the third year of our pontificate.”
(In Spiritu Sancto, Walter M. Abbott, SJ, The Documents of Vatican II, pp.
738-9)
Paul VI established at the Council’s end that “all that has been established
synodally is to be religiously observed”. The 1983 Code of Canon Law
distinguishes the matter of religious submission from infallible, definitive
teaching.
---
“Can. 752. While the assent of faith is not required, a religious submission of
intellect and will is to be given to any doctrine which either the Supreme
Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising their authentic magisterium,
declare upon a matter of faith or morals, even though they do not intend to
proclaim that doctrine by definitive act. Christ’s faithful are therefore to
ensure that they avoid whatever does not accord with that doctrine.”
So, “religious submission” is given when the Pope, either alone or with his
bishops in a council, does not intend to “proclaim doctrine by a definitive
act”: therefore the matter of religious submission is not infallible, which is
why it does not require “the assent of faith”. IT IS CONDITIONAL.
6. CAN A NON-INFALLIBLE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL ERR?
Dr. William H. Marshner, Professor of Theology at Christendom College and
Theological Editor of Faith and Reason, considers Vatican II’s authority in the
Fall, 1983 issue of that journal. The issue was dedicated to Dignitatis humanae
and whether it represents continuity or rupture with previous teaching.
Marshner concludes that the Declaration on Religious Liberty is consonant with
perennial doctrine, but he goes on to acknowledge certain other possibilities:
“At the same time, however, I join with all other theologians in saying that
the new ground is non-infallible teaching. So when I say that the possibility
exists that Vatican II is wrong on one or more crucial points of Dignitatis
humanae, I do not simply mean that the Council’s policy may prove unfruitful. I
mean to signal a possibility that the Council’s teaching is false.
But may a Catholic theologian admit that such a possibility exists? Of course
he may. The decree (sic) Dignitatis humanae is a non-infallible document, and
the teaching which it presents is admitted to be a “new development,” hence not
something which is already acknowledged dogma ex magisterio ordinario.
Therefore the kind of religious assent which Catholics owe to that teaching is
the kind of assent which does not exclude the logical possibility that the
teaching is wrong; rather our assent excludes any probability that the teaching
is wrong.[20]
---
This synthesis agrees with that of Mr. Michael Davies, a Traditionalist
apologist, where he cites a pre-Vatican II Benedictine theologian to this same
effect:In a profound study intended to enhance the authority of the Ordinary
Magisterium, Dom Paul Nau, O.S.B., cites a number of authors who reckon the
duty of Catholics when confronted with a document of the Ordinary Magisterium
“to be that of inward assent, not as of faith, but as of prudence, the refusal
of which could not escape the mark of temerity, unless the doctrine rejected
was an actual novelty or involved a manifest discordance between the pontifical
affirmation and the doctrine which had hitherto been taught.”[23]
---
The final theologian we will cite regarding the possibility of error in Vatican
II is Cardinal Avery Dulles. In discussing the four categories of Church
teaching we have employed, he labels Vatican II’s teachings exactly as we have:
The third category has long been familiar to Catholics, especially since the
popes began to teach regularly through encyclical letters some two centuries
ago. The teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal
definitions, falls predominantly into this category. In view of the mission
given by Christ to the hierarchical magisterium, it is evident that when the
magisterium formally teaches something as Catholic doctrine, it is not uttering
a mere opinion that Catholics are free to disregard. The teaching has a real,
though not unconditional, claim on the assent of the faithful.[24]
---
J. Robert Dionne, who produced “the most exhaustive investigation of the
so-called ‘reversals’ of ordinary papal teaching”:
Dionne maintains that reversals occurred in Catholic doctrine regarding
non-Christian religions, religious freedom, the ideal of church-state
relations, the identity (or non-identity) between the Mystical Body of Christ
and the Catholic Church, and the theology of church membership. On these and
other issues, he contends, historical scholarship does not support the
“maximalist” position that the ordinary magisterium of the pope is equipped
with the charism of infallibility. To deny on principle that ordinary papal
teaching can be corrected would be, in effect, to assert that all of it is
definitive, and that none of it can pertain to the third and fourth categories
in the CDF instruction.[29]
7. CONCLUSION: VATICAN II IS NOT INFALLIBLE, ONLY REQUIRES
"CONDITIONAL" RELIGIOUS ASSENT, AND THUS, IN ITS NOVELTIES, IT CAN
ERR.
Pax Vobis, CathInfo post
Pope Francis: 'There Is No Hell'
CNSNEWS.COM | Michael W. Chapman | March
29, 2018
In another interview with his longtime
atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist
and that condemned souls just "disappear." This is a denial of the
2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and
the eternal existence of the soul.
The interview between Scalfari and the Pope
was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was
translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli.
The interview is headlined, "The Pope:
It is an honor to be called revolutionary." (Il Papa: “È un onore essere
chiamato rivoluzionario.")
Scalfari
says to the Pope, "Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me
that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of
his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about
the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You
have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God.
But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?"
Pope Francis says, "They are not
punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of
souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be
forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful
souls."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
states: "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hee and its
eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of
mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell,
'eternal fire.' The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from
God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was
created and for which he longs." (1035)
The Catechism further states,
"The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on
the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make
use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an
urgent call to conversion: 'Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and
the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who
find it are few.'
"Since we know neither the day nor the
hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when
the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with
him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like
the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire,
into the outer darkness where 'men will weep and gnash their teeth.'"
Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2007
sermon, “Jesus came to tell us that he wants us all in Heaven and that
Hell, of which so little is said in our time, exists and is eternal for those
who close their hearts to his love.”
As for the human soul, the Catholic
Church teaches that it is eternal, immortal in countless places throughout the
Catechism. One instance, "Endowed with 'a spiritual and
immortal' soul, the human person is 'the only creature on earth that God
has willed for its own sake.' From his conception, he is destined for
eternal beatitude."
COMMENT: The Vatican issued a
statement that Scalfari's comments may not necessarily be true because he does
not actually quote what Pope Francis said.
But this is nothing new.
Scalfari, the 93 year-old atheist and Bergoglio intimate, never takes
notes during interviews with Francis and his reporting is typically is a
paraphrase of what was said. Pope Francis has given several interviews with his
good friend and if Scalfari was reporting things that Francis did not say and
need to be qualified by Vatican officials, why does he continue to give him
interviews? The Vatican qualification does not deny that Francis denied the
eternal punishment of Hell, it just says that Scalfari may be a liar. But there is no evidence of this so it is
nothing more than calumny by the Vatican against Scalfari.
There is one that humbleth
himself wickedly, and his interior is full of deceit.
Ecclus. 19:23
A Historical Indictment by
Antonio Socci’s La Profezia Finale
“Yet you, Holy Father, who are always cold
and detached regarding the dogma of the Church, have uncritically wed
yourself to absurd ecological dogmas … making a granitic profession of faith
in that absurd climatist ideology… [I]t is improper and ridiculous that a
Pope makes the climate and the environment (to which he dedicated the
first encyclical he penned) the heart of his preaching… The Lord did not say:
‘Convert and believe in global warming,’ but rather: “Convert and believe in
the Gospel.” And He never commanded: ‘Separate your refuse’ but rather ‘Go
and baptize all peoples’“ (p. 134)..... “But above all, Father Bergoglio [a reference to the
Pope’s penchant for introducing himself thus], how is it possible that you do
not notice and do not indicate other emergencies than those of the climate, or
at least with equal insistence? The apostasy of entire peoples from the faith
of the true God is not a drama that merits your most ardent appeals? The war
against the family and against life? The neglect of Christ and the massacre of
Christian communities? It seems that only the environment and
other themes of the religion of political correctness merit your passion.
“A great French intellectual, Alain Finkielkraut, has
described you as “Supreme Pontiff of the world journalistic ideology.”
Is he wrong? Does he exaggerate?
“In effect, in ‘your’ Church it seems that the themes of
separating refuse and recycling take precedence over the tragedy of entire
peoples who, in the turn of a few years, have abandoned the faith. You
sound the alarm over “global warming” while the Church for two millennia has
sounded it concerning the fire of Hell” (p. 142).
“Before the spiritual catastrophe of
the eternal perdition of multitudes, which induced the mother of God to come
earnestly to Earth, I find it frankly incomprehensible that you preoccupy
yourself for the most part—as you did in your encyclical Laudato si
—with biodiversity, the fate of worms and little reptiles, the lakes, and the
abuse of plastic bottles and air-conditioning” (p. 148).
“I
invite you, reread attentively these words because they describe dramatically
what is occurring during your pontificate. In fact, it is precisely you
personally, Holy Father, who accuse of ‘fundamentalism’ those who have a clear
and certain faith and bear witness to their fidelity to Catholic doctrine….
“You, curiously, are convinced that the
danger for the Church of today is Christians fervent in their faith and those
pastors who defend the Catholic creed. In your Evangelii gaudium you
attack “some who dream of a monolithic doctrine” and those who “use a language
completely orthodox.”
“Should
we then prefer those who are carried here and there by every ideology and use
heretical language? Evidently yes, seeing that they are never attacked by you.
“If
one chooses any day, one will almost always find that you, in your discourse,
attack those you call ‘rigorists,’ ‘rigid,’ that is, men with fervent faith,
whom you identify with ‘Scribes and Pharisees’“ (p. 153-155).
“(You)should
overcome your personal resentment toward those who have studied; you should
know that, in the Christian horizon, it is completely absurd to oppose mercy to
Truth, because both are incarnated in the same Jesus Christ. Thus it is false
to oppose doctrine to the pastoral, because that would be to oppose the Logos
(doctrine) to the Good Shepherd (the Truth made flesh): Jesus is the Logos (the
Truth made flesh) and, at the same time, the Good Shepherd” (p. 159).
“… closed hearts that often hide
even behind the teaching of the Church, or behind good intentions, to sit in
the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superficiality and superiority, to
judge difficult cases and wounded families….
“The
true defenders of doctrine are not those who defend the letter but the spirit;
not the idea but the man; not the formula, but the gratuitous love of God and
of his pardon.”
“So
doing, do you not think that you have disqualified your predecessors and all
the Magisterium of the Church, in order to affirm your strictly personal
concept of mercy different from the doctrine of the Church?...
“Evidently,
even Jesus would have been, according to you, doctrinaire, a rigorist, one
who defends the idea instead of the man.
“In
effect—applying your criterion—we would have to say that Jesus would not have
been accepted to a seminary during your pontificate because he was the most
fundamentalist of all; in fact, not only was he certain of the truth, but
he proclaimed himself the Truth made flesh (‘I am the way, the truth, and the
life.’ Jn 14, 6).”
Antonio Socci’s La Profezia Finale
Old news for faithful Catholics but now it is published
in popular media outlets!
SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist
Pope Francis Is Beloved. His Papacy Might Be a Disaster
NewYorkTimes | Ross Douthat | MARCH 16,
2018
The papal plan for
a truce is either ingenious or deceptive, depending on your point of view.
Instead of formally changing the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage,
same-sex marriage, euthanasia — changes that are officially impossible, beyond
the powers of his office — the Vatican under Francis is making a twofold move.
First, a distinction is being drawn between doctrine and pastoral practice that
claims that merely pastoral change can leave doctrinal truth untouched. So a
remarried Catholic might take communion without having his first union declared
null, a Catholic planning assisted suicide might still receive last rites
beforehand, and perhaps eventually a gay Catholic can have her same-sex
union blessed— and yet supposedly none of this changes the church’s teaching
that marriage is indissoluble and suicide a mortal sin and same-sex wedlock an
impossibility, so long as it’s always treated as an exception rather than a
rule. (excerpt)
Vatican Treason Against Faithful Catholics
Police seize Chinese bishop who was asked to stand aside by Vatican
Catholic Herald | by Staff Reporter | March
27, 2018
Bishop Vincent
Guo Xijin had reportedly refused to concelebrate Mass with an excommunicated
government-backed bishop
One of the Chinese
‘underground’ bishops who was asked by a Vatican delegation to stand aside for
a government-backed prelate has been “kidnapped” by police.
Asia News, the outlet
of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reports that Bishop Vincent
Guo Xijin of Mindong was taken, along with the diocesan chancellor, after
refusing to concelebrate Mass with the government-backed bishop.
Bishop Guo, who is
recognised by the Vatican but not by the Chinese government, had recently been
asked to make way for excommunicated bishop Vincent Zhan Silu. A Vatican
delegation asked Bishop Guo to accept the position of auxiliary bishop under
Bishop Zhan as part of a rumoured deal between the Holy See and Beijng.
However, the Office
for Religious Affairs reportedly summoned Bishop Guo to a meeting on Monday
afternoon, after which he returned to his residence and packed luggage. He was
then taken away at 10pm.
The bishop had been
held in police custody for 20 days during the Easter season last year.
Chinese Catholics
are currently split between those in the ‘underground’ Church who remain loyal
to Rome, and those in the Catholic Patriotic Association, which is backed by
the government.
The CPA has
ordained several bishops without Vatican approval, causing them to be
automatically excommunicated. A rumoured deal between Beijing and the Holy See
would address the appointment of bishops, a lead to excommunicated bishops
being reconciled with the Pope. It is
not yet known if Bishop Zhan’s excommunication has been lifted.
Pope Francis opposition to underground Catholic Church
places faithful directly under Communist Party control! Become
"department" within Party!
Goodbye to the Religious Affairs Bureau: religions are now under the
direct control of the Party
AsiaNews.IT | Wang Zhicheng | China-Vatican
| Beijing | March 22, 2018
The State
Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), also known as the "Religious
Affairs Bureau ", so far under the authority of the Council of State, has
passed under the direct rule of the Communist Party. The move is among a
detailed program of reforms on the Party and the state institutions released
yesterday.
The decision to
eliminate SARA was passed in the third plenary session of the 19th Communist
Party’s Central Committee in late February. Part of the program was reviewed in
the recently concluded National People’s Congress, China’s parliament. Detail
of the program was made public on March 21, with indication that the reform
should be implemented by the end of 2018.
Among the reforms, religious
affairs are now managed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an organ of
the Communist Party’s Central Committee, whose main function is to manage
relations with the non-Communist elite, including individuals and
organizations, such as religious groups. Also now under the management
of the UFWD are the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the Ethnic Affairs
Commission, both also originally under the State Council.
The structural
change received mixed views among Chinese Christians and observers. “There
won’t be big change to religious environment, neither loosen nor tighten. It is
only a change on management structure and they will do the same thing,” said
Father Liu, a priest who serves in a Southern province.
“The reform is to
put all authority under the Party, no more sharing power with the State
Council,” said a Chinese observer who asked not to be named. However, he agreed
that there is nothing to surprise as the UFWD has always been the supervising
unit of the SARA, adding that the UFWD will still keep the signboard of the
SARA as it needs an executive office to implement the work.
