.....
this missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely,
without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or
censure, and may freely and lawfully be used ..... Nor are superiors, administrators, canons,
chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title
designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. ..... Accordingly,
no one whatsoever is permitted to infringe or rashly contravene this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant,
direction, will, decree and prohibition. Should any person venture to do so,
let him understand he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed
Apostles Peter and Paul.
Pope
St. Pius V, Papal Bull, QUO PRIMUM,
Tridentine Codification of the “received and approved”
traditional Roman Rite of the Mass.
Sunday within the Octave of
the Sacred Heart
[Third Sunday after
Pentecost]
Within the Octave
Ss. John & Paul, Martyrs
Within the Octave of St.
John the Baptist
June 26, 2022
Today’s liturgy proclaims God’s
mercy to men. Like our Lord, who came
“not to call the just, but sinners,” the Holy Ghost who carries on Christ’s
work in our hearts comes to set up the kingdom of God in sinful souls. This is the Church’s teaching in breviary and
missal today.
The
breviary lessons are concerned with the history of Saul. After Heli’s death the Israelites obeyed
Samuel like a new Moses but when he became old they asked for a king. There was living, at that time, in the tribe
of Benjamin a man named Cis, who had a son called Saul. No boy in Israel was his equal in
appearance. His father’s asses having
gone astray, Saul went to look for them and coming to Ramatha, where Samuel
lived, he said to himself: “The man of God will tell me where I shall find
them.” No sooner was he in Samuel’s
presence, than God told the latter that this was the man whom He had chosen to
reign over His people. Samuel told Saul
that the asses he had lost three days ago had been found. The next day Samuel took a horn of oil and
having poured it on Saul’s head, kissed him and said: “Behold the Lord hath anointed thee to be
prince over His inheritance: and thou shalt deliver His people out of the hands
of their enemies that are round about them.”
“Saul,” says St. Gregory, “was only anointed
with a little vessel of oil because he was to be rejected in the end.” For since the vessel contained but a little
oil, Saul received little, and he adds elsewhere: “In every respect Saul represents the
obstinate and the proud.” St. Gregory
says that Saul, who was sent by his father “to look for the asses, is a type of
our Lord whom His Father sent to seek lost souls.” He goes on to say the enemies are round about
as blessed Peter said: “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth
about.” Saul was anointed to deliver his
people from the enemies who were attacking them, but Christ the Anointed in the
highest sense, came to deliver us from the devils who seek our
destruction. This enables us to
understand the choice of the epistle and gospel of this Mass. The gospel shows us the lost sheep and the
Good Shepherd seeking it, placing it on His shoulders and returning with it to
the fold. It is one of the oldest
representations in Christian iconography found in the catacombs. The epistle explains the dangers to which
men, expressed by the lost sheep, are exposed.
“Watch because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about
seeking whom he may devour; whom resist ye, strong in
faith” (Epistle). He will shelter you
from the attack of your enemies (Gradual), who is the protector of all who hope
in Him (Collect), and who never forsakes them that seek Him (Offertory).
Remembering Saul’s fate who, at first little in his own eyes, afterwards became
puffed up with pride on account of his royal dignity, disobeyed God and would
not acknowledge his faults, let us “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of
God” (Epistle), saying: “O my God, look upon me and have mercy…in thee I put my
trust; let me be not ashamed (Introit): and since without Thee nothing is
strong, nothing is holy, make us in such manner to use temporal goods, that we
lose not those which are eternal (Collect).
Give us, then, an immovable constancy in the midst of temptation of
every kind (Epistle).
INTROIT:
Ps. 24. Look Thou
upon me, and have mercy on me, O Lord; for I am alone and poor. See my abjection and my labor; and forgive me
all my sins, O my God.
Ps. To Thee, my God, I put my trust; let me not
be disappointed. Glory be, etc. Look Thou
upon me, etc.
COLLECT:
O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee, without
whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, increase and multiply upon us Thy
mercy; that, Thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through temporal
blessings that we finally lose not those which are eternal. Through our Lord, etc.
O God who in the heart of Thy Son, wounded by our sins,
dost deign mercifully to bestow upon us the infinite treasures of Thy love;
grant, we pray, that we who now pay Him the devout homage of our piety, may
also perform the duty of worthy satisfaction.
Through our Lord, etc.
We ask, almighty God that on this feast we may rejoice in
the twofold joy of the triumph of blessed John and Paul, whom a common faith
and common martyrdom made to be truly brethren.
Through our Lord, etc.
O God, who hast made this present day honorable for us by
the birth of blessed John, grant to Thy people the grace of spiritual joys, and
guide the souls of all the faithful into the way of eternal salvation. Through
our Lord, etc.
EPISTLE: 1 Peter 5, 6-11.
Dearly beloved, Be
you humbled under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in the time of
visitation; casting all your care upon Him, for He hath care of you. Be sober
and watch, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about
seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in faith; knowing that the
same affliction befalls your brethren who are in the world. But the God of all
grace, who hath called us unto the eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you
have suffered a little, will Himself perfect you, and confirm you, and
establish you. To Him be glory and empire forever and ever. Amen.
EXPLANATION
In this lesson St. Peter teaches that if we would be exalted we must humble
ourselves under the mighty hand of God. This necessary humility shows itself in
us by giving ourselves and all our cares up to the providence of God who, as
St. Augustine says, provides for one as for all. We should not fail, however,
to be sober and circumspect, and not think ourselves secure from the lusts of
the world. The devil like a lion seeking prey, desires the ruin of our souls,
tormenting us by temptations and afflictions. By confidence in God's help we
can and should resist him, especially when we consider that after the trials of
this life the crown of glory will be our portion for all eternity.
GRADUAL:
Ps. 54. Cast thy care upon the Lord, and
he shall sustain thee. Whilst I cried to the Lord, He hearkened to my voice
against those that pressed upon me.
Alleluia, alleluia.
Ps 7. God is a just judge, strong and
patient; is He angry every day?
Alleluia.
GOSPEL: Luke 15, 1-10.
At that time, the publicans and sinners drew near
unto Jesus to hear Him: and the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This
man receiveth sinners and eateth with them. And He spoke to them this parable,
saying: What man is there of you that hath a hundred sheep, and if he shall
lose one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after
that which was lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, lay it upon
his shoulders rejoicing and coming home, call together his friends and
neighbors, saying to them: Rejoice with me because I have found my sheep that
was lost? I say to you that even so there shall be more joy in heaven upon one
sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need no penance. Or what woman having ten groats, if she
lose one groat doth not light a candle and sweep the house, and seek diligently
until she find it? And when she hath found it, call together her friends and
neighbors, saying: Rejoice with me because I have found the groat which I had
lost? So I say to you, there shall be joy before the Angels of God upon one
sinner doing penance.
What moved the sinners to approach Jesus?
The goodness and benevolence with which He met the penitent sinners. Do you also humbly and trustingly approach Him, and you may rest assured that, even if you are the greatest of sinners, you will receive grace and forgiveness.
What is Christ's meaning in the parable of the lost sheep and groat?
He expresses by this His desire for the salvation of the sinner, His joy and that of all heaven when a sinner is converted. Moreover, He shows the Pharisees, who in vain self-righteousness avoided all intercourse with acknowledged sinners, and who murmured at the goodness of Jesus, that the sinner, being truly unhappy, deserves our compassion rather than our anger.
Why do the angels rejoice more over one sinner who does penance than
over ninety-nine just?
Because the places of the fallen angels are thus refilled; because the angels see how the good God rejoices; because they find their prayers for the conversion of sinners granted, as St. Bernard says: "The tears of the penitents are wine for the angels;" because, as St. Gregory says, "the true penitents are usually more zealous than the innocent."
ASPIRATION: I have erred like a sheep that has lost its way; but I thank Thee, O Jesus, my good Shepherd, that Thou hast so carefully sought me by Thy inspirations, admonitions and warnings, and dost now bring me back to true penance, that I may be a joy to the angels. Amen.
OFFERTORY:
Ps. 9. Let them trust in Thee who know
Thy name, O Lord; for Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee. Sing ye to the Lord,
who dwelleth in Sion: for He hath not forgotten the cry of the poor.
SECRET:
Look down, O Lord, on the gifts
of thy suppliant Church, and grant that they may be received unto the perpetual
sanctification and salvation of believers.
Through our Lord, etc.
Look, we pray, O Lord, on the heart
of Thy beloved Son, whose charity no words can tell; that the gift which we
offer may be pleasing to Thee and an expiation for our
offenses. Through our Lord, etc.
Graciously receive, O Lord, the
oblation consecrated to Thee through the merits of Thy holy Martyrs John and
Paul: and grant that it may be to us a means of perpetual succor. Through our Lord, etc.
We heap Thy altar with gifts, O Lord, giving due honor to the birthday of him who both foretold the coming of the Saviour of the world and pointed Him out when come, our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son. Who liveth and reigneth, etc.
PREFACE
OF THE SACRED HEART:
It is truly meet and just, right
and for our salvation, that we should at all times, and in all places, give
thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God; Who didst will
that Thine only-begotten Son, while hanging on the cross, should be pierced by
a soldier's spear, that the Heart thus opened, a shrine of divine bounty,
should pour out on us streams of mercy and grace, and that what never ceased to
burn with love for us, should be a resting-place to the devout, and open as a
refuge of salvation to the penitent. And therefore with Angels and Archangels,
with Thrones and Dominations, and with all the hosts of the heavenly army, we
sing the hymn of Thy glory, evermore saying:
Holy, Holy, Holy, etc.
COMMUNION:
Luke 15. I say to you: There shall be joy
before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.
POSTCOMMUNION:
May Thy holy mysteries which we
have received, O Lord, give us life, may they expiate our sins, and prepare us
to receive Thy everlasting mercy.
Through our Lord, etc.
We have received Thy heavenly
sacrament, O Lord, as we keep the memory of Thy holy Martyrs John and Paul;
grant, we pray, that the service we render Thee in time may bring us to the
joys of eternity. Through our Lord, etc.
Let Thy Church, O God, be glad at
the birth of blessed John the Baptist, through whom she knew the author of her
new birth, our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son.
Who liveth and reigneth, etc.
“Rejoice with me because I
have found my sheep that was lost? I say to you that even so there shall be
more joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon
ninety-nine just who need no penance.”
I will
send forth famine into the land, not a famine of bread . . . but of hearing the word of the Lord, . . . they
shall go about seeking the word of the Lord and shall not find it.
Amos 8:11
The faithful soul has now witnessed in the holy liturgy the close of
the mysteries of our redemption. The
Holy Ghost has come down to support her during this second portion of her
career, by forming and developing within her the fullness of the Christian life
as taught by her divine Saviour when on earth…. The miseries of this present
life are the test to which God puts His soldiers; He passes judgment upon them,
and classifies them, according to the degree of courage they have shown. Therefore is it, that we all have our share
of suffering. The combat has
commenced. God is looking on, watching
how each of us comports himself. The day
is not far off, when the Judge will pass sentence on the merits of each
combatant, and award to each one the recompense he has won. Combat now; peace and rest
and a crown, forever after.
Dom Gueranger, Sunday within Octave of the Sacred Heart
The gift of knowledge has taught us what we must do and what we must avoid, in order that we may be such as Jesus, our divine Master, wishes us to be…. The Holy Ghost grants us the gift of fortitude, which, if we but faithfully use it, will enable us to master every difficulty, yea, will make it easy for us to overcome the obstacles which would impede our onward march. There are times, when the Holy Ghost required from a Christian something beyond interior resistance to the enemies of his soul: he must make an outward protestation against error and evil, as often as position or duty demands it. On such occasions, he must bear to become unpopular, and console himself with the words of the apostle: ‘If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.’
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year on the Gift of Fortitude
PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WEEK OF JUNE 26th:
26 |
Sun |
Sunday within Octave of the Sacred Heart [3rd Sunday after Pentecost] Within the Octave Ss. John & Paul, Martyrs Within the Octave of St. John the Baptist |
sd |
W |
|
Mass 9:00 AM & Noon; Members Ss. Peter &
Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM |
27 |
Mon |
Within Octave of the Sacred Heart Within the Octave of St. John the
Baptist BVM of Perpetual Help |
sd |
W |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
28 |
Tue |
St. Irenaeus, BpM Within Octave of the Sacred Heart Within the Octave of St. John the
Baptist Vigil of Ss. Peter & Paul |
d |
R |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
29 |
Wed |
Ss. Peter & Paul, App Within Octave of the Sacred Heart Within the Octave of St. John the
Baptist |
d1cl |
R |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
30 |
Thu |
Commemoration St. Paul, Ap St. Peter, Ap Within the Octave of St. John the
Baptist Eucharistic Heart of Jesus |
dm |
W |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
1 |
Fri |
Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ Octave Day of the Sacred Heart FIRST FRIDAY |
d1cl |
R |
A |
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass; Holy
Hour & Benediction of Reparation |
2 |
Sat |
Visitation of the BVM Octave Day of St. John Baptist Ss. Processus & Martinian, Mm FRIST SATURDAY |
d1cl |
W |
|
Mass 9:00 AM; Confessions 8:30 AM; Holy Hour
& Benediction with Rosary of
Reparation |
3 |
Sun |
4th Sunday after Pentecost St. Leo II, PC Within the Octave of Ss. Peter & Paul |
sd |
G |
|
Mass 9:00 AM & Noon; Members Ss. Peter &
Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM |
“The Evangelist,” says
St. Augustine, “made use of a word which has a special import, when he said:
the soldier opened Jesus’ Side with a spear.
He did not say struck the Side, or wounded the Side, or anything else
like that; but he said he opened Jesus’ Side.
He opened it; for that Side was like the door of life; and when it was
opened, the Sacraments (the Mysteries) of the Church came through it…. This was
predicted by that door which Noe was commanded to make in the side of the Ark,
through which were to go those living creatures which were not to be destroyed
by the deluge; and all these things were a figure of the Church.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year on the Sacred Heart of
Jesus
“I often ask myself how it came
that pictures of hell did not lead me to fear these pains as they deserve. Now I feel a killing pain at the sight of the
multitudes who are lost. This vision was one of the greatest graces
the Lord has given me. From it arise
also these vehement desires to be useful to souls. Yes, I say it with all truth: to deliver one
soul from these terrible torments, I would gladly, it seems to me, endure death
a thousand times.”
St. Teresa of Avila
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,
Ss. John and Paul, Martyrs
O Jesus, a soldier opened Your side with
his lance, so that, through the gaping wound, we might know the charity of Your
Heart, which loved us unto death, and that we might enter into Your unutterable
love through the same channel by which it came to us. Approach, then, O my
soul, the Heart of Christ, that magnanimous Heart, that hidden Heart, that
Heart which thinks of all things and knows all things; that loving Heart, all
on fire with love. Make me understand, O Lord, that the door of Your Heart was
forced open by the vehemence of Your love. Allow me to
enter into the secret of that love which was hidden from all eternity, but is now
revealed by the wound in Your Heart.
St. Bernardine of Siena
The first suffering
which the damned endure is that they are deprived of seeing Me. This suffering is so great that, if it were
possible, they would choose to endure fire and torments, if they could in the
meantime enjoy My vision, rather than to be delivered
from other sufferings without being able to see Me. This pain is increased by a
second, that of the worm of conscience, which torments them without cessation.
Thirdly, the view of the demon redoubles their sufferings, because, seeing him
in all his ugliness, they see what they themselves are, and thus see clearly
that they themselves have merited these chastisements. The fourth torment which the damned endure is
that of fire, a fire which burns but does not consume. Further, so great is the hate which possesses
them that they cannot will anything good.
Continually they blaspheme Me. They can no longer merit. Those who die in hate,
guilty of mortal sin, enter a state which lasts forever.
Our Lord speaking to
St. Catherine of Siena
ON DRUNKENNESS
Be sober and watch (I Peter, 5, 8).
Sobriety is the mother of vigilance; intemperance is the mother of sloth and of numberless other vices which cast many souls into the jaws of the devil who, like a hungry lion, goes about day and night seeking for prey. Woe, therefore, to those who because of their drunkenness live, as it were, in constant night and in the perpetual sleep of sin! How will they feel when, suddenly awakened by death, they find themselves before the judgment seat of God burdened with innumerable sins of which they were unconscious, or of which they wished not to know they were guilty? Who can number the sins committed in a state of intoxication, sins for which the drunkard cares nothing, for which he has no contrition, and has not confessed, because the light of reason is extinguished, his life is a senseless stupor, and he is therefore unconscious of his thoughts, words and actions.
But will the divine Judge find no
sin in such persons? Will He permit the shameful deeds committed while
intoxicated, the curses, blasphemies, sneers, detractions, outrages, and
scandals to remain unpunished? He who demands an account of every idle word,
will He demand no account of the time 'so badly spent, of the money so
uselessly squandered, families neglected, church service unattended, education
of children omitted, and the other great sins committed? They will indeed
excuse themselves, pleading that these sins were committed involuntarily, or as
a joke, when they were intoxicated; that their intoxication was excusable, as
they were not able to stand muck; but will God be content with such excuses?
Will they not add to their damnation? That they took more than they could bear
of the intoxicating drink, deprived themselves of the use of reason, and thus
voluntarily caused all the sins they committed while in that state, is what
will be punished.
What then can they expect? Nothing less than the fate of the rich man spoken of
in the gospel, who on account of his debaucheries was buried in hell; where
during all eternity his parched tongue was not cooled by one drop of water
(Luke 16, 22). Yes, this will be the place of those unconverted drunkards of
whom St. Paul says that they will not possess the kingdom of God (I Cor. 6,10). How rare and how difficult is the conversion of a
drunkard, because with him as with the unchaste this habit becomes a second
nature, and because he generally abuses the remedies: the holy Sacraments of
Penance and the Altar.
