SPECIAL FAVORS FOR
THOSE DEVOTED TO THE SORROWS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
The graces which Our Lord
promises to those who are devoted to the sorrows of His Blessed Mother are very
great. St. Alphonsus, in his discourse on the dolors of Mary, states: It was
revealed to St. Elizabeth that some years after the Blessed Virgin was assumed
into heaven, St. John, the beloved disciple, was seized with an ardent desire
to see her again. This favor was granted him. His dear Mother appeared to him
in company with our Divine Lord. Then St. John heard Mary asking of her Son
some special graces for those who were devoted to her dolors. Our Lord promised
the four following graces:
1) Those
who invoke the Heavenly Mother through her sorrows will obtain true sorrow for
their sins before death.
2) Our
Savior will protect them in their tribulations, especially at the hour of
death.
3) He
will impress upon them the memory of His Passion, and will reward them for it
in Heaven.
4) He
will commit such devout servants to the hands of Mary, that she may dispose of
them according to her pleasure, and obtain for them all the graces she desires.
St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Devotion to the Sorrowful Mother
Besides these great graces, Father Faber enumerates others which are
obtained through devotion to Mary's sorrows:
1) This
devotion has a remarkable connection with great interior holiness.
2) It
reveals the emptiness of worldly joys. Worldliness finds no soul harder to
attack than one entrenched in the sorrows of our Blessed Lady. The world can
graft itself upon nothing in this devotion.
3) It
gives us a permanent share in the sorrow for sin which Jesus and Mary felt.
4) It
keeps our thoughts close to Jesus Christ, and to Him Crucified.
5) It
communicates to our souls the spirit of the Cross, and gives us strength to
endure our own sufferings with resignation to the holy will of God.
6) This
devotion is wholly covered with the Precious Blood of Jesus and leads us
directly into the depths of the Heart of our Savior.
7) Anyone
who during his lifetime has cherished compassion for this afflicted Mother may
consider this as a most assured sign of predestination.
The Holy Spirit has not been promised to the
successors of Peter that, under His revelation, they might make known a new
doctrine, but in order that, with His assistance, they sacredly preserve and
faithfully set forth the revelation transmitted by the Apostles, that is to
say, the deposit of the faith.
Pastor aeternus, Vatican I
Strenuously humble thy
heart in the midst of thy miracles and signs, and beware thou seek not thy own
glory therin. Whilst God giveth thee
such favours, search thyself inwardly, and recognize what thou truly art.
Pope St. Gregory to St.
Augustine of Canterbury
For who can fail to see that society is
at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and
deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost
being, is dragging it to destruction?
You understand, Venerable Brethren,
what this disease is—apostasy from God, than which in truth nothing is more
allied with ruin, according to the word of the Prophet: "For behold they
that go far from Thee shall perish" (Ps. 72, 17). We saw therefore that,
in virtue of the ministry of the Pontificate, which was to be entrusted to Us,
We must hasten to find a remedy for this great evil, considering as addressed
to Us that Divine command: "Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations
and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy,
and to build, and to plant" (Jerem. 1, 10).
…When all this is considered there is good
reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and
perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and
that there may be already in the world the "Son of Perdition" of whom
the Apostle speaks (II Thess. 2, 3). Such, in truth, is the audacity and the
wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of
the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and
the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle
is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put
himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in
such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of
God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a
temple wherein he himself is to be adored. "He sitteth in the temple of
God, showing himself as if he were God" (II Thess. 2, 2).
St. Pope Pius X, On
the Restoration of All Things in Christ, October 4, 1903
INSTRUCTION CONCERNING DEATH
If there were locked up in prison
several hundred persons, on whom sentence of death had irrevocably been
pronounced, yet who knew not the day or hour of their execution; if one after
the other, and often he who least expected it, were taken out to be executed;
would not each one's heart tremble, whenever the prison door opened? Now the
irrevocable sentence of death is pronounced on us all; we are all locked up in
our bodies, as in a prison (Ps. 114, 8); one after the other is called hence,
yet we do not regard it. We live as though we could live forever; we think only
of the body, but for the soul nothing is done, except that we load it with sins
and vices.
Is this rational? The body will be
food for worms, but the soul (without knowing when) will travel into the house
of eternity, to which place she must bring treasures of good works, in order to
live happy forever. Who would, therefore, be so foolish as to care only for the
body during life, and neglect the salvation of the soul?
O man, says St. Francis of Sales
(Phil. 1, 13), represent to yourself in lively colors, that at your death the
world will cease to exist with respect to you. In that last hour the pleasures,
the vanities, the riches, the honors, the friendships, and all that was dear to
you, will disappear before your eyes as so many shadows. O fool that I am! you
will then say, for what trifles and fooleries have I lost all! On the contrary,
piety, good works, penance, etc., will appear pleasant to you, and you will
exclaim: O, why did I not travel on this blessed road. Then the sins which you
now consider as mere trifles, will seem to you like mountains, and all that you
thought you had accomplished as, great things, with regard to piety, will seem
to you very little.
What terrible fear will then seize
your soul, when she must travel alone into the abyss of eternity which, as St.
Bernard says, devours all possible, imaginable ages, and of which St. Gregory
says, that we can easier say what it is not than what it is. What terrors will
befall her, when she must appear before the tribunal of that God whom she never
really loved and honored in her life-time and before whom she must now give the
strictest account, and hear an irrevocable and just sentence!
Should not these thoughts make an
impression upon you? How can you escape this terrible future? By living now, as
you would wish to have lived at the hour of death. Die daily with St. Paul by
crucifying the flesh and its lusts and by voluntarily withdrawing your heart
from the world, its pomps and vanities, before death will do this by violence.
RESOLUTION O
world! because I cannot know the hour, in which I must leave you, I will not be
attached to you. O you dear friends and relatives, you, too, I will in future
love only with a holy inclination, directed to God, which will not cease with
death, but remain forever. O Lord! help me, that I may die totally to myself
and the world, and live only for Thee, and partake of eternal happiness.
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Mary is the center of
the universe, the ark of God, the cause of creation, the business of ages. Towards her turn the inhabitants of heaven
and the dwellers in the place of expiation, the men that have gone before us,
and we that are now living, those who are to follow us, our children’s children
and their descendants. Those in heaven
look to her to have their ranks filled up; those in purgatory look for their
deliverance; the men of the first ages, that they may be found faithful
prophets; those who come after, that they may obtain eternal happiness. Mother of God, Queen of heaven, Sovereign of
the world, all generations shall call thee blessed, for thou hast brought forth
life and glory for all. In thee the
angels ever find their joy, the just find grace, the sinners pardon; in thee,
and by thee, and from thee, the merciful hand of the Almighty has reformed the
first creation.
St. Bernard of
Clairvaux
All ye nations, come
hither, come every race and every tongue, every age and every dignity, let us
joyfully celebrate the birthday of the world’s gladness.
St. John Damascene
It is the beginning of
salvation, the origin of every feast, for behold!, the Mother of the Bridegroom
is born. With good reason does the whole
world rejoice today and the Church, beside herself, bids her choirs sing
wedding songs.
St. Peter Damian
The Feast of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary can be document as an immemorial tradition
during the 6th century in both the East and West. The Octave of the Nativity was established in
1245 in fulfillment of a vow by Pope Innocent IV (before his election) and all
the other Cardinals during the Church’s widowhood, which through the intrigues
of the crafty emperor, Frederick II, lasted nineteen months after the death of
Celestine IV until the election of Pope Innocent. The octave day is the Feast of the Seven
Sorrows.
Dom Gueranger on the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
And they that carried it stood
still. The sinner is ‘carried’ by the four elements of which he is made up.