“The move could
unify different voices on the management of religions,” the observer said,
noting that religious management could involve a number of departments, such as
national security, public security, buildings and education, etc.
But Eric Lai, a
Catholic commentator, sees the move shows the Chinese Communist Party no more
regards religion as a target to liaise but actively using it as a tool to
maintain stability.[.....] Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the Chinese University
of Hong Kong’s Divinity School, also questioned on his Facebook if this is
“reform or moving backward?”
“Religion is a
citizen’s basic rights endowed by the Constitution. If it is assigned as
specialized duty of the Party, this is undoubtedly a major change in the
religious work since the founding of the Communist-rule China. It reflects the
unlimited expansion of the Party’s power, interfering directly the basic rights
of citizens. This kind of retrogression is definitely negative for the
development of religious freedom in China,” he said.
Following closely
recent China-Vatican developments, the Protestant professor said he “could not
help but ask whether Vatican recognized these facts or still believe in wishful
thinking that China’s freedom of religion is stepping forward to the bright
side and that the Chinese citizens’ religious freedom will be fully safeguard?”
“Or will the Holy
See make another interpretation to justify the Party's leadership over
religions, and believe that it could bring greater space for freedom of
religion in China by its own efforts?”
On the same day of
the official announcement, SARA director Wang Zuoan held a meeting for all
staff to relate the spirit of the deepened reforms. According to the SARA’s
website, he said the decision “fully demonstrates the Party’s central high
priority for religious work and is more conducive to strengthening and
improving the Party’s leadership in religious work.” [.....]
Fr.
Waters - persecuted by those who hope that “true Liturgy shall become extinct.”
The holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of anti-Christ, and of
the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know - and
they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin
Church - all of them unanimously say that in the latter end of the world,
during the reign of anti-Christ, the Holy sacrifice of the Altar will
cease. In the work of the end of the
world ascribed to St. Hippolytus, after a long description of the afflictions
of the last days, we read as follows: “The Churches shall lament with a great
lamentation, for there shall be offered no more oblation nor worship acceptable
to God. The sacred buildings of the
churches shall be as hovels; and the precious Body and Blood of Christ shall
not be manifest in those days; the true Liturgy shall become extinct.... Such
is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries.”
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning
Our Lady of Good Success (Fortune) to the Catholics of Today
My Beloved
Daughter, I am Mary of Good Success, your Mother and your Protectress, I carry
my most Holy Son in my left arm and the scepter of the world in my right arm…. The sanctuary lamp which you just saw go
out has several meanings.
Firstly, towards the end of the
nineteenth century and during a large part if the twentieth century there will
arise various errors and the whole universe will become Republican. The
precious light of faith will be going out following on the almost complete
destruction of morals; in that time there will be many tribulations, moral
tribulations also, both public and private. The little group of people who keep
the true worship of faith and the virtues will have to suffer cruelly and
indescribably. The constant martyrdom will bring many to an early death, they
will be counted amongst the martyrs, they have sacrificed themselves for Church
and country. In order to deliver oneself from the slavery of these errors one
will need great strength of will, perseverance, courage and a great trust in
God. These are gifts of the merciful love of my Divine Son, He has provided them
for the renewal. In order to test the faith and the trust of the just and good
men there will be moments when everything seems to be lost and paralyzed but
that is the moment in which the happy beginning of the complete renewal starts.
Secondly, my communities will be
abandoned, sunk in an abyss, a deep ocean of bitterness and they will seem to
be satiated with sufferings and afflictions. How many good vocations are lost
because of lack of good and prudent spiritual direction; the Novice Mistresses should
take great care of the prayers of the novices and they should show
understanding of souls.
The Third reason for the
extinguishing of the sanctuary lamp is the spirit of impurity of those times,
the air will be filled with this unclean spirit. A flood of filth will overflow
the streets, the squares, and all public places so that there will be no
virginal souls left in the world.
Fourthly, in all layers of society
errors will strive with great cunning to penetrate into the families in order to
corrupt the youth too; Satan will congratulate himself that he can feed himself
in the fouled way on the hearts of the children. The innocence of children will
hardly exist anymore. Priestly vocations will be lost. That will be a true
misfortune and priests will turn away from their holy duties and enter upon a
false, wrong course, and therefore the Church will go dark. No prelate and
father will be watching any longer with love, strength and prudence over this
flock, and many of the prelates will lose the spirit of God and bring their own
souls into danger. Pray constantly, call upon heaven without tiring, and weep
without ceasing inwardly in your heart and pray to the Heavenly Father through
the Eucharistic Heart of my Divine Son Who has nobly shed blood.
Out of the bitterness and pains of His
sufferings and death, pray that He will have compassion upon His servants, that
He will bring an end to this terrible scourge by sending to the Church a
prelate to renew the spirit of His priests. My Divine Son and I will surround
this beloved son with a special love, we shall pour out a heap of many graces
of humility of heart and docility towards God’s inspirations, and the strength
to defend the rights of the Church so that he will know how to defend the rights
of the Church with a heart which enables him to behave like another Christ
towards the mighty people of this world and the little people of this world
without despising the unfortunate ones. He will, with a divine gentleness, lead
into the convents and monasteries souls consecrated to God for the service of
God without making the yoke of the Lord heavy upon them. He holds in his hands
the scales of sanctity in order that everything happen according to the weight
and measure so that God be glorified.
This
prelate and father will form a counter-weight against the lukewarmness of
priests and religious who are meant to be dedicated to God. As a result of the
guilt of these faithless men, Satan will gain upon earth control of this world
like a dark cloud which darkens the sky and darkens all of the people who are
consecrated to the Most Holy Heart of my Divine Son. All will have to suffer
chastisements because all kinds of crimes have been allowed. They will suffer
pestilence, hunger, civil strife, degeneration of morals and the loss of
countless souls. In order to blow away the black clouds which block the shining
holiness and the freedom of the Church there will be a fearful war in which
much blood will flow of priests and religious. This night will be so terrible
that people will think that wickedness is conquering. Then strikes my heart and
in a most sudden way I shall annihilate the pride of Satan, I shall assist and
liberate the Church and country from his cruel tyranny.
The Fifth reason why the sanctuary
lamp went out is that influential men will watch with indifference, uncaringly,
the oppression of the Church, the persecution of virtue and the triumph of
wickedness. Because these influential people will not use their position of
influence in order to combat evil or to renew the faith, the people will
gradually become indifferent to the demands of God, they will take on an evil
spirit and let themselves be swept away in all kinds of passion and vice. My
beloved daughter, were you to live that terrible time you would die of pain or
grief over the circumstances which I have described to you. The love of my Holy
Son and mine which we have for this world which is our property demand from now
on sacrifices and good works in order that the duration of this terrible
catastrophe will be shortened.
The Blessed and ever Virgin Mary, under the
title of Our Lady of Good Success, to Sister Maria Anna of Jesus, in the
Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito on the 2nd February,
1634. Sister was praying in front of the
Blessed Sacrament when suddenly the sanctuary lamp went out.
And
Novus Ordo Neo-Modernism is no different in its ends!
The
opening of Vatican II John XXIII declared that there existed a disjunction
between dogma and its "external formula or terminology"!
Modernism
is condemned because it virtually destroys Christian dogma by denying that the
dogmas of faith are contained in the revelation made by the Holy Spirit to the
Catholic Church and subsequently defined through the supreme authority of the
same Ecclesia docens{1}. Once the
Holy Spirit, speaking through the supreme magisterium{2} of the
Church, defines a doctrine as de fide{3} the dogma
in question remains, both in se{4} and in
its external formula or terminology, unchanged and unchangeable,
like God, Whose voice it communicates to us, in the shape of definite truth.
Modernism tells us quite the reverse.
{1} Ecclesia docens
-- i.e., 'the teaching Church.'
{2} Magisterium = 'teaching authority.'
{3} De fide
= 'what is of faith.'
{4} In se =
'in itself.'
Rev.
Father Norbert Jones, C.R.L., Old Truths, Not Modernist Errors, Exposure of
Modernism and Vindication of its Condemnation by the Pope, 1908
Why the Cross?
The thoughtful ones of earth contemplating
the scene presented by a human activity that continually changes its purpose
and is powerless to assign itself any purpose that human reason cannot
instantly question, must feel the pathos of much well-meaning and humanitarian
effort. Great generosity is shown and real kindness is spent in praiseworthy
attempts to arrest the ravages of mortality, especially amongst the
young. “Save the children” is an appeal that finds a ready response in the
hearts of the humane and the kindly. Not with cynicism, but with real sympathy,
one may ask, “Save them for what?” Is it for the adult life that frets
itself away in vain endeavours to assign itself an adequate reason for living?
Is it worthwhile to preserve children for what any person would logically
confess to be not worth while? [Footnote: There is question only of those who
have not the view of the aims and objects of life as furnished by the true
faith or even by sound philosophy.] Is this charity of the kind-hearted
dictated by the hope that somehow life for these children may prove different
to what it has been for those who have tried to save them from death and
disease? Are there grounds for hope that the little ones when come to adult age
will light on, by chance, a solution of the problem of existence that has
evaded their grown-up benefactors? What is the use of bestowing health unless
there can be given with it the key to such a use of life as will issue in
happiness? Life is a precious gift when it is accompanied by the knowledge of
how to live rightly and the means to exercise this right living. […..]
Death is not a break, but a stepping stone
by which one passes from one stage to another in the same existence. But man
will perversely and blindly strive to effect a cleavage in that line and
persuade himself that the good of the human life that precedes death can be
different from the good of human life that follows death. The result is that he
is necessarily at cross-purposes with God. It is not surprising that the
creature, seeking to gain the goal of life — namely happiness — by a
use of life’s powers and energies at variance with the design of the Creator,
should be continually frustrated in his main object, should enjoy no peace, and
should be involved in contradiction and become a prey to perpetual
dissatisfaction. What is the way out of this impasse? The way out
is through a thorough understanding of the religion of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ and a practice based on such understanding.[…..]
The [Gospel] passages that reveal Jesus in
the exercise of works of mercy, in healing disease, in consoling grief and in
overcoming death, are given an undue emphasis. In this way the central truth is
obscured, the truth, namely, that the conflict of the Redeemer was primarily
with spiritual evil and only incidentally with physical evil. His purpose was
to banish from earth the ills that appear to God as such, not those that appear
so to the pain-dreading nature of man… The gospel is not a record of a more
less successful philanthropic mission.
…To Christians, who persist in thinking
that the function of Christianity is to provide men with good things and banish
from their life evil things — understanding by good and evil what appear
such to fallen human nature — life will speedily prove
unintelligible. To men with such views the mystery of pain becomes
insoluble. In the face of the harsh realities of existence their belief stands
condemned. They have no answer to give to the ever-recurring question: if God
is kind and good and tender towards human suffering, why does suffering
continue to be not only for those that deserve it, but also for those who do not?
That Jesus, in His power and goodness, did
not put an end to all human suffering shows that, in His eyes, suffering
is not the real source of human unhappiness.
Rev. Edward Leen, Why the Cross?
The Francis/Bergoglio
Effect, Kasper doing more "theology on his knees"!
Cardinal Kasper: Homosexual unions are ‘analogous’ to Christian
marriage
LifeSiteNews | March 14, 2018 –
Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose theology appears to be the chief inspiration for
Pope Francis’ doctrine on giving Holy Communion to people living in states of
adultery in second marriages, now appears to be claiming that homosexual unions
contain “elements” of Christian marriage and are even “analogous” to it in a
way that is similar to the relationship between the Catholic Church and
non-Catholic Christian communities.
Moreover, the
cardinal is attributing his claims to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation
Amoris Laetitia, despite the fact that the document explicitly contradicts him.
“The pope does not
leave room for doubt over the fact that civil marriages, de facto unions, new
marriages following a divorce (Amoris Laetitia 291) and unions between
homosexual persons (Amoris Laetitia 250s.) do not correspond to the Christian
conception of marriage,” writes Kasper in a recently-released book on Amoris
Laetitia.
“He says, however,
that some of these partners can realize in a partial and analogous way some
elements in Christian marriage (Amoris Laetitia 292),” continues Kasper.
Kasper compares
such relationships with the relationship between the Catholic Church and
non-Catholic Christian groups, whom Vatican II says contain “elements of
sanctification and truth” of the Church.
“Just as outside
the Catholic Church there are elements of the true Church, in the
above-mentioned unions there can be elements present of Christian marriage,
although they do not completely fulfill, or do not yet completely fulfill, the
ideal,” adds Kasper. [.....]
Clinton Foundation Data from 2014 TAX YEAR
Have you wondered why the Clinton
Foundation folded so suddenly after Hillary was no longer in a position of
influence? Perhaps this summary will provide some insight??
They list 486 employees (line 5)! It
took 486 people who are paid $34.8 million and $91.3 million in fees and
expenses, to give away $5.1 MILLION
This is real. You can check the return
yourself (see below). The real heart of the Clintons can be seen here.
Staggering but not surprising. These figures are from an official copy of the
Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for the tax year 2014. The
copy of the tax return is from the National Center for Charitable Statistics
web site (http://nccs.urban.org/) . You can obtain the latest tax
return on any charitable organization there.
The Clinton Foundation:
Number of Employees (line 5) 486
Total revenue (line 12)
$177,804,612.00
Total grants to charity (line 13)
$5,160,385.00 (this is less than 3%)
Total expenses of
$91,281,145.00
Expenses include:
Salaries (line 15)
$34,838,106.00
Fund raising fees (line
16a) $850,803.00
Other expenses (line
17) $50,431,851.00
HUH??????
Travel
$8,000,000.00
Meetings
$12,000,000.00
Net assets/fund balances (line
22) $332,471,349.00
So it required 486 people, who were paid
$34.8 million, plus $91.3 million in fees and expenses, to give away $5.1
MILLION! And they call this a CHARITY?
It is alleged that this is one of the
greatest white-collar crimes ever committed. And just think---one of the
participants was a former president and one wanted to be elected president of
the United States. If justice is ever truly served they will both be in
prison.
The IRISH Famine: 1845-1852 – or tricks of political
persecution the English taught “Uncle” Joe Stalin
FOOD for APOSTASY: What Our Catholics
Ancestors Suffered to bring the Holy Faith to Us.
Throughout the entire period of the Famine,
Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. In Ireland before and after
the famine, Cormac O’Grada points out, “Although the potato crop failed, the
country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed
the population. But that was a ‘money crop’ and not a ‘food crop’ and could not
be interfered with.”