This should certainly deter any one from the vice of drunkenness; but those who are not thus withheld, may consider the indecency, the disgrace, and the injury of this vice, for it ruins the body as well as the soul.
Is it not disgraceful that man endowed with reason, and created for heaven, should drown that reason in excessive drink, degrading his mind, his intellectual spirit, the image of God, rendering it like the brute animals, and even lower than the beasts. “Are not the drunkards far worse than the animals?” says St. Chrysostom. Yes, not only on account of their drunkenness, but far more so because of the shameful position of their body, their manners, their speech, their behavior. How disgracefully naked lay Noah, although he was intoxicated not through his own fault, exposed in his tent to the ridicule of the impudent Chain (Gen. 9, 21)! Even the heathen Spartans considered the vice of drunkenness so disgraceful that they were in the habit of intoxicating a slave, and bringing him before their children that they might be disgusted with such a state.
Finally, that which should deter everybody from this vice is its injuriousness. It ruins the body as well as the soul. By surfeiting many have perished (Ecclus. 37, 34), and it has ruined the health of many more. Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who fall into pits, who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink off their cups (Prov. 23, 29-30)? Daily observation confirms this truth of Scripture, and the miserable old age, accompanied by innumerable weaknesses and frailties of one addicted to drink is a sufficient testimony of the injuriousness of this vice.
O my soul, you will always find in the Blessed Sacrament, under
whatever aspect you consider it, great consolation and delight, and once you
have begun to relish it, there will be no trials, persecutions, and
difficulties which you cannot easily endure.
St. Teresa of Jesus, Way of
Perfection
PRESENCE
OF GOD ‑
O Jesus, reveal to me the infinite treasures of mercy contained in Your Heart.
MEDITATION:
I.
Today's liturgy is a warm invitation to confidence in the merciful love of
Jesus. Even from the beginning of the Mass, the Church has us pray thus: “Look
toward me and have pity on me, O Lord, for I am desolate and unhappy. See my
misery and my sadness, and pardon all my sins” (Introit) ; then in the Collect we add: “O
God... pour out upon us Your mercy,” and a little later we are exhorted: “Cast
your care upon the Lord, and He will support you” (Gradual). . But how
can we justify all this confidence in God, since we are always poor sinners?
The Gospel (Lk 15,1‑10) explains the
grounds for this justification by relating two parables used by Jesus Himself
to teach us that we can never have too much confidence in His infinite mercy:
the story of the lost sheep and the account of the missing drachma. First He
shows us the good shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep; it is a
picture of Jesus coming down from heaven to search for poor human beings lost
in the dark caves of sin. In order to find them, rescue them, and bring them
back to the sheepfold, He does not hesitate to undergo the greatest sufferings
and even death. “And when he hath found it.. . [he lays] it upon his shoulders, rejoicing: and coming home,
[he calls] together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: 'Rejoice with me
for I have found my sheep that was lost.'“ This is the story of the love of
Jesus for all mankind and especially for every individual soul. The story has a
beautiful symbolism in the tender figure of the good shepherd, to which Jesus
likened Himself. We might say that the image of the good shepherd -which was so
greatly loved in the early days of the Church‑ is the equivalent of that
of the Sacred Heart; both are living, concrete expressions of the merciful love
of Jesus, and they urge us to go to Him with complete confidence.
2.
“I say to you, that even so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who
repents, more than over ninety‑nine
just who have no need of repentance.” Here we have the underlying idea
of all three parables about mercy ‑the lost sheep, the missing drachma,
and the prodigal son‑ each expressing this thought in a different way.
This insistent repetition tells us how earnestly Jesus would inculcate the
profound lesson of His infinite mercy, a mercy which is the exact opposite of
the hard, scornful attitude of the Pharisees who murmured, saying, “He [Jesus]
receives sinners and eats with them.” The three parables are the Master's
answer to their mean and treacherous insinuations.
It is not easy for finite
creatures with a limited spiritual outlook to understand this ineffable mystery
completely; not only is it difficult to understand in respect to others,
but it presents a problem even in what concerns ourselves. However, Jesus said
and repeated: “There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more
than over ninety-nine just” thus giving us to understand what great glory a
soul gives to God when, after many falls, it comes back to Him, repentant and
confident. The message of this parable applies not only to great sinners, those
converted from serious sin, but also to those who turn from venial sins, who
humble themselves and rise again after faults committed through weakness or
lack of reflection. This is our everyday story: how many times we resolve to
overcome our impatience, our quick temper, our sensitiveness, and how many
times we fall again! But the Heart of Jesus “thrills with joy when, humbly
acknowledging our fault, we come to fling ourselves into His arms, imploring
forgiveness; then, He loves us even more tenderly than before we fell” (T.C.J.
L‑C).
The liturgy repeats in the Communion hymn
the last verse of the Gospel: “I say to you, there shall be joy before the
angels of God over one sinner doing penance.” Let us ask Jesus, when He comes
to us in Holy Communion, to help us penetrate the secrets of His infinite,
merciful love.
COLLOQUY:
“In whom, Lord, can Your
mercies shine forth as in me, who with my evil deeds have thus obscured the
great favors which You had begun to show me? Alas, my Creator! If I would make
an excuse, I have none, and no one is to blame but I.
For had I cooperated even a little with Your love which You had begun to show
me, I would not have been able to love aught but Yourself Lord. . . but as I
have not deserved this . . . may Your
mercy be availing for me.
“Yet even from me some good has been
brought forth by Your infinite goodness, and, the
greater have been my sins, the more has the great blessing of Your mercies
shone forth in me. How many reasons have I for singing of them forever! I
beseech You, my God, that it may be so: may I sing of them, and that without
end, since You have deigned to work such exceeding great mercies in me that
they amaze those who behold them, while as for me, I am drawn out of myself
continually, that I may be the better able to sing Your praise. For so long as
I am in myself, my Lord, and without You, I can do nothing but be cut off like
the flowers in this garden, and this miserable earth will become a dunghill
again as before. Permit it not, Lord. Let it not be Your will that a soul which
You have purchased with so many trials should be lost, when You have so often
redeemed it anew and have snatched it from the teeth of the horrible dragon”
(T. J. Life, 4‑14)
“O Jesus, I know that Your Heart is more
grieved by the thousand little imperfections of Your
friends than by the faults, even grave, which Your enemies commit. Yet, it
seems to me, that it is only when those who are Your own are habitually guilty
of thoughtlessness and neglect to seek Your pardon, that You can say: 'These
wounds which you see in the midst of My hands I have received in the house of
those who love Me.' But Your Heart thrills with joy when You have to deal with
all those who truly love, and who after each little fault come to fling
themselves into Your arms, imploring forgiveness. You say to Your
angels what the prodigal's father said to his servants: 'Put a ring upon his
finger, and let us rejoice.' O Jesus, how little known is the merciful love of
Your Heart!” (cf. T.C.J. L‑C).
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.
Luther was the apostle
of the very opposite of what the Sacred Heart reveals. Instead of the merciful God, as known and
loved in the previous ages, Luther would have the world believe Him to be the
direct author of sin and damnation, who creates the sinner for crime and
eternal torments, and for the mere purpose of showing that He could do
anything, even injustice! Calvin
followed; he took up the blasphemous doctrines of the German apostate, and
riveted the protestant principles by his own gloomy and merciless logic. By these two men, the tail of the dragon
dragged the third part of the stars of heaven.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year on the Sacred Heart of
Jesus
“The holy Roman Church holds the highest
and complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church which
she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of power
from the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles whose
successor is the Roman Pontiff. And just
as to defend the truth of Faith she is held before all other things, so if any
questions shall arise regarding faith they ought to be defined by her
judgment. And to her anyone
burdened with affairs pertaining to the ecclesiastical world can appeal; and in
all cases looking forward to an ecclesiastical examination, recourse can be had
to her judgment.”
Second Council of Lyons, Denz. 466
“And since the Roman Pontiff is at the head of the universal Church by the divine right of apostolic primacy, We teach and declare also that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases pertaining to ecclesiastical examination recourse can be had to his judgment.”
First Vatican Council, Denz. 1830
“Never forget
Him Who died for love of you. You will only love Him in
so far as you know how to suffer in silence, preferring Him to creatures and
eternity to time.”
St. Margaret
Mary Alacoque
It is terrible dangerous to put off conversion!
“First, in order to profit
by our last hour, we must foresee it. Everything conspires to hide this moment
when it arrives: the sinner's own illusions, his negligence, the lack of
sincerity on the part of those who surround him. Secondly, to profit by this
last hour, if he foresees it, he must wish to be converted. But it is greatly
to be feared that the sinner does not wish this. The tyranny of habit gives to
his last acts a character of irresolution. Calculated delays have weakened his faith, have blinded him to his own state. Hence even the
last hour does not move him, and he dies impenitent. Thirdly, to profit by this
last hour, even if he wishes for conversion, the conversion must be sincere,
and for this the soul needs efficacious grace. Yet the delaying sinner counts
rather on his own will than on grace. If he does count on grace, he does so
with a cowardly look toward the mercy of God. Will he thus reach a true regret
for the offense done against God, to a genuine and generous act of repentance?
The sinner who delays may forget what penitence is, and runs great risk of
dying in his sin. Hence the conclusion: Seize the grace of repentance now, lest
you lack it then when you must have it to decide your eternity.”
Father
Jacques-Marie-Louis Monsabre, O.P.
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
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 to the
Father, 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
“Come, Father,
let us go preach the faith to the pagans.”
I was deeply satisfied
at having thus proclaimed the gospel to these barbarians. Without budging from the spot, I stood
waiting for them. One of the Indians in
my escort entered my hut and begged me to leave. He returned a second and third time, saying,
“Father, for the love of God, let us go; they are going to tear you to
pieces!” Flinging his arms around my
neck, he persuaded me by his pleas to leave.
In him I seemed to see not an Indian but an angel from heaven. Hardly had we left when we began to feel the
arrows they were shooting at us. Seven
of my Indian escort fell at my side, shot to death. For me this was to die seven deaths of my own. But my own good fortune did not direct a
single arrow towards me so that I could accompany in death those who had
accompanied me in life – not just physically but also in the resolve to help me
proclaim the gospel. Indeed, with this
resolve they had prepared themselves the day before by confession and Communion
as if for death. With Christian fervor
they had said to me: “Come, Father, let us go preach the faith to the
pagans. We shall give our lives for
Jesus Christ in your aid and in the defense of the faith that you preach.”
Rev. Antonio Ruiz De
Montoya, S.J., The Spiritual Conquest
Let us turn back and
re-climb the mountain of holiness. Holiness, as St. Thomas
shows, has two essential characteristics, the absence of all stain of soilure
and sin, and a firm union with God. Holiness is perfect in heaven, but
it begins on earth. It manifests itself concretely in three fashions, upon
which we would here insist. We have three great duties toward God: we must know
Him, we must love Him, and we must serve Him. Thus we obtain eternal life. Now
there are souls which have especially the mission of loving God and of making
Him loved. These are souls of strong will, who receive from God the grace of a
burning love. There are others whose mission is to make God known. In such
souls the intellect is manifestly the dominating character, and these souls
receive above all the graces of enlightenment. And there are souls whose chief
mission is to serve God by fidelity in daily duty. This class contains the
majority of good Christians. These three forms of sanctity seem to be represented
in the three privileged apostles, Peter, John, and James.
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Life
Everlasting
The people of Tudor
England were, by and large, no Spartans, no saints, but by the same token they
were no reformers. They knew themselves
to be mercenary, worldly, weak, and they looked to religion to pardon these
vices, not to reform them. When the
crisis of Reformation came they mostly behaved as mercenary, worldly, and weak
men and women will, grumbling, obstructing, but in the end taking the line of
least resistance, like Bishop Stokesley lamenting his own helplessness in the
face of advancing heresy and wishing that he had had the courage to stand
against it with his brother the Bishop of Rochester, St. John Fisher.
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars
Henry
VIII, founder of the Church of England, was a chip off the old block!
“This would be a very evil thing – one never before seen, the mere
mention of which offends the ears. We would not for anything in the world that
it should take place. Therefore, if anything be said to you about it, speak of
it as a thing not to be endured. You must likewise say very decidedly that on
no account would we allow it, or ever hear it mentioned, in order that by these
means the King of England may lose all hope of bring it to pass.”
Queen Isabel of Spain, addressing her ambassador to England upon
hearing the suggestion from 45 year old Henry VII of England that he would like
to marry the 17 year old Catherine of Aragon, the recently widowed wife of his
eldest son, after which he offered his second son, Henry.
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 most important thing is to commend lovingly and with much devotion
the soul of the Queen (Isabel) our lady, to God. Her life was always Catholic
and holy, and prompt in all things in His holy service. Because of this we
should believe that she is in holy glory, and beyond the cares of this harsh
and weary world.”
Christopher Columbus, returning from his fourth and last voyage where
he discovered the American continent, upon learning that Queen Isabel the
Catholic had died
“I will do what I can to set forward God's Catholic service.”
Among his chief friends and
supporters was the saintly Margaret Clitherowe, who, at the risk of her life
sheltered him in her own house in the Shambles at York, and provided him with
all that was necessary fulfilling his sacred office.
In 1585 the cruel and
sanguinary law was passed by which it was made high treason for any Englishman,
made priest by the authority of Rome since the first year of Elizabeth, to
return into the kingdom or remain there; and felony for any person to harbour
or relieve any such priest. By these statutes it was only necessary to prove
that a man was a Catholic priest, in order to condemn him to the most cruel and shameful death; and many were the victims who
were sacrificed under these unjust laws. When these laws came into force a
priest, (perhaps Mr. Ingleby himself) who had frequently said Holy Mass in Mrs.
Clitherowe's house, came to warn her of the risk she was running in relieving
priests. But she, being filled with the desire for martyrdom was greatly
rejoiced at the news, and said, “By God's grace all priest shall be more
welcome to me than ever they were, and I will do what I can to set forward
God's Catholic service.”
On March 10, 1586, in the
beginning of Lent, the sheriffs of York came to search her house. They whipped
a little boy until he showed them the priest's chamber, and the hiding-place
where she concealed the church vestments, Catholic books and other treasures,
These they carried off, but they could not find Mr. Ingleby
Margaret Clitherowe was
committed to prison, and on the Annunciation, March 25, 1586 (which was also
Good Friday), she suffered a most cruel and barbarous martyrdom, being pressed
to death in the Tollbooth on Ousebridge, at York, for having harboured Mr.
Francis Ingleby and another priest, Mr. John Mush.
They stripped her and laid
her on the ground, hands (outstretched in the form of a cross) to two stakes.
They then put upon her a door, and on that heaped stones to the weight of five
or six hundredweight. She was a quarter of an hour in dying, and in the very
pangs of death she cried: “ Jesu, Jesu, help me. Blessed
Jesu, I suffer this for Thy sake,” and so in terrible agony she yielded up her
blessed soul to God. One of her hands is kept as a relic at St. Mary's Convent, York, to this day.
Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., B.A., Forgotten Shrines
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.
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
If
what he has to say is, “foolish or perhaps a heresy” then he should try his
best to not think out loud!
[…..] And it comes to my mind to say something that may be foolish or
perhaps a heresy, I don't know. […..]
Pope Francis, message to John 17 (Ecumenical) Movement, May 23, 2015
Catholic
Official Teaching on Homosexual Unions
1. The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.
2. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society.
3. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, CONSIDERATIONS
REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL
PERSONS, 2003
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
Feast of the
Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The angel Gabriel had
announced to Mary that God would soon give a son to Elizabeth. The Virgin at once betook herself to Hebron,
where her cousin resided. The Feast of
the Visitation was established by Urban VI, 6 April 1389 (Decree published by
Boniface IX, 9 Nov., 1389) to invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin
Mary for the purpose of restoring peace to the Church during the Western
Schism, which rent the seamless garment of Christ. It was celebrated on the day following the
Octave Day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, July 2nd for a
specific reason. The Octave Day of the
Nativity of St. John is the anniversary of his circumcision on which day St.
Zachary’s tongue was loosened and his canticle pronounced ending with these
words, “the Orient from on high hath visited us: To enlighten them that sit in
darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of
peace.” It was this “peace” brought
through the Virgin Mary that the Church sought.
It was also on July 2nd that Blessed Pius IX returned to Rome
in 1849 after his forced exile during the Masonic revolutions in Europe, again
restoring peace to the Church. In
thanksgiving, Blessed Pius IX raised the dignity of the feast to a double of
the second class. Our Lady, the true Ark
of the Covenant, bearing within her the Emmanuel, the living testimony of a
true reconciliation, of an alliance more sublime between earth and heaven, is
the source of all true peace.
In the 1962 Missal the
ranking of the Visitation was downgraded so that the Mass would never be
offered in place of the Mass of an ordinary Sunday. Further, the octave of St. John the Baptist,
one of the many octaves suppressed by Fr. Annibale Bugnini and his liturgical
commission was also suppressed. Without
the octave of St. John, it made no theological sense to have the Visitation to
be celebrated on July 2nd.
The Novus Ordo liturgists therefore translated the feast to May 31st
ignoring the purpose of its traditional establishment. Since then, there has been no peace for the
Church.
“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.
“Certainly there is to be development and on the largest scale. Who can
be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it
must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith.
Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means
that a thing is changed from one thing into another. The understanding,
knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole
Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the
ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is,
with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.”