He is carried by the earth, when he thinks only of earthly things; as the Psalm
says: They have set their eyes bowing down to the earth [Ps 16.11]. He
is carried by water, when he thinks of lust; as Jacob said to Ruben in Genesis:
Thou art poured out as water, grow thou not: because thou wentest up to thy
father’s bed, and didst defile his couch [Gen 49.4]. It is told that
he slept with Bala, his father’s concubine. He is carried by air, when he does
everything for the sake of human praise. Air is less substantial than other
elements, and so it represents vainglory, thin and transparent untruth. So the
Psalm says: The sons of men are liars in the balances, to deceive [Ps
61.10]. As St. Bernard said, "You lying hypocrite, who do you pretend to
be? Why do you sell yourself to others under a false appearance, when the
scales and balance of truth are weighing you? Weigh yourself in secret, and do
not sell yourself to us as more than the just scales measure." Finally,
he is carried by fire when he is ablaze with anger. The Psalm says: Like wax
that melteth they shall be taken away: fire hath fallen on them, and
they shall not see the sun [Ps 57.9]. When the fire of wrath falls from the
devil upon the sinner’s heart, he melts like wax in words of blasphemy, and is
beside himself, and ‘carried away’.
These four carry the soul to
burial in hell, but when the Lord touches the sinner’s conscience with the hand
of mercy and the golden sceptre of his Passion, those four vices stand still,
and the mind recalled to itself by the voice of God comes to life, and responds
by obeying the Saviour. So there follows: Young man, I say to thee, arise, etc.
Note the four phrases, arise, he sat up, he began to speak, and, he
gave him to his mother. This is the right order of returning to life. The
sinner must first arise, rising from sin by abominating it and detesting it.
Then he must sit up, humbling himself in heartfelt contrition. Thirdly, he must
speak in confession; and so the Lord will restore him to his mother, the grace
of the Holy Spirit.
St. Anthony of Padua, Sermon on
the 15th Sunday after Pentecost
On September 12, 1213, the Catholic Crusaders under the command of
Simon de Montfort, outnumbered forty to one, crushed the Albigensian army in a
most critical engagement at the battle of Muret during the pontificate of
Innocent III. On September 12, 1683,
Vienna, worn out and dismantled, abandoned by its emperor, was surrounded by
300,000 infidels. But another great
Pope, Innocent XI, again confided to Mary the defense of the baptized
nations. Jan Sobieski, the King of
Poland, mounting his charger on the feast of the Assumption rode to the gates
of Vienna, and although vastly outnumbered, engaged and defeated the Moslem
army. The feast of the most holy name of
Mary inscribed on the calendar of the universal Church, was the homage of the
world’s gratitude to Mary, our Lady and Queen.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical
Year
The rosary shall be a
powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat
heresies. It will cause virtue and good
works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will
withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and
will lift them to the desire of eternal things.
Blessed Virgin Mary to St.
Dominic
Take away the material sun from the world: what would become of our
day? Take away Mary, the star of the
vast sea: what would remain but obscurity over all, a night of death and icy
darkness? Therefore, with every fiber of
our heart, with all the love of our soul, with all the eagerness of our
aspirations, let us venerate Mary; it is the will of Him who wished us to have
all things through her.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
The Charity of
a Saint
Yesterday, May 30, 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, numerous
blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship.
Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what
else, we hurried toward them. We had to force our way through the crowd until
we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or
rather in puddles of mud. To prevent excessive dampness, someone had thought of
building up a mound with a mixture of tines and broken pieces of bricks. This,
then, was their couch, a very uncomfortable one not only for that reason, but
especially because they were naked, without any clothing to protect them.
We laid aside our cloaks, therefore,
and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. In that
way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a
passage through bands of slaves. Then we divided the sick into two groups: one
group my companion approached with an interpreter, which I addressed the other
group. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse
could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals
together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we
tossed aromatics. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of the sort,
and to ask the owners for others would have been a waste of words, we provided
for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth, and
the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to
see.
This was how we spoke to them, not
with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they
were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have
proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed
their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with
friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions which somehow
naturally tend to hearten the sick.
After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is,
the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers
to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on
to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and
punishes each one according to his merit, and the rest. Finally, when they appeared
sufficiently prepared, we told them the mysteries of the Trinity, the
Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he
is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his
wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.
Excerpt from a letter by St. Peter Claver who baptized more than 300,000 slaves
in the New World
You need never fear
that they will kill themselves; they are eminently reasonable folk! Their love is not yet ardent enough to
overwhelm their reason. How I wish ours
would make us dissatisfied with this habit of always serving God at a snail’s
pace! As long as we do that we shall
never get to the end of the road. Do you
think that if we could get from one country to another in a week, it would be
advisable to take a year over it? …. I have never seen any courageous person
hanging back on this road, nor any soul that, under the guise of humility,
acted like a coward, go as for in many years as the courageous soul can in a
few… How true it is, O Lord, that everything is possible in You; I realize too,
that of myself I can do nothing.
Therefore, I beseech You with St. Augustine: “Give me, Lord, what You
command me and then command what You will.”
St. Teresa of Avila
September is dedicated to the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The prophecy of the aged Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the
divine Child in Jerusalem, the carrying of the cross, the Crucifixion, the
taking down from the cross, and the burial of Jesus: these are the seven
mysteries into which are grouped the well-nigh infinite suffering which made
our Lady the Queen of martyrs, the first and loveliest rose in the garden of
the Spouse. Let us take to heart the
recommendation from the Book of Tobias which the Church reads during this week
in the Office of the time: Thou shalt honour thy mother: for thou must be
mindful what and how great perils she suffered in giving thee birth.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year
INSTRUCTION ON THE CEREMONIES USED
AT FUNERALS
Behold, a dead man was carried out, the only son of his mother, and a
great multitude of the city was with her (Luke 7, 12).
Of these people who accompanied the
funeral of the youth, we should learn to pay the last honors to the dead, and
follow their bodies to the grave. This is a meritorious work, one pleasing to
God, if it be not performed from vanity and self-interest, but for love of God
and the deceased, with the charitable intention of assisting him by prayers.
Therefore those do very wrong, who from worldly motives either omit this good
work entirely, or during the funeral procession indulge in idle talk and deny
the deceased even a short prayer.
Why is a cross carried before
the corpse?
By this is indicated that the deceased
during life professed Christ, died believing in Him, and hoping for
resurrection through Him.
Why are lighted candles carried
before the bier?
To represent the desire of the Church
that the deceased through the grace of God may be received into eternal light.
This custom is very ancient; wax-candles and torches, together with prayer and
great solemnity were made use of at the burial of St. Cyprian who was beheaded
for Christ's sake, in the year 258 after Christ. (Ruinart.)
Why are the coffin and the grave
sprinkled with holy water?
In order, as St. Thomas of Aquinas
(Lib. iii. art. 21.) remarks, to implore God, on account of the prayers which
the Church says when she blesses the water, that the souls of the faithful may
be cleansed from all stains, and may receive consolation and refreshment in the
tortures which they may still have to suffer.
Why are the body and the grave
incensed?
By this the Church indicates that the
deceased by his Christian vocation was a good odor of Christ (II Cor. 2,
14-15), and admonishes the faithful that their prayers should ascend like
incense to heaven for the deceased.
Why are Psalms and other sacred
canticles sung?
This is done to remind us of the
teaching of St. Paul (I Thess 4, 12), not to be excessively sorrowful
for the loss of the deceased, like the heathens who have no hope of eternal
life. We also signify, thereby, that we congratulate the dead for the peace
which they now enjoy (Apoc. 14, 13). This custom, as St. Jerome shows (Ep.
53), is derived from the apostles, who interred St. Stephen, singing Psalms and
hymns of praise.
Why are the bells rung?
To invite the faithful to the funeral
and to pray for the dead who, during lifetime, was called very often by the
same bells, prayed with and for us during religious worship, and who is not
separated from us by death.
Why are the bodies of the
faithful buried with the head towards the East, and those of the priests
towards the West?