In History Ireland magazine, Christine
Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor,
relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the
ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish
men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also
writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham
actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped under British
military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland; Ballina,
Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and
Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including
peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues,
animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed. The most shocking export
figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9
imperial gallons; 41 litres. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins
(509,010 imperial gallons; 2,314,000 litres) were exported from Ireland to
Bristol, and 34,852 firkins (313,670 imperial gallons; 1,426,000 litres) were
shipped to Liverpool, which correlates with 822,681 imperial gallons (3,739,980
litres) of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the
worst year of the Famine. The problem in Ireland was not lack of food, which
was plentiful, but the price of it, which was beyond the reach of the poor.
Celil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the
Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger:
Ireland 1845-1849 that no issue has provoked so much anger and embittered
relations between England and Ireland “as the indisputable fact that huge
quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period
when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation.” […….]
(Protestant) Landlords were responsible for
paying the rates of every tenant whose yearly rent was £4 or less. Landlords
whose land was crowded with poorer tenants were now faced with large bills.
They began clearing the poor tenants from their small plots, and letting the
land in larger plots for over £4 which then reduced their debts. In 1846, there
had been some clearances, but the great mass of evictions came in 1847.
According to James S. Donnelly Jr, it is impossible to be sure how many people
were evicted during the years of the famine and its immediate aftermath. It was
only in 1849 that the police began to keep a count, and they recorded a total
of almost 250,000 persons as officially evicted between 1849 and 1854.
Donnelly considered this to be an
underestimate, and if the figures were to include the number pressured into
“voluntary” surrenders during the whole period (1846–1854) the figure would
almost certainly exceed half a million persons. While Helen Litton says there
were also thousands of “voluntary” surrenders, she notes also that there was
“precious little voluntary about them.” In some cases, tenants were persuaded
to accept a small sum of money to leave their homes, “cheated into believing
the workhouse would take them in.”
West Clare was one of the worst areas for
evictions, where landlords turned thousands of families out and demolished
their derisory cabins. Captain Kennedy in April 1848 estimated that 1,000
houses, with an average of six people to each, had been leveled since November.
The Mahon family of Strokestown House evicted 3,000 people in 1847, and were
still able to dine on lobster soup.
After Clare, the worst area for evictions
was County Mayo, accounting for 10% of all evictions between 1849 and 1854. The
Earl of Lucan, who owned over 60,000 acres (240 km2) was among
the worst evicting landlords. He was quoted as saying ‘he would not breed
paupers to pay priests’. Having turned out in the parish of Ballinrobe over
2,000 tenants alone, the cleared land he then used as grazing farms. In 1848,
the Marquis of Sligo owed £1,650 to Westport Union; he was also an evicting
landlord, though he claimed to be selective, saying he was only getting rid of
the idle and dishonest. Altogether, he cleared about 25% of his tenants.
[……]Calcutta is credited with making the
first (relief) donation of £14,000. The money was raised by Irish soldiers
serving there and Irish people employed by the East India Company. Pope Pius IX
sent funds and Queen Victoria (head of the Church of England) donated £2,000…..
(about one brass farthing for every Irish Catholic who starved to death). Wikipedia
It is true that, after his
death, (Pope) Honorius was anathematized by the Orientals; but one must
remember that he was accused of heresy, the only crime that makes the resistance
of inferiors to superiors, as well as the rejection of their pernicious
doctrines, legitimate.
Pope Hadrian II
“Against any
and all enemies of the Christian name”
Truly in these tumultuous times, in this revolutionary
upheaval, all good men must join the burdensome struggle against any and all
enemies of the Christian name.[….] For in fact, when a leader
of God’s holy Church, under the name of Priest, turns the very people of Christ
away from the path of truth toward the peril of an erroneous belief, and when
this occurs in a major city, then clearly the distress is multiplied, and a
greater anxiety is in order.
Pope Pius VI, Auctorem
Fidei, addressed to all the faithful
Pope Francis – his “most gentle manner”!
They (our most
holy predecessors) knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In
order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought
to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly
innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight
changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that
is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their
eternal damnation. This
manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances
under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a
synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth
with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in
the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the
seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along
orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected;
as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or
denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the
individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by
innovators to establish error. It allows for both the
possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. It is a most reprehensible
technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by
our predecessor St. Celestine, who found it used in the writings of Nestorius,
bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the
greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the
impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of
words, mixing true things with others
that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in
such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied
while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences
which he confessed.
Pope
Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, 1794 papal
bull addressed to all the faithful condemning 85 propositions from the Council
of Pistoia, 1786
True, Jesus has loved us with an immense,
infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around
Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity,
all men might live in peace and happiness.
But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has
laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His
Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that
we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners
and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however
sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed
them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in
order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to
them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it
was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and
rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with
gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy
indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men
who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people
with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.
He was as strong as He was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised,
knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is
sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body.
Finally, He did not announce for
future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be
banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the
happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven:
the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply
only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are
eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something
quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.
Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter, Our Apostolic Mandate
“Going down the synodal path” to Hell! -
The hard sell of heresy from the Vatican with the soft
title, “Rejoice with me,” misery loves company!
Divorced and remarried, indications on how to discern case by case
Bishop Semeraro’s pastoral instruction: an
application document of “Amoris laetitia” prepared and shared together with the
priests
andrea tornielli | vatican city |
08/03/2018
It is a pastoral instruction entitled
“Rejoice with me” dedicated to “Welcoming, discerning, accompanying and
integrating into the ecclesial community the faithful who have divorced and
civilly remarried”. The Bishop of Albano Marcello Semeraro, secretary of the C9,
the council of cardinals who helps the Pope in the reform of the Curia and in
the governance of the universal Church, is distributing it these days. The
peculiarities of the document are two: it is a well-defined application
instruction about the topic - described in the subtitle - and at the same time
it is a generous document, which, although it doesn’t get into any case
studies, it precisely outlines general main guidelines. And it is a document
born from a diocesan synodal experience, which involved all the clergy.
Semeraro recalls that in talks with his
priests it emerged the number of cases of civilly remarried divorcees who live
“in fidelity and with self-sacrifice their marital relationship ”. And that
sometimes these faithful are “on the margins, or in the proximity of the
ecclesial communities of the diocese”. For this reason, the bishop of Albano
chose not to make “a solo journey, but to go down the synodal path” by asking
the presbyteral council to devote all ordinary sessions of the pastoral year
2016-2017 “to reflection, to deepening and discernment on the concrete forms of
response to the divorced and civilly remarried faithful present in our
communities and to our brothers and sisters who ask for a word of consolation
and orientation”. The contents of these reflections were then shared and
discussed with all the clergy. [.....]
Every single novelty introduced since Vatican II has
always been introduced with the assurance that nothing of substance has really
changed. Yet everything, without exception, has changed!
In New ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Pastoral Plan, Cardinal Wuerl Shares
Missionary Mandate
ANALYSIS
Dominican Father Thomas Petri | Catholic
News Agency | Mar. 5, 201
8
Since the beginning of the debate on
whether Chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ Amoris
Laetitia (The Joy of Love) permits the divorced and civilly married to
receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has lamented that the exhortation
has been co-opted by that single issue and that, really, the Holy Father’s
concern is much broader than that debate suggests.
Some people, though, have suggested that
the synods and Amoris Laetitia were simply a cover to change the
practice of not giving Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly married. In a
newly released pastoral plan for the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl
has taken a decided step away from such a cynical view and captured the passion
of Pope Francis’ insistence that because we are all in need of it, we must also
go out and give God’s mercy and truth to those who do not know it, who are not
living it, and who are desperate to receive it.
“Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and
Family,” the Archdiocese of Washington's pastoral plan, focuses the
implementation of the exhortation not on questions of sacramental doctrine and
practice, since these truths have been definitively taught and Church teaching
has not changed.
Rather, echoing a cornerstone in the thought of Pope Francis, Pope St. John
Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, Wuerl’s plan begins with the principle that “the
desire to love and to be loved is a deep, enduring part of our human
experience.” This desire is part of God’s providential care for us and his plan
for marriage. Echoing a reflection on our need for God that Joseph Ratzinger
once made in his Introduction to Christianity, Cardinal Wuerl notes
that the joy of love in this life “gives us an invitation to experience
Christian hope in the love of God that never ends.”
It’s somewhat surprising that it was
thought necessary to hold two synods and to issue an apostolic exhortation to
encourage priests and parish leaders to reach out to people living in irregular
situations. [etc., etc., etc.....]
So
just what has the Novus Ordo Church been “dialoguing” about with the Jews?
“Judeo-Christian tradition does not
exist!”
That fabled (Judeo-Christian)
tradition does not exist, nor does the “Judeo-Christian ethic.”
Though sharing a common origin in the Hebrew Scriptures, the two faiths read
the scriptural texts differently. They believe in God, but view Him through different
lenses. They each have a story, but they are not the same. They each have a
concept of man, but they are not the same. They are both ethical religions, but
with separate ideas of man's nature, salvation and destiny.
Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi of
the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia. Published in Jerusalem Post
PEW POLL: 95% of Jewish Leaders support
abortion and “same-sex marriage.”
The Jewish question of our time does not differ greatly from the one
which affected the Christian peoples of the Middle Ages. In a foolish way it is
said to arise from hatred towards the Jewish tribe. Mosaism in itself could not
become an object of hate for Christians, since, until the coming of Christ, it
was the only true religion, a prefiguration of and preparation for
Christianity, which, according to God’s Will, was to be its successor. But the
Judaism of the centuries [after Christ] turned its back on the Mosaic law,
replacing it with the Talmud (ii.),
the very quintessence of that Pharisaism which in so many ways has been
shattered through its rejection by Christ, the Messiah and Redeemer. And
although Talmudism is an important element of the Jewish question, it cannot be
said, strictly speaking, to give that question a religious character, because
what the Christian nations despise in Talmudism is not so much its virtually
non-existent theological element, but rather, its morals, which are at variance
with the most elementary principles of natural ethics.
On the Jewish Question in Europe; La
Civiltà Cattolica, Series XIV, Vol. VII, 23;10; October 1890
Is new Vatican doc on neo-Pelagianism at odds
with Pope’s preferred pejorative?
LifeSiteNews | ROME, March 1, 2018 — In Evangelii
Gaudium, Pope Francis refers 
to the “self-absorbed
promethean neo-Pelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own
powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain
intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”
He added that “a
supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic
and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and
classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his
or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”
Such people, he
said in the apostolic exhortation, are not really “concerned about Jesus Christ
or others.”
Many have taken the
Pope’s comments on neo-Pelagianism to refer to those whom he has said “rigidly”
adhere to doctrine and tradition, particularly in light of other similar
comments he has made in the course of his pontificate.
In an address on
Christian Humanism delivered in Florence’s famous cathedral, Pope Francis said
that Pelagianism “prompts the Church not to be humble, selfless and
blessed. And it does so with the appearance of being a good.”
“In facing ills or
the problems of the Church,” the Pope added, “it is useless to look for
solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of practices
and outdated forms that even culturally aren’t able to be meaningful.”
But is this what
neo-Pelagianism really means, according to the Vatican?
In a letter
released today, targeting neo-Pelagianism and neo-Gnosticism as two
contemporary errors that can be obstacles to salvation, the Vatican’s doctrinal
office made no connection between these erroneous “tendencies” and Catholics
who adhere to the Church’s tradition.
It also doesn’t
mention rigidity or anything about neo-Pelagianism meaning those who “observe
certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style
from the past.”
Entitled “Placuit
Deo” (In His Goodness), the Letter was signed by Archbishop Luis Ladaria,
S.J., prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and approved
by Pope Francis. Its aim is to “demonstrate certain aspects of Christian
salvation that can be difficult to understand” in today’s culture.
The document
focuses on Neo-Pelagianism and Neo-Gnosticism, which it says are two modern
schools of thought that “resemble certain aspects of [the] two ancient
heresies” of Pelagianism and Gnosticism. It notes that Pope Francis has often
referred to these two “tendencies” in his addresses and homilies.
The letter refers
to Neo-Pelagians as individuals who believe themselves to be “radically
autonomous,” who presume to be able to save themselves and depend on their own
strength. They are unable to recognize that they derive “from God and from
others.” Such ways of thinking are “incapable of welcoming the newness of the
Spirit of God,” it says.
Classical
Pelagianism was the heresy of Pelagius, a British priest of the fifth century,
who stated that humans are on their own, without need of grace, and could
initiate their own salvation. St. Augustine of Hippo was one of the main
opponents of Pelagianism, arguing that God’s unmerited grace is necessary for
us to perform any good work that will help us get to heaven.
By contrast,
Neo-Gnostics accept a model of salvation that is “merely interior, closed off
in its own subjectivism.” The document adds that it consists in “improving
oneself,” of being “intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus
towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity.”
The Neo-Gnostic way
of thinking “presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the
material universe,” and fails to see traces of God’s provident hand in
creation. Neo-Gnostics experience a reality “deprived of meaning,” and foreign
to the fundamental identity of the human person as a unity of body and soul. This
idea of reality is therefore “easily manipulated by the interests of man.”
Classical
Gnosticism is ancient pantheistic belief in “secret teachings” of Christ,
namely, that he came in order to free us from the evils of matter so that we
might live as purely spiritual beings.
Placuit Deo
notes that while there is “a great difference” between modern, secularized
society and “the social context of early Christianity, in which these two
heresies were born,” there are “similarities” between the ancient histories
and the modern tendencies to which Pope Francis refers, insofar as they
represent “perennial dangers for misunderstanding Biblical faith.”
It adds that as
both modern-day versions of these heresies prevent Christ from mediating
salvation, it is important to “reaffirm that salvation consists in our union
with Christ.” [.....]
Asked which is the
more important, he said it is “easier” to point to examples of neo-Pelagianism,
but you could “fill books” with ancient Gnosticism which is a “very complicated
phenomenon.”
In light of the
Pope’s repeated use of the term neo-Pelagianism to describe those who “rigidly”
adhere to doctrine or Tradition, the National Catholic Register asked
why the word or sentiment does not appear in the Letter. Archbishop Ladaria
said he was not aware the word was not included, and added there was “no
particular reason” why it was not.
Finally, a
journalist from the Associated Press said she “marveled” that the document only
used the word ‘Catholic’ once (in the title) and asked whether Placuit Deo
marked a departure from the Church’s teaching regarding the “fullness of
salvation” being only found in the Catholic Church.
The CDF Prefect
said the Church has often repeated what Vatican II taught that “Christ’s Church
subsists in the Catholic Church.” He also referred to the Council document Lumen
Gentium which teaches that “many elements of salvation are found in
Christian religious confessions” and that these elements “tend towards Catholic
unity.”
Archbishop Ladaria
said that denominations have “elements of sanctification” and “we recognize
these gladly.” And he stressed that “the fact that we don’t enter directly into
this [in Placuit Deo] doesn’t mean that the teaching has changed. It
seems to me to have deepened.”