St. Vincent of Lèrins
COMMENT: Change can be either accidental
(a “development” according to St. Vincent) or substantial (an “alteration” according to St. Vincent). A boy growing
to manhood constitutes a series of accidental
changes. A boy changing into a dog constitutes a substantial change and this only happens in Hollywood fantasy. A
sinner becoming a saint is an accidental
change and this is an accidental
change that the Neo-modernist heretics refuse to make. They instead want the
Church to substantially change into
an institution that will accommodate their love and complacency in sin. Pope
Francis, for example, says that the morality of capital punishment has evolved
to the point that it is now known to be intrinsically evil in that it is
‘opposed to the dignity of man and contrary to the spirit of the gospel.’
Capital punishment changing from a morally permissible to intrinsically evil
act constitutes a substantial change
and therefore impossible as a legitimate development. There are many reasons
why Neo-modernists, like Pope Francis and his conciliarists predecessors, deny
the reality of substance but this is
an important one. Trying to enroll St. Vincent of Lèrins in their defense is
not a misunderstanding but just another lie.
Pope
Francis thinks the miracle of Transubstantiation is a “Magic trick”!
Surprisingly, the account of the multiplication of the loaves does not
mention the multiplication itself. On the contrary, the words that stand out
are: “break”, “give” and “distribute” (cf. Lk 9:16). In effect, the emphasis is
not on the multiplication but the act of sharing. This is important. Jesus does
not perform a magic trick; he does not change five loaves into five thousand
and then to announce: “There! Distribute them!” No. Jesus first prays, then
blesses the five loaves and begins to break them, trusting in the Father. And
those five loaves never run out. This is no magic trick; it is an act of trust
in God and his providence.
Pope Francis the Destroyer, Homily on Corpus Christi, 6-23-2019
The Native
American Savages were no more “savage” than the native Celtic savages before
St. Patrick, the native Gallic savages before St. Martin, the native German
savages before St. Boniface, etc., etc., etc.
On the
most solemn occasions the Pawnees add a bloody sacrifice to the oblation of the
calumet; and according to what they pretend to have learned from the bird and
the Star, the sacrifice most agreeable to the Great Spirit is that of an enemy
immolated in the most cruel manner. It is impossible
to listen without horror to the recital of the circumstances that attended the
sacrifice of a young female, of the Scioux tribe, in the course of the year
1837. It was about seed time, and they thus sought to obtain a plentiful
harvest. I shall here give the substance of the detailed account, which I have
given of it in a former letter. This young girl, was
only aged fifteen; after having been well treated and fed for six months, under
pretence that a feast would be prepared for her at the opening of the summer
season, felt rejoiced when she saw the last days of winter roll by. The day
fixed upon for the feast having dawned, she passed through all the preparatory
ceremonies, and was then arrayed in her finest attire, after which she was
placed in a circle of warriors, who seemed to escort her for the purpose of
showing her deference. Besides their wonted arms, each one of these warriors
had two pieces of wood, which he had received at the hands of the maiden. The
latter had on the preceding day carried three posts, which she had helped to
fell in the neighboring forest: but supposing that she was walking to a
triumph, and her mind being filled with the most pleasing ideas, the victim advanced
towards the place of her sacrifice with those mingled feelings of joy and
timidity, which, under similar circumstances, are naturally excited in the
bosom of a girl of her age.
During
their march, which was rather long, the silence was interrupted only by
religious songs and invocations to the Master of life, so that whatever
affected the senses, tended to keep up the deceitful delusion under which she
had been till that moment. But as soon as she had reached the place of
sacrifice, where nothing was seen but fires, torches, and instruments of
torture, the delusion began to vanish and her eyes were opened to the fate that
awaited her. How great must have been the surprise, and soon after the terror
which she felt, when she found it no longer possible to doubt of their
intentions? Who could describe her poignant anguish? She burst into tears; she
raised loud cries to heaven — she begged, entreated, conjured her executioners
to have pity on her youth, her innocence, her parents, but all in vain: neither
tears, nor cries, nor the promises of a trader who happened to be present,
softened the hearts of these monsters. She was tied with ropes to the trunk and
branches of two trees, and the most sensitive parts of her body were burnt with
torches made of the wood which she had with her own hands distributed to the
warriors.— When her sufferings lasted long enough to weary the fanatical fury
of her ferocious tormentors, the great chief shot an arrow into her heart; and
in an instant this arrow was followed by a thousand others, which, after having
been violently turned and twisted in the wounds, were torn from them in such a
manner that her whole body presented but one shapeless mass of mangled flesh,
from which the blood streamed on all sides. When the blood had ceased to flow,
the greater sacrificator approached the expiring victim, and to crown so many
atrocious acts, tore out her heart with his own hands, and after uttering the
most frightful imprecations against the Scioux nation, devoured the bleeding flesh,
amid the acclamations of his whole tribe. The mangled remains were then left to
be preyed upon by wild beasts, and when the blood had been sprinkled on the
seed, to render it fertile, all retired to their cabins, cheered with the hope
of obtaining a copious harvest.
Such
horrid cruelties could not but draw down the wrath of heaven upon their nation.
And in fact, as soon as the report of the sacrifice reached the Scioux, they
burned with the desire to avenge their honor, and swore to a man that they
would not rest satisfied till they should have killed as many Pawnees as the
young victim had bones in her fingers and joints in her body. More than a
hundred Pawnees have at length fallen beneath their tomahawks, and their fury
was afterwards more increased by the massacre of their wives and children, of
which I have spoken before.
At the
sight of so much cruelty, who could mistake the agency of the enemy of mankind,
and who would refuse to exert himself for the purpose of bringing these
benighted nations to the knowledge of the true Mediator, and of the only true
sacrifice, without which, it is impossible to appease the divine justice.
Rev. and dear Father, yours,
Rev.
P. J. De Smet, S.J., Letter to Jesuit Superiors, Banks of the Platte River,
June 2, 1841
“This is magisterium: the Council is the magisterium of the Church.
Either you are with the Church and therefore you follow the Council, and if you
do not follow the Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you
are not with the Church. We must be demanding and strict on this point. The
Council should not be negotiated in order to have more of these... No, the
Council is as it is. And this problem that we are experiencing, of selectivity
with respect to the Council, has been repeated throughout history with other
Councils.”
Pope Francis, 1-30-2021
“I dare say that the Council has revolutionized to some extent the
status of theology – the believer’s way of doing and thinking.”
Pope Francis, 9-2-2015
“With the Council, the Church entered a new phase of her history.”
Pope Francis, Misericordiae
Vultus, 4-11-2015
COMMENT: It is true that Councils in the past have been “experiencing
selectivity.” Such as the Council of Trent and its dogmatic definitions
regarding the doctrine of Justification which Pope Francis has repeatedly
“selectively” rejects while professing his belief in the condemned propositions
of the arch-heretic Luther. Those who are “selective” on any Catholic dogma are
by definition, heretics. The word heresy means ‘to choose,’ in other words, to
be “selective” of Catholic dogma. Vatican II was a “pastoral council” that
defined no doctrine and remained purely on the level of the magisterium of
churchmen grounded upon their grace of state. No Catholic is required to assent
to any teaching whenever that ‘teachings’ in any way possibly contradicts
revealed truth. The Magisterium of the Church is a different matter. It is the
infallible teaching of the Church grounded upon its divine attributes of
Authority and Infallibility which is incapable of error and to which every
Catholic conscience is bound to assent on pain of heresy. Any Council that
“revolutionized” a “believer’s way of doing and thinking” is not Catholic by
definition for the task of the Church is to protect, defend and propagate God’s
revealed truth and not to “revolutionize” it. A “believer” can only be
“revolutionized” by revolting against the revealed truth. To claim that the
“(Vatican II) Council is the magisterium of the Church” is an indirect
profession of apostasy, for whatever “Church” that this is the “magisterium”
for, is not the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ. Vatican II does
represent a “new phase” in the history of the Church. Every “phase of (the
Church’s) history” is defined by the current errors of that age propagated by
her enemies and the Church’s response to those errors in the defense of truth
with dogmatic councils. Vatican II is not a response to any error but is rather
the error itself propagated by her enemies. Traditional Catholicism is the response
to the modern errors!
My heart was utterly filled with pain, all the more because it was of a
most fine and delicate nature; the pain went from my Heart into my nerves, from
my nerves back to my Heart: it kept on increasing so that my death-agony was
prolonged while I was thus immersed in suffering, I opened my eyes and saw my
dearest Mother overcome by a sea of anguish and tears, which pained me more
than my own sufferings; I also saw my friends overwhelmed with sorrow. With
this torture my Heart was actually rent by the force and fury of the pain; and
then it was that my soul went forth from my body…… There are few persons who
can imagine with what pain I remained fastened to the wood of the Cross, my
Heart being broken and shattered by its violence: quando Cor meum crepuit.
Jesus Christ addressing St. Bridget of Sweden, quoted by St. John
Eudes, The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Thy divine Heart was rent and broken in Thy dying, by the excess of Thy
love of me. This made Thee suffer such violent tortures for love of me that Thy
adorable Heart was broken by the force of the pain; so that I may say that Thou
didst die of pain and love for me. This can be repeated by each one of us with
equal truth.
St. Gertrude the Great, her address to our Lord Jesus Christ, quoted by
St. John Eudes, The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Positive and scholastic theology cannot be too highly praised. As it is the special work of the positive
Doctors to excite the affections and to lead men to love and serve God with all
their might; so it is rather the object of the scholastic Doctors, to define
and explain more exactly, in conformity
with the wants of our times, what is necessary for salvation, the better
to attack and to expose the errors and fallacies of the enemies of the
Church. The saying of Luther is well
known: “Get rid of Thomas, and I will rid you of the Church.”
St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus
“Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God,
holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience:
Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint
against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. But above
all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection.”
St. Paul, Col. 3: 12-13
“The pluralism and the diversity of
religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom,
through which He created human beings..... An insincere stance of openness to the other, as well as a corporatist
attitude, which reserves salvation exclusively to one’s own creed, is
destructive of the same creed. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus
explained this to the inquiring lawyer. Love lived in any religion pleases God.
‘Through an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into
truth and goodness.’”
Pope Francis approved Abu Dhabi document
COMMENT:
“For all the gods of the
Gentiles are devils”
(Ps. 96:5). Pope Francis is affirming that
the worship of idols is “willed
by God in His wisdom.” This is blasphemy but not a surprising
blasphemy from Francis the Blasphemer.
What Pope Francis calls a “corporatist
attitude, which reserves salvation exclusively to one's own creed” is the denial of a revealed truth of God
that has been dogmatically defined by the Catholic Church on three separate
occasions. It is a dogma that there is “no salvation outside the Catholic Church.”
The denial of this dogma is heresy by definition and anyone holding this
heresy cannot be saved. Furthermore,
membership in the Catholic Church also dogmatically requires profession of the
true faith and reception of the sacrament of Baptism.
In
the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus may very well have had in mind a
specific Samaritan man who received him as the Messiah through the calling by
the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Be that
as it may, are good works alone sufficient for salvation? Those that affirm this are Pelagian
heretics which is a favorite calumny that Francis mindlessly smears
Catholics faithful to tradition. But
unlike Francis, who accuses traditional Catholics of Pelagianism without a
shred of evidence, our accusations are supported with the bile that flows
routinely from Francis' mouth. The recognition
of Logos, “which
enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9), leads
to the regulation of life according to the natural law and is an essential
prerequisite to receiving the truth of the Gospel and the sacrament of Baptism,
but of itself, it with all the good works in the world, insufficient for
salvation. Jesus' conversation with the
Samaritan Woman itself destroys this heretical claim of Francis. According to Francis, the Samaritan Woman
could have been saved in her idolatrous and adulterous state.
What
every faithful Catholic must know is that the faith is the necessary and
sufficient cause of and the sign of unity in the Catholic Church. The pope is only secondarily and accidentally
the cause and sign of unity in the Catholic Church. When the pope falls from the faith he is to
be opposed to his face as St. Paul did to St. Peter (Galatians 2:11). Those who make the pope their proximate rule
of faith will follow Francis in his heresy and eventual apostasy. Those who keep dogma as their proximate rule
of faith will save their souls.
“It pleased God that in order to the rescuing of man from the power of
the Devil, the Devil should be conquered, not by might,
but by righteousness.… What, then, is the righteousness by which the Devil was
conquered? What, except the righteousness of Christ? In this redemption the
blood of Christ was given, as it were, as a price for us, by accepting which
the Devil was not enriched, but bound, that we might be loosed from his bonds.”
St. Augustine, quoted by Fr. Joseph Pohle, Dogmatic Theology, vol. 5
“And you shall
be hated by all men for my name's sake: but he that shall persevere unto the
end, he shall be saved” (Matt. 10:22).
Remember
in your charity:
Remember the welfare of our expectant mothers: Vanessa LoStrocco,
The Vargas’ request our prayers for the spiritual welfare of their
son, Nicholas,
Monica Bandlow petitions prayers for Kathy Simons, Regina Quinn, James Mulgrew and Ruth Beaucheane,
Fr. Waters requests prayers for the spiritual and physical welfare
of Frank McKee,
For the welfare of Lazarus
Handley, his mother, Julia,
and his brother, Raphael, with Down’s Syndrome, is the petition of Monica Bandlow,
Nancy
Bennett and Julia McDonald, for the recovery of their health,
Kathy Elias,
who is
gravely ill in hospital with heart problems,
Richard Giles, his conversion for a holy death,
Gabriel Schiltz, the daughter of Thomas Schiltz, for the recovery of
her health and spiritual strength,
For
the spiritual welfare of Mark Roberts,
a Catholic faithful to tradition,
Monica
Bandlow requests our prayers for the health and welfare of John Kopczynski,
Philip
Thees asks our prayers for the recovery of Bridget
McGuigan, recent hand injury,
Joe Sentmanet request prayers for Scott Nettles, who is gravely ill and in need of conversion,
Michael Brigg requests our prayers for the health of John Romeo,
The health and welfare of Gene
Peters who underwent recent cardiac surgery,
Conversion of Anton
Schwartzmueller, is the paryer request of his children,
Stacy Fernandez requests are prayers for the heath of Terry Patterson, Steven Becerra, and
Roberto Valez,
Christine
Kozin, for her
health and spiritual welfare,
Teresa
Gonyea, for her
conversion and health, is the petition of her grandmother, Patricia McLaughlin,
Nolan Moran, a three year old diagnosed with
brain tumor, and his family,
For the health of Sonia
Kolinsky,
Jackie Dougherty asks our prayers for her brother who is gravely
ill, John Lee,
Rose Bradley asks our prayers for the health and spiritual welfare
of her granddaughter, Meg Bradley,
Timothy
& Crisara, a couple
from Maryland have requested our prayers for their spiritual welfare,
Roger &
Mandy Owen Family,
for their welfare is the request of Monica Bandlow,
Celine
Pilegaard, the seven
year old daughter of Cynthia Pilegaard, for her recovery from burn injuries,
Rafaela de
Saravia, for her
health and welfare,
Mary Mufide, requests our prayers for her family,
Abbe Damien
Dutertre, traditional
Catholic priest arrested by Montreal police while offering Mass,
Francis
(Frank) X.
McLaughlin, for
the recovery of his health from a serious work injury,
Nicholas
Pell, for his
health and spiritual welfare is the petition of Camilla Meizer,
Mary Kaye
Petr, her health
and welfare is petitioned by Camilla Meizer,
The welfare of Excellency Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò,
The welfare of Rev. Fr. Martin Skierka, who
produces the traditional Ordo in the U.S.,
For the health and welfare of Katie
Wess, John Gentry, Vincent Bands, Todd Chairs, Susan Healy and James O’Gentry
is the petition of Camilia,
Marieann
Reuter, recovery of her health, Kathy Kepner, for her health, Shane Cox, for his health,
requests of Philip Thees,
Thomas
Thees, recently
hospitalized,
Thomas A.
Nelson, long time
faithful traditional Catholic the founder and former owner of TAN Books & Publishing, suffered a recent stroke,
The Joseph Cox Family,
their spiritual welfare,
The Thomas Dube Family, for
their conversion and spiritual welfare,
Luis Rafael
Zelaya, the
brother of Claudia Drew, who is seriously ill,
For the health of Kim
Cochran, the daughter-in-law of Joseph and Brenda Cochran, the wife of
their son Joshua,
Louie
Verrecchio, Catholic
apologist, who has a health problem,
John
Minidis, Jr. family, for help in their spiritual
trial,
John and Joann DeMarco, for their health and spiritual
welfare,
Regina
(Manidis) Miller, her
spiritual welfare and health,
Melissa
Elena Levitt, her
conversion, and welfare of her children,
For the grace of a holy death, Nancy Marie Claycomb,
The health and spiritual welfare of Tom Grow, Amanda Gardner, and Alex Estrada,
Conversion of Annette
Murowski, and her son Jimmy,
Brent Keith from Indiana has petitioned our prayers for the Keith Family,
The welfare of the Schmedes
Family, and the Mike and
Mariana Donohue Family,
The spiritual welfare Robert
Holmes Family,
For the spiritual and temporal welfare of Irwin Kwiat,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for Elvira Donaghy, 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 and he family members, living and
deceased,
Mary and
Bill Glatz, the
welfare of their family,
Barbara
Harmon, who is ill, and still cares for her ailing parents,
Jason Green, a father of ten children who
has been seriously injured,
For the health and welfare of Robert
Kolinsky and his family, and the Sorace
family,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for the
health and spiritual welfare of Brian
Abramowitz,
Thomas
Schiltz family, in
grateful appreciation for their contribution to the beauty of our chapel,
Welfare of Bishop
Richard Williamson, for strength and courage in the greater battles to
come,
John Rhoad, for his health and spiritual
welfare,
Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for her
welfare,
Joyce
Laughman and Robert Twist, for their conversions,
Michael J.