The faithful are buried towards the
East, whence the sun rises, to indicate, that they are waiting for Christ who
is called the Orient from on High (Luke 1, 78), and whose voice they
will hear at the end of the world, when He calls them to the resurrection; the
priests towards the West, as a sign that on the day of judgment they will be
placed opposite to the souls confided to them, to give an account of their
charge and to bear judgment for or against them.
Why is a cross or monument
erected over the grave?
To show that the deceased was a
follower of Christ, the Crucified, to admonish the passers-by to pray for him,
and to remind us of the solemn moment of death.
Why is the body laid in
consecrated ground?
This is done through reverence for the
bodies of the dead which are, by baptism, temples of the Holy Ghost; to show
that, even in death, they still belong to the communion of that holy Church, in
which they were embodied during life by baptism, and to which they clung in
faith even until death; to inspire the surviving with a holy fear lest they profane
graves.
Why is the solemn funeral
service of the Church denied to heretics?
Because they would not belong to the
Church during life, and despised the holy customs and prayers of the Church for
the dead. How should the blessing and prayer of the Church be useful in death
to one who despised them during life.
Why does not the Church permit
criminals and suicides to be buried on consecrated ground?
In order to express her horror for the
crimes perpetrated by them, and to deter the faithful from committing similar
actions.
Ugly fact ignored by Reform of Reform – Bugnini was appointed by Paul
VI, his work was approved and imposed by Paul VI, and his work accurately
reflected the novel principles of liturgical innovation adopted in 1948 and
approved at Vatican II
Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican
II document on the liturgy, is the justification for Bugnini’s
Novus Ordo
• The order to promote urgently a liturgical reform is in SC §§ 1, 14,
25, 31, 40, 43, 50, 63b, 128.
• The encouragement of the participation of the faithful in the liturgy is
stated in §§ 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 27, 41, 53, 114, 121, 124.
• In § 12 communitarian prayer is recommended.
• In § 30 acclamations and dances are advised.
• Inculturation is counseled in §§ 37-40, 112, 119.
• Communion under two species is counseled in §55.
• In §§ 62, 67-82 a complete change in the ceremonies of the sacraments and
sacramentals is imposed.
• The reform of Divine Office is decreed in §§ 87-88, 91-93, 97.
• The reform of the liturgical year is ordered in § 107.
• The introduction of liturgical modern art is approved in § 123.
• The suppression of the statues in the churches is recommended in § 125.
• The change of sacerdotal vestments is allowed in §128.
Atila S. Guimarães, Tradition in Action
The heart into which Divine Love enters no longer
makes any account of all that the world esteems. St. Francis de Sales says that
when the house is on fire, all the goods are thrown out of the window; by which
he means, that when the heart is inflamed with Divine Love, man, without
sermons, or exhortations from his Spiritual director, of himself seeks to
divest himself of all worldly goods, honors, riches, and other earthly things,
that he may have nothing but God.
St. Alphonsus Liguori
Instances of the
weakness of the Church are rare but history records them, and it is not in the
interest of the Church’s sons to dissemble about them, knowing that what
assured infallibility of the faith to the Roman pontiffs in their teaching in
no way guaranteed them against any mistake in the exercise of the supreme
government. Do what they will, I shall
always be in the first row of the defenders of principles, although with no
illusion at all about the persons.
Dom Gueranger, Solesmes
and Dom Gueranger by Dom Louis Soltner
When
the disciples fled, and all men deserted, she alone, to the glory of the whole
female sex, amongst so many torments of her Son, stood steadfast in the faith
of Jesus, and stood nobly as became her virginal purity… she stood, not
complaining, nor murmuring, nor imploring mercy, but as a recollected, modest,
most patient, most sorrowful virgin.
St.
Anselm
The first characteristic
of the anti-liturgical heresy is HATRED OF TRADITION AS FOUND IN THE
FORMULAS USED IN DIVINE WORSHIP. One cannot fail to note this
special characteristic in all heretics, from Vigilantus to Calvin, and the
reason for it is easy to explain.
Every sectarian who
wishes to introduce a new doctrine finds himself, unfailingly, face to face
with the Liturgy, which is Tradition at its strongest and best, and he cannot
rest until he has silenced this voice, until he has torn up these pages which
recall the faith of past centuries.
As a matter of fact, how
could Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism establish themselves and maintain
their influence over the masses? All they had to do was substitute new
books and new formulas in place of the ancient books and formulas, and their
work was done. There was nothing that still bothered the new teachers;
they could just go on preaching as they wished: the faith of the people was
henceforth without defense.
Luther understood this
doctrine with a shrewdness worthy of the Jansenists, since he, at the beginning
of his innovations, at the time he still felt he should maintain a part of the
external form of the Latin cult, gave the following rule for the reformed Mass:
“We approve and preserve
the Introits of Sundays and of the feasts of Our Lord, that is to say Easter,
Pentecost and Christmas. We should much prefer that the entire Psalms
from the Introits should be taken, as was done in former times; but we will
gladly conform to the present usage. We do not blame even those who would
wish to keep even the Introits of the Apostles, of the Blessed Virgin and other
Saints, since these three Introits are taken from the psalms and other places
in Scripture.”
He hated too much the
sacred songs composed by the Church herself as the public expression for her
faith. He felt too much in them the vigor of Tradition, which he wanted
to ban. If he granted to the Church the right to mix her voice with the
oracles of the Scripture in the holy assemblies, he would expose himself
thereby to have to listen to millions of mouths anathematizing his new
dogmas. Therefore, his hatred for everything in Liturgy which does not
exclusively derive from Holy Scripture.
Dom Gueranger, Liturgical
Institutions
JESUS OUR LIFE
FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
PRESENCE
OF GOD ‑ O Jesus, life of my soul, make me rise each day to a new life of charity
and fervor.
MEDITATION:
I. In the Mass of today there is a dominant thought, so often
repeated in the liturgy and so dear to our hearts Jesus is our life. Whatever
good there is in us is the fruit of His grace, by which we remain steadfast in
good (Collect) and live in the
Spirit (Epistle) ; by His grace
we rise from sin (Gospel), and
eating His flesh, we nourish His life within us (Communion). Without Jesus we would abide in death; without Him
we could never live the glorious life of the Spirit described by St. Paul in
today's Epistle (Gal 5,25-26 ‑
6, 1‑10).
It would be well to glean a few thoughts from this. "Let us not be
made desirous of vainglory, provoking one another. For if any man think himself
to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself." True
humility is presented here as the basis of fraternal charity; anyone who is
proud carries about with him a hotbed of discord for, preferring himself to
others, he will often be provocative, envious, haughty, and disdainful of those
whom he considers his inferiors.
"If a man be overtaken in any fault, you, who are spiritual,
instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness." One who wishes to scale
the heights must never be critical of him whose way is not so high, nor be
scandalized at the faults of another. If duty requires us to admonish anyone,
we should do so with sweetness and kindness. This sweetness is another fruit of
humility, because when we correct others, we should always take heed to
ourselves "lest thou also be tempted."
"And in doing good, let us not fail; for in due time we shall reap,
not failing." We must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by
difficulties in the spiritual life, even when we do not succeed in overcoming
them. God does not ask us to succeed but to continually renew our efforts,
although the results may not be apparent. "In due time," that is,
when God wills and in the way that pleases Him, we shall reap the fruit,
provided we "fail not."
2. The thought that Jesus is our
Life shines forth even more in the Gospel (Lk 7, 11-16). The Master meets the sad funeral procession of a
young man. His mother is walking beside the bier, weeping. "And the Lord,
seeing her, had compassion on her, and said to her: Weep not. And He came near
and touched the bier.... And He said: Young man, I say to thee, arise.... And
He gave him to his mother." Jesus is our Savior who sympathizes with us in
our trials and uses His divine omnipotence to alleviate them. Today we see Him
work a miracle in order to console a widowed mother; He restores her dead son
to life. This was an expression of the delicacy of His love for us; but how
many others, less visible perhaps but no less full of love and life, have
surged from His heart! "The Gospel speaks of three who were dead and who
were visibly restored to life by Our Lord," St. Augustine tells us,
"but He has restored thousands invisibly." When writing these words,
the Saint must have recalled with ineffable gratitude the much greater miracle
Jesus had wrought for him, making him rise from the death of sin.