COMMENT:
Pope
Francis is a Neo-Modernist heretic. The heresy of Neo-Modernism, like
Modernism, denies all dogma as divinely revealed truths that constitute the
formal objects of divine and Catholic faith, and therefore, constitute the
proximate rule of faith. The difference between the two is in their
methodology. The Modernist denies dogma directly and the Neo-Modernist denies
dogma indirectly by various methods. The Neo-Modernist will change established
definitions, use words equivocally, qualify categorical propositions and/or
change dogmatic propositions from the category of truth-falsehood to the
category of authority-obedience and thus, negate all dogmas on the grounds of
impossibility, excessive moral or physical burden, and whatever else excuses a
person from fulfilling a legal obligation, precept, command, etc., etc.
Now
comes Pope Francis. He is not stupid but he is remarkably ignorant,
self-willed, arrogant, proud, authoritarian, hypocritical, posturing,
dissembling, viscous, revengeful, and uniformly shameless. He employs the term
neo-Pelagianism to attack Catholic
faithful loyal to our Lord's reveal truths who conform their lives to His moral
law, and yet, he does not define his terminology. Obviously Francis is using
term the same way that Jews use the term “anti-Semitism.” Accusations that are
defined can be refuted and refutation is not what the calumniator is interested
in. Joe Sobran defined “anti-Semitic” as a person the Jews don’t like. The same
can be said that a neo-Pelagian is someone Pope Francis doesn’t like.
The
heresy of Pelagius was the denial of Original Sin, and because he denied
Original Sin, he held that man could attain the supernatural end of salvation
by natural means. He could obtain salvation by natural works. Francis therefore
does not accuse faithful Catholics of denying Original Sin, he is accusing them
of employing Pelagian methodology to obtain salvation. It is the ends that
constitute the primary determinate of the moral act and thus Francis (Who am I
to judge?) is guilty of nothing less than direct calumny by associating
faithful Catholic with the heretic Pelagius because he sees a similarity of
material acts that are in themselves morally neutral but have entirely
different moral ends.
Modernism
was called by Pope St. Pius X “the synthesis of all heresies.” Since Modernism
denies all dogma as its end, every heresy can be discovered in the Modernist.
Francis recently declared that Luther’s condemned heretical doctrine of
Justification was “correct.” Luther denied the value of good works (and free
will) in his heresy of justification by “faith alone.” So does Pope Francis. He
interminably talks about caring for the poor but like all liberals, he gives
mouth service to humanity and treats individual humans with contempt excepting
photo-ops. What is particularly grating is his assertion that Catholics
faithful to dogma and the moral law do not perform the corporal and spiritual
works of mercy, that they are ‘enclosed upon themselves’. And this from the
mouth of the hypocrite who degrades the spiritual works of mercy by calling
proselytism “solemn nonsense.” Every Catholic university, school, hospital,
nursing home, orphanage, charitable institute for the care of the poor or the
ransom of captives, for the conversion of heretics and pagans, etc. was founded
by Catholics faithful to dogma and the divine moral law. The Modernists have
done less than nothing. They have so gutted the faith of any substance that
they have overseen the greatest collapse of Catholic charitable works of mercy
emptying religious institutions of vocations that completely overshadows the
decimation caused by the plague in medieval Europe.
Nothing
could be more hypocritical than a Modernist, who denies an objective knowable
truth, suggesting that anyone could be a heretic. You can be assured that there
will never be a “syllabus of errors” condemning neo-Pelagianian propositions
because that would require clear definitions and the structuring of sound
judgments. The real purpose is to smear. Nothing more. Cardinal Laderia ends
his interview by affirming the Vatican II heresies that deny the identity of
the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ, and then affirms that
heretical sects can be “elements of salvation.” In the end for Novus Ordo
Modernist, salvation can be found anywhere. Why not in “neo-Pelagianism”?
Maybe that's one of Francis' Gnostic
secrets?
What
Exactly is Pelagianism?
A far more radical heresy was that of the Pelagians. They admitted that
Adam sinned, but denied that his sin is transmitted to his descendants.
Pelagius himself and Clestius maintained the following errors: (1) Man, as now
constituted, does not differ essentially in endowment from Adam before the
Fall. The only difference (an accidental one) is that personal sins are
committed in the present order. (2) Newborn infants do not bring original sin
with them into the world; they are baptized not “for the forgiveness of sins,”
but merely that they may be enabled to attain to the regnum coelorum, which, in the mind of these heretics, is something
quite different from eternal life. (3) The sin which Adam committed in Paradise
injured him, but not his descendants, except in so far as their willpower is
weakened by his bad example. (4) Since Adam’s sin is not transmitted to his
descendants, they cannot be punished for it. Death is not a punishment for sin,
but a necessity of nature (necessitas
naturae), and concupiscence is merely nature’s way of asserting itself (vigor naturae).
Few heresies were so vigorously combated from their very birth, and
condemned by so many councils, as Pelagianism. During the short period from
A.D. 412 (or 411) to 431 no less than twenty-four councils, in the East and in
the West, denounced the new sect. Prominent among them is the Second Council of
Mileve (416); its canons were taken over by a plenary council held at Carthage
in 418, and approved and promulgated by Pope Zosimus in his Epistola Tractoria. Pelagianism was cut
to the quick by the second canon of this council, which reads as follows:
Whoever denies that new-born infants should be baptized immediately after
birth, or asserts that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but
do not contract from Adam original sin, which must be expiated in the waters of
regeneration, and that consequently the baptismal form ‘for the remission of
sins’ applies to them not truly, but falsely; let him be anathema.” The Council
bases this definition on Rom. V, 12 sqq., and on ecclesiastical Tradition, and
concludes: According to this rule of faith little children, who are as yet
unable to commit actual sin, are therefore truly baptized for the remission of
sins, in order that by regeneration they may be cleansed of that which they
have contracted by generation.”
The Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431) imposed this teaching on all clerics
under pain of deposition, and the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529) dealt
Pelagianism a further blow by defining: — If any one asserts that the
prevarication of Adam injured himself only and not his progeny, or alleges that
bodily death, which is the penalty of sin, but not sin, which is the death of
the soul, was brought by one man upon the entire human race, he attributes an
injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says: ‘By one man, etc.’”
Rev. Joseph Pohle, God, the Author of Nature and Supernatural
“Endeavor to acquire the virtues in which you
believe your brother to be wanting; then you will no longer be sensible of his
defects, because they will have ceased to exist in yourself.”
St. Augustine
Pope Francis never kneels before the Blessed Sacrament!
Why?
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say
unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall
not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat
indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my
blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I
live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This
is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and
are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever. John 6:54-59
For as often as you shall eat this bread,
and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come.
Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a
man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to
himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. 1 Cor 11:26-29
Because for
Francis, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60)
Pope Francis for the second time has made the
cover of the liberal and salacious Rolling
Stone Magazine. It may be because he
is the first pope to actually duplicate Stan Laurel’s infallible magic match
trick?
As we suffer under the moral
and doctrinal Novelties of Pope Francis, it is evident why he wants the Novelty
Master, Paul VI, to become another novel Novus Ordo saint. Montini is the man who defined the “Spirit of
Vatican II” in one word: “NOVELTY” in order to “please
men.”
“But though we, or an angel from heaven,
preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be
anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a
gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. For do I now
persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I
should not be the servant of Christ.”
St. Paul, Galatians 1, 8-10
“Blind
that they are, and leaders of the
blind, inflated with a boastful science, they have reached that pitch of
folly where they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true nature of
the religious sentiment; with that new system of theirs they are seen to be
under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid
foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they
embrace other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, condemned by the Church, on
which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can rest and maintain
truth itself.”
St.
Pius X, Pascendi
“A lamentable spectacle is that presented by
the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it
seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on
itself it thinks it can find the fruit outside the Church wherein truth is
found without the slightest shadow of error.”
Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari nos, 1834, quoted by St. Pius X in Pascendi
“It is impossible to approve in Catholic
publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the
piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of
Christian life, on new
directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new
vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.”
Leo XIII, Jan 27, 1902, quoted by St. Pius
X in Pascendi
"... We wish to make our own the
important words employed by the Council; those words which define its spirit,
and, in a dynamical synthesis, form the spirit of all those who refer to it, be
they within or without the Church. The word “NOVELTY”, simple, very dear to
today’s men, is much utilized; it is theirs... That word... it was given to us
as an order, as a program... It comes to us directly from the pages of
the Holy Scripture: “For, behold (says the Lord), I create new heavens and a
new earth”. St. Paul echoes these words of the prophet Isaiah; then, the
Apocalypse: “I am making everything new.” And Jesus, our Master, was not He,
himself, an innovator? “You have heard that people were told in the past ...
but now I tell you...”– Repeated in the “Sermon on the Mount”.
It is precisely
thus that the Council has come to us. Two terms characterize it: “RENOVATION”
and “REVISION”. We are particularly keen that this “spirit of renovation”–
according to the expression of the Council – be understood and experienced by
everyone. It responds to the characteristic of our time, wholly engaged in an
enormous and rapid transformation, and generating novelties in every sector of
modern life. In fact, one cannot shy away from this spontaneous reflection: if
the whole world is changing, will not religion change as well?
Between the reality
of life and Christianity, Catholicism especially, is not there reciprocal
disagreement, indifference, misunderstanding, and hostility? The former is
leaping forward; the latter would not move. How could they go along? How could
Christianity claim to have, today, any influence upon life?
And it is for this
reason that the Church has undertaken some reforms, especially after the
Council. The Episcopate is about to promote the “renovation” that corresponds
to our present needs; Religious Orders are reforming their Statutes; Catholic
laity is qualified and found its role within the life of the Church; Liturgy is
proceeding with a reform in which anyone knows the extension and importance;
Christian education reviews the methods of its pedagogy; all the canonical
legislations are about to be revised.
And how many other
consoling and promising novelties we shall see appearing in the Church! They
attest to Her new vitality, which shows that the Holy Spirit animates Her
continually, even in these years so crucial to religion. The development of
ecumenism, guided by Faith and Charity, itself says what progress, almost
unforeseeable, has been achieved during the course and life of the Church. The
Church looks at the future with Her heart brimming with hope, brimming with
fresh expectation in love... We can say... of the Council: It marks the onset
of a new era, of which no one can deny the new aspects that We have indicated
to you."
Paul VI, General Audience, July 2, 1969
What needs to be “contextualized” is
the idiot Sosa. The context is the
heresy of Modernism!
Jesuit Superior General: We Don’t Know ‘What
Jesus Really Said’
In a strangely convoluted interview, the
new Superior General of the Jesuit order suggested that different
interpretations of the Bible can all be valid since no one really knows what
Jesus said anyway.
Breitbart
| Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. | 23 Feb 2017
“It would be necessary to start a nice reflection on what Jesus really
said,” Father Arturo Sosa said in his interview with Swiss Vatican journalist
Giuseppe Rusconi, since “at that time no one had a tape recorder to record his
words.”
“What we do know is
that Jesus’ words need to be contextualized. They were expressed with a
language, in a specific setting and were directed to someone in particular,” he
said.
Asked whether
Jesus’ words have an “absolute value,” Father Sosa said that scholars have been
struggling “to understand exactly what Jesus meant to say.”
“The word is
relative, the Gospel is written by human beings, it is accepted by the Church
which is made up of human persons,” he said.
“It is true,” he said,
“that no one can change the word of Jesus, but we need to know what it was!”
Curiously, the
Second Vatican Council, which Father Sosa appeals to, taught that “everything
asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted
by the Holy Spirit,” and that the books of Scripture “must be acknowledged as
teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put
into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
It also declared
that the Church has always firmly held that the four Gospels faithfully
hand on “what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for
their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven.”
Getting down to
specifics, the interviewer asked Father Sosa whether Jesus’ words regarding
divorce are “debatable.”
The priest answered
that Jesus’ words should not be doubted but “brought under discernment.” His
words continue to oblige, he said, but they oblige us to “follow the results of
discernment.”
The Jesuit seemed
to suggest that the Holy Spirit is very active in the discernment process but
was not quite so active in inspiring the biblical text itself, which was
simply “written by human beings” and is therefore “relative.”
What is up for
discussion, he continued, is “not the word of Jesus, but the word of Jesus as
we have interpreted it.”
“Doctrine is a word
that I don’t like very much, it brings with it the image of the hardness of
stone,” he said. “Human reality is much more nuanced, it is never black or
white, it is in continual development.”
Doctrine is part of
discernment, and “true discernment cannot ignore doctrine,” Father Sosa said.
At the same time,
however, discernment can reach conclusions at odds with doctrine “because
doctrine doesn’t substitute discernment or the Holy Spirit,” he said.
Heretics welcome for Novus
Ordo Communion! What has been done sub
rosa for years is now open practice.
At their spring conference in Ingolstadt, the German bishops'
conference agreed that a Protestant partner of a Catholic can receive the
Eucharist after having made a "serious examination" of conscience
with a priest or another person with pastoral responsibilities, "affirms
the faith of the Catholic Church," wishes to end "serious spiritual
distress," and has a "longing to satisfy a hunger for the
Eucharist."
Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register
Pope
Francis comments on the Resistance to his Heresy
But when I realize that there is real resistance, of course it displeases
me. Some people tell me that resistance is normal when someone wants to make
changes. The famous ‘we’ve always done it this way’ reigns everywhere, it is a
great temptation that we have all faced. … I cannot deny that there is
resistance. I see it and I am aware of it. There is doctrinal resistance, which
you all know better than I do. For the sake of mental health, I do not read the
websites of this so-called “resistance.” I know who they are, I am familiar
with the groups, but I do not read them, simply for my mental health. If there
is something very serious, they inform me so that I know about it. You all know
them … It is a displeasure, but we must move ahead. Historians say that it
takes a century before a Council puts down roots. We are halfway there.
When I perceive resistance, I try to dialogue, when dialogue is
possible. But some resistance comes from people who believe they possess the
true doctrine and accuse you of being a heretic. When I do not find spiritual
goodness in these people, because of what they say or write, I simply pray for
them. It pains me, but I do not dwell on this feeling for the sake of mental
hygiene.
Pope Francis the Destroyer, addressing a private meeting with ninety
fellow Jesuits, January 16, 2018, Santiago de Chile. Their conversation was
transcribed by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civilta Cattolicà,
and was published in Italian with the Pope’s approval.
COMMENT: “True doctrine” is possessed by all faithful Catholics who hold
DOGMA as their rule of faith. Pope Francis does not. He believes that
he is the rule of faith and revealed Truth must bend to his will. Whatever he
says and does is what every Catholic must say and do. Francis rejects DOGMA and
that is why he is a heretic. He judges those who hold DOGMA as their rule of
faith as an outward sign that “these people” are without “spiritual goodness.”