Brigg & his family,
who have helped with the needs of the Mission,
Nancy Deegan, her welfare and conversion to
the Catholic Church,
Francis Paul
Diaz, who was
baptized at Ss. Peter & Paul, asks our prayers for his spiritual welfare,
The conversion of Rene McFarland, Lori Kerr, Cary Shipman and family, David
Bash, Crystal and family, Larry Reinhart, Costanzo Family, Kathy Scullen,
Marilyn Bryant, Vicki Trahern and Time Roe are the petitions of
Gene Peters,
For the conversion of Ben
& Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf, Eckhard Ebert, and Fahnauer
family,
Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX 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,
Mel Gibson
and his family, please
remember in our prayers,
Rev. Timothy A. Hopkins requested our prayers for the welfare of his Fr Jean-Luc Lafitte,
Ebert’s request our prayers for the Andreas & Jenna Ortner Family,
Joyce Paglia has asked prayers for George Richard Moore Sr. & his children, and her
brother, George Panell,
For the welfare of Anthony
& Joyce Paglia, who are responsible for the beautiful statuary in
our chapel,
Philip Thees asks our prayers for his family, for McLaughlin Family, the welfare
of Dan & Polly Weand, the
conversion of Sophia Herman,
Tony Rosky, the welfare Nancy Erdeck, the wife of
the late Deacon Erdeck, John Calasanctis, Tony Rosky, James Parvenski and Kathleen Gorry.
Pray for the Repose of the Souls:
Thomas Thees, the brother of Philip, died June 19,
Juanita
Mohler, a friend of
Camella Meiser, died June 14,
Michelle
Donofrio McDowell, the
cousin of Monica Bandlow, died March 5, and Patricia Fabyanic, the Prefect of Our Lady’s Sodality, March
8,
Hernan
Ortiz, the brother
of Fr. Juan Carlos Ortiz, died February 3,
Mary Ann
Boyle, the mother
of a second order Dominican nun, a first order Dominican priest, and a SSPX
priest, died January 24,
John
DeMarco, who attended
this Mission in the past, died January23,
Charles
O’Brien, the father
of Marlene Cox, died December 30,
Kathleen
Donelly, died
December 29 at 91 years of age, ran the CorMariae website,
Monica Bandlow requests our prayers for the health and welfare of John Kinney, died December 21,
Matthew
O'Hare, most
faithful Catholic, died at age 40 on November 30,
Rev. Patrick
J. Perez, a Catholic
priest faithful to tradition, pastor Our Lady Help of Christians, Garden Grove,
CA, November 19,
Elizabeth
Benedek, died
December 14, requested by her niece, Agnes Vollkommer,
Dolores
Smith and Richard Costello, faithful Catholics, died November,
Frank
D’Agustino,a friend of
Philp Thees, died November 8,
Fr. Dominique
Bourmaud, of the SSPX,
Prior of St. Vincent in Kansas City, died September 4,
Pablo Daniel
Silva, the brother of Elizabeth Vargas,
died August 18,
Rose Bradley, a member of Ss. Peter & Paul,
died July 14,
Patricia
Ellias, died June 1,
recently returned to the Church died with the sacraments and wearing the brown
scapular,
Joan Devlin, the sister-in-law of Rose
Bradley, died May 18,
William
Muligan, died April
29, two days after receiving the last sacraments,
Robert
Petti, died March
19, the day after receiving the last sacraments,
Mark
McDonald, the father
of Kyle, who died December 26,
Perla Otero,
died
December 2020, Leyla Otero,
January 2021, cousins of Claudia Drew,
Mehmet
Rende, died
December 12, who was the father of Mary Mufide,
Joseph Gravish,
died
November 26, 100 year old WWII veteran and daily communicant,
Jerome
McAdams, the father
of, died November 30,
Rev. James
O’Hara, died
November 8, requested by Alex Estrada,
Elizabeth
Batko, the
sacristan at St. John the Baptist in Pottstown for over 40 years, died on First
Saturday November 7 wearing the brown scapular,
Fr. Anthony
Cekada, a
traditional Catholic priest, died September 11,
William Cox,
the father
of Joseph Cox, who died September 3,
James
Larson, Catholic
apologists, author of War Against Being publication, died July 6, 2020,
Hutton
Gibson, died May 12,
Sr. Regina
Cordis, Immaculate
Heart of Mary religious for sixty-five years, died May 12,
Victoria
Zelaya, the
sister-in-law of Claudia Drew, died March 20,
Ricardo
DeSilva, died
November 16, our prayers requested by his brother, Henry DeSilva,
Roland H.
Allard, a friend of
the Drew’s, died September 28,
Stephen
Cagorski and John Bogda, who
both died wearing the brown
scapular,
Cecilia
LeBow, a most faithful Catholic,
Rose Cuono, died Oct 23,
Sandra
Peters, the wife of
Gene Peters, who died June 10 receiving the sacraments and wearing our Lady’s
scapular,
Rev. Francis
Slupski, a priest who
kept the Catholic faith and its immemorial traditions, died May 14,
Martha
Mochan, the sister
of Philip Thees, died April 8,
George
Kirsch, our good
friend and supporter of this Mission, died February 15,
For Fr. Paul J. Theisz,
died October 17, is the petition of Fr. Waters,
Fr. Mecurio
Fregapane, died Jan
12, was not a traditional priest but always charitable,
Fr. Casimir
Peterson, a priest
who often offered the Mass in our chapel and provided us with sound advice,
died December 4,
Fr.
Constantine Bellasarius, a faithful and always charitable Eastern Rite Catholic Melkite
priest, who left the Roman rite, died November 27,
Christian
Villegas, a motor
vehicle accident, his brother, Michael, requests our prayers,
John Vennari, the former editor of Catholic
Family News, and for his family’s welfare,
Mary Butler, the aunt of Fr. Samuel Waters,
died October 17,
Joseph
DeMarco, the nephew
of John DeMarco, died October 3,
John Fergale, died September 25 after
receiving the traditional sacramental rites of the Church wearing the brown
scapular,
John Gabor, the brother of Donna Marbach,
died September 9,
Fr. Eugene
Dougherty, a faithful
priest, fittingly died on the Nativity of the BVM after receiving the
traditional Catholic sacraments,
Phyllis
Schlafly, died
September 5,
Helen
Mackewicz, died August
14,
Mark A.
Wonderlin, who died
August 2,
Fr. Carl
Cebollero, a faithful
priest to tradition who was a friend of Fr. Waters and Fr. DeMaio,
Jessica
Cortes, a young
mother of ten who died June 12,
Frances
Toriello, a life-long
Catholic faithful to tradition, died June3, the feast of the Sacred Heart, and
her husband Dan, died in
1985,
John
McLaughlin, a friend of
the Drew’s, died May 22,
Angela
Montesano, who died
April 30, and her husband, Salvatore, who died in
July 3, 2013,
Charles Schultz, died April 5, left behind nine children
and many grandchildren, all traditional Catholics,
Esperanza Lopez de Callejas, the aunt of
Claudia Drew, died March 15,
Fr. Edgardo Suelo, a faithful priest defending our
traditions who was working with Fr. Francois Chazal in the Philippines, died
February 19,
Conde McGinley, a long time laborer for the
traditional faith, died February 12, at 96 years,
The Drew family requests your prayers
for Ida Fernandez and Rita Kelley, parishioners at
St. Jude,
Fr. Stephen
Somerville, a
traditional priest who repented from his work with the Novus Ordo English
translation, died December 12,
Fr. Arturo
DeMaio, a priest
that helped this Mission with the sacraments and his invaluable advice, died
December 2,
J. Paul
Carswell, died
October 15, 2015,
Solange
Hertz, a great
defender of our Catholic faith, died October 3, the First Saturday of the
month,
Paula P.
Haigh, died
October 22, a great defender of our Catholic faith in philosophy and natural
science,
Gabriella
Whalin, the mother
of Gabriella Schiltz, who died August 25,
Mary
Catherine Sick, 14 year
old from a large traditional Catholic family, died August 25,
Fr. Paul
Trinchard, a
traditional Catholic priest, died August 25,
Stephen J.
Melnick, Jr., died on
August 21, a long-time faithful traditional Catholic husband and father, from
Philadelphia,
Patricia
Estrada, died July
29, her son Alex petitions our prayers for her soul,
Fr. Nicholas
Gruner, a devoted
priest & faithful defender of Blessed Virgin Mary and her Fatima message,
died April 29,
Sarah E.
Shindle, the
grandmother of Richard Shindle, died April 26,
Madeline
Vennari, the mother
of John Vennari, died December 19,
Salvador
Baca Callejas, the uncle
of Claudia Drew, died December 13,
Robert Gomez, who died in a motor vehicle
accident November 29,
Catherine
Dunn, died
September 15,
Anthony
Fraser, the son of
Hamish Fraser, died August 28,
Jeannette
Rhoad, the
grandmother of Devin Rhoad, who died August 24,
John Thees, the uncle of Philip Thees, died
August 9,
Sarah
Harkins, 32 year-old mother of four
children, died July 28,
Msgr. Donald
Adams, who offered
the Indult Mass, died April 1996,
Anita Lopez, the aunt of Claudia Drew,
Fr. Kenneth
Walker, a young
traditional priest of the FSSP who was murdered in Phoenix June 11,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for Gilberte Violette, the mother of
Fr. Violette, who died May 6,
Pete Hays petitions our prayers for his brothers, Michael, died May 9, and James, died October 20, his
sister, Rebecca, died March17, and his mother, Lorraine Hayes who died May 4,
Philip
Marbach, the father
of Paul Marbach who was the coordinator at St. Jude in Philadelphia, died April
21,
Richard
Slaughtery, the
elderly sacristan for the SSPX chapel in Kansas City, died April 13,
Bernedette
Marie Evans nee Toriello, the daughter of Daniel Toriello , died
March 31, a faithful Catholic who suffered many years with MS,
Natalie
Cagorski, died march
23,
Anita Lopez
de Lacayo, the aunt
of Claudia Drew, who died March 21,
Mario
Palmaro, Catholic
lawyer, bioethicist and professor, apologist, died March 9, welfare of his
widow and children,
Daniel Boyle, the uncle of Ryan Boyle, died
March 4,
Jeanne
DeRuyscher, who died
on January 25,
Arthur
Harmon, died
January 18,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for the
soul of Jeanne DeRuyscher,
who died January 17,
Joseph
Proctor, died
January 10,
Susan Scott, a devote traditional Catholic
who made the vestments for our Infant of Prague statue, died January 8,
Brother
Leonard Mary, M.I.C.M., (Fred Farrell), an early supporter and friend of Fr. Leonard
Feeney, died November 23,
John Fergale, requests our prayers for his
sister Connie, who died December 19,
Jim Capaldi, died December 15,
Brinton
Creager, the son of
Elizabeth Carpenter, died December 10,
Christopher
Lussos, age 27, the
father of one child with an expecting wife, died November 15,
Jarett
Ebeyer, 16 year
old who died in his sleep, November 17, at the request of the Kolinsky’s,
Catherine
Nienaber, the mother
of nine children, the youngest three years of age, killed in MVA after Mass,
10-29,
Nancy Aldera, the sister of Frances Toriello,
died October 11, 2013 at 105 years of age,
Mary Rita
Schiltz, the mother
of Thomas Schiltz, who died August 27,
William H.
(Teddy) Kennedy, Catholic
author of Lucifer’s Lodge, died August 14, age 49, cause of death unknown,
Alfred
Mercier, the father
of David Mercier, who died August 12,
The Robert Kolinsky asks our prayers for his friend, George Curilla, who died August
23,
John Cuono, who had attended Mass at our
Mission in the past, died August 11,
Raymond
Peterson, died July
28, and Paul Peterson, died
February 19, the brothers of Fr. Casimir Peterson,
Margaret
Brillhart, who died
July 20,
Msgr. Joseph
J. McDonnell, a priest
from the diocese of Des Moines, who died June 8,
Patrick
Henry Omlor, who wrote Questioning The Validity of the Masses using the New, All English Canon,
and for a series of newsletters which were published as The Robber Church, died
May 2, the feast of St Athanasius,
Bishop
Joseph McFadden, died
unexpectedly May 2,
Timothy
Foley, the
brother-in-law of Michelle Marbach Folley, who died in April,
William
Sanders, the uncle
of Don Rhoad, who died April 2,
Gene Peters ask our prayers for the repose of the soul of Mark Polaschek, who died March
22,
Eduardo
Gomez Lopez, the uncle
of Claudia Drew, February 28,
Cecelia
Thees, died
February 24,
Elizabeth
Marie Gerads, a nineteen year old, the oldest
of twelve children, who died February 6,
Michael
Schwartz, the
co-author with Fr. Enrique Rueda of “Gays, Aids, and You,” died February 3,
Stanley W.
Moore, passed
away in December 16, and Gerard (Jerry) R. Pitman, who died January 19, who
attended this Mission in the past,
Louis
Fragale, who died
December 25,
Fr. Luigi
Villa, Th.D. author of Vatican II About Face! detailing the heresies
of Vatican II, died November 18 at the age of 95,
Rev. Michael
Jarecki, a faithful
traditional Catholic priest who died October 22,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,
Stanley
Spahalski, who died
October 20, and his wife, Regina
Spahalski, who died June 24, and for the soul of Francis Lester, her son,
Julia
Atkinson, who died
April 30,
Antonio P.
Garcia, who died January
6, 2012 and the welfare of his teenage children, Andriana and Quentin,
Helen Crane, the aunt of David Drew who died
February 27,
Fr. Timothy
A. Hopkins, of the
National Shrine of St. Philomena, in Miami, November 2,
Frank Smith, who died February 7, and the
welfare of his wife, Delores,
Eduardo
Cepeda, who died
January 26,
Larry Young, the 47 year old father of
twelve who died December 10 and the welfare of his wife Katherine and their
family,
Sister Mary
Bernadette, M.I.C.M.,
a founding member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, died December
16,
Joeseph
Elias, who died
on September 28,
William, the brother of Fr. Waters, who
died September 7,
Donald
Tonelli, died
August 1,
Rev. Fr.
Gregory Hesse, of
Austria, a great defender of Catholic Truth, died January 25, 2006,
Emma
Colasanti, who died May 29,
Mary
Dullesse, who died
April 12, a Catholic convert who died wearing our
Lady’s scapular,
Ruth Jantsch, the grandmother of Andre Ebert,
who died April 7, Derrick and Denise Palengat, his godparents,
Philip D.
Barr, died March
5, and the welfare of his family,
Judith Irene
Kenealy, the mother
of Joyce Paglia, who died February 23, and her son, George Richard Moore, who
died May 14,
For Joe Sobran
who died September 30,
Fr. Hector
Bolduc, a great and
faithful priest, died, September 10, 2012,
John Vennari asks our prayers for Dr. Raphael Waters who died August 26,
Stanley
Bodalsky, the father
of Mary Ann Boyle who died June 25,
Mary Isabel
Kilfoyle Humphreys,
a former York resident and friend of the Drew’s, who died June 6,
Rev. John
Campion, who
offered the traditional Mass for us every first Friday until forbidden to do so
by Bishop Dattilo, died May 1,
Joseph
Montagne, who died May 5,
For Margaret Vagedes,
the aunt of Charles Zepeda, who died January 6,
Fr. Michael
Shear, a Byzantine
rite Catholic priest, died August 17, 2006,
Fr. James
Francis Wathen, died
November 7, 2006, author of The Great
Sacrilege and Who Shall Ascend?,
a great defender of dogma and liturgical purity,
Fr. Enrique
Rueda, who died
December 14, 2009, to whom our Mission is indebted,
Fr. Peterson asks to remember, Leonard Edward Peterson, his cousin, Wanda, Angelica Franquelli, and the six priests ordained with him.
Philip Thees petitions our prayers for Beverly Romanick, Deacon Michael Erdeck, Henry J. Phillips, Grace
Prestano, Connie DiMaggio, Elizabeth Thorhas, Elizabeth Thees, Theresa Feraker,
Hellen Pestrock, and James & Rose Gomata, and Kathleen Heinbach,
Fr. Didier
Bonneterre, the author
of The Liturgical Movement, and Fr. John Peek, both were traditional priests,
Brother
Francis, MICM, the
superior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, NH, who
died September 5,
Rodolfo
Zelaya Montealegre,
the father of Claudia Drew, who died May 24,
Rev. Francis
Clifford, a devout
and humble traditional priest, who died on March 7,
Benjamin
Sorace, the uncle
of Sonja Kolinsky
But how can these rites of expiation bring solace now, when Christ is
already reigning in the beatitude of Heaven? To this we may answer in some
words of St. Augustine which are very apposite here, --”Give me one who
loves, and he will understand what I say” (In Johannis evangelium, tract. XXVI, 4). For any one who has great love of God, if he will
look back through the tract of past time may dwell in meditation on Christ, and
see Him laboring for man, sorrowing, suffering the greatest hardships, “for
us men and for our salvation,” well-nigh worn out with sadness, with
anguish, nay “bruised for our sins” (Isaias liii, 5), and healing us by
His bruises. And the minds of the pious meditate on all these things the more
truly, because the sins of men and their crimes committed in every age were the
cause why Christ was delivered up to death, and now also they would of
themselves bring death to Christ, joined with the same griefs and sorrows,
since each several sin in its own way is held to renew the passion of Our Lord:
“Crucifying again to themselves the Son of God, and making him a mockery”
(Hebrews vi, 6). Now if, because of our sins also which were as yet in the
future, but were foreseen, the soul of Christ became sorrowful unto death, it
cannot be doubted that then, too, already He derived somewhat of solace from
our reparation, which was likewise foreseen, when “there appeared to Him an
angel from heaven” (Luke xxii, 43), in order that His Heart, oppressed with
weariness and anguish, might find consolation. And so even now, in a wondrous
yet true manner, we can and ought to console that Most Sacred Heart which is
continually wounded by the sins of thankless men, since --as we also read in
the sacred liturgy -- Christ Himself, by the mouth of the Psalmist complains
that He is forsaken by His friends: “My Heart hath expected reproach and
misery, and I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was
none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none” (Psalm Ixviii,
21).