St. Augustine and many other saints have been restored to life. If the
saints who led lives of innocence attract us so much, those who were brought
back from sin have still greater power to encourage us in our struggles. It may
be a laborious task for us to overcome pride, sensuality, and all the other
passions, but it was no easier for them. They too knew our temptations,
struggles and falls; if they overcame them, why cannot we do the same?
Thanks be to God, it is not always a question of having to rise from a
life of serious sin, but there is always occasion for a resurrection from our
little daily infidelities; if they are not corrected, our fervor in the
spiritual life will gradually weaken. In this regard, we need to rise every
day, indeed every hour; yet so many times we lack the strength for it. But if
we beseech Jesus, our Life, He will touch us with His as He once touched the
bier of the young man of He will give us fresh vigor and will put us back again,
full of courage, on the way to perfection. The resurrection of the young man
was implored by his mother's tears; let ours be implored every day by the tears
of our hearts, by our compunction, humility, and trust.
COLLOQUY:
"O Lord, my God, I had reached the gates of death, but You placed
Yourself between them and me, so that I could not pass through them. O my
Savior, You have often rescued me from bodily death when I was seriously ill or
exposed to danger. You knew, Lord, that if death had surprised me then, my soul
would have been cast into hell and I should have been damned forever. Your
mercy and Your grace prevented me, and saved both my body and soul from death.
You have done all this and much more for me, O Lord, my God!
"Now, O light of my soul, my God, life by which I live, I give You
thanks: to You do I offer my thanks, though I am poor and worthless and
unworthy to receive Your benefits.
"I was once among the sinners whom You saved. To give others an
example of Your most benign mercy, I shall declare Your great favors. You saved
me from the deepest pit of hell once, twice, thrice, a hundred times, a
thousand times. I was ever tending toward hell, and always You drew me back
when, if You had so willed, You could have justly damned me a thousand times;
You did not will to do so, because You love souls and dissimulate the sins of
men so that they may do penance, O Lord, most merciful in all Your ways.
"Now I see and
by Your light I know all this, O Lord my God, and my soul faints away when it
considers the greatness of Your mercy. My whole life, which was perishing in my
misery, has been revived by Your mercy. I was wholly dead and You restored me
wholly to life. May all that is in me be Yours then, henceforth, for I give
myself wholly to You!" (St. Augustine).
O most loving Word of
God, teach me to be generous, to serve You as You deserve: to give and not to
count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek
for rest, to labor and not to ask for any other reward save that of knowing
that I do Your holy will.
St. Ignatius of Loyola
Catholic doctrine tells
us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false
ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical
indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged
. . . Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray,
He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared.
He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save
them.
Pope St. Pius X, Our
Apostolic Mandate
“Nothing is more insolent
than a fact.” Dom Gueranger
A Look into a Dark Future: A
Note on the “Nobel Savage” before the Gospel Message
For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through
the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in
them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the
former. (2 Peter 2:20)
Nothing is more difficult than the
conversion of these Indians; It is a miracle of the Lord's mercy. It is
necessary first to transform them into men, and afterwards to labor to make
them Christians. As they are absolute masters of themselves, without being
subject to any law, the independence in which they live enslaves them to the
most brutal passions. There are, however chiefs among them, but they have no
authority. If they should resort to threats, so far from making themselves
feared, they would find themselves immediately abandoned by the very persons
who had chosen them to their office. They do not draw to themselves
consideration and respect, except when they have, as they express it here,
something to fill the kettle, that is, something with which to give feasts to
those who should obey them.
It is this independence indeed which is
the origin of all kinds of vices which rule them. They are lazy, treacherous,
fickle and inconstant, deceitful, naturally thievish, so as even to glory in
their success in stealing, brutal, without honor, without truth ready to
promise anything for those who are liberal to them but at the same time
ungrateful and without thankfulness. The only effect produced by conferring a
favor freely upon them, is to strengthen them in their natural arrogance; it
only renders them more insolent. "He fears me," they say, "for
he courts me." Thus, whatever good will one may have to oblige them must
be restrained, that he may force them to value any little services he may
render them.
Gluttony and the love of pleasure are
above all those vices which are most prominent among our Indians. They become
addicted to a most disgraceful habit of life, even before they are of
sufficient age to know the shame which is attached to it. If you add to this
the wandering life they pass in the forests in pursuit of wild beasts, you will
easily agree that reason must be entirely stupefied in this race, and that they
are almost incapable of submitting themselves to the yoke of the Gospel. But
the farther they are removed from the kingdom of God, so much the more should
our zeal be animated to cause them to approach it, and to make them enter
there. Persuaded that we can do nothing of ourselves, we know at the same time that
all things are possible through the aid of Him for whom we labor. We have even
this advantage in the conversions which God has been willing to effect through
our ministry, that we are freed from all danger of pride, or any reference we
might make to ourselves. We cannot attribute these conversions, either to the
forcible arguments of the Missionary, or to his eloquence, or to his other
talents which might be useful in other countries, but can produce no impression
on the minds of our Indians: we can render the glory to Him alone, who even of
the stones knows how to make, when it pleases Him, children unto Abraham.
Fr.
Gabriel Marest, S.J., Letter to his superior, Fr. Germon, work among the
Indians of Michigan and Illinois, November 9, 1712
In correction we must love the person while we rebuke the fault, lest
perchance correction pass into cruelty, and we destroy him whom we would
amend. Let, then, thy gentleness be
wary, and not remiss; and thy correction firm, but not severe.
St. Gregory the Great
Rights Created from Duties - In the conflict of
Law - The "Ends" Determine the Law that Must be Followed
Let us examine these words of Aquinas. First, he says that "since a precept of law is binding, it is about
something to be done." This is a truth to which we seldom if ever
advert, namely, that although right and duty are correlatives, duty is
ultimately the basis of right - not vice versa. And this is so because right
and duty are grounded upon law. Law, as we saw, is a directive norm of action
which carries with it an obligation. It binds us to do or avoid something. The
Eternal, Natural and Positive Laws are ordinations, commands of reason. The
fundamental notion of law then is obligation - not the concept of right. We
have rights because we have duties. Since a precept of law is binding it is
about something to be done.
Secondly, "that a thing must be done
arises from the necessity of some end." Whenever a man does
anything, i.e., whenever he acts as a reasonable being, he acts for an end - to
obtain some good; and so the necessity of his doing anything as a man must come
from the end. However, because man is a rational being he is free and
consequently the necessity exercised by any particular end or good cannot be
psychological; it must be
moral. That is, man's will remains free but he is obliged morally, he has a
duty to seek the end - and that because a precept of law binds him to do so.
Rights, therefore, are founded upon duties, duties are grounded upon
Natural or Positive Law, and because these laws are themselves based upon the
Eternal Law all rights and duties have their ultimate source in the same Eternal Law.
Rev. John A. Driscoll, O.P., S.T.Lr.,
Ph.D., Rights and Duties - Their
Foundation
Take My yoke
upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.
“ Depend upon it, it is better to learn how to live without
being angry than to imagine one can moderate and control anger lawfully;
and if through weakness and frailty one is overtaken by it, it is far better to
put it away forcibly than to parley with it; for give anger ever so little way,
and it will become master, like the serpent, who easily works in its body
wherever it can once introduce its head.”
St. Francis de Sales, Introduction
to the Devout Life
Rage acts as a
stimulant to my whole being. It sharpens my wits, puts a stop to the
assaults of the Devil and drives out care. Never do I write or speak better
than when I am in a rage. If I wish to compose, write, pray and preach well, I
have to be in a rage.