What is evident is that Francis, who babbles that “time is greater than space,”
cannot and will not be dissuaded from his commitment to destroy. He will not listen
to those who offer filial correction and he does not accept evidence of the
rotten fruits from Vatican II because it takes “a century before a Council puts
down roots.” We are supposed to believe that in another fifty years we will
really see the springtime of Vatican II? Unfortunately, at the current rate of
decline there will not be a Catholic Church in another fifty years. God being
God, this will not happen. Unfortunately for Francis, since he cannot repent,
he will pay awful price for all eternity.
Pope
Francis' Idea of Zero Tolerance!
In Italy there has been an uproar over the act of “mercy” with which
Francis has graced Fr. Mauro Inzoli, a prominent priest of the movement
Communion and Liberation, reduced to the lay state in 2012 by the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith for having abused numerous young boys, but
restored to the active priesthood by Francis in 2014, with the admonishment
that he lead a life of penance and prayer. In the civil arena, Inzoli was
caught again and charged. He has been
sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison.
Sandro Magister
The Great Recurring Theme of Pope Francis and the Novus
Ordo Church: "We will not walk, We will not hearken!"
Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways,
and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and
you shall find refreshment for your souls. And they said: we will not walk. And
I appointed watchmen over you, saying: Hearken ye to the sound of the trumpet.
And they said: We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O
congregation, what great things I will do to them. Hear, O earth: Behold I will
bring evils upon this people, the fruits of their own thoughts: because they
have not heard my words, and they have cast away my law. To what purpose do you
bring me frankincense from Saba, and the sweet smelling cane from a far
country? Your holocausts are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing
to me.
Jeremias, 6, 16-20
Leaked docs raise question of Pope’s personal role in new Vatican
financial scandal
LifeSiteNews | ROME, February 20, 2018
– Leaked documents obtained by LifeSiteNews connect the Pope himself to a new
Vatican financial scandal and raise
serious questions about his global reputation as the “pope for the poor.”
LifeSiteNews has
obtained internal documents of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, a charity with
a stellar history of assisting the world’s poor, showing that last summer the
Pope personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant to a
corruption-plagued, Church-owned dermatological hospital in Rome accused of
money laundering. Records from the financial police indicate the hospital has
liabilities over one billion USD – an amount larger than the national debt of
some 20 nations.
The grant has lay
members of the Papal Foundation up in arms, and some tendering resignations.
Responding to questions from LifeSiteNews, Papal Foundation staff sent a
statement saying that it is not their practice to comment on individual
requests.
Speaking of grants
in general, the Papal Foundation said their mission has not changed. “The
grants to help those in need around the world and of significance to the Holy
Father are reviewed and approved through well-accepted philanthropic processes
by the Board and its committees,” it said.
Lay membership or
becoming a “steward” in the Papal Foundation involves the pledge “to give
$1 million over the course of no more than ten years with a minimum donation of
$100,000 per year.” Those monies are invested in order to make a perpetual
fund to assist the Church.
However, the
majority of the board is composed of U.S. bishops, including every U.S.
Cardinal living in America. The foundation customarily gives grants of $200,000
or less to organizations in the developing world via the Holy See.
According to the
internal documents, the Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is
100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board
chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.
Despite opposition
from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an
$8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay
members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds,
but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl
brooking no dissent.
Along with this
report, LifeSite is publishing three leaked documents.
‘Negligent… flawed… reckless’
On January 6, the steward who until
then served as chairman of the Foundation’s audit committee submitted his
resignation along with a report of the committee’s grave objections to the
grant.
“As head of the Audit Committee
and a Trustee of the Foundation, I found this grant to be negligent in
character, flawed in its diligence, and contrary to the spirit of the
Foundation,” he wrote in his resignation letter accompanying the report.
“Instead of helping the poor in a third-world country, the Board approved an
unprecedented huge grant to a hospital that has a history of mismanagement,
criminal indictments, and bankruptcy.”
“Had we allowed such
recklessness in our personal careers we would never have met the requirements
to join The Papal Foundation in the first place.”
The audit committee
chairman’s report noted that the Foundation’s “initial $8 million was sent
without any supporting documentation.”
He said the board
eventually received a “2-1/2 inch thick binder of information (mostly in
Italian)” but it lacked essential details. The report notes:
There was no
Balance Sheet. There was no clear explanation as to how the $25 million
would be used. Normal grant requests are fairly specific about how our money
will be used. Buried in the thick binder was only a one-page financial
projection labelled “Draft for Discussion” showing:
2017
1.6 million Euro PROFIT
2018
2.4 million Euro PROFIT
2019
4.4 million Euro PROFIT
And on this data,
our Board of Directors voted to grant this failing hospital $25 million of our
hard-earned dollars. To put this in perspective, rarely have we given above
$200,000 to a grant request. I pointed out that there was NO PROFESSIONAL DUE
DILIGENCE, just a lot of fluff. If the numbers presented were accurate, then
this commercial enterprise should go to a bank. They don’t need our
money. If the numbers were not accurate, then a decision could not be
made. […..]
Hungarian Prime Minister: ‘Christianity is Europe’s last hope’
LifeSiteNews | BUDAPEST, Hungary | February
19, 2018 – Brushing aside any semblance of political correctness, Hungary’s
Prime Minister said in his state of the nation speech on Sunday that,
“Christianity is Europe's last hope.”
Addressing his
country and the world, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that European nations
which have encouraged migration have, “opened the way to the decline of
Christian culture and the advance of Islam.”
Orbán painted an
image of Western Europe being overwhelmed by the accelerating influx Muslim
immigrants in recent years.
“According to
estimates, the proportion of immigrants will grow at an accelerated pace in the
European countries west of us,” said Orbán. “I won't even say anything about
France and Holland, but even the born Germans are being forced back from most
large German cities as migrants always occupy big cities first.”
Orbán warned that
as Western Europe becomes saturated with Muslim occupants, Islamists would soon
seek to stream in to his country from both Western Europe as well as from
Islamic nations.
“This means that
the Islamic civilization, which always considers its vocation to convert Europe
to what it calls the true faith, in the future will be knocking on the door of
Central Europe not only from the south, but from the west, as well,” he said.
Prime Minister
Orbán said his government will oppose efforts by the United Nations or the
European Union to “increase migration” around the world.
In June,
LifeSiteNews reported that Orbán had taken a strong stand and not backed down
against outside globalist influences seeking to control his nation’s politics.
Billionaire George
Soros, who famously backs many progressive initiatives around the world, locked
horns with Orbán over the Central European University (CEU) he founded in 1989,
which has been criticized as a funnel for anti-nationalist views. [……]
A
Knife in the Back of every faithful Catholic, especially the Chinese.
“The Communists want to enslave the Church…. Cardinal (Pietor) Parolin (the Vatican
Secretary of State) venerates the Ostpolitik diplomacy of his mater
Casaroli [a reference
to Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Secretary of State from 1979 to 1990, who
was noted for his efforts to promote dialogue with the Soviet bloc] and
despises the genuine faith of those who firmly defend the Church founded by
Jesus on the apostles from any interference by secular power.”
Cardinal Joseph Zen, warning against a proposed Vatican deal with
Beijing to formally recognize the Patriotic Catholic Church run by the
Communist government as the official Catholic Church in China
Catholic saints and the religious that have
followed their examples have done more for the poor, for children, for
exploited women than all others throughout all of history. We own no apology to anyone for Catholic
charity! Is Francis, the class warrior,
begging for an apology because he was mistreated?
“I believe that the church not only should apologize to the person who
is gay whom it has offended, but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited
women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having
blessed many weapons.”
Pope Francis
Effigy of Pope Francis the Communist being
mocked in a Shrove Tuesday Celebration in 2017 along with cherub images of Mao,
Lenin and Castro. The measure of the man
by faithful Catholics is being taken more accurately every day but
unfortunately, the measure of the man is doing incalculable damage to the
dignity of the office with the loss of many souls.
Cardinal says Vatican-China deal would put Catholics in communist cage
Reuters
| HONG KONG | February 9, 2018 - A senior Catholic cardinal accused the Vatican on Friday of acting
“unfaithfully” in its rapprochement with China, saying it would put the
country’s some 12 million faithful in a bird cage controlled by the Communist
Party.
Addressing a news conference,
Hong Kong’s outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen also said he was highly skeptical of
a deal that reportedly would give Pope Francis the final say in the appointment
of bishops, the key part of the agreement.
Nearly 70 years
after China and the Vatican severed diplomatic relations, the two sides
recently reached a framework accord on the thorny issue of who gets to appoint
new Chinese bishops and a historic deal could be signed in a few months.
The 86-year-old former
bishop of Hong Kong, recently rebuked by the Vatican after he said it had “sold
out” China’s faithful, said sources told him that under the framework agreement
the pope would have the final veto power over bishops who are effectively
chosen by the Chinese government.
“They (The Chinese
government) say the last word belongs to the Holy Father. Sounds wonderful? But
it’s fake,” Zen said.
”They are not going
to make good choices for the Church ... surely they choose the one they prefer,
which means the one who always obeys the government. So how (could) the Holy
Father approve such a choice?”
“Okay, he can veto.
How many times? It takes courage to veto the second time, the third time, five
times,” Zen said.
Catholics in China
are split between the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, where
bishops are appointed by the government, and the “underground” Church that
remains loyal to the pope while being systematically persecuted by Chinese
authorities for years.
Zen, who has
fiercely criticized the Vatican for attempting to force two “underground”
bishops to give way to government-backed “illegitimate” bishops in order to
foster the deal, was rebuked by the Vatican last Wednesday for “fostering
confusion and controversy”.
Zen said that under
the status quo, which he described as “the lesser evil,” the Vatican secretly
approves candidates who are acceptable to both sides before the
state-controlled Church makes them bishop.
But under the new
agreement, where candidates would be selected via a “so-called democratic
election” inside the Chinese Catholic community and endorsed by a
state-controlled bishops’ conference before being submitted to the pope, the
choice lies entirely in the hands of the government, Zen said.
“A church enslaved
by the government is no real Catholic Church,” he said.
Zen said he was not
criticizing the pope, whom he believed might not be briefed on “reality”
because bureaucrats in the Holy See are eager to strike a deal.
“What they (Vatican
negotiators) are doing is unfaithful,” Zen said. “I am not judging their
conscience but ... it’s a surrender and they have no right to surrender.”
Those who think that the pope is the "rule of
faith" will follow Francis into heresy.
Those who are faithful to dogma as the "rule of faith" can at
least find salvation.
Scholar stumps Cardinal Cupich, asks if Pope’s ‘paradigm shift’ means
‘radical’ doctrinal change
LifeSiteNews | CAMBRIDGE, England | February 15, 2018 – A respected Catholic historian
and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week
about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many
are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice.
Professor John
Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge University in which
Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice,
asked the Cardinal at the end of the lecture why Pope Francis “mercilessly”
insults and eliminates his doctrinal opponents.
Rist asked the
Cardinal:
Your Eminence, In view of your
account of the sunny, caring and holistic features of Pope Francis’ revolution
of mercy – described disturbingly by the leaflet for this meeting and by your
Eminence as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the presentation of Catholicism – and of the
Pope’s call for free and frank discussion of his challenging proposals and
policies, I would like to ask why Pope Francis acts so mercilessly in insulting
and eliminating doctrinal opponents:
·
Cardinal Burke removed from the leadership of the Roman Rota;
·
Three loyal priests from the CDF dismissed without explanation,
followed by the abrupt termination of Cardinal Mueller himself;
·
The denial of a Cardinal’s hat to the much loved champion of the
unborn, Archbishop Chaput;
·
The removal of most of the original members of the Academy for Life;
·
The apparent selling-down the river of Cardinal Pell, who may have been
framed;
·
And more recently the banishment from Rome of the Professor of
Patristics at the Lateran and editor of the challenging book Remaining in
the Truth of Christ;
The list goes on and on, but I
stop there to ask again whether harsh actions of this sort — combined
with the well-documented rigging of the Synod on the Family — indicate that the
Pope’s 'paradigm shift' should be recognized as an attempt — under cover of
offering solutions to genuine social problems in Western society — to impose on
the Church radical changes of doctrine, developed not by laity but largely in
Germany by a group of relativist Hegelian theologians?
Cupich sidestepped away from the
question, replying that those who have such concerns should ask themselves: “Do we really believe that the Spirit is
no longer guiding the Church?” reported the Catholic Herald.
The professor said
after the event that if he had been given the chance to reply, he would have
told the Cardinal that “the Church is indeed guided by the Holy Spirit, via
good Catholic souls such as Cardinal Burke and many others.”
Rist is a Professor
of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and now holds a Chair in
Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A native
of the United Kingdom, Rist is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge
University. He is also a convert to Catholicism from agnosticism, thanks to his
study of Plato, the Gospels and other ancient texts.
Rist, whose career
as a philosopher and a classicist spans fifty years and three continents, has
written 16 scholarly books and over a hundred journal articles on ancient and
Christian philosophy or the Gospels. He also contributed to Remaining in
the Truth of Christ, the defense of Catholic teaching that was
“intercepted” at the Synod on the Family.
Rist told
LifeSiteNews that he regards the Francis papacy as a “disaster.”
“I regard this papacy as a
disaster and Bergoglio as possibly — because of his tampering with established
doctrine — as possibly the worst pope we have ever had,” he said.
“Cupich's attempt to defend him
[at Cambridge] was itself dependent on misrepresentations, the evading of
legitimate questions, and in at least one case — that of my charge of the Synod
on the Family being rigged — of downright lying. I was teaching in Rome at the
time, and contributed to Remaining in the Truth of Christ, so I know
about what happened firsthand,” he added.
The professor said that one of
the principal difficulties in the Church today is when people confuse the
Church with the person of the Pope.
"One of the basic problems
we have is that too many Catholics (and others) confuse the pope with the
Church,” he said. “Cupich tried to play that card by suggesting that Amoris
Laetitia — even in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis — is de fide
[i.e. doctrine that must be believed], which it manifestly is not.”
Rist suggested that
Pope Francis is not doing his job well.
“It is the function of the Pope
to provide unity in the Church by scrutinizing new ideas to see if they are
compatible with the inherited regula fidei [rule of faith],” the
professor continued. “Instead of unity Pope Francis has caused massive
confusion and division – and many sad clergy are afraid of being sanctioned if
they speak out.”
As have many others
before him, Rist compared the challenges posed by Francis’ innovations to the
crisis of faith in the fourth century.
“The whole thing
amounts to a heresy on the scale of the Arian heresy,” he stated. “That took
some 60 years to wort out. I fear that this set of moral heresies may last even
longer.”
Friends
of Pope Francis - those who oppose sodomy are "corrosive and
repugnant."