Pius XI, Miserentissimus
Redemptor, On Reparation to the Sacred Heart
St. Paul says that Antichrist “sitteth
in the temple of God” . . . This is not the ancient Temple of Jerusalem,
nor a temple like it built by Antichrist, as some have thought, for then it
would be his own temple . . . this temple is shown to be a Catholic Church,
possibly one of the churches in Jerusalem or St. Peter’s in Rome, which is the
largest church in the world and is in the full sense “The Temple of God.” [.....] This false prophet
possibly at the behest of Antichrist usurps the papal supremacy… His assumed
spiritual authority and supremacy over the Church would make him resemble the
Bishop of Rome… He would be Pontifex Maximus, a title of pagan emperors, having
spiritual and temporal authority. Assuming authority without having it makes
him the False Prophet… Though he poses as a lamb, his doctrines betray him.
Fr. Herman B. Kramer, The Book of Destiny,
interpretation of Apocalypse
The Absolute Necessity of “Prayer and
Penance”
However, in the face of this satanic hatred
of religion, which reminds Us of the “mystery of iniquity” [Thess. 2, 7]
referred to by St. Paul, mere human means and expedients are not enough, and We
should consider ourselves wanting in Our apostolic ministry if We did not point
out to mankind those wonderful mysteries of light, that alone contain the
hidden strength to subjugate the unchained powers of darkness. When Our Lord,
coming down from the splendors of Thabor, had healed the boy tormented by the
devil, whom the disciples had not been able to cure,
to their humble question: “Why could not we cast him out?” He made reply in the
memorable words: “This kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting” [Matth.
17, 18-20]. It appears to Us, Venerable Brethren, that
these Divine words find a peculiar application in the evils of our times, which
can be averted only by means of prayer and penance.
Mindful then of our condition, that we are
essentially limited and absolutely dependent on the Supreme Being, before
everything else let us have recourse to prayer. We know through faith how great
is the power of humble, trustful, persevering prayer.
To no other pious work have ever been attached such
ample, such universal, such solemn promises as to prayer: “Ask and it shall be
given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. For
every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that
knocketh, it shall be opened” [Matth. 7, 7]. “Amen, amen I say to you, if you
ask the Father anything in my name He will give it you.”
And what object could be more worthy of our
prayer, and more in keeping with the adorable person of Him who is the only
“mediator of God and men, the Man Jesus Christ” [I Tim. 2, 5], than to beseech
Him to preserve on earth faith in one God living and true? Such prayer bears
already in itself a part of its answer; for in the very act of prayer a man
unites himself with God and, so to speak, keeps alive on earth the idea of God.
The man who prays, merely by his humble posture, professes before the world his
faith in the Creator and Lord of all things; joined with others in prayer, he
recognizes, that not only the individual, but human society as a whole has over
it a supreme and absolute Lord. …..The Divine Heart of Jesus cannot but be
moved at the prayers and sacrifices of His Church, and He will finally say to
His Spouse, weeping at His feet under the weight of so many griefs and woes:
“Great is thy faith; be it done to thee as thou wilt” [Matth. 15, 28.]. Pope Pius XI, Charitate Christi Compulsi,
On the Sacred Heart
Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
fountain of eternal life, Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love. You are my
refuge and my sanctuary. O my adorable and loving Savior, consume
my heart with the burning fire with which Yours is aflamed. Pour down on my
soul those graces which flow from Your love. Let my
heart be united with Yours. Let my will be conformed
to Yours in all things. May Your Will be the rule of
all my desires and actions. Amen. St.
Gertrude the Great
THE NINE FIRST FRIDAYS DEVOTION AND
THE TWELVE PROMISES OF THE SACRED HEART MADE TO ST. MARGARET MARY
· I WILL GIVE THEM ALL THE GRACES NECESSARY FOR THEIR STATE OF LIFE.
· I WILL GIVE PEACE IN THEIR FAMILIES
· I WILL CONSOLE THEM IN ALL THEIR TROUBLES.
· THEY SHALL FIND IN MY HEART AN ASSURED REFUGE DURING LIFE AND ESPECIALLY AT THE HOUR OF DEATH.
· I WILL POUR ABUNDANT BLESSINGS ON ALL THEIR UNDERTAKINGS.
· SINNERS SHALL FIND IN MY HEART THE SOURCE AND INFINITE OCEAN OF MERCY.
· TEPID SOULS SHALL BECOME FERVENT.
· FERVENT SOULS SHALL SPEEDILY RISE TO GREAT PERFECTION.
· I WILL BLESS THE HOMES IN WHICH THE IMAGE OF MY SACRED HEART SHALL BE EXPOSED AND HONORED.
· I WILL GIVE TO PRIESTS THE POWER TO TOUCH THE MOST HARDENED HEARTS.
· THOSE WHO PROPAGATE THIS DEVOTION SHALL HAVE THEIR NAME WRITTEN IN MY HEART, AND IT SHALL NEVER BE EFFACED.
· THE ALL-POWERFUL LOVE OF MY HEART WILL GRANT TO ALL THOSE WHO SHALL RECEIVE COMMUNION ON THE FIRST FRIDAY OF NINE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS THE GRACE OF FINAL REPENTANCE; THEY SHALL NOT DIE UNDER MY DISPLEASURE, NOR WITHOUT RECEIVING THE SACRAMENTS; MY HEART SHALL BE THEIR ASSURED REFUGE AT THE LAST HOUR.
Obstacles that Prevent Devotion to the Sacred Heart
1) TEPIDITY
“I would thou were cold or hot,” says our amiable Savior, “but because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” [Apoc. 3:15-16]. …A tepid soul is in a state of blindness caused by the passions ---- a state of continual dissipation ---- by the multitude of venial sins, and by the withdrawal of grace brought on by resistance. This blindness brings the formation of a false conscience, causing the person to have neither the will nor courage to correct serious venial sins. What renders this state more dangerous and what compels Jesus Christ to reject a tepid soul from His Heart, is that it is, in a certain sense, desperate, because tepidity is rarely if ever cured.
As sins committed by a tepid soul are not gross and scandalous, but are often purely interior, taking place only in the heart, they escape the attention of a lax conscience. Thus, it does not know the greatness of its evils, takes no pain to remedy them; whereas a great sinner is more in a state to be touched by his disorders and to conceive a horror for them because he knows them. It is in this sense that Our Savior says that it is better to be cold than tepid. As soon as a person begins to live in tepidity, he seeks himself in everything, continually looks for what will give pleasure. The marks by which a person can recognize whether he is in this dangerous state of tepidity are the effects produced on a tepid soul:
A) great
negligence in all prayers, Confessions without amendment, Communions without
preparation;
B) occupation
with trifles;
C) a perverse habit of doing all one’s actions
without any interior spirit, but by whim and custom;
D) sloth
in acquiring the virtues proper to one’s state;
E) disgust for spiritual things.
2)
SELF-LOVE
It
is only too true that people who are not influenced in their actions by
self-love are very rare; Self-love dictates that the practices of virtue to be
adopted are those which gives us the least trouble and suit our tastes best. We
try to persuade ourselves that God does not demand such high sanctity from us,
although He has given us great graces, or placed us in a state that demands the
highest sanctity. We refuse to recognize the will of God when it contradicts
our self-love. The reason is that, in truth, it is not the will of God
that we take as our rule of conduct, but our own inclination . . . . We content
ourselves with mere external rule, with natural or affected modesty, with
apparent virtue which is the fruit of education, not grace . . . . we imagine that we have much virtue because we do not show
many faults. From this source of self-love come those sterile desires,
those fantastic projects on which naturally proud people feed. Certain
grandiose projects are proposed but they take no further action to acquire
holiness.
3) SECRET PRIDE
Secret pride is no less an obstacle to the love of Jesus Christ; in fact, there is no greater obstacle to perfection, than the spirit of vanity by which most people are dominated, Vanity feeds on its practice. Even our victories are weapons which the devil makes use against us, profiting by them to inspire us with pride. It may be said that of all the vices there is none which stopped more souls on the road to piety. From this spirit of vanity comes the immoderate desire to appear important and the extreme eagerness to succeed in everything we do ---- we labor for our own glory, and not the glory of God.
This same spirit infiltrates into the exercise of the greatest virtues, we become with our virtues, it is edifying; from this same source proceed most faults. Pride makes people wish to be popular, to possess the esteem and affection of everyone, with the result that they prefer to dispense themselves from their obligations rather than to disoblige anyone, and what is more strange, they try to cover this ambition under the specious pretexts of honesty and charity. People try to please God and man at the same time, and in doing so do not please God and often fail to please men.
From the same source spring delicacy on points of honor, cooling of friendship, grief resembling envy though not so malicious, secret pain at the success of others. The success of others is always attributed to accident; we are sensitive to the least offensive word, we will not pardon others if they are wanting in what we claim to be our rights.
Finally, some people pass for pious and think themselves so, who are guided by mere worldly prudence disguised under the name of common sense; it is even according to this false rule that they judge spiritual things. They limit the action of God in themselves and others according to the maxims of human prudence.
4) SOME UNMORTIFIED PASSION
The fourth obstacle to the devotion and the fourth source from which these defects arise that smother the love of Jesus Christ and consequently, devotion to the Sacred Heart, are certain unmortified passions, which sooner or later will be the cause of some great evil; they make war on all their passions, but somehow there is one predominate one which they spare, there is something which they regard as very dear, and which they will not touch. They kill the spirit of the world in themselves, but are pleased to see it in others, they moderate their outbursts of anger, but harbor jealously; they mortify the external display but spend hours in witless conversations, under the pretext of amiability.
Finally, there are generous souls who resolve to conquer all obstacles and who make serious efforts, but who will not go against their natural bent; they spare some failing that is in harmony with their inclination, and this one enemy spared, this one unmortified passion, makes them limp along all their lives, and prevents them from arriving at this high perfection to which they are called. A small leak will sink a great ship, a single spark will cause a great fire; a single defect is sufficient to spoil an otherwise beautiful painting. We are sometimes astonished at seeing people who have grown old in the exercises of piety, really spiritual people and very mortified, who have, however, great imperfections which they condemn in others, but which they will not correct in themselves. These are great obstacles to the pure love of Jesus Christ and to the devotion to the Sacred Heart. True love of Jesus Christ will not endure these imperfections; this tepidity and secret pride.
Fr. John Croiset, S. J., The Devotion to the Sacred Heart
“It has
spared nothing…”
One day (in 1690), when, according to her custom during the octave of Corpus Christi, St. Margaret Mary was deeply engaged in devotions before the Blessed Sacrament, the divine Savior appeared to her, showed her His Heart burning with love, and said: “Behold this Heart, which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of love. And what is most painful to Me is that they are hearts consecrated to Me. It is for this reason I ask thee that the first Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi be appropriated to a special feast to honor My Heart by communicating on that day and making reparation for the indignity that it has received. And I promise that My Heart shall dilate to pour out abundantly the influences of its love on all that will render it this honor or procure its being rendered.”
Margaret obeyed, but met everywhere the greatest opposition, until finally, when she became mistress of novices, she succeeded, by the help of her divine Spouse, in animating her young charges to venerate the sacred Heart of Jesus. But this was not sufficient for her zeal. She persevered until she softened the opposition of the nuns, and kindled in all an equal devotion towards the most sacred Heart. Thence the devotion spread to the adjoining dioceses, where confraternities in honor of the most sacred Heart of Jesus soon sprung up. Pope
Novena to SS. Peter and Paul
[Novena begins June 20]
O glorious SS. Peter and Paul, filled with compassion for those who
invoke you, with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of my
troubles, I kneel at your feet and humbly beg you to take my present need under
your special protection (mention intention).
As disciples of Christ and the first pastors of
the early Church you both knew disappointment and suffering. Lead me out of my troubles as you have so
many to Christ our Lord. Cease not to
intercede for me until my request is granted.
Above all, obtain for me the grace to one day meet God face to face, and
with you and Mary and all the angels and saints praise Him through all eternity.
O most powerful SS. Peter and Paul, do not let me lose my soul, but obtain for me the grace of winning my way to heaven.
O holy Apostles, Peter and Paul, I choose you this day and forever to
be my special patrons and advocates; thee, Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles,
because thou art the Rock, upon which Almighty God hath built His Church; thee,
Saint Paul, because thou wast fore-chosen by God as the Vessel of election and
the Preacher of truth in the whole world.
Obtain for me, I pray you, lively faith, firm hope and burning love;
unshakable confidence in the merciful providence of God, complete detachment
from myself, contempt of the world, patience in adversity, humility in
prosperity, attention in prayer, purity of heart, a right intention in all my
works, diligence in fulfilling the duties of my state of life, constancy in my
resolutions, resignation to the will of God and perseverance in the grace of
God even unto death; that so, by means of your intercession and your glorious
merits, I may be able to overcome the temptations of the world, the flesh and
the devil, and may be made worthy to appear before the chief and eternal
Shepherd of souls, Jesus Christ, who with the
Father and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth for endless ages, to enjoy
His presence and love Him forever. AMEN
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.
V. Thou shalt make them princes
over all the earth,
R.
They shall be mindful of Thy name, O Lord.
“Death, properly speaking, is not
that which separates body and soul, but that which separates the soul from
God. God is life, and he who is cut off
from Him, perishes.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria
“The virtue of fortitude protects a person from
loving his life so much that he loses it.”
Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the
Virtues of the Human Heart
“Prayer draws
its merits from charity; but its imperative efficacy comes from faith and
confidence.”
St. Thomas
“Only take heed to yourself
and guard your soul diligently.” (Deut 4:9)
“It is a sin to
believe there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!”
Blessed
Pope Pius IX
When Pope Francis teaches that Catholics living in a state of adultery
can under certain circumstances receive Holy Communion without repenting of
Sin, he overturns the First Principle of Catholic Moral Theology and thus
destroys all Morality permitting any and every kind of sin.
St. Thomas lists the following as principles or sources of morality: 1)
the moral object, that is, that to which the action tends of its very nature primarily and necessarily; 2) the circumstances of the act; 3) the purpose of the
act.
FIRST PRINCIPLE:
The primary and essential morality of a human act is derived from the object
considered in its moral aspect.
The primary and essential morality of a human act is that which acts as
the invariable basis of any additional morality. Now it is the moral object
which provides such a foundation. This will be clear from an example. The moral
object of adultery is the transgression of another’s marriage rights. This moral object remains the
invariable basis of the moral character of the act, no matter what further
circumstances or motives accompany the act. It cannot be objected that
in human acts the first consideration should be given to the motive rather than
to the object of the act. For this motive is either the objective purpose of
the act itself which is identical with the moral object, or the subjective
purpose (the end of the agent) which presupposes moral goodness or evil in the
object.
Rev. Dominic Prummer, O.P., Handbook
of Moral Theology
How
Far Modern Judaism is identified with Freemasonry
Although the Jewish role in Freemasonry is for many reasons difficult
to deal with, some acquaintance with that aspect of the subject is essential
for an intelligent grasp of the whole. It is a common belief among Catholics
and others that Freemasonry is somehow or other closely associated with modern
Judaism. Our present purpose is to discuss how far such a belief is
well-founded, and what is the nature of the relations between
the two. We may say at once that the available evidence points at least
to the following general conclusions: 1) That much of the external trappings of
Freemasonry, such as its ritual, its terminology, its legends, etc., are of
Jewish origin; 2) that the philosophy or religion of esoteric Freemasonry (that
is of the inner circles and controlling power) is practically identical with
the doctrines of the Jewish Cabala, which is the religion of philosophy of a
certain section of the Jews; 3) that a certain group, probably very few in
number, but of immense influence and power, are leading Freemasons; and 4) that
a somewhat larger group of very influential Jews pursue the same ends as
Freemasons, and use similar means, and are at least in close alliance with them.
Rev. E. Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement,
1930.
“Every judgment of conscience, be it right or
wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is
obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.”
St. Thomas Aquinas
Behold, then, the whole of Christian perfection: - love and sacrifice. Who cannot, with God's grace, fulfill this
twofold condition? Is it, indeed, so difficult to love Him Who
is infinitely lovable and infinitely loving? The love that He asks of us is
nothing extraordinary; it is the devotedness of love - the gift of oneself -
consisting chiefly in conformity to the divine will. To want to love is to
love. To keep the commandments for God's sake is to love. To pray is to love.
To fulfill our duties of state in view of pleasing God, this is likewise to
love. Nay more, to recreate ourselves, to take our means with the like
intention is to love. To serve our neighbor for God's sake is to love. Nothing
then is easier, God's grace helping, than the constant exercise of divine love
and through this, steady advance toward perfection.
As for sacrifice, doubtless
it seems hard. But we are not asked to love it for its own sake. It is enough
if we love it for God's sake, or, in other words if we realize that here on
earth one cannot love God without renouncing whatever is an obstacle to His
love. Then sacrifice becomes first tolerable and soon even lovable. Does not a
mother passing long, sleepless nights at the bedside of her son joyously
undergo fatigue when she entertains the hope and, more especially, when she has
the certainty of thereby saving his life? Now, when we accept for the sake of
God the sacrifices He demands, we have not only the hope, but the certainty
itself, of pleasing Him, of giving His glory and of working out the salvation
of our own souls. In this, have we not for our encouragement the example and
the help of the God-Man? Has He not suffered as much as and even more than we
ourselves suffer, for the glory of His Father and the salvation of our souls.