Martin Luther, “Table Talk,” 1210
"What harm
could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the
sake of the Christian Churches?...
To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse—such
lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on
Himself."
Martin Luther the LIAR, Lenz: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, page 373 & 375
Remembered
Ecumenical Outrages of Benedict/Ratzinger
Pope Benedict
greeting the spiritual sons of Luther the Liar
As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting
representatives of Council of the Lutheran Church of Germany here in the
ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt. This is where Luther studied theology.
This is where he was ordained a priest in 1507. Against his father’s wishes, he
did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off
on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. On this path,
he was not simply concerned with this or that. What constantly exercised him
was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s
journey. "How do I receive the grace of God?": this question struck
him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and
inner struggle. For him theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle
for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God. “How do I receive
the grace of God?" The fact that this question was the driving force of
his whole life never ceases to make an impression on me.
Pope Benedict to the Lutherans in Germany, September 22, 2011
Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity
Tradition: from an Objective Truth Received reduced to a
Subjective Impression of Historical Events
Now I make known unto you, brethren, the
gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you
stand; By which also you are
saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached unto you, unless you have
believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also
received.
St. Paul, 1 Cor. 15: 1-3
Concluding and summing up, we can therefore say that Tradition is
not the transmission of things or words, a collection of dead things.
Tradition is the living river that links us to the origins, the living river in
which the origins are ever present, the great river that leads us to the gates
of eternity.
Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, April 26, 2006
Both the Catholic and Protestant interpretation of Christianity have
meaning each in its own way; they are true in their historical moment... Truth
becomes a function of time... fidelity to yesterday’s truth consists precisely
in abandoning it, in assimilating it into today’s truth.
[.....] The
truth is whatever serves progress, that is, whatever serves the logic of
history.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building
Stones for a Fundamental Theology
Pope Benedict to the Jews in
Germany: Maybe he never heard of the Talmud?
I would also like to express my gratitude for the deepening dialogue
between the Catholic Church and Judaism. The Church feels a great closeness to
the Jewish people. With the Declaration
Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, an “irrevocable commitment to pursue the path of dialogue, fraternity
and friendship” was made (cf. Address in the Synagogue in Rome, 17 January
2010). This is true of the Catholic Church as a whole, in which Blessed John
Paul II committed himself to this new path with particular zeal. [....]
Alongside these important initiatives, it seems to me that we Christians must also become increasingly
aware of our own inner affinity with Judaism, to which you made reference. For Christians, there can be no rupture in
salvation history. Salvation comes from the Jews (cf. Jn 4:22). When Jesus’ conflict with the Judaism of
his time is superficially interpreted as a breach with the Old Covenant, it
tends to be reduced to the idea of a liberation that mistakenly views the Torah
merely as a slavish enactment of rituals and outward observances. Yet in actual
fact, the Sermon on the Mount does not abolish the Mosaic Law, but reveals its
hidden possibilities and allows more radical demands to emerge. It points us
towards the deepest source of human action, the heart, where choices are made
between what is pure and what is impure, where faith, hope and love blossom
forth.
The message of hope contained in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the
Christian Old Testament has been appropriated and continued in different ways
by Jews and Christians. “After centuries of antagonism, we now see it as our
task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts – the Christian
way and the Jewish way – into dialogue with one another, if we are to
understand God’s will and his word aright” (Jesus of Nazareth. Part Two: From
the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pp. 33f.). This
dialogue should serve to strengthen
our common hope in God in the midst
of an increasingly secularized society. Without this hope, society loses its
humanity.
Pope
Benedict to the Jews in Germany, September 22, 2011
“Strengthen Our common hope in God”??? – Society
lost “its humanity” after Vatican II
96% of Jewish Leaders
Support Abortion
The study also found that on a variety
of issues involving sexual morality that have roiled other religious groups,
Jews are much more liberal than other Americans. Jews take a less critical view of homosexuality,
abortion, birth control and pornography than do Gentiles," the study
found. In each case, Jewish leaders are
even more tolerant than the Jewish public.
For example, 48 percent of non-Jews say homosexuality is
wrong, compared to 23 percent of Jews and 7 percent of Jewish leaders. And
while 56 percent of non-Jews support abortion
rights, 88 percent of Jews and 96 percent of Jewish leaders do.
Only 38 percent of Jews support
allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, compared to 65
percent of non-Jews; 39 percent of Jews would allow the teaching of
creationism, compared with 63 percent of non-Jews; and 22 percent of Jews would
support vouchers that could be used at religious schools, compared with 43
percent of non-Jews.
Pew
Charitable Trusts, examining the contemporary role of religious groups in the
United States
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
The novel theory that Dogma contains "perennial truths" and
contingent accretions
My
fundamental impulse, precisely from the Council, has always been to free the
very heart of the faith from under any ossified strata, and to give this heart
strength and dynamism. This impulse is the constant in my life.
Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth
The
steps taken by the Council towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been
presented as ‘openness to the world’ [aggiornamento], belong in short to the
perennial problem of the relationship between faith and reason that is
re-emerging in ever new forms.... The Council had to find a new definition of
the relationship between the Church and the modern age.... Here I shall cite
only John XXIII’s well-known words, which unequivocally express this
hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine
pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion". And he continues: "Our duty is not only
to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity,
but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work
which our age demands of us…" It is necessary that "adherence to all
the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness…" be presented
in "faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which,
however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and
through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient
doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is
presented is another…", retaining the same meaning and message.... It is
clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands
new thinking upon it and a new relationship with it.
Pope
Benedict XVI, speech to Roman Curia on Dec 22, 2005, outlining his papal
agenda
Catholic teaching that Dogma once defined is the irreformable formal
object of Divine and Catholic Faith
For
the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a
philosophical invention, to be perfected by human ingenuity; but has been
delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully kept
and infallibly declared. Hence, also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is
perpetually to be retained which our holy Mother the Church has once declared;
nor is that meaning ever to be departed from, under the pretence or pretext of
a deeper comprehension of them. Vatican Council I
If
anyone shall assert it to be possible that sometimes, according to the progress
of science, a sense is to be given to doctrine propounded by the Church
different from that which the Church has understood and understands; let him be
anathema.
Vatican
Council I, Canon III, on Faith and Reason
Meditate often on the sorrows of the Holy Mother, sorrows
inseparable from those of her beloved Son.
If you seek the Cross, there you will find the Mother; and where the
Mother is, there also is the Son.
St. Paul of the Cross
“It
is the crime of the age not to hate Evil.”
We ought clearly to understand what is meant by charity. The more glorious a word, the more dangerous it may be. It
is impossible to overstate the importance of language. Words are terrible in
their complaisance. They lend themselves to any abuse, and make no protest.
It is just because charity is of all things most sublime, that the
abuse of charity, and the employment of its name in a false sense, is
exceptionally dangerous. Optimi
corruption pessima. The grander the word, the more awful it is; and if the
power which was intended to give life be directed against Truth, what service
may not thereby be rendered to death?
Now, we use the word charity
as a weapon against Light, every time when instead of crushing error we parley
with it, under pretext of consideration for the feelings of others. We employ
the word charity as a weapon against
Light, every time we make it serve as an excuse for relaxing our execration of
evil. As a general rule, men love to relax their efforts. There is something in
the very act of faltering pleasing to human nature; and besides, the absence of
any horror of error, evil, sin, and the devil, becomes a plausible excuse for
the evil there is in us. To feel less detestation of evil in general is only
perhaps a way of excusing ourselves for the particular evil we cherish in our
own soul.
There is a verse in the Psalms to which little attention is paid. It is
this: Qui diligitis Dominum, odite malum.
(You who love the Lord, hate evil.)
At the close of a long war, when each side is exhausted, kings have
often been known to cede to each other such and such fortresses. They are tired
of fighting, and these concessions have the effect of silencing the cannon. But
truths cannot be treated like fortresses. When it is a question of making peace
in spirit and in truth, it is conversion we must have, and not compromise.