“We have to face the fact that there is a group of people across all
religious views that are particularly antagonistic to LGBT people. That comes
from deep within the human soul, and it’s really corrosive and repugnant.”
Quote from the Jesuit trained Pope Francis appointed San Diego Bishop,
Robert McElroy, who endorsed the book written by the Sodomophile James Martin.
S.J., Building a Bridge, that defends
the LGBT agenda claiming that God created homosexuals as they are and that
chastity is not required of them, that Catholics should reverence gay marriages
and support transgenderism in children. He even endorses the aberrant displays
of homosexuals kissing at the sign of peace during Novus Ordo services.
Gee,
what do you suppose happened in the 1960s that started this “erosion of the
Catholic Faith in Germany”?
One notes in particular in traditionally Catholic regions a very strong
decline in participation at Sunday Mass, not to mention the sacramental life.
Where in the 1960s everywhere just about all the faithful still
participated at Holy Mass every Sunday, today there are often less than 10
percent. Ever fewer people seek the sacraments. The Sacrament of Penance has
almost disappeared. Ever fewer Catholics receive Confirmation or
contract Catholic Matrimony. The number of vocations to priestly ministry
and the consecrated life has sharply diminished. In consideration of
these facts, one can speak truly of an erosion of the Catholic Faith in
Germany.
Pope Francis, addressing the German bishops, Nov. 2015
Many of the actions of worldlings, which at
first sight may appear innocent, have a natural and fatal tendency to pervert
the morals of the just; and therefore, we must keep as much as possible at a
distance from their society. --- Ismael was a figure of the synagogue, which
persecuted the Church of Christ in her birth.
Fr. George Leo Haydock, scriptural
commentary, Genesis 21, upon Abraham sending away Ismael with his mother, Agar.
Even the modern media is tiring of Pope Francis the Sham!
Global scandal: Francis exposed as a liar by own advisers on abuse
victim
From the
Associated Press, in what is turning out to be the greatest scandal of a sorry
Pontificate:
By NICOLE WINFIELD and EVA VERGARA
Associated Press | VATICAN CITY — Pope
Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a
priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it,
contradicting the pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward to
denounce the cover-up, the letter’s author and members of Francis’ own sex-
abuse commission have told The Associated Press.
The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP,
challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and
cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors,
compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.
The scandal exploded last month when Francis’ trip to South America was marred
by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by
victims of covering up the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis
callously dismissed accusations against Barros as “slander,” seemingly unaware
that victims had placed him at the scene of Karadima’s crimes.
On the plane home, confronted by an AP reporter, the pope said: “You, in all
good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they
haven’t come forward.”
But members of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors say that in
April 2015, they sent a delegation to Rome specifically to hand-deliver a
letter to the pope about Barros. The letter from Juan Carlos Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and
fondling he says he suffered at Karadima’s hands, which he said Barros and
others witnessed and ignored.
Four members of the commission met with Francis’ top abuse adviser, Cardinal
Sean O’Malley, explained their objections to Francis’ recent appointment of
Barros as a bishop in southern Chile, and gave him the letter to deliver to
Francis.
“When we gave him (O’Malley) the letter for the pope, he assured us he would
give it to the pope and speak of the concerns,” then-commission member Marie
Collins told the AP. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been
done.”
Cruz, who now lives and works in Philadelphia, heard the same later that year.
“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he
told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the pope — in his
hands,” he said in an interview at his home Sunday.
Neither the Vatican nor O’Malley responded to multiple requests for comment.
While the 2015 summit of Francis’ commission was known and publicized at the
time, the contents of Cruz’s letter — and a photograph of Collins handing it to
O’Malley — were not disclosed by members. Cruz provided the letter, and Collins
provided the photo, after reading an AP story that reported Francis had claimed
to have never heard from any Karadima victims about Barros’ behavior.
The Barros affair first
caused shockwaves in January 2015 when Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno,
Chile, over the objections of the leadership of Chile’s bishops’ conference and
many local priests and laity. They accepted as credible the testimony against
Karadima, a prominent Chilean cleric who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011
for abusing minors. Barros was a Karadima protege, and according to Cruz and
other victims, he witnessed the abuse and did nothing.
“Holy Father, I write you this letter because I’m tired of fighting, of crying
and suffering,” Cruz wrote in Francis’ native Spanish. “Our story is well known
and there’s no need to repeat it, except to tell you of the horror of having
lived this abuse and how I wanted to kill myself.”
Cruz and other survivors
had for years denounced the cover-up of Karadima’s crimes, but were dismissed
as liars by the Chilean church hierarchy and the Vatican’s own ambassador in
Santiago, who refused their repeated requests to meet before and after Barros
was appointed.
After Francis’ comments backing the Chilean hierarchy caused such an outcry in
Chile, he was forced last week to do an about-face: The Vatican announced it
was sending in its most respected sex-crimes investigator to take testimony
from Cruz and others about Barros.
In the letter to the pope, Cruz begs for Francis to listen to him and make good
on his pledge of “zero tolerance.”
“Holy Father, it’s bad enough that we suffered such tremendous pain and anguish
from the sexual and psychological abuse, but the terrible mistreatment we
received from our pastors is almost worse,” he wrote.
Cruz goes on to detail in
explicit terms the homo-eroticized nature of the circle of priests and young
boys around Karadima, the charismatic preacher whose El Bosque community in the
well-to-do Santiago neighborhood of Providencia produced dozens of priestly
vocations and five bishops, including Barros.
He described how Karadima would kiss Barros and fondle his genitals, and do the
same with younger priests and teens, and how young priests and seminarians
would fight to sit next to Karadima at the table to receive his affections.
“More difficult and tough was when we were in Karadima’s room and Juan Barros —
if he wasn’t kissing Karadima — would watch when Karadima would touch us — the
minors — and make us kiss him, saying: ‘Put your mouth near mine and stick out
your tongue.’ He would stick his out and kiss us with his tongue,” Cruz told
the pope. “Juan Barros was a witness to all this innumerable times, not just
with me but with others as well.”
“Juan Barros covered up everything that I have told you,” he added.
Barros has repeatedly denied witnessing any abuse or covering it up. “I never
knew anything about, nor ever imagined, the serious abuses which that priest
committed against the victims,” he told the AP recently. “I have never approved
of nor participated in such serious, dishonest acts, and I have never been
convicted by any tribunal of such things.”
For the Osorno faithful who have opposed Barros as their bishop, the issue
isn’t so much a legal matter requiring proof or evidence, as Barros was a young
priest at the time and not in a position of authority over Karadima. It’s more
that if Barros didn’t “see” what was happening around him and doesn’t find it
problematic for a priest to kiss and fondle young boys, he shouldn’t be in
charge of a diocese where he is responsible for detecting inappropriate sexual
behavior, reporting it to police and protecting children from pedophiles like
his mentor.
Cruz had arrived at Karadima’s community in 1980 as a vulnerable teenager,
distraught after the recent death of his father. He has said Karadima told him
he would be like a spiritual father to him, but instead sexually abused him.
Based on testimony from Cruz and other former members of the parish, the
Vatican in 2011 removed Karadima from ministry and sentenced him to a lifetime
of “penance and prayer” for his crimes. Now 87, he lives in a home for elderly
priests in Santiago; he hasn’t commented on the scandal and the home has
declined to accept calls or visits from the news media.
The victims also testified to Chilean prosecutors, who opened an investigation
into Karadima after they went public with their accusations in 2010. Chilean
prosecutors had to drop charges because too much time had passed, but the judge
running the case stressed that it wasn’t for lack of proof.
While the victims’ testimony was deemed credible by both Vatican and Chilean
prosecutors, the local church hierarchy clearly didn’t believe them, which
might have influenced Francis’ view. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz has
acknowledged he didn’t believe the victims initially and shelved an
investigation. He was forced to reopen it after the victims went public.
He is now one of the Argentine pope’s key cardinal advisers.
By the time he finally got his letter into the pope’s hands in 2015, Cruz had
already sent versions to many other people, and had tried for months to get an
appointment with the Vatican ambassador. The embassy’s Dec. 15, 2014, email to
Cruz — a month before Barros was appointed — was short and to the point:
“The apostolic nunciature has received the message you emailed Dec. 7 to the
apostolic nuncio,” it read, “and at the same time communicates that your
request has been met with an unfavorable response.”
One could argue that Francis didn’t pay attention to Cruz’s letter, since he
receives thousands of letters every day from faithful around the world. He
can’t possibly read them all, much less remember the contents years later. He
might have been tired and confused after a weeklong trip to South America when
he told an airborne press conference that victims never came forward to accuse
Barros of cover-up.
But this was not an
ordinary letter, nor were the circumstances under which it arrived in the
Vatican.
Francis had named O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, to head his Commission
for the Protection of Minors based on his credibility in having helped clean up
the mess in Boston after the U.S. sex abuse scandal exploded there in 2002. The
commission gathered outside experts to advise the church on protecting children
from pedophiles and educating church personnel about preventing abuse and
cover-ups.
The four commission
members who were on a special subcommittee dedicated to survivors had flown to
Rome specifically to speak with O’Malley about the Barros appointment and to
deliver Cruz’s letter. A press release issued after the April 12, 2015,
meeting read: “Cardinal O’Malley agreed to present the concerns of the
subcommittee to the Holy Father.”
Commission member Catherine Bonnet, a French child psychiatrist who took the
photo of Collins handing the letter to O’Malley, said the commission members
had decided to descend on Rome specifically when O’Malley and other members of
the pope’s group of nine cardinal advisers were meeting, so that O’Malley could
put it directly into the pope’s hands.
“Cardinal O’Malley promised us when Marie gave to him the letter of Juan Carlos
that he will give to Pope Francis,” she said.
O’Malley’s spokesman in Boston referred requests for comment to the Vatican.
Neither the Vatican press office, nor officials at the Pontifical Commission
for the Protection of Minors, responded to calls and emails seeking comment.
But O’Malley’s remarkable response
to Francis’ defense of Barros and to his dismissal of the victims while he was
in Chile, is perhaps now better understood.
In a rare rebuke of a pope by a cardinal, O’Malley issued a statement Jan. 20
in which he said the pope’s words were “a source of great pain for survivors of
sexual abuse,” and that such expressions had the effect of abandoning victims
and relegating them to “discredited exile.”
A day later, Francis
apologized for having demanded “proof” of wrongdoing by Barros, saying he meant
merely that he wanted to see “evidence.” But he continued to describe the
accusations against Barros as “calumny” and insisted he had never heard from
any victims.
Even when told in his airborne press conference Jan. 21 that Karadima’s victims
had indeed placed Barros at the scene of Karadima’s abuse, Francis said: “No
one has come forward. They haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This
is all a bit vague. It’s something that can’t be accepted.”
He stood by Barros, saying: “I’m certain he’s innocent,” even while saying that
he considered the testimony of victims to be “evidence” in a cover-up
investigation.
“If anyone can give me evidence, I’ll be the first to listen,” he said.
Cruz said he felt like he had been slapped when he heard those words.
“I was upset,” he said, “and at the same time I couldn’t believe that someone
so high up like the pope himself could lie about this.”
Francis continues in his fulsome praise of Communists!
Vatican Official Praises China for Witness to Catholic Social Teaching
The U.S. has
criticized the country regarding lack of human rights, pointing to
‘still-coercive population-control policies,’ other troubling practices.
CNA/EWTN News | Vatican | February 7, 2018
VATICAN CITY — The chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of
Social Sciences has said that China is exercising global moral leadership in
the principles of Catholic social teaching and defense of human dignity.
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo,
an Argentinian, is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and
the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In an interview with Vatican
Insider, he recently said that, “at this moment, those who best realize the
social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”
Bishop Sorondo told Vatican
Insider that he had recently visited China, where he says he found that “they
[the Chinese] seek the common good, subordinate things to the general good.”
“I found an
extraordinary China; what people do not know is that the central Chinese
principle is ‘work, work, work.’ ... As Paul said: ‘He who does not work does
not eat.’ You do not have shantytowns; you do not have drugs; young people do
not have drugs. There is a positive national consciousness — they want to show
that they have changed; they already accept private property,” he said of his
trip.
The bishop said that the
People’s Republic of China has “defended the dignity of the human person” and,
in the area of climate change, is “assuming a moral leadership that others have
abandoned.”
He criticized the
United States, where, he said, the economy dominates politics. “How is it
possible that oil multinationals manage Trump?” he asked.
“Liberal thought
has liquidated the concept of the common good; they do not even want to take it
into account — it affirms that it is an empty idea, without any interest.” On
the other hand, he said, the Chinese propose work for the common good.
The bishop said
that “China is evolving very well,” adding that “you cannot think that the
China of today is the China [during the pontificate of] John Paul II or the
Russia of the Cold War.”
In October 2017,
the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China criticized the country’s
human-rights practices.
The commission
condemned “the Chinese government and Communist Party’s continued efforts to
silence dissent, criminalize activities of human-rights lawyers, control civil
society, suppress religious activity, and restrict the operations of foreign
media outlets, businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) over the
past 12 months.”
“Nothing good happens
in the dark,” U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in an October statement on
China. “That is why the administration should shine a light on the Chinese
government’s failures to abide by universal standards, shine a light on the
cases of tortured and abused political prisoners, shine a light on China’s
unfair trade practices and still-coercive population-control policies.”
Cardinal says Vatican-China deal would put Catholics in communist cage
Reuters | HONG KONG | February 9, 2018 -
A senior Catholic cardinal
accused the Vatican on Friday of acting “unfaithfully” in its rapprochement
with China, saying it would put the country’s some 12 million faithful in a
bird cage controlled by the Communist Party.
Addressing a news
conference, Hong Kong’s outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen also said he was highly
skeptical of a deal that reportedly would give Pope Francis the final say in
the appointment of bishops, the key part of the agreement.
Nearly 70 years
after China and the Vatican severed diplomatic relations, the two sides
recently reached a framework accord on the thorny issue of who gets to appoint
new Chinese bishops and a historic deal could be signed in a few months.
The 86-year-old
former bishop of Hong Kong, recently rebuked by the Vatican after he said it
had “sold out” China’s faithful, said sources told him that under the framework
agreement the pope would have the final veto power over bishops who are
effectively chosen by the Chinese government.
“They (The Chinese
government) say the last word belongs to the Holy Father. Sounds wonderful? But
it’s fake,” Zen said.
”They are not going
to make good choices for the Church ... surely they choose the one they prefer,
which means the one who always obeys the government. So how (could) the Holy
Father approve such a choice?”
“Okay, he can veto.
How many times? It takes courage to veto the second time, the third time, five
times,” Zen said.
Catholics in China
are split between the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, where bishops
are appointed by the government, and the “underground” Church that remains
loyal to the pope while being systematically persecuted by Chinese authorities
for years.