Shall we, His disciples, incorporated into Him in Baptism, nourished with His
Body and Blood, shall we hesitate when we are to suffer together with Him, for
His love and for His intentions? Is it not true that in the Cross there is
gain, especially for loving heats? "In the Cross" says the author of
the Imitation, "is salvation; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is
protection from enemies. In the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness."
We shall conclude with the words of St. Augustine: "There are no labors
too great for loving heats. In fact, one finds pleasure therein, as we observe
in the case of the fisherman fishing, the hunter at the chase, the merchant at the mart. For where there is love, there is
no labor, or if there be labor, it is a labor of love." Let us then hasten
toward perfection by this path of love and sacrifice.
Rev. Adolphe Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life
“More lace, but where are we? Sixty years after the Council! A little
updating also in liturgical art, liturgical fashion! Yes, sometimes bringing
some grandmother's lace goes, but sometimes. It's to pay homage to grandma,
isn't it?”
Pope Francis, mocking Sicilian bishops and priest in public meeting, June
9, 2022
Islamophobia?
In the 14th century, Clement V bemoaned that in Christian lands one
hears “the public invocation of the sacrilegious name of Mahomet”; in the 15th
century, Callixtus III denounced Islam as a “diabolical sect.” Pius II warned
against Muhammad as a “false prophet,” and Pope Eugene condemned “the
abominable sect of Mahomet”; in the 16th century Pope Leo X portrayed the
Muslims as replacing the light of salvation with “totally unyielding blindness”;
and in the 18th century, Pope Benedict XIV castigated Christians who indirectly
promote “the errors of Mohammed” when they take Muslim names in order to avoid
taxation and other penalties by Muslim authorities.
And there was harsh criticism of Islam in past centuries by saints such
as Thomas Aquinas, or John of Damascus, who called Islam “diabolical.”
“Evil”? “Diabolical”? Overly harsh allegations? Many
of us know good individual Muslims. But can the religion they belong to be evil? [.....]
Pope Francis said,
“Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for
true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for
authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form
of violence.”
[.....] But
in view of the hateful attitude toward other religions shown throughout Islamic
scriptures, as well as the massive numbers of murders and church-burnings and
persecutions we’ve seen for decades now, was such praise simply wishful
thinking? Condemnations
of obvious features of Islam are almost
non-existent in today’s Church. [.....]
And as to “the religion
of peace,” it’s time to take into account the traditional Muslim interpretation
of “peace.” The world is divided into two “houses” – the House of Peace (Dar
Al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar Al-Harb). Only Muslims are within that
first “house.”
Howard Kainz, Emeritus Professor at Marquette University
“Be bold and break with half measures and compromises; with mixing and
matching teachings and compromising principles. If you continue to believe that
you can ‘come to an arrangement’ with Heaven, that the rights of God are not so
pressing, that some words of the Gospel and of the Church can be chosen and
others not; if you believe that the Faith is nothing but a cupboard in which
certain ingredients are stored and occasionally used to appease the conscience,
and that it should not enter into the particulars of everyday life; if you do
not want to take the Faith in its truth and the Gospel in its bareness, if you
are not willing to be a Christian in all places and situations, to be nothing
other than a Christian, integral and absolute, without calculated interests,
you will, in fact, not understand this book — put it down….. Be one, walking on your only path toward your
only destination, without wandering either to the left or to the right. Are you
resolved to be a Christian? To be one completely? To be one exclusively? Come, I will tell you what it means
to be a Christian and how to become one.”
Dom François de Sales Pollien, Carthusian prior and spiritual director,
prologue to Lived Christianity
y
“Why, I ask, O
damnable sodomites, do you seek after the height of ecclesiastical dignity with
such burning ambition?”
St. Peter Damian,
Doctor of the Church
“Restorationism has come to gag the Council. The number of groups of
‘restorers’ – for example, in the United States there are many – is
significant. An Argentine bishop told me that he had been asked to administer a
diocese that had fallen into the hands of these ‘restorers.” They has never accepted the Council. There are ideas, behaviors
that arise from a restorationism that basically did not accept the Council. The
problem is precisely this: in some contexts, the Council has not yet been
accepted. It is also true that it takes a century for a Council to take root.
We still have 40 years to make it take root, then! [To doubt
the Council is] in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who
guides the Church.”
Pope Francis the Incredulous, interview from May 19, 2022 published in
La Civiltà Cattolica on June 14
COMMENT: Gee, only 40 more years of mindless
babble? That is hard to believe. Who would have thought that mindless babble
could be sustained for 60 years? Yet there is no shortage of mindless clerical
babblers. What is disturbing is this persistent effort to blame God for the
destruction of the Church since the end of Vatican II. God, as every mindful
person knows, was not invited to Vatican II. It was from the beginning to the
end a purely human endeavor, a work of the personal non-infallible magisterium
of clerics grounded upon their grace of state. To attribute this sinful,
heretical Council of the DoubleSpeak to God may be one of those ‘sins that will
not be forgiven in this world or the next.’ Making the accusation of
“restorationism” is actually an open admission of corruption. Restore is
derived from the Latin restaurare
meaning to renew, to rebuild. Once the punishment promised at Fatima has
cleared the traitors from Rome, the Restorationists will have their work cut
out for them to do what Restorationists do, that is, to “renew, rebuild,” but
fear not, ‘with God, all things are possible.’
Is this the
end of Pope Francis?
The cruel
pontiff is lining up a successor
UnHerd
| England | Damian Thompson | June 9, 2022
For well over a year, a nasty rumour has been floating through the
Vatican that Pope Francis is terminally ill with cancer. I was told it was true
by an Italian prelate in an apartment just a stone’s throw from the hostel
where the 85-year-old pontiff is now pushed around in a wheelchair. A
diplomatic source discussed it ruefully over an espresso in the Borgo Pio. A well-connected American traditionalist Catholic texted that it
was “definitely true!” — the exclamation mark
suggesting that he wasn’t too distressed.
Then, on Sunday morning, the Associated
Press reported that “Italian and Catholic media have been rife with unsourced
speculation that Francis might be planning to follow in Benedict’s footsteps”
by resigning, “given his increased mobility problems”.
The reason for the speculation? The Pope has announced that in August he’s
visiting the Italian city of Aquila, where he will pray at the tomb of Pope
Celestine V, a hermit who resigned the papacy in 1294 after only five months.
Benedict XVI also prayed at the tomb in 2009 — and in 2013 he became the first
pope since Celestine to resign.
Moreover, Francis will travel to Aquila in the middle of a consistory
at which he will create 16 cardinals who can vote in the next conclave, thus
ensuring that 60% of the electors have been picked by him. This is called
“stacking the deck” so that the next successor of St Peter is in your own
image. Most popes do it, but very few with the partisan determination of
Francis since he took office nine years ago. Also, he’s holding the consistory
three months ahead of schedule.
The cancer story and the Aquila one aren’t mutually exclusive. If
Francis is as ill as the rumour-mongers suggest — and I’ve heard gruesomely
detailed descriptions of spreading tumours — then the August consistory and
visit to Celestine’s tomb mean he can stage a dramatic exit immediately after
his last opportunity to pack the college of cardinals.
The one thing the two rumours have in common is that no one has
produced a shred of evidence to back them up. On Tuesday the Washington
Post quoted a senior Vatican official “speaking on the condition of
anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue” — i.e. Francis’s health. He said: “His
situation isn’t brilliant, but it’s not enough to impose a resignation.”
However, in the same article Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology
at Villanova University, Philadelphia, said that: “What is clear is that his
pontificate has entered his declining final stage… He is aware that he is
approaching the end of his pontificate.”
That’s interesting, because Faggioli is an uber-loyalist. He’s one of
the founding members of “Team Francis”, a group of journalists and other
commentators whose near-deification of this pope wouldn’t be out of place in
North Korea. Faggioli has made a career out of his laudatory analysis of
Francis; many Catholics on Twitter tease him for it, at which point (and I
speak from experience) he immediately blocks them.
“Declining final stage”? Francis doesn’t look like he’s dying: he’s
just a fat man in a wheelchair. There’s nothing wrong with his faculties. He continues to charm visitors
and, when it comes to internal church politics, he’s more vindictive than ever.
(Giving a red hat to Archbishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, a hardline liberal
who favours giving Communion to pro-abortion politicians, was a masterstroke of
revenge against Francis’s least favourite people in the world: American
conservative bishops.)
Perhaps “declining final stage” is just the sound of a worried Faggioli
jumping ship while he still has time. As a Vatican diplomat puts it: “Common
sense tells us that Pope Francis is nearer the end than the beginning of his
time in office. Those people who talk about him as if he’s this great reformer
who’s going to live for ever just look ridiculous. The new pope, whether he’s
liberal or conservative, won’t be interested in their flattery.”
Team Francis aren’t popular in Rome these days. The best kept secret
of this pontificate, at least so far as the general public in concerned, is
that Jorge Bergoglio is not, and never has been, a nice man. He made so
many enemies in Argentina that he hasn’t dared set foot in his native country
since being elected pope. He was involved in some jaw-dropping scandals there,
most shockingly his attempt to protect his child abuser ally Fr Julio Grassi
from justice. He’s lucky that the Vatican press corps is too afraid of him to
investigate them properly.
Francis has a
streak of cruelty in him, and recently he’s done little to hide it. Last
year his authoritarian attempt to crush regular celebrations of the traditional
Latin Mass offended hundreds of bishops who don’t like that style of worship
but dislike the Argentinian pontiff even more. They have quietly ignored the
ruling, much to the fury of the papal liturgy chief, a painfully self-important
Yorkshireman called Arthur Roche who will be made a cardinal in August.
But liturgical matters won’t loom large at the next conclave, whenever
it is. Sexual morality will. Francis has spent nearly a decade casting doubt on
the wisdom of Catholic teaching on divorce and homosexuality — but without
making any formal changes to the rules. Never before will a conclave have been
forced to debate such fundamental questions. And, up to a point, it will be
operating in the dark. Francis has a policy of not summoning the cardinals to
meet as a single body, which means many of them haven’t even met each other and
don’t know who thinks what.
It’s likely, however, that the most contentious topic will be
homosexuality, and this is where the labels “liberal” and “conservative” are
misleading. Left-wing cardinals from the developing world, of whom Francis has
created plenty, may countenance a more relaxed attitude towards
divorced-and-remarried Catholics, but the thought of homosexuality turns their
stomachs.
That may push them towards a moderate conservative such as Cardinal
Péter Erdő of Hungary, a charming and self-effacing scholar who, when
called upon to preside over a synod of bishops at the Vatican in 2014, suddenly
looked and sounded like a pope. It certainly rules out Cardinal Jean-Claude
Hollerich of Luxembourg, president of the European Conference of Bishops and a
Jesuit thinker of far greater distinction than Pope Francis, who wants the
Church to recognise gay relationships.
At the moment, however, all eyes are on Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the
rake-thin bicycling Archbishop of Bologna, 66, who is gay-friendly while
unobtrusively sticking to the line that homosexual acts are sinful. That could
be enough to satisfy the African cardinals. Zuppi’s political credentials are
likely to help him: he’s associated with the centre-Left Sant’Egidio movement,
which is obsessed with pulling strings — no bad thing during a conclave. He’s
also nice to traditionalists: as a bishop he asked them to teach him how to
celebrate the old Mass, and he hasn’t clamped down on it in his diocese.
But the smart money, as in most conclaves, will be on “none of the
above”. Except on rare occasions, the number of ballots means the white smoke
is followed by a murmur of surprise. But I’ll make one prediction. Bishops all
over the world are sick of being bullied by the Vatican. The new pope won’t be
a Francis II either in name or in his approach to governing the Church. When
this pope goes, that mould will be broken, and there probably isn’t a single
cardinal who wants to piece it together again.
Why Vatican II popes deny the reality of Substance!
“Certainly there is to be development and on the largest scale. Who can
be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development
of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each
thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from
one thing into another. The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all,
of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and
vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only
along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same
meaning and the same import.”
St. Vincent of Lèrins
COMMENT: Change can be either accidental
(a “development” according to St. Vincent) or substantial (an “alteration” according to St. Vincent). A boy
growing to manhood constitutes a series of accidental
changes. A boy changing into a dog constitutes a substantial change and this only happens in Hollywood fantasy. A
sinner becoming a saint is an accidental
change and this is an accidental
change that the Neo-modernist heretics refuse to make. They instead want the
Church to substantially change into
an institution that will accommodate their love and complacency in sin. Pope Francis,
for example, says that the morality of capital punishment has evolved to the
point that it is now known to be intrinsically evil in that it is ‘opposed to
the dignity of man and contrary to the spirit of the gospel.’ Capital
punishment changing from a morally permissible to intrinsically evil act
constitutes a substantial change and
therefore impossible as a legitimate development. There are many reasons why
Neo-modernists, like Pope Francis and his conciliarists predecessors, deny the
reality of substance but this is an
important one. Trying to enroll St. Vincent of Lèrins in their defense is not a
misunderstanding but just another lie.
“Jesus does not condemn them for having denied and abandoned him during
his passion, but instead grants them the spirit of forgiveness. The Spirit is the first gift of
the risen Lord, and is given above all for the forgiveness of sins. Here
we see the beginning of the Church, the glue that holds us together, the cement
that binds the bricks of the house: forgiveness. Because forgiveness is
gift to the highest degree; it is the greatest love of all. It preserves
unity despite everything, prevents collapse, and consolidates and strengthens.
Forgiveness sets our hearts free and enables us to start afresh.
Forgiveness gives hope; without forgiveness, the Church is not built up.”
Pope Francis, excerpt for Pentecost address
COMMENT: The “first gift of the
risen Lord” is Faith in His divine resurrection. Faith is the cause and sign of
Unity in the Church. In Pope Francis’
address on ‘unity in diversity and diversity in unity’ he does not once mention
the word “faith.” “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” It is Faith that is “the glue
that holds us together, the cement that binds the bricks of the house.”
Faith is preliminary to and necessary for the forgiveness of any sin.
The virtue of Wisdom is the knowledge of the most important truths in their
proper order. Pope Francis never places
Catholic truths in their proper order of reference which in the end corrupts
truth. Why? Because Faith is an obstacle to the unity with
Pope Francis.
“[Catholic] fundamentalists, have a nostalgia for returning to the ashes.... Tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the container of the ashes,.... Tradition is like roots [of a tree], which give us nutrition to grow,... You will not become like the roots. You will flower, grow, give fruit. And the seeds become roots for other people..... The tradition of the church is always in movement.... The tradition does not safeguard the ashes”
Pope Francis the Destroyer, another high altitude, hypoxic babble on a
flight to Rome.
COMMENT: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the grand-daughter of the French National Front founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, applied a quotation of Gustav Mahler in a new context, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” Tradition is not the “root” of the tree, it is the tree itself, and trees are not “always in movement.” They are in fact ‘rooted’ and stable.
Tradition is firstly as a noun refers to content of divine revelation. This content is incarnate in our immemorial Catholic traditions which are the perfect images of the Catholic faith. These images are the means by which the faith is known and communicated to others. The Neo-iconoclasts destroy these images as the means to destroy the faith itself. For Francis, Tradition is obstacle that must be overcome if he is to overthrow the Catholic faith. He therefore considers how tradition has always been understood by the Church as “ashes.”
The verb form of tradition refers to the actual handing-on of the content of divine revelation to the next generation of Catholics. As St. Paul said, “For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread” (I Cor. 11:23). What St. Paul “delivered” is exactly the same as what he first “received,” and this is called Tradition.
“Have in mind therefore in what manner thou hast received and heard: and observe, and do penance. If then thou shalt not watch, I will come to thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know at what hour I will come to thee” (Apoc. 3:3). This is the warning to the Church in Sardis. What was their sin? They had not kept the traditions they received and therefore St. John writes, “And to the angel of the church of Sardis, write: These things saith he, that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast the name of being alive: and thou art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die. For I find not thy works full before my God” (Apoc. 3:1-2). The Catholics of Sardis were not faithful to what they had “received.” When the faith is corrupted by corrupting its images, the corruption of morals necessarily follows, therefore, their “works” were “dead,” that is, they had fallen from the grace of God.
By the light of Francis, tradition received is not what is passed on. What is passed on is different and no longer shares an identity between father and son with every generation. Francis is a Neo-modernist Neo-iconoclast. Those that follow him will lose their souls because “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). And without the images of the faith it is impossible to have the faith.
Therefore, faithful Catholics today, unlike those of Sardis, must “watch” lest their traditions be trampled into ashes by Francis the Destroyer.
This is why the key phrase for responding is one which the Church
constantly uses, as I do: it is ‘responsible parenthood’. How does this
work? With dialogue. Each person with his
or her pastor has to try to exercise this responsible parenthood. The
example I mentioned just now, about the woman who was expecting her eight child and already had seven caesarean births: this is a form
of irresponsibility.
[Some might say:] ‘No, I trust in God’. ‘But, look, God gives you the means, be
responsible.’ Some people believe that -- pardon my language – in order
to be good Catholics, we should be like rabbits. No. Responsible
parenthood.
Pope Francis, Homosexual Lobby CEO
Modernists and Neo-Modernists
are willfully blind to Essence, that
is, they are in the end the most heatless of all!
“Here is my secret. It
is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential
is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost ever the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright
wings.
Rev. Gerard Manley Hopkins
Abp. Viganò:
Pope Francis has chosen his new cardinals for their ‘corruptibility’
Until this
sect of corrupters and fornicators is thrown out of the temple, we will not be
able to hope that civil society will be any better than those who ought to be
edifying it rather than scandalizing it.