Justice demands it, and it is not for us to tamper with justice.
In the relations between man and man, a reconciliation seems sometimes
to take place, and yet there is no change in the heart of the offender, who
thinks that a simple handshake will do instead of repentance and compunction
for the wrong he has wrought. But it is not long before this false
reconciliation reveals its true tendency, which is to lead inevitably to a
second separation fro wider than the first. The same holds good with regard to
doctrines. Apparent peace, purchased by concession, is as contrary to charity
as to justice, and opens out an abyss where before there was only a ditch.
Charity must have Light, and Light avoids wven the shadow of a compromise. All
beauty implies completeness. Peace is perhaps, at bottom, victory sure of
itself.
It is the crime of the age not to hate Evil, but to discuss terms of
peace with it and make it proposals. There is only one proposal to make to it –
that it should disappear.
Earnest Hello, French Catholic writer & apologist, 1828-1885, Life, Science and Art
All Art of Christendom
has as its foundation the immemorial “received and approved rite” of the Mass,
while only the most “mediocre man” could ever embrace the Novus Ordo!
ART
is the remembrance of the universal presence of God.
Art
is Beauty expressed in ways that can be grasped by the senses. It is the form
assumed by the Ideal under the laws of the natural world.
How
shall it succeed in entering this land of exile?
Time
and Space guard the frontiers of our world, and seize on all that enter.
Nothing escapes them. And so Art condescends to submit its infinite and
gracious splendour to human limitations. It does not violate its unity; but
since the finite mind of man cannot grasp it as a whole, it reveals itself in
different modes.
Forced
to submit to Time and Space, it begs their aid to help it to retain its beauty
while it sojourns in the country which they rule. And Time lends it language,
Space lends it light.
The
laws of Time are summed up in arithmetic; the laws of Space in algebra. In the
world of Art, arithmetic—the science of numbers—is the basis of poetry and
music; for Time determines measure, and measure is rhythm. Geometry is the
basis of architecture, sculpture, and painting, for it is Space which decides
their proportions. Love is the life of Art, yet the arts are founded on
mathematics, inflexible and absolutely exact. It is as though Love and Order, which men sometimes
regard as opposed to each other, had determined to demonstrate their essential
unity by the loftiest of their forms.
Art
is an ascension. Its law is to rise. By its very nature it seeks the eternal
types of things, and tends towards the Ideal. It may, indeed, lose sight of the
Polar Star and make for a false ideal. Still, through every error we catch a
glimpse of THE IDEAL, the corruption of which, in one way or another, explains
the deviations of Art. Through every error we perceive the shattered form of
Truth perverted.
Every
artist—every artist worthy of the name—helps the human soul to breathe. Art, to
a certain extent and at a given moment, is a force which blows the roof off the
cave where we crouch imprisoned. What mighty levers does it employ? What
massive weights have been placed at its service? Language! Music! A mere breath
from human lips!
Poor
fugitive notes, poor syllables caught away by the breeze! How invisible your
majesty! How weak you seem! Yet you have power to shake earth to its
foundations, and Heaven itself stoops to listen to you. In the solemn moments
when we yield ourselves to your sway, our soul breathes a purer air; she
breathes, and she is conscious of herself. She says: "Yes, my God, I am
great, and I had forgotten it." [.....]
Contempt for Art is one of the
commonest of sentiments, not only among ordinary men, but among artists and
critics. To have a
contempt for Art is to permit it to lie. The artist despises Art when he aims
at anything but the realization of Truth. The critic despises Art when he
pardons it for adopting an ideal which is not true.
Every day we hear this absurd
expression with reference to some error clothed in brilliant language: “It is
poetry.” When the mediocre man, speaking of a lie, has declared that it is
poetry, he thinks he has excused the liar. On the contrary, he has brought a
fresh accusation against him; for if the liar lies poetically, he has laid hold
of the loftiest form of language and forced to utter a lie.
When the mediocre man desires
pander to the disorderly life of another man, he says: “He is an artist.” If
the man is really an artist, the disorder is most criminal. Music is founded on
mathematics, poetry and painting depend on rigorous laws. Every artist should
live in austere conformity to Order.
Earnest
Hello, French Catholic writer & apologist, 1828-1885, Life, Science and Art
TO KNOW THE FAITH, YOU MUST KNOW THE RULE
The Rule of Faith was given to the Church in the very act of Revelation
and its promulgation by the Apostles. But for this Rule to have an actual and
permanently efficient character, it must be continually promulgated and
enforced by the living Apostolate, which must exact from all members of the
Church a docile Faith in the truths of Revelation authoritatively proposed, and
thus unite the whole body of the Church, teachers and taught, in perfect unity
of Faith. Hence the original promulgation is the remote Rule of Faith, and the
continuous promulgation by the Teaching Body, (i.e.: DOGMA) is the proximate
Rule.
Rev. Scheeben’s Manual of Catholic Theology
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties
of words, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. Which some promising, have erred concerning the faith.
Grace be with thee. Amen.” St. Paul, letter to his disciple, Bishop St. Timothy
(1 Timothy 6:20-21)
... We wish to make our own the important words employed by the
Council; those words which define its spirit, and, in a dynamical synthesis,
form the spirit of all those who refer to it, be they within or without the
Church. The word “NOVELTY”, simple, very dear to today’s men, is much
utilized; it is theirs... That word... it was given to us as an order, as a
program... It comes to us directly from the pages of the Holy Scripture: “For,
behold (says the Lord), I create new heavens and a new earth”. St. Paul echoes
these words of the prophet Isaiah (II Corinthians 5, 17); then, the Apocalypse:
“I am making everything new” (II Corinthians 21, 5). And Jesus, our Master, was
not He, himself, an innovator? “You have heard that people were told in the
past ... but now I tell you...” (Matthew 5) – Repeated in the
“Sermon on the Mount”.
It is precisely thus that the
Council has come to us. Two terms characterize it: “RENOVATION” and “REVISION”.
We are particularly keen that this “spirit of renovation” – according to the
expression of the Council – be understood and experienced by everyone. It
responds to the characteristic of our time, wholly engaged in an enormous and
rapid transformation, and generating novelties in every sector of modern life.
In fact, one cannot shy away from this spontaneous reflection: if the whole world
is changing, will not religion change as well? Between the reality of life and
Christianity, Catholicism especially, is not there reciprocal disagreement,
indifference, misunderstanding, and hostility? The former is leaping forward;
the latter would not move. How could they go along? How could Christianity
claim to have, today, any influence upon life?
And it is for this reason that
the Church has undertaken some reforms, especially after the Council. The
Episcopate is about to promote the “renovation” that corresponds to our present
needs; Religious Orders are reforming their Statutes; Catholic laity is
qualified and found its role within the life of the Church; Liturgy is
proceeding with a reform in which anyone knows the extension and importance;
Christian education reviews the methods of its pedagogy; all the canonical
legislations are about to be revised. And how many other consoling and
promising novelties we shall see appearing in the Church! They attest to Her
new vitality, which shows that the Holy Spirit animates Her continually, even
in these years so crucial to religion. The development of ecumenism, guided by
Faith and Charity, itself says what progress, almost unforeseeable, has been
achieved during the course and life of the Church. The Church looks at the
future with Her heart brimming with hope, brimming with fresh expectation in
love... We can say... of the Council: It marks the onset of a new era, of which
no one can deny the new aspects that We have indicated to you.
Pope Paul VI, General Audience
of July 2, 1969
And Then, Only Three Years Later:
Through
some cracks the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: there is doubt,
uncertainty, problematic, anxiety, confrontation. One does not trust the Church
anymore; one trusts the first prophet that comes to talk to us from some
newspapers or some social movement, and then rush after him and ask him if he
held the formula of real life. And we fail to perceive, instead, that we are
the masters of life already. Doubt has entered our conscience, and it has
entered through windows that were supposed to be opened to the light
instead....