Zen, who has
fiercely criticized the Vatican for attempting to force two “underground”
bishops to give way to government-backed “illegitimate” bishops in order to
foster the deal, was rebuked by the Vatican last Wednesday for “fostering
confusion and controversy”.
Zen said that under
the status quo, which he described as “the lesser evil,” the Vatican secretly
approves candidates who are acceptable to both sides before the
state-controlled Church makes them bishop.
But under the new
agreement, where candidates would be selected via a “so-called democratic
election” inside the Chinese Catholic community and endorsed by a
state-controlled bishops’ conference before being submitted to the pope, the
choice lies entirely in the hands of the government, Zen said.
“A church enslaved
by the government is no real Catholic Church,” he said.
Zen said he was not
criticizing the pope, whom he believed might not be briefed on “reality”
because bureaucrats in the Holy See are eager to strike a deal.
“What they (Vatican
negotiators) are doing is unfaithful,” Zen said. “I am not judging their
conscience but ... it’s a surrender and they have no right to surrender.”
Warning from the Francis the “Snake Charmer”
Beware of the illusions of “charlatans”, who trigger “violence against
those who do not live up to our expectations”!
Pope’s message for Lent 2018: “snake charmers”, who manipulate human
emotions in order to enslave others”. No to false remedies for young people
“drugs, disposable relationships, and easy but dishonest gains”. Prayer,
fasting and almsgiving, “set us free from greed”
Vatican Insider | salvatore cernuzio |
vatican city | February 6, 2018
“Snake charmers”,
“charlatans”,”swindlers”. Pope Francis’ message for Lent 2018 is a warning
against today’s “false prophets” who offer cheap happiness, easy earnings and
illusory liberations - in short, those “who offer easy and immediate solutions
to suffering that soon prove utterly useless” – robbing, instead, “people of
all that is most precious: dignity, freedom and the ability to love”.
[…..]
Another Novus Ordo “Miracle” making another Novus Ordo
“saint”! But who in their right mind would willingly exchange their hoped for
eternal reward with any of them!
Vatican Saints’ Congregation Approves Miracle No. 2 for Blessed Paul VI
Unanimous
Vatican vote was held Feb. 6. Next step: papal approval. Speculation is that
the canonization may take place this fall.
Vatican Insider | Hannah Brockhaus |
CNA/EWTN News | February 6, 2018
VATICAN CITY — On Tuesday the
Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the second miracle needed for
the canonization of Pope Blessed Paul VI, allowing his canonization to take
place, possibly later this year.
According to
Vatican Insider, the saints’ congregation approved the miracle by a unanimous
vote Feb. 6. The next step is for Pope Francis to give his approval, with an
official decree from the Vatican. Then the date for the canonization can be
set.
The miracle
attributed to the cause of Paul VI is the healing of an unborn child in the
fifth month of pregnancy. The case was brought forward in 2014 for study.
The mother, originally from the
province of Verona, Italy, had an illness that risked her own life and the life
of her unborn child, and she was advised by doctors to have an abortion.
A few days after the
beatification of Paul VI, on Oct. 19, 2014, she went to pray for his
intercession at the Shrine of Holy Mary of Grace in the town of Brescia, Italy.
The baby girl was later born in good health and remains in good health today.
The healing was
first ruled as medically inexplicable by the medical council of the
congregation last year, while the congregation’s consulting theologians agreed
that the healing occurred through the late Pope’s intercession.
Today’s meeting
with cardinals was the final step before Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the
congregation, will take the miracle to Pope Francis, who has the final say in
its approval.
After the Pope
issues a decree approving it, the date of the canonization will be announced
during a consistory. According to Vatican Insider, the canonization may take
place in October of this year during the Synod of Bishops on youth. […..]
Why are those responsible for
this disaster on the fast-track to canonization?
Certainly the results
(of Vatican II) seem cruelly opposed to the expectations of everyone, beginning
with those of Pope John XXIII and then of Pope Paul VI: expected was a new
Catholic unity and instead we have been exposed to dissension which, to use the
words of Pope Paul VI, seems to have gone from self-criticism to
self-destruction. Expected was a new enthusiasm and many wound up discouraged
and bored. Expected was a great step forward, instead we find ourselves faced
with a progressive process of decadence which has developed for the most part
under the sign of a calling back to the Council, and has therefore contributed
to discrediting it for many. The net result therefore seems negative. I am
repeating here what I said ten years after the conclusion of the work: it is
incontrovertible that this period has definitely been unfavorable for the
Catholic Church.
Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, 1984
Ecumenism, Love, Hatred, and St. John the Evangelist
In his encyclical Mortalium Animos, Pope
Pius XI makes notable appeal to the teaching of the Apostle and Evangelist John
to distinguish between true and false charity toward non-Catholic Christians:
“These
pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem, indeed, to
pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all Christians:
nevertheless how does it happen that
this charity tends to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the
Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his
followers the new commandment “Love one another,” altogether forbade any
intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of
Christ’s teaching: “If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive
him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you.” For which
reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the disciples
of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith. Who then can
conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain each his own
opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern the object of
faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of the rest? And in what
manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the
same Federation of the faithful? For example, those who affirm, and those who
deny that sacred Tradition is a true fount of divine Revelation; those who hold
that an ecclesiastical hierarchy, made up of bishops, priests and ministers,
has been divinely constituted, and those who assert that it has been brought in
little by little in accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore
Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous
conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those
who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and
virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the nature both
of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more
than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord’s Supper; those who believe it
to be good and useful to invoke by prayer the Saints reigning with Christ,
especially Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who
urge that such a veneration is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the
honor due to Jesus Christ, “the one mediator of God and men.” How so great a
variety of opinions can make the way clear to effect the unity of the Church We
know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of
belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from this it is an easy
step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism
and to modernism, as they call it.”
No one understands charity better than St.
John, but he understood that the theological virtue of charity must be founded on
the theological virtue of faith, and therefore anything that undermines the
faith of necessity undermines charity. And therefore he commands us to avoid
contact with those who would undermine the faith.
In general one can see that love
necessarily cause the one loving to hate anything which threatens to destroy
what is loved. Thus, since we naturally love health, therefore we naturally
hate disease; since we naturally love life, we naturally hate anything that
destroys our lives, and so on. And charity is no exception the supernatural
love of God above all things necessarily implies hatred of sin, which is
directly opposed to that charity, and error which is opposed to the faith on
which it is founded.
But ecumenists have difficulty seeing this.
Even if they would perhaps hesitate to use such strong words, they would
probably agree with the non-Catholic New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann’s
judgement on St. John, in his critique of Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est:
“[The]
Johannine communities fell far short of exhibiting the love that [Pope Benedict
XVI] recommends to the contemporary church. For not only does the First Letter
of John—from which the encyclical takes its theme and exhortation—restrict
brotherhood to those of orthodox belief, but the Second Letter of John, which
quite predictably is not mentioned in the encyclical, takes the same approach
and pushes it even further. In verses 9 through 11 of this very brief letter,
its author, who identifies himself only as ‘the Elder,’ commands the community
to receive into their homes only those brothers who confess Christ’s coming in
the flesh. Any present or former brothers who have a different opinion
concerning Christ’s incarnation should be spurned. Indeed, “John” forbids the
members of his communities even to greet them. He deems this precautionary
measure necessary, lest the community of right belief become infected by the
evil doctrines and consequent guilt of its dissident brothers. How strange it
is to encounter such harsh and
hate-filled expostulations in a letter overflowing with assurances of
mutual love and attesting to a community’s unanimous recognition of sacred
truth!”
Lüdemann’s reasoning is precisely the sort
of thing that one is likely to hear from contemporary ecumenists. And the reason
is clear: they are not motivated by the supernatural virtue of charity, founded
on the one true faith, but rather by a vague benevolence, founded on modernism
and indifferentism. And like every kind of love, this vague benevolence causes
a hatred of everything that threatens the object of love; they do not (like St.
John) hate heresy, rather they hate “fanaticism” and “fundamentalism.” In other
words they hate the perennial claim of the Catholic Church to teach the truth.
COMMENT: This was copied from
the conservative Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli. It is interesting for two
reasons. Firstly, because what it says concerning the virtues of Faith and
Charity is what every traditional Catholic already knows and has defended over
the last fifty years but, nevertheless we do not tire of hearing it repeated
from time to time. It is also interesting because it politely affirms that Pope
Benedict, and a fortiori, Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II, by
professing the heresy of ecumenism, “are not motivated by the supernatural
virtue of charity, founded on the one true faith” and therefore “hate the
perennial claim of the Catholic Church to teach the truth.” It is a hopeful
sign that younger conservative Catholics recognize that it is first and
foremost the Faith that must be defended by keeping the immemorial
ecclesiastical traditions that make that Faith known and communicable to
others. At this time, established publications who claim to be traditional are
content with the crumbs offered by Benedict XVI and continually heap praise
upon him and his Motu Proprio, Summormum Pontificum, they fail to
recognize that the battle has always been and will continue to be the Faith
itself that Modernists and Neo-modernists aim to destroy. These younger
conservative Catholics will hopefully become the radical traditionalists that
are so desperately needed at this time for the Church militant. The Novus Ordo
Church keeps two fast days during Lent and abstains on Fridays and has gutted
liturgical prayer. Let us keep faithfully the traditional penances and
practices during Lent as an act of reparation for our own sins and the welfare
of the Church. If traditional Catholics do not do it, it will not be done.
Conservative Catholics, (actually, the children of
Conservative Catholics), turning on the Golden Calf! Finally recognize that
Vatican II is the sartorial equivalent of the Leisure Suit!
Time to Let Go of Vatican II
OnePeterFive | Brian Willaims | February 5,
2018
Several months back
Father Hugh Somerville-Knapman, OSB wrote a must read article over at his blog,
Dominus mihi adjutor. For those not familiar with Fr. Hugh, a Benedictine
monk and priest of Douai Abbey in Berkshire, U.K., he is no liturgical bomb
thrower. His arguments are always well reasoned and thoughtful, which is why
it’s worth revisiting.
“Vale Vatifan
II: Moving On” verbalizes what a growing number of the faithful are finally
coming to grips with. In the words of Fr. Hugh: “it is time now to let go of
the Council.” While I encourage everyone to read the full article, there are
several points worth highlighting here.
Fr. Hugh begins by
making the (obvious) acknowledgement that the world has changed greatly since
the 1960’s. This would hardly matter if the Council had sought to
clarify doctrine and timeless truths, but it is relevant for a
Council claiming to be pastoral in its scope and very purpose. As
Father writes:
It described itself as a
pastoral council, and it sought to repackage the teaching, life and worship of
the Church to suit a world in flux. For this very reason the Council was
necessarily going to have a best-before date. That date has been passed. The
sad thing is that its milk turned sour very soon after packaging.
Fr. Hugh rightly
notes that “Catholic vitality has plummeted” in the post-conciliar years, at
least when measured by weekly Mass attendance and vocations. There is no need
to restate the dire data here. If one still disputes this they cannot be taken
seriously and should step away from the grown up table; these discussions
aren’t for you.
Father continues
with an assessment of the ecclesial landscape of the last five decades:
By any reasonable standard of
judgment the application of the Council failed, miserably, to achieve the
Council’s aims. This statistical revelation of decline is quite apart from the
decline experienced by Catholics as they have seen dogmas, doctrines, morals
and many other elements of Catholic life thrown into chaos in the wake of the
Council.
Acknowledging that
the Church is indeed growing in much of the developing world (think Africa and
Asia), Fr. Hugh notes that its growth in the west is only occurring in certain
places:
But here’s the rub: it is
growing precisely where much of what was discarded by the post-conciliaristas
is slowly and sensibly being reclaimed and integrated into the world of 2017
rather than the mid-1960s. What they are reclaiming is essential, timeless
Catholicism rather than the tired mantras and shibboleths of the “Vatican II
Church”. The young have discovered, and many of the older re-discovered, that
there was a Church before Vatican II, and it was healthy, vital and beautiful.
Fr. Hugh then
states his simple, clear, and polemic free conclusion: it’s time to move
on from the Council and (instead) to reclaim what the Church always was:
Thus it makes no sense to be
constantly referencing every contemporary initiative to Vatican II, for
justification or acceptance-value. It is time to move from a post-conciliar
Church to a post-post-conciliar Church; which is to say, it is time to reclaim
the Church as She has always been in her essence and her stable form, which has
been able to function viably and vitally in every age and circumstance since
the time of Christ.
A growing number of
the faithful have indeed moved on from post-conciliarism. Among many
Catholics, particularly the young, the sentiment and conclusions of Fr. Hugh
are being realized. Our point of reference and foundation is the Church’s
history and tradition, not simply the most recent Council in the history of the
Church.
Sadly, it would
seem few bishops have connected the dots yet. May thoughtful articles by
thoughtful men, such as Fr. Hugh Somerville-Knapman, help them to finally move
on (and move forward) as the Church reclaims “essential, timeless Catholicism.”
For the sake of the salvation of souls, pray that it happens soon.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning –
The true Revelation of God is both a Definite and Certain
participation in God’s own knowledge. IT
is this fundamental truth of revelation that our Neo-Modernist hierarchy reject!
What, then, is the knowledge which God has restored to man through
revelation but a definite knowledge, a participation of His own? The
truth which has been revealed, what is it in the mind of God who reveals it,
but one, harmonious and distinct? What was that know ledge as revealed by the
Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but one, harmonious and distinct? What was
the conception of that knowledge in inspired men, but one, harmonious and
distinct also? And what was that knowledge when communicated by those who were
inspired to those who believed, but one, harmonious and distinct as before? And what is this unity and
harmony and distinctness of knowledge, which God revealed of Himself through
Jesus Christ, but the faith we confess in our creed? Our baptismal faith, its
substance and its letter, the explicit and the implicit meaning, article by
article, is as definite, severe, and precise, as any problem in science. It is
of the nature of truth to be so; and where definiteness ends, knowledge ceases.
Observe, then, the distinction between finite knowledge and definite knowledge.
Is not science definite? And yet it is also finite. The theory of gravitation,
definite as it is, it is finite too. [……] Go through the whole range of
physical sciences, what is it but an example of the same condition of
knowledge, definiteness in conception with finiteness of reach? [….] If we have not a definite
knowledge of what we believe, we may be sure we have no true knowledge of it.
But, further, it is evident that knowledge must also be certain.
When we speak of certainty, we mean one of two things. Sometimes we say, that a
thing is certain; at other times, that we are certain. When we say a truth is
certain, we mean, that the proofs of that truth are either self-evident, or so
clear as to exclude all doubt. This is certainty on the part of the object
proposed to our intelligence. But when we say we are certain, we mean that we
are inwardly convinced, by the application of our reason to the matter before
us, of the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the truth of it. In us,
certainty is rather a moral feeling, a complex state of mind. As light manifests itself by its
own nature, but sight is the illumination of the eye; so certainty means truth
with its evidences illuminating the intelligence, or, in other words, the
intelligence possessed by truth with its evidences.