June 3, 2022– If we could ask Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Pius
V, Blessed Pius IX, Saint Pius X, and Venerable Pius XII what was the basis of their assessments
in deciding on which Prelates to bestow the sacred scarlet of the cardinalate,
we would hear from each of them, without exception, that the main requirement
for becoming princes of the Holy Roman Church is holiness of life, excellence
in particular virtues, erudition in the ecclesiastical disciplines, wisdom in
the exercise of authority, and faithfulness to the Apostolic See and the Vicar
of Christ.
Many of the Cardinals created by these popes went on to become popes
themselves; others distinguished themselves for their contribution to the
government of the Church; still others merited to be elevated to the glory of
the altars and to be proclaimed Doctors of the Church, like Saint Charles
Borromeo and Saint Robert Bellarmine.
Likewise, if we could ask the cardinals created by Saint Gregory the
Great, Saint Pius V, Blessed Pius IX, Saint Pius X, and Venerable Pius XII how
they considered the dignity to which they had been elevated, they would have
responded, without exception, that they felt themselves to be unworthy of the
role they held and confident that they would receive the assistance of the
Grace of state.
All of these, from the most famous to the least known, considered it
essential for their own sanctification to give proof of absolute fidelity to
the immutable Magisterium of the Church, heroic witness to the Faith by the
preaching of the Gospel and the defense of revealed truth, and filial obedience
to the See of Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the successor of the prince of the
Apostles.
Anyone who would
today pose these questions to the one who is seated on the throne and to those
whom he has elevated to the cardinalate would discover with great scandal that
the appointment of cardinals is considered to be the same as any prestigious
appointment in a civil institution, and that it is not the virtues required for
the office of cardinal that lead to the choice of this or that candidate, but
rather his level of corruptibility, his blackmailability, and his adherence to
this or that political current.
And the same, indeed perhaps worse, would happen if one were to presume
that, just as in the things of God the Lord’s ministers must be examples of
holiness, so also in the things of Caesar those who govern are guided by the
virtues of government and moved by the common good.
The cardinals appointed by the Bergoglian church are perfectly
consistent with that deep church of which they are an expression, just as the
ministers and functionaries of state are chosen and appointed by the deep
state. And if this happens, it is because the crisis of authority which we have
been witnessing in the world for centuries and in the Church for sixty years
has now metastasized.
Honest and incorruptible leaders demand and obtain convinced and
faithful collaborators, because their consent and collaboration derive from the
sharing of a good purpose – one’s own sanctification as well as that of others
– using morally good instruments to achieve it. Analogously, corrupt and
treacherous leaders require subordinates who are no less corrupt and disposed
to betrayal, because their consent and their collaboration derive from
complicity in crime, the blackmail of the hitman and the one who hires him, and
from the lack of any moral hesitation in following orders.
But loyalty in doing evil, let us not forget, is always only for a
time, and hanging over it there is the sword of Damocles of the boss remaining
in power and of the absence of a more attractive or more profitable alternative
for those who serve him.
Conversely, loyalty in doing good – which is rooted in God who is
charity and truth – does not know any second thoughts, and is ready even to
sacrifice life – usque ad effusionem sanguinis –
for that spiritual or temporal authority that is the vicar of the Authority of
Our Lord, who is both King and High Priest. This is the martyrium symbolized by the
cardinal’s robes. This will also be the condemnation of those who profane it,
believing themselves to be protected by the Leonine
walls.
It is therefore not surprising that an authority that is based on
blackmail surrounds itself with people who are vulnerable to blackmail, nor
that a power exercised on behalf of a subversive lobby wants to guarantee
continuity with the line that has been undertaken, preventing the next conclave
from electing a Pope rather than a vaccine vendor or a New World Order
propagandist.
I wonder, however, which of their eminences who dot the foul-mouthed
press with their colorful nicknames and the burden of financial and sexual
scandals would be ready to give their lives – I do not say for their boss in
Santa Marta, who would of course himself take good care not to give his life
for his courtiers – but for Our Lord, assuming that they have not replaced him
in the meantime with the Pachamama.
It seems to me that this is the crux of the matter. Peter, do you love me more than these? (Jn
21:15-17). I do not dare to think how Bergoglio would respond; instead, I know
what these characters, who have been awarded the cardinalate just as Caligula
conferred the laticlavius [the
rank of senator] on his horse Incitatus in
order to show his contempt for the Roman Senate: I do not know him (Lk 22:54-62).
It is the primary task of Catholics – both lay people and clergy – to
implore the Master of the vineyard to come and do justice to the wild boars who
are devastating it. Until this sect of corrupters and fornicators is thrown out
of the temple, we will not be able to hope that civil society will be any
better than those who ought to be edifying it rather than scandalizing it.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Pope
Francis/Bergoglio receives award from the B'nai B'rith
In the photo, we see the CEO of B'nai B'rith International Daniel S.
Mariaschin giving Pope Bergoglio a gold chalice with Jewish inscriptions and
symbols. This was a
symbolic award to thank Francis for his constant support for this Jewish
Masonic organization.
This took place during a meeting in the Papal Library when Francis
received a delegation of 27 members of that organization on May 30, 2022.
Commenting on the encounter, Mariachin told the Jerusalem Post: “From his years
as Cardinal in Buenos Aires until today, Pope Francis has expressed a special
interest in furthering Jewish-Catholic relations.” He continued, “Our audience
with him gave us an opportunity to demonstrate our appreciation for this
support, to confirm our shared aspirations for peace and mutual respect.”
In a formal speech, the president of the Jewish organization Seth Riklin asked
for papal support for the Abraham Accords, which is a Jewish initiative to make
Arabs recognize the State of Israel. This was an implicit request for the Holy
See to exercise its influence over the Middle East Arab countries to accept
Israel. This is what B'nai B'rith calls its work for fraternity and peace.
In his speech, Francis praised B'nai B'rith for its “tireless commitment to
humanitarian causes.” He added: “If the duty to care for others is incumbent
upon every member of our human family, it applies even more to those of us who
are Jews and Christians.”
We see that, after Vatican II and its Nostra aetate Declaration, the conciliar
Popes have set aside any doctrinal discussion with the Jews about the divinity
of Our Lord Jesus Christ and are conducting a policy based on a supposed love
and common collaboration to solve social problems. On the other hand, the Jews
did not change one comma of their false beliefs.
What could be the final end of this policy
except a Judaization of the entire Church?
Tradition In Action
“More lace,
but where are we? Sixty years after the Council! A little updating also in
liturgical art, liturgical fashion! Yes, sometimes bringing some grandmother's
lace goes, but sometimes. It’s to pay homage to grandma, isn’t it?”
Pope Francis,
mocking Sicilian bishops and priest in public meeting for wearing laced
vestments, June 9, 2022
Pope Francis
cancels trip to Congo and South Sudan over health issues
AP | June 10, 2022
Pope
Francis canceled a planned July trip to Africa on doctors' orders because of
ongoing knee problems, the Vatican said Friday, raising further questions about
the health and mobility problems of the 85-year-old pontiff.
The Vatican said the July 2-7 trip to Congo and South Sudan would be
rescheduled “to a later date to be determined.”
“At the request of his doctors, and in order not to jeopardize the
results of the therapy that he is undergoing for his knee, the Holy Father has
been forced to postpone, with regret, his Apostolic Journey to the Democratic
Republic of Congo and to South Sudan,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Francis has used a wheelchair for about a month due to strained
ligaments in his right knee that have made walking and standing difficult and
painful. He also has received injections, kept the knee as immobile as possible
and walked with a cane or the help of an aide, when necessary. […..]
The pope has told friends he doesn’t want to undergo knee surgery,
reportedly because of his reaction to anesthesia when he had 33 centimeters (13
inches) of his large intestine removed in July 2021.
Speculation has swirled about the future of the pontificate because of
Francis' knee problems, his decision to create 16 new voting-age cardinals, and
his plans to pay homage in August to a 13th century pope who resigned,
Celestine V.
But Francis has given no indication he wants or plans to resign.
Vatican watchers say a papal resignation now would be unthinkable given that
Francis' predecessor, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, 95, is still alive.
COMMENT: Rumor has it that Pope Francis injured his knee while kicking
Conservative Indult Catholics in the head after his goons knocked them to the
ground. His physicians have advised, it is reported by unconfirmed sources,
that he should let the goons do the kicking from here on out.
Did
one of the main Vatican II documents distort the Words of Our Lord in the
Gospel?
Those who wish to apply a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ to Vatican II, or who deny that there can be any opposition or rupture between the documents of that council and Catholic tradition, or who claim that the assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false, might consider the following passage from the council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes:
Gaudium et Spes 24: ‘Quapropter dilectio Dei et proximi primum et maximum mandatum est.’
For non-Latinists, this claim (it is a complete sentence in the conciliar document) can be translated as follows: ‘For love of God and of neighbour is the first and greatest commandment’. No Latin is needed to realize that this is a flat contradiction of the teaching of Christ. There is a deliberate allusion in Gaudium et Spes 24 to the wording of the divine teaching it is contradicting, as can be seen from looking at the Vulgate text of that teaching:
Matthew 22:35-39: “Et interrogavit eum unus ex eis legis doctor,
temptans eum; ‘Magister, quod est mandatum magnum in lege? Ait illi Iesus:
‘diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et in tota anima tua, et in tota
mente tua. Hoc est maximum et primum mandatum.
Secundum autem simile est huic: diliges proximum tuum,
sicut teipsum.’”
This text from Gaudium et Spes suffices to prove that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are not without error, and that fidelity to Christ’s teaching requires that parts of it be rejected. It is also a fruitful starting point for reflection and investigation into the ideology and motivations of the progressive leadership of that council, and into the degree to which the Council Fathers as a whole accepted their responsibility for preserving the divine deposit of faith. (This text was pointed out to me by a Catholic professor of theology who must remain anonymous.)
Dr. John Lamont, posted by Rorate Caeli
Prophecy
and our times!
An unhappy time is coming of revolt and dissension in the Church.
Oh my children, do not let yourselves be led astray by
innovations. Rally and hold fast. Stay on the same road, the same
footpaths as your pious fathers trod. Preserve and maintain what they
have taught you. It will be enough if you resist the attacks, the
tempests, the hurricanes that will arise with such violence.
The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high
and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper
until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and
the Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be victoriously
exalted in the sight of all doubters.
St. Nicholas of Flu, 15th Century
During the fifth period, we saw only calamities and devastation;
oppression of Catholics by tyrants and heretics; execution of Kings, and
conspiracies to set up republics . . . Are we not to fear, during this period,
that the Mohammedans will come again, working out their sinister schemes
against the Latin Church? . . . During this period men will abuse the freedom
of conscience conceded to them . . . there will be laxity in divine and human
precepts. Discipline will suffer. The holy canons will be
completely disregarded, and the clergy will not respect the laws of the
Church. Everyone will be carried away and led to believe and to do what
he fancies, according to the manner of the flesh. . . But, by the hand of God
Almighty, there occurs so wondrous a change during the sixth period that no one
can humanly visualize it.
The sixth period of the Church will begin with the powerful Monarch and
the holy Pontiff . . . and it will last until the revelation of
Antichrist. In this period, God will console His Holy Church for the
affliction and great tribulation she has endured during the fifth period.
All nations will become Catholic. Vocations will be abundant as never
before, and all men will seek only the Kingdom of God and His justice.
Men will live in peace, and this will be granted because people will make their
peace with God. They will live under the protection of the Great Monarch
and his successors.
All nations will come to worship God in the true Catholic and Roman
faith. There will be many Saints and Doctors on earth. Peace will
reign over the whole earth because God will bind Satan for a number of years
until the days of the Son of Perdition. No one will be able to
pervert the Word of God since, during the sixth period,
there will be an Ecumenical Council which will be the greatest of all
councils. By the grace of God, by the power of the Great Monarch, by the
authority of the Holy Pontiff, and by the union of all the most devout princes,
atheism and every heresy will be banished from the earth. The Council
will define the true sense of Holy Scripture, and this will be believed and
accepted by everyone.
Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser, holy priest of the seventeenth
century
In the twentieth century there will be a time of great corruption of
customs, and this devotion will be the safeguard of this land during the times
to come when it will no longer be a colony, but a free and libertine
republic. Let us weep, pray, and do penance so that this time will not be
of long duration.
The secular clergy will leave much to be desired because priests will
become careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they
will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry, and they will
become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to
obtain. How the Church will suffer during this dark night! Lacking
a Prelate and Father to guide them with paternal love, gentleness, strength,
wisdom and prudence, many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls
in great danger. This will mark the arrival of My
hour.
Therefore, clamor insistently without tiring and weep with bitter tears
in the privacy of your heart, imploring the Celestial Father that, for love of
the Eucharistic Heart of my Most Holy Son and His Precious Blood shed with such
generosity and the profound bitterness and sufferings of His cruel Passion and
Death, He might take pity on His ministers and bring to an end those Ominous
times, sending to this Church the Prelate who will restore the spirit of its
priests. . . [When all seems lost, it will be] the happy beginning of the
complete restoration. This will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a
marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under my
feet and fettering him in the infernal abyss.
Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Good Success, to Venerable Marianne de
Jesus Torres (1563-1635)
It was revealed to me that through the intercession of the Mother of
God all heresies will disappear. The victory over heresies has been reserved by
Christ for his Blessed Mother… The power of Mary in the latter days will be
very conspicuous. Mary will extend the reign of Christ over the heathens and
the Mohammedans, and it will be a time of great joy
when Mary is enthroned as Mistress and Queen of hearts.
Venerable Maria of Agreda, seventeenth century
Jewish
neo-con policy has produced another Jewish neo-con disaster for U.S. Currently
165 of 195 nations of the world, including India and China with 35% of the
world’s population, have refused to join the U.S. in sanctioning Russia,
leaving the U.S., not Russia, relatively isolated in the world. While the
dollar falls, the ruble has soared since the beginning of conflict. Nuclear war
may be necessary for saving face!
"We endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region
whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate
global power. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential
competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global power."
Wolfowitz Doctrine, articulated in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense, guiding principle for Neo-con
foreign policy strategy for world domination in a “unipolar” world. This is
what is meant by Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, celebrating “the end-point of
mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government.”
Maybe
a nuclear war would not make any difference!
200 Million
People: Europe Will Lose 26% of Its Population
EN.News | May 11, 2022
Over the
next 80 years, Central Europe is expected to lose 54% of its population, while
Eastern Europe is expected to lose 34%, LeSalonBeige.fr writes,
• Bulgaria -63%
• Ukraine -61%
• Poland -60%
• Spain -51%
• Italy -50%
No European country has a replacement fertility rate of 2.1 that would stabilise its population. The average rate is 1.61.
Pope Francis:
Guarding ‘dead traditions’ is dangerous for the Church’s life
CatholicNewsAgency | Vatican City, Jun 1, 2022 | Courtney Mares
Pope Francis on Wednesday criticized people who “call themselves guardians of traditions, but of
dead traditions,” saying that failing to move forward is dangerous for
the Church today.
Speaking to the organizers of a conference on education on June 1, the
pope said that it was vital to make progress by “drawing from the roots.”
He said that “there
is the fashion — in every age, but in this age in the Church’s life I consider
it dangerous — that back,’ not going up or down, but backward.”
“This
‘back-stepping’ makes us a sect; it makes you ‘closed’ and cuts off your
horizons. Those people call themselves guardians of traditions, but of dead
traditions.”
Pope Francis underlined that “the true Catholic Christian and human tradition … grows, progresses.”
“Education, for
its part, is always rooted in the past, but it does not stop there: it is
directed towards ‘forward-looking initiatives,’ where the old and the new
converge to create a new humanism,” he said.
The pope underlined that true tradition is “what that fifth-century theologian described as a
constant growth: throughout history, tradition grows, progresses: ut annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore,
sublimetur aetate.”
The pope was referring to St. Vincent of Lerins, who wrote about the
development of Church teaching, saying that it “is solidified over the years,
extended with time, and refined with age.”
Pope Francis has invoked this quotation numerous times since his
election in 2013, including in a letter on Amoris
laetitia in 2018. [……]
COMMENT:
Pope
Francis/Bergoglio, addressing an international conference on education,
entertained his favorite psychological fixation insulting Catholics faithful to
Tradition. The attack was not just an aside. He used the mythological heroic
character Aeneas from Virgil’s Aeneid
for his overall contextual theme for successful education and contrasted this
against Catholics faithful to Tradition as the example of qualities that beget
educational failure. Aside from the vacuity of a Jesuit looking to pagan mythology
as a theme for sound education, it is interesting to witness his compulsive
fixation on this subject Catholic Tradition which is only understandable when
the true nature of the conflict is clearly identified.
Pope
Francis/Bergoglio says we must “move forward” and if we fail to “move forward”
we are “dangerous for the Church today.” Oh, “dangerous” in what way? “Move
forward” to what end? Why he answers, “move forward” in a Hegelian dialectic
between a “Catholic Christian” and “human tradition” to “progress” to a “new
humanism.” Gee? Isn’t this the same progressive ideology that gave us the
French Masonic Revolution and was even abandoned by the secular world in the
aftermath of World War I? This is just another anti-Catholic ideology.
Pope Francis
understands that the fight is to destroy the Catholic faith and thus it is
central to his pontificate. He hates Catholic tradition because Catholic
tradition is the perfect image of the revealed truth of God which he rejects.
He calls these “dead traditions” not because they are dead but because he
wishes them so. He calls them “human” traditions because he denies the divine
faith that they image; He denies that the immemorial traditions are the work of
God, yet, arrogantly and blasphemously affirms that the Novus Ordo is the work
of the Holy Ghost.
Faithful
Catholics, as said before, in fact are not opposed to change but are rather
‘progressivists’ desiring the most radical kind of change possible. The change
they desire is the progressive conversion from sin to a perfect unity with God
as His children through grace and charity; the change of a sinner into a saint.