Even
in the Church this state of uncertainty rules. One thought that after the
Council there would come a shiny day for the history of the Church. A cloudy day
came instead, a day of tempest, gloom, quest, and uncertainty. We preach
ecumenism and drift farther and farther from the others. We attempt to dig
abysses instead of filling them.
How
has all this come about? We confide to you our thought: there has been the
intervention of a hostile power. His name is the Devil; this mysterious being
who is alluded to even in the letter of St. Peter. So many times, on the other
hand, in the Gospel, on the very lips of Christ, there recurs the mention of
this enemy of man. We believe in something supernatural (post-correction:
“preternatural”!), coming into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate
anything of the Ecumenical Council, and to prevent that the Church would
explode into the hymn of joy for having regained full consciousness of Herself
(!!).
Pope
Paul VI, June 29, 1972
And we DO
know them!
"BY THEIR FRUITS YOU WILL KNOW THEM ... A GOOD TREE CANNOT BEAR BAD FRUIT, NOR CAN A BAD TREE BEAR
GOOD FRUIT." JESUS CHRIST, MATTHEW 7:15-18
Before thou inquire, blame no
man; and when thou hast inquired, reprove justly.
Ecclesiasticus 11:7
Pope Leo
XIV appoints Freemason to Vatican committee
Umberto
Longo, appointed to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, appears
repeatedly in Masonic records.
LifeSiteNews | VATICAN CITY | Fri Aug 14, 2026 — Pope Leo has appointed a historian who
appears repeatedly in Masonic records to a Vatican historical committee.
On August 13, Pope Leo XIV appointed
Umberto Longo, director of the Italian Historical Institute for the Middle Ages
and professor of medieval history at Sapienza University of Rome, as a member
of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
The appointment comes despite documentary evidence connecting him
to Freemasonry, including records from the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
and later appearances by Longo at events organized within the sphere of the
major Masonic lodge in Italy, the Grand Orient of Italy (GOI).
On February 9, 2019, for example, Longo participated in the
conference “God and People. Roman Republic. 170 years of love,” organized in
Rome by the GOI and the District College of Worshipful Masters of Lazio. The
surviving video provides visual evidence of Longo speaking at the event, opened
by Giuseppe Bramucci, a Master Mason. In particular, Longo gave a lecture
titled “The Legacy of the Roman Republic.”
The Roman Republic of 1849 was deeply influenced by the ideals of
liberty, equality, and fraternity that spread through Europe after the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and was founded in hatred against the
Roman Pontiff. The Republic’s leaders – including Giuseppe Mazzini – were
mostly Freemasons and shared with the Masonic tradition a vision of a moral and
civic regeneration of humanity, grounded in reason and universal brotherhood
rather than religious authority. […..]
During his lecture, Longo describes with remarkable precision the
stages of the Masonic initiation ritual: the chamber of reflection, the
divesting of metals, the inner journey. He presents them not merely as a
subject of historical study, but as a “complete representation” which he
interprets using the kind of language of someone well-versed in the Order’s
symbolism.
At the end of his lecture, Longo concludes by placing himself, Hugo
Pratt, Corto Maltese, and the audience within a single shared category: “Corto
and Ugo know well that an initiate can only be a traveler… Pratt and Corto
embody all of this, with a gentle smile, without dogmas, without claims to
primacy; they are gentlemen of fortune. And, after all, so are we.”
Even more striking is that, at the conclusion of the conference, a
man introduced as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite took the floor to thank the speaker, referring to him verbatim as
“Brother Professor Longo.”
Pagan
Gaia earth worship officially part of Novus Ordo liturgical prayer service!
Pope asks
Catholics to acknowledge 'unfaithful' attitudes for care of creation
National Catholic Reporter | Justin McLellan | Vatican Correspondent
| September 1, 2026
Celebrating a new form of the Catholic
Mass "for the care of creation," Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to
contemplate nature as well as the ways they have shirked their responsibility
to care for it.
"From contemplating creation and encountering its creator,
there arises an awareness of our particular place within God's wondrous plan,
and of the responsibility that we bear both personally and collectively for
preserving the original harmony," Leo said while celebrating Mass in the
papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, on Sept. 1.
During the intimate Mass marking the church's celebration of World
Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation and attended by Vatican staff, Leo
remarked that the Gospel invites believers to contemplate God's creation,
"a task that is certainly not difficult in the setting of these beautiful
gardens."
It was only the second time the pope has celebrated a Mass
"for the care of creation" using a new formulary for the Mass he
introduced into the Roman Missal last July.
Pope Leo XIV
celebrates Mass for the Care of Creation on the grounds of the Borgo Laudato
Si’ ecology center in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Sept. 1, 2026. (CNS/Vatican
Media)
The Vatican's liturgy office promulgated the Latin text of the new
formulary last year. But English and Spanish translations were
approved only last month (August), making this the first year in which Catholic
communities in the United States can celebrate the new Mass during the Season
of Creation — a month long period devoted to prayer and action for the care of
creation which runs from Sept. 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of
Creation, through Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
This year's observance ends during the 800th anniversary of the
death of St. Francis: the founder of the Franciscan order, namesake of Pope
Francis and a central inspiration for the late pope's encyclical on the care of
creation, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."
In a nod to the patron saint of ecology, Leo quoted extensively in
his homily from St. Francis' "Canticle of the Sun."
Beginning Mass amid the lush green surroundings of the papal garden
on Tuesday, Leo invited the congregation to "recognize with humility the
ways in which we have been unfaithful in safekeeping creation and caring for
the dignity of each person."
In his homily, the pope asked the faithful in the coming weeks to
"set aside a few moments to pause from the frenzy of our daily lives, in
order to savor the profound harmony of which we ourselves are a part."
"Let us place in 'silent mode' the many noises generated by
human activity, so that we may hear the melodious voice of creation, through
which God, the author of all things, speaks to us," he said.
Contemplation of nature, Leo added, "is a first step towards
an authentic ecological conversion."
"It is not yet too late, and the Season of Creation calls us
to a profound conversion," he said.
Celebrating Mass in the same spot as he did last year to inaugurate
the new formulary, the pope prayed "for the conversion of many
people, inside and outside of the church, who still do not recognize the
urgency of caring for our common home."
Leo, who has continued the church's advocacy for environmental
issues which was championed by his predecessor Francis, warned in his
encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of the far-reaching environmental
consequences of the AI revolution.
One of the prayer intentions offered during the Mass asked that the
work and research of those working in artificial intelligence "may be increasingly
oriented toward the common good, safeguarding human work and service of
fraternity and peace."
The pope's celebration came as local churches worldwide seek to
better understand and embrace the new formulary of the Mass.
Bishops' councils across Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia
with other Catholic organizations hosted a webinar in June to explain
how to celebrate the new formulary of the Mass and why it should be celebrated
on the day of prayer for creation.
"The new Mass is a significant step to enable our liturgical
celebrations of this special day, aligning our faith and deeds," said
Bishop Allwyn D'Silva, chair of the Office for Human Development at the
Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences said in a statement on the new formulary.
"Ultimately, the Eucharistic celebration of Creation Day is an opportunity
to celebrate God as Creator and renew our appreciation of the sacred gift of
creation, while inspiring us to care for it more fervently."
Mass for care
of creation ready for US churches after Vatican finalizes translations
National
Catholic Reported | Brian Roewe | environment correspondent | August 27, 2026
The Mass for safeguarding the environment that Pope Leo XIV first
celebrated last summer is now available for Catholic churches in the U.S., just
in time for the upcoming ecumenical Season of Creation.
The Vatican's Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of
the Sacraments finalized Aug. 4 English and Spanish translations of the Mass
"for the care of creation," a new set of prayers and texts the
Vatican added to the Roman Missal in June 2025.