This we call certainty. I ask, then, is there not this twofold
certainty in the revelation which God has given? Was not the revelation
which God gave of Himself through Jesus Christ made certain on His part by
direct evidence of the divine act which revealed it? Is it not also certain on
our part by the apprehension and faith of the Church? Was not God manifest in
the flesh that He might reveal Himself? Did not God dwell on earth that He
might teach His truth? Has not God spoken to man that man might know Him? Did
not God work miracles that man might believe that He was present? What evidence
on the part of God was wanting that men might know that Jesus Christ was indeed
the Son of God? And if
there was certainty on the part of God who revealed, was there not certainty
also on the part of those that heard? Look back into the sacred history.
Had not Prophets and Seers certainty of that which they beheld and heard? […..]
What, then, is the first
condition of faith but certainty? He that has not certain faith has no faith.
We are told that to crave for certainty implies a morbid disposition. Did not
Abraham, and Moses, and Daniel, the Apostles and Evangelists desire certainty
in faith, and crave to know beyond doubt that God spake to them, and know with
definite clearness what God said? Was this a morbid craving? Surely this is not
to reproved. But rather
the contrary disposition worthy of rebuke. How can we venture to content
ourselves with uncertainty in matters where the truth and honour of God and the
salvation of our own souls are at stake? This truly is not without sin.
[…..] And yet, what is the very idea of Revelation but a Divine assurance of
Truth? Where faith begins uncertainty ends. Because faith terminates upon the
veracity of God; and what God has spoken and authenticated to us by Divine
authority cannot be uncertain.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Grounds of
Faith
For
unless there come a revolt first,
and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…. 2 Thes 2:3
“The divorced and
remarried, de facto couples, those cohabitating, are certainly
not models of unions in sync with Catholic Doctrine, but the Church cannot look
the other way. Therefore, the
sacraments of Reconciliation and Communion should be given even
to those so-called wounded families and to however many who, despite living in
situations not in line with traditional matrimonial canons, express the sincere
desire to approach the sacraments after an appropriate period of discernment.”
Cardinal
Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for
Legislative Texts, his new book entitled, The Eighth Chapter of the
Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia
“Discernment” between “true doctrine of the Gospels” and
the “rigidity of abstract doctrine” means never letting Revealed Truth stand in
the way of our love of sin.
Pope Francis denounces ‘restorationist’ orders bursting with young
people
LifeSiteNews | ROME | February 9, 2017
-- Pope Francis has stated
that the rise of new religious institutes that attract numerous religious
vocations “worries” him because they often promote “rigidity.” Francis
denounced new traditional religious orders as “Pelagians,” who want a return to
asceticism and penance.
In an obvious
reference to the Legionaries of Christ, he called young people in traditional
orders “soldiers who seem ready to do anything for the defense of faith and
morality, and then some scandal emerges involving the founder [male or
female].”
“So, do not put
hope in the sudden, mass blooming of these Institutes,” he added.
“When they tell me
that there is a congregation that draws so many vocations, I must confess that
I worry,” he said during the closed-door meeting with 140 Superiors General of
male religious orders and congregations that took place November 25. The
transcript of the unscheduled Q&A was published this week by the leading
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Asked about how to
fire the hearts of young people for the cause of the Gospel, the pope turned
his focus to the training of “seminarians and future priests.”
Francis said that
in priests’ training the “logic of black and white” that “can lead to abstract
casuistry” must be avoided.
“Discernment, meanwhile, means
moving forward through the gray of life according to the will of God. And the
will of God is to be sought according to the true doctrine of the Gospel and
not in the rigidity of an abstract doctrine,” he said.
Asked what should
be done about the plummeting number of vocations to the priesthood, the pope
said that while the decline “worries me” he is also worried about the rise of
new traditional religious orders.
“Some are, I might say, ‘restorationist’:
they seem to offer security but instead give only rigidity,” he said.
“When they tell me that there is
a Congregation that draws so many vocations, I must confess that I worry. The
Spirit does not follow the logic of human success: it works in another way. But
they tell me that there are so many young people prepared to do anything, who
pray a great deal, who are truly faithful. And I say to myself: ‘Wonderful: we
will see if it is the Lord!”
Traditional orders
do not simply worry Pope Francis. Within months of becoming pope in March 2013,
Francis moved quickly to utterly dismantle the flourishing Franciscan Friars of
the Immaculate. The order, which encouraged the Latin Mass, was one of the most
faithful of all of the new Catholic religious orders, especially in regard to
their pro-life commitment. The move stunned faithful Catholics.
In 2015 the pope
warned bishops against ordaining “traditionalist” seminarians, stating that
doing so was like placing a “mortgage on the Church.”
In 2012 under
Benedict XVI, the Vatican was in the process of reforming the umbrella group of
American nuns and sisters for their “secularist mentality [and] 'feminist'
spirit.” After Francis took over the reigns of the Church, that process
concluded by offering the nuns’ group a “positive message.”
During the November
Q&A Francis also admitted that there is “corruption in the Vatican” but he
is nevertheless “at peace” by the “grace of God.”
Catholics who actually believe the revealed truths of God
are called the “far-right,” which the Washington Post identifies as the “rot”
of the Catholic Church! There is no such thing as “separation of Church and
State.” That is the liberal shibboleth
used to keep any other religion from competing with their own religion in the
public forum. Nothing the “far-left”
fears more than a national populist uprising in the West that will return to
the Faith of our Fathers. Maybe they have read the prophecies of the “Great
Monarch”?
How Pope Francis can cleanse the far-right rot from the Catholic Church
Washington Post | Emma-Kate Symons |
February 9
Pope Francis needs
to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential
Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is
not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel
teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the
church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize
extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K.
Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the
modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white
Christian dominance.
Burke was reduced
to a ceremonial patron role at the Knights of Malta after a power struggle at
the ancient chivalric order, won by the pope last month, following a spat
over its humanitarian wing’s alleged distribution of condoms. Losing the
leadership battle and prestige at the secretive society headquartered in Rome —
Francis is appointing his own special delegate above Burke — was seen as a
papal rap on the knuckles for the cardinal leading the charge against Francis’s
writings on communion for divorcees. But the virulently anti-Islam
(“capitulating to Islam would be the death of
Christianity”), migrant-phobic, Donald Trump-defending, Vladimir
Putin-excusing Burke is unrepentant and even defiant, continuing to
preside over a far-right, neo-fascist-normalizing cheer squad out of the Holy
See.
This Vatican
operation, called Dignitatis Humanae, or the Institute for Human Dignity, whose
advisory board includes two of the four cardinals openly challenging Francis on
marriage and sexuality, is slavishly promoting Burke’s favorite American white
Catholic nationalist, Bannon, with star billing on its home page. The
institute’s top office-bearers, Burke and his henchman, the media-savvy
Breitbart contributor Benjamin Harnwell, are also encouraging Benito Mussolini
fan Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s Northern League, and Muslim-baiting far-right
Catholic poster girl Marion Le Pen, the National Front “rising star” niece of
party leader Marine Le Pen in France.
As the
Italian press first revealed, Burke held a long meeting last week at his
Vatican home with Salvini, a fierce critic of the pope who wants to push
refugees back into the sea and close all mosques in Italy. It was a flagrant
political intervention on the side of the extreme-right racist grouping ahead
of the Italian elections. Mysterious posters also appeared around the Vatican
decrying a sinister-looking pope’s “decapitation” of the Malta Knights order.
The situation
facing the Catholic Church raises alarming parallels with the ideological
warfare that split the Vatican in the 1930s when ethnic nationalism was
sweeping Europe under Mussolini and Hitler and when fascist forces infiltrated
the highest echelons of the church. In 1937, Pope Pius XI published an
encyclical in German denouncing the Nazi regime and its racism. The diatribe
infuriated Hitler, but the focus was more on Nazi persecution of Catholics than
laws targeting Jews.
In Italy, the
Vatican had long made accommodations with Mussolini for its own geopolitical
gains, and Pius XI failed to quell widespread institutional anti-Semitism in
the church before it was too late. When Mussolini decreed in
1938 that Italian Jews were to suffer a legal fate similar to those in
Germany, Pius XI tried to prepare a fresh encyclical deploring anti-Semitism
and racism, as revealed in historian David Kertzer’s book “The Pope and
Mussolini,” he was double-crossed by pro-fascist forces in the
Vatican working in tandem with Il Duce. Senior figures in the French
Catholic Church also collaborated with fascism in France, where the Vichy
regime aided the Nazis in deporting about 80,000 Jews to the death camps.
The lesson of
history has not been lost on Francis. After President Trump’s inauguration, he
warned that rising populism could produce a new Hitler. But now, as Europe
faces historic elections that could bring extreme-right nationalists back into
power across the continent for the first time since World War II, he must act.
The bellicose anti-Islam invective being marshaled by figures such as Burke
shares much in common with the vicious anti-Semitism many Catholic clerics
adhered to in the 1930s, when they saw Jews as a danger to the Christian West
whose rights must be restricted.
Burke, like Bannon,
who says Islam is “the most radical” religion in the world, makes no
distinction in his clash-of-civilizations frenzy between the Muslim faith’s
diverse currents and interpretations, and violent jihadist movements derived
mostly from Saudi-style Salafism. Unsurprisingly, Burke says he is “very
satisfied” with Russian autocrat Putin’s “defense of life and family” and
believes he may have “converted” since his KGB days. Yet, just as godless
Communism posed an existential threat in the past, the Catholic Church has
nothing to gain and everything to lose from cozying up to far-right extremists
from the United States to Europe. They distort Christianity into an
exclusionary ideology in defense of nation and race, and unite a new support
base of Muslim-haters with historically anti-Semitic movements such as the
National Front that are anything but Christian, and often neo-pagan.
The options open to
the pope in dealing with Burke are limited. Excommunication isn’t in the
cards; Burke is not a heretic denying the Catholic faith. Nor is Burke
refusing to submit to the pontiff like French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre,
who was cast out by John Paul II after his ultra-conservative Society of Saint
Pius X ordained its own bishops rather than take directions from the Vatican.
However, Francis,
who has full authority over his cardinals, could fully remove Burke from his
remaining sinecure with Knights of Malta, call him in for a pastoral correction
on the issue of his unacceptable political interventions, investigate
Dignitatis Humanae with a view to shutting it down for its subversive
politicking, and send the rebel cardinal back home to the United States. As
Burke tries to run an insurgency and rebukes the pope for his doctrinal
“ambiguities,” with the backing of thousands of priests, Francis could seize
the agenda. In time-honored papal tradition, he could write an encyclical on
the burning questions of populism and nationalism, with specific reference to
migrants, Muslims and Jews, so priests including Burke know they are in breach
of church teaching when they try to act as power brokers for the international
extreme right.
The stakes could
hardly be higher, especially as the pope seems on a collision course with a
Trump-Bannon White House that has imposed a form of a Muslim ban and
disparaged him during the election campaign for daring to suggest that building
a wall on the United States’ southern border was un-Christian. If the pope
doesn’t put the reactionary elements such as Burke and his cronies back in
their place, they could force a real schism during his papacy and leave the
church open to justifiable accusations it failed to stand up to enablers of
extremism and neo-fascism within its ranks.
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
Pope
Francis Believes
In the call to be evangelisers, all the Churches and Ecclesial
Communities discover a privileged setting for closer cooperation. For this to
be effective, we need to stop being self-enclosed, exclusive, and bent on
imposing a uniformity based on merely human calculations. Our shared commitment
to proclaiming the Gospel enables us to overcome proselytism and competition in
all their forms. All of us are at the service of the one Gospel.
In this moment of prayer for unity, I would also like to remember our
martyrs, the martyrs of today. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, and they are
persecuted and killed because they are Christians. Those who persecute them
make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong.
They are Christians and for that they are persecuted. This, brothers and
sisters, is the ecumenism of blood.
Mindful of this testimony given by our martyrs today, and with this
joyful certainty, I offer a cordial and fraternal greeting to His Eminence
Metropolitan Gennadios, the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His
Grace David Moxon, the personal representative in Rome of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and all the representatives of the various Churches and Ecclesial
Communions gathered here to celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint
Paul.
Pope Francis to ecumenical gathering
The
Catholic Infallibly Teaches
The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that
none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also
Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that
they will go into the "eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and
his angels" (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her;
and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those
remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto
salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts,
their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a
Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one,
even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he
remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.
Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino (1441)
Since
Proselytism is Out of the Question, for Pope Francis the “Common Good” and the
“Best Solution for Everyone” does not include their salvation!
Dialogue is not negotiating in order to try and get one’s piece of the
cake. Dialogue is to seek the common good, for everyone; it is to discuss
together and think of the best solutions for everyone.
Pope Francis, defining "dialogue" to the Italian Episcopal
Conference (CEI)
Irate
with Pope Francis? Worry about it if you are not!
Only the person who becomes irate without reason, sins. Whoever becomes
irate for a just reason is not guilty. Because, if ire were lacking, the
science of God would not progress, judgments would not be sound, and crimes
would not be repressed. Further, the person who does not become irate when he
has cause to be, sins. For an unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many
vices: it fosters negligence, and stimulates not only the wicked, but above all
the good, to do wrong.
St. John Chrysostom, Homily
Ire may be understood in two ways. In one way, as a simple movement of
the will that inflicts punishment not through passion, but by virtue of a
judgment of the reason: and in this case, without a doubt, lack of ire is a
sin. This is how Chrysostom understands ire when he says: “Ire, when it has a
cause, is not ire but judgment. For properly speaking, ire is a movement of
passion. And when a man is irate with just cause, his ire does not derive from
passion. Rather, it is an act of judgment, not of ire.”
In another way, ire can be understood as a movement of the sensitive
appetite agitated by passion with bodily excitation. This movement is a
necessary sequel in man to the previous movement of his will, since the lower
appetite naturally follows the movement of the higher appetite unless some
obstacle prevents it. Hence the movement of ire in the sensitive appetite
cannot be lacking altogether, unless the movement of the will is altogether
lacking or weak. Consequently, the lack of the passion of ire is also a vice,
as it is the lack of movement in the will to punish according to the judgment
of reason.
St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae
Super
Bowl metaphysics: This is about as good as it gets for a modern Jesuit
formation!
Great sporting events like today’s Super Bowl are highly symbolic,
showing that it is possible to build a culture of encounter and a world of
peace. May this year’s Super Bowl be a sign of peace, friendship and solidarity
to the world.
Pope Francis, address to the Super Bowl audience