The immemorial traditions are the means by which this change is effected for
Catholics today as it has been for faithful Catholics throughout the history of
the Church.
Pope Francis
hates the revealed truth of God and hates the idea of conversion from sin to
unity with God. He wants the traditions overthrown and replaced with new images
of the Novus Ordo Church of the New Advent that perfectly imgae his complacency
in sin and his vice of sloth. His quoting St. Vincent Lerins is actually
embarrassing. It would be just as absurd if a Catholic apologist used Karl
Marx’s materialism to defend the Incarnation. Gustave Mahler’s quotation is
actually, ‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.’
It is Francis ideology that is the cold worship of ashes for his “new humanism”
is the worship of man.
Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from
above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor
shadow of alteration. James 1:17
For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass,
one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled. Matt 5:18
Paradoxically precisely because one remains [in the Church], precisely
if one is faithful, one changes. One does not remain faithful,
like the traditionalists or the fundamentalists, to the letter. Fidelity is always a change, a blossoming, a growth. The Lord
brings about a change in those who are faithful to Him.
Cardinal Bergoglio, interview with Stefani Falasca, 2007
More distantly, this view comes from the German transcendental
philosophies that value becoming more than being and therefore value perennial
doubt more than certainty and seeking more than finding..... The mistake in
this position lies in regarding as humble an attitude that is really an intense
form of pride. What is someone really preferring when
he prefers searching for the truth to truth itself? He is preferring his
own subjective movement and the activity of the Ego more than the good that his
powers of acting are given him to attain.
In short the Object is being valued less than the subject and an
anthropocentric view is being adopted that is irreconcilable with religion,
which seeks the creature's subjection to the Creator and teaches that in being
thus subjected the creature finds its own satisfaction and perfection. The false view that values searching more
than the truth is really a form of indifferentism.
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, The Virtue of Faith
COMMENT:
It is not a question of changelessness but rather
of what must necessarily change and what must remain the same. For the faithful
Catholic there is always a change in that he grows in Charity and Grace by
cooperating with the baptismal infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost
gaining greater knowledge of his own his sinfulness, his unworthiness, and his
nothingness (as Cardinal Manning would say) and thus perfecting his unity with
Truth, with God. The means for growing in holiness, especially with the
sacraments, remains the same from generation to generation.
For a Modernist, like the progressive Pope
Francis/Bergoglio, he refuses to change by growing in holiness and instead wants
the Church to change her immemorial traditions to conform to his sinfulness and
his pride, to confirm him in his vicious acts.
The most evident proof for this is seen in both their quality and quantity of vocations for “by their fruit you shall know them.” The Novus Ordo Church, the Church of the New Advent, the Church of the New Evangelization, is effectively barren and the fruit that it does bare is itself fruitless. Why doesn't this truth make an impression? Well, it does and that is why the Modernist must always drive a wedge between the Truth of God and the Mercy of God.
Bishop Refuses
Roman Ordinations, Monastery Finds Solution
EN.NEWS | May 15, 2022 - The English-speaking monastery Saint Benoit in
Brignoles, France, organised in April at a discrete location outside France
"unauthorised" Roman Rite ordinations celebrated by a “senior prelate
in unimpeded communion with the Holy See.”
The prelate ordained founding Prior Alcuin Reid who has been a deacon for
several years to the priesthood and another monk to the diaconate. Saint Benoit
in Brignoles is only a diocesan association of the faithful.
The Australian born prior is a liturgical scholar. His 2005 book The Organic
Development of the Liturgy carries a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger.
The monastery depended not always successfully on diocesan priests for the
celebration of Mass. Three visitators recommended to ordain
a monk, recently in December.
However, Fréjus-Toulon Bishop Dominique Rey, a good man, was unwilling to
proceed with the ordinations. What Rey called “prudence” the monastery calls
fear of repercussions increased by a recent apostolic visitation of the
diocesan seminary. In January, Rey confirmed that he wouldn't proceed with
ordinations.
The monastery justified the ordinations with the Church's extraordinary
situation. Rey has "suspended" those ordained.
COMMENT: This has to be disturbing news for Pope
Francis who does not want to see traditional Catholics breaking away from
centralized control.
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
The Kingdom of God is not the work of man and does not emerge by a
natural law of progress from the course of human history. It makes a violent
interruption into history and confounds the work of man, like the stone hewn
from the mountain without human agency which crushes the image of the four
world empires into dust.
Christopher Dawson, Dynamics of World History
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
Cardinal
Zen arrested by Communist Chinese Government May 12, 2022 on “security”
violations.
Amazing!
Martyrdom is a barrier to ecumenical unity!
If you have a Church that considers martyrs, that sets them off against
the others, this in itself contains the pebbles of a
rocky road to disunity. Sure I appreciated [Cardinal Joseph Zen’s] concerns and
sufferings… You have to be proud of the Church that suffers, but also worried
that a Church that suffers allows that suffering to be a barrier to the common
union to which the Lord has called us.
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick the Homosexual Pervert, criticizing Cardinal
Zen and the faithful Catholics of China for resisting a forced unity with the
Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) founded by the communist government.
“O
God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help
me.”
Not without reason has this verse been selected out of the whole body
of Scripture. For it takes up all the emotions that can be
applied to human nature and with great correctness and accuracy it adjusts
itself to every condition and every attack. It contains an invocation of
God in the face of any crisis, the humility of a devout confession, the
watchfulness of concern and of constant fear, a consciousness of one's own
frailty, the assurance being heard, and confidence in a protection that is
always present and at hand, for whoever calls unceasingly on his protector is
sure that he is always present. It contains a burning love and charity, an
awareness of traps, and a fear of enemies. Seeing oneself surrounded by these
day and night, one confesses that one cannot be set free without the help of
one's defender. This verse is an unassailable wall, an impenetrable
breastplate, and a very strong shield for those who labour under the attack of
demons.
St. John Cassian, The Conferences, Commentary
Psalm 69
Worth Reading Again from Previous Year:
Open Letter by “Papal
favorite” calling for End of Summorum
Pontificum
OPEN LETTER on the “State of Liturgical Exception” |
Andrea Grillo, April 29, 2020
To all
theologians, scholars, and students of theology:
The great
liturgical tradition, which has always accompanied and supported the Church in
her history of grace and sin, hears the groaning of individuals and nations in
this pandemic crisis, which brings suffering and affliction to those who are
sick, and fear, isolation and loneliness to everyone else. The ordinary
rhythm of the Lenten and Paschal journey is altered and subverted, in
solidarity with our common suffering. We would never have thought, however,
that a small but not marginal suffering would also come at the same time
through the exercise of ecclesial authority and through the decrees Quo
magis e Cum sanctissima, which the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith published on 25 March 2020.
It is no
surprise that This Congregation should devote its attention to the liturgy. But
special and singular is the fact that it modifies the ordines, introduces prefaces
and formularies for feasts, and modifies calendars and criteria of precedence.
And it does this on a 1962 missal. How is this possible? The Congregation, as is known,
in this case moves in the space of an exceptional authority, which dates
back 13 years, in accordance with motu proprio Summorum
pontificum. But
since time is greater than space, what is possible on the regulatory level is
not always appropriate. Therefore, it is crucial to engage in critical
reflection on the logic of this development.
Time, in fact,
has unveiled to us the paradox of a competence on the liturgy being taken away
from the Bishops and the Congregation of Worship: this was arranged, in Summorum
pontificum, with an intention of solemn pacification and generous
reconciliation, but soon it changed into a serious division, a widespread
conflict, and became the symbol of a “liturgical rejection” of the Second
Vatican Council. The greatest distortion of the initial intentions of the motu
proprio can be seen today in those diocesan seminaries where it is expected
that the future ministers will be trained at the same time in two different
rites: the conciliar rite and the one that denies it. All this reached its most
surreal point the day before yesterday, when the two Decrees were released.
They mark the culmination of a distortion which is no longer tolerable, and
which can be summed up as follows:
·
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith acts as a
substitute in exercising competences conferred by the Second Vatican
Council on Bishops and the Congregation for Divine Worship;
·
it undertakes to elaborate ”liturgical
variants” of the ordines without having the
historical, textual, philological and pastoral competences;
· it seems to ignore, precisely on the dogmatic
level, a grave conflict between the lex orandi and
the lex credendi, since it is inevitable that a dual,
conflictual ritual form will lead to a significant division in the faith;
·
it seems to underestimate the
disruptive effect this “exception” will have on the ecclesial level,
by immunizing a part of the community from the “school of prayer” that the
Second Vatican Council and the liturgical reform have providentially given to
the common ecclesial journey.
A “state of
exception” is also happening today on the civil level, in its harsh necessity,
and this fact allows us greater ecclesial foresight. To return to an ecclesial
normality, we must overcome the state of liturgical exception established 13
years ago in another world, with other conditions and with other hopes, by Summorum pontificum. It
no longer makes sense to deprive diocesan bishops of their liturgical powers;
neither does it make sense to have an Ecclesia Dei Commission (which has in fact already been
suppressed), or a Section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
which take away authority from diocesan Bishops and the Congregation of Divine
Worship; it no longer makes sense to enact decrees to “reform” a rite that is
closed in the historical past, inert and crystallized, lifeless and without
vigor. There can be no resuscitation for it. The double regime is over; the
noble intention of SP has waned; the Lefebvrians have raised the barhigher and
higher and then run away, insulting the Second Vatican Council and the present
pope along with all three of his predecessors. Continuing to nourish a
“state of liturgical exception” – one that was born to unite, but does nothing
but divide – only leads to the shattering, privatization, and distortion of the
worship of the Church. On the basis of these considerations, we
resolve together to request that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
immediately withdraw the two decrees of 25/03/2020 and restore all powers
concerning the liturgy to the diocesan Bishops and the Congregation for Divine
Worship.
Obviously, we ask this without prejudice to the powers that this Congregation
retains in doctrinal matters.
So let
us leave the “state of liturgical exception”. If not now, when?
With best
wishes to all colleagues and students, besieged but not conquered in life,
during these bitter yet still generous times.
“Time is greater than space” – The
ideological lynchpin of Pope Francis the Great Equivocator
This liturgical OPEN LETTER structures its
argument around the phrase: Time is Greater Than Space.” This slogan of Pope
Francis, “Time is greater than space” (TGTS), appeared in his first two
encyclicals, Lumen Fidei and Laudato Si’. It surfaced again in
the apostolic exhortations, Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia.
From Lumen
Fidei:
“Let us refuse to be robbed of hope, or to allow our hope to be dimmed
by facile answers and solutions which block our progress, ‘fragmenting’ time
and changing it into space. Time is always much greater than space. Space
hardens processes, whereas time propels towards the future and encourages us to
go forward in hope.”
Evangelii Gaudium is more revealing as to the cryptic meaning
of this phrase:
222. A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation.
Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall
set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an
expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each
individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure.
People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter
horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here
we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater
than space.
223. This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being
obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and
adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept
the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time.
One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is
that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to
space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying
to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize
processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to
time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing
spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a
constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then,
is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and
engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they
bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety,
but with clear convictions and tenacity.
St. Pius X said in Pascendi that Evolution
is the fundamental principle of the heresy of Modernism. This error is
practically applied when Modernists embrace Becoming
and reject Being.
This neologism of Francis, TGTS, is just a repacking of this old philosophical
error of Modernism. Francis is trying to sound clever by putting a little
make-up and bow-tie on the pig. But the pig remains a pig because that is his Being. Fr. Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. explained this error in his great
essay, Where is the New Theology Leading
Us?, that was published in the Angelicum
in 1946.
It should be remembered that on December 1, 1924, the Holy Office
condemned 12 propositions taken from the philosophy of action, among which was
number 5, or the new definition of truth: “Truth is not found in any particular
act of the intellect wherein conformity with the object would be had, as the
Scholastics say, but rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and
consists in a progressive alignment of the understanding with life, indeed a
certain perpetual process, by which the intellect strives to develop and
explain that which experience presents or action requires: by which principle,
moreover, as in all progression, nothing is ever determined or fixed.” The last
of these condemned propositions is: “Even after Faith has been received, man
ought not to rest in the dogmas of religion, and hold fast to them fixedly and
immovably, but always solicitous to remain moving ahead toward a deeper truth
and even evolving into new notions, and even correcting that which he
believes.”
Many, who did not heed these warnings, have now reverted to these errors.
……
It revisits modernism. Because it accepted the proposition which was
intrinsic to modernism: that of substituting, as if it were illusory, the
traditional definition of truth: aequatio rei et
intellectus (the adequation of intellect and reality), for the subjective
definition: adequatio realis mentis et vitae (the adequation of intellect and
life). That was more explicitly stated in the already cited proposition, which
emerged from the philosophy of action, and was condemned by the Holy Office,
December 1, 1924: “Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect
wherein conformity with the object would be had, as the Scholastics say, but
rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and consists in a progressive
alignment of the understanding with life, indeed a certain perpetual process,
by which the intellect strives to develop and explain that which experience
presents or action requires: by which principle, moreover, as in all
progression, nothing is ever determined or fixed” (v. Monitore ecclesiastico,
1925. t. I; p. 194.)
The truth is no longer the conformity (of judgment) to the intuitive
reality and its immutable laws but the conformity of judgment to the exigencies
of action, and of human life which continues to evolve. The philosophy of being
or ontology is substituted by the philosophy of action which defines truth as
no longer a function of being but of action.
Thus is modernism reprised: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself,
inasmuch as it is evolved with him, in him and through him.
As well, Pius X said of the modernists, “they pervert the eternal concept of
truth.”
……
The traditional definition truth is no longer for them the conformity of
judgment to intuitive being and the immutable laws of non-contradiction, of
causality, etc. For them, the truth is no longer that which is but that which
is becoming — and is constantly and always changing.
For the Modernist heretic, Pope Francis,
“Time is greater than space,” “Time” means the process of becoming through evolution
and “Space” is the limitation of static being.
A library could be filled with analyzing the implications of this error but
suffice for the present there are two obvious to everyone: Firstly, the very
definition of heresy is the rejection of DOGMA. For the faithful Catholic,
DOGMA is NECESSARILY the proximate rule of faith. This is directly rejected by
the Modernists. They replace Dogma with the person of the pope as the proximate
rule of faith and he is free to corrupt the revealed truth in whatever manner
he pleases. The second obvious error is that they deny the philosophical
meaning of substance. They follow
modern reductionist Scientism that resurrected the Greek philosopher
Democritus’ (460-370 B.C.) theory that the fundamental nature of all that
existed is “atoms and the void.” Since all reality is just the recombination of
atoms and the void between them, then there cannot be such thing as a fixed substance in which accidents adhere. Consequently, we have Benedict/Ratzinger denying substance and making the accident of relationship the fundamental ground of all reality. It is therefore
not surprising when he denies the Dogma of Transubstantiation. And what becomes
of the Dogma that the Father and the Son are Consubstantial? Francis follows in
the same manner and never kneels before the Blessed Sacrament. No argument can
touch these blighted minds, if you call something that never thinks a “mind.”
It matters not what wreckage and ruin that has followed since Vatican II
because the being of the wreckage
cannot overcome their ideological fantasy of becoming as Pope Francis looks to his “brighter horizon of the utopian future… for progress in
building a people.”
The truth is just the opposite, ‘Space is
Greater than Time.’ God revealed His name to Moses, “I AM.” Jesus applied this
name to Himself. God is perfect BEING; He is perfect ACT: “Every best gift, and
every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:17). Ultimately
time will end in a changeless eternity where the faithful will be with God in a
space prepared by Him for each one of us. “In my Father's house there
are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place
for you. And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come
again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be” (John
14:2-3).
Andrea Grillo
gives as a reason for the suppression of the Latin Mass granted to the Indult
crowd:
· it seems to ignore, precisely on the dogmatic
level, a grave conflict between the lex orandi and
the lex credendi, since it is inevitable that a dual,
conflictual ritual form will lead to a significant division in the faith;
He to believes
with Francis that TGTS. Latin Mass Catholics are stuck in space while the Catholic Church is moving in time to a new “dogmatic
level” that will inevitably “lead to a significant division in the faith.”
The two rites he says represent a “grave
conflict between the lex orandi and the lex credenda.”
Are we to congratulate Grillo for this insight?Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith with his Interventionin in
1969 said the same thing! This is a truth that faithful Catholics have
known for more than 50 years! Yet Indultists publicly deny this truth
professing that both the Novus Ordo and the traditional Latin rite express an
identity of “lex orandi /lex credendi.” This is the price they
have paid for their Indult; a mind that turns its back on the first principle
of the understanding cannot even be called a “mind”!
Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic
Mission’s purpose is to make a public profession of the Catholic faith before
our local ordinary and Rome. Foundational to this purpose is that DOGMA IS
divine revelation infallibly defined by the Magisterium of the Church, which is
irreformable both in its truth (form) and its terminology employed (matter), IS
the “formal object of divine and Catholic faith” and constitutes the proximate
rule of faith for all the faithful. Furthermore, our immemorial ecclesiastical
traditions are necessary attributes of the faith by which alone the faith can
be known and communicated to others. Since God has imposed a duty upon His
faithful to profess their faith and worship Him in the public forum, every
Catholic possesses the inalienable right to our immemorial traditions by which
alone these duties can be fulfilled. Those who have accepted the Latin Mass by
virtue of Indult and/or grant of legal privilege want a non-confrontational modus vivendi with Modernist heretics.
This has never worked in the past and it will not work now. Being neither ‘cold
nor hot’, they please no one and will soon learn that having traded their birth
right for bowl of pottage there is nothing left to eat.
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