The completion of the translations proved providential for the
Seattle Archdiocese, which plans to use the new texts (known as a formulary) at
a Mass Sept. 2 celebrated by Archbishop Paul Etienne at St. James Cathedral to
open its celebration of the Season of Creation. The monthlong period of prayer
and actions for God's creation runs from Sept. 1, the World Day of Prayer
for the Care of Creation, to Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis of
Assisi.
"The timing is ideal to be able to celebrate it when it's new
and fresh and just start a new tradition, I guess, to do this each year,"
said Corinna Laughlin, the cathedral's pastoral assistant for liturgy and consultant
for the archdiocese's liturgy office.
Pope Leo XIV leads the Mass for the Care of Creation, in
Castel Gandolfo, Italy, July 9, 2025. (Pool Via AP/Yara Nardi)
The Mass for creation joins 17 other "civil needs"
formularies in the Roman Missal, among others for particular needs and other
circumstances. Several touch on environment-related themes, such as times of
harvest and famine along with prayers for good weather.
Vatican officials said its development was in response to requests
for a liturgical means to celebrate the messages of Pope Francis' 2015
encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home." In that papal
teaching document, Francis bemoaned the numerous ecological threats facing the
planet, including climate change and biodiversity loss, and called on
Christians to act.
"At this time it is evident that the work of creation is
seriously threatened because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods
God has endowed to our care," Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the divine
worship dicastery, wrote in the decree issuing the new formulary.
The first iteration of the Mass for creation was celebrated in July
2025 by Leo at the Borgo Laudato Si' ecology project in Castel Gandolfo outside
Rome. He is set to do so again on Sept. 1. But before it could be used in most
churches in the U.S., it first needed to be translated from Latin.
Along with the exemplar original Latin text, the Vatican
released working translations to assist national bishops' conferences in
preparing them for use in their native languages. The English translation was
led by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, which includes
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In June, the U.S. bishops' unanimously
approved the translation, which were then sent back to Rome for final
confirmation.
A similar process unfolded for the Spanish translation, which was
undertaken through a collaboration by the U.S. bishops' conference and the
Mexican Episcopal Conference.
Fr. Dustin Dought, executive director of the U.S. bishops'
Secretariat of Divine Worship, said the procedure for approving adaptations of
liturgical texts was outlined in Francis' 2017 motu proprio ("on
his own initiative") Magnum Principium. That document gave bishop
conferences responsibility for translating into local languages.
"His insight there was that the conference of bishops is
closest to the culture and language that it serves," Dought said.
The new formulary will be included in
future editions of the Catholic Lectionary for Mass. In the meantime, the U.S.
bishops' conference has posted translations for both the English and
Spanish versions of the Mass for the care of creation on its website, as well
as bulletin inserts.
Along with creation-themed prayers, the formulary suggests readings
for the Liturgy of the Word, including passages from Matthew's Gospel where
Jesus calms the sea and where he instructs his disciples to learn from the
birds in the air and flowers in the field to trust in God's providence.
Before the Mass for creation was issued, some Catholic churches
prepared ecological liturgies at various times, even at the occasion of
the first Earth Day in 1970. The practice has grown in the past
decade, including with "Green Masses," following Francis' invitation
for Catholics to join fellow Christians in marking the Season of
Creation.
Tuty Gunawan
sings during a prayer service marking the summer solstice and celebrating the
beauty of creation at the motherhouse campus of the Sisters of St. Joseph of
Brentwood, N.Y., June 20, 2024. (OSV News/Gregory A. Shemitz)
Having a Mass for the care of creation formally added to the Roman
Missal is a major step, said Jesuit Fr. James Hug, who for years has
developed liturgical resources for the Season of Creation.
"It's official, and that makes it legitimate to use," he
said, calling the prayers "lovely" and affirming the Christian
mission to care for the world God has created.
That stamp of approval from the Vatican is important, Hug added,
for many priests who may have been hesitant to use other creation-centered
liturgical resources in the past, whether ones he prepared or from groups like
the Catholic Climate Covenant or Laudato Si' Movement.
"It says that this is the concern of the whole church,"
Laughlin said. "This isn't just a thing we pray about but a really
important universal concern."
At Seattle's St. James Cathedral, the
new formulary will be used at the Mass with the archbishop as well as a weekend
Mass later in the month. Other parishes have also expressed an interest in
planning their own liturgies for creation.
Dought said his office has received many inquiries about when the
Mass for the care of creation would be available.
Preparations are already in the works in at least a half-dozen
dioceses to celebrate the Mass for the care of creation. That includes the St.
Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, where Archbishop Bernard Hebda will be the lead
celebrant Sept. 6 at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Lake St Croix
Beach, situated along the St. Croix River in Minnesota.
School Sister of Notre Dame Kathleen Storms, who too for decades
has developed creation prayer services, is eagerly anticipating the first use
of the new formulary in the Twin Cities region.
"Even with everything we've seen just this summer — with the
fires and the floods and the huge hurricanes and all of the rest — sometimes
there is no connection between what's going on there and
what the church teaches about care for creation," she said.
Sr. Kathleen Storms
shows tomatoes grown in a raised garden bed made by her brother with recycled
cedar planks at her apartment in West St. Paul, Minn., Aug. 17, 2022. (CNS/The
Catholic Spirit/Dave Hrbacek)
Storms hopes the new Mass for creation will lead more priests to
uplift Catholic social teaching on creation and to preach on environmental
concerns. How and when a formulary is used is mostly left to the discretion of
the pastor, who weighs it against other feast days and holy dates on the
liturgical calendar.
Catholics who have been eagerly anticipating the new formulary see
in it the potential to expand awareness of Laudato Si' and other
church teachings on creation, as well as cultivate the ecological
conversion both Leo and Francis have said is essential to spur the level
of collective action needed to address crises like climate change and
deforestation.
"The liturgy does something that a lecture can't do. The
liturgy does something that a catechism can't do," Dought said.
Laughlin, the liturgical consultant in the Seattle Archdiocese,
turned to the church adage "Lex orandi, lex credendi" — how we
pray expresses what we believe.
"What we lift up at Mass really shapes our understanding of
what church teaching is, even without going to other documents. ... It tells us
this is part of what we believe. This is significant enough and substantial
enough that this is part of the Mass, which is source and summit. "So I
think planting the seeds there will make a difference, because obviously we
need to be praying about this."
COMMENT:
Freemasonry is the creation of
gnostic Jewish Cabalism. Its mystical symbology is taken from Jewish Cabalism.
Freemasonry is a secret society that reveals itself to its initiates as they
progress to greater degrees of depravity for everyone begins by choosing evil
under the appearance of good. At the apex of freemanonry, like Jewish
Cabalism, it is unadulterated Satanism.
Pope Leo has been pictured paying religious homage to the pagan goddess, Pachamama,
an Andean earth goddess, like the Greek goddess Gaia. Common in pre-Columbian Andean worship was
ritual human sacrifice. Thier ritual murder seems to have largely involved
children, like our present day abortion and the ancient worship paid to the
pagan deities Baal and Moloch in the Old Testament. Every faithful Catholic
knows that "All the gods of the gentiles are devils" and Pope Leo
knows this as well. The Novus Ordo offers the "fruit of the earth and the
work of human hands" like the ritual offering of Cain who killed his
brother Abel. He killed his brother out
of envy because God would not accept his man-made worship and, rather than
repenting, he looked for another who would accept his worship. Like freemasonry
that reveals itself in degrees, we now see the direct unification of earth
worship and the Novus Ordo service by a pope who worships the earth goddess and
honors professed enemies of Jesus Christ.
Conservative Catholics are critical
of Pope Leo just as they slowly became critical with Pope Francis but the
tragedy is that they argue as a correction against this blasphemy for a return
to days of Pope Benedict. It was Pope
Benedict who was present at, participated in, and personally endorsed the Aparecida
Document (2007) that was produced by the Fifth General Conference of Latin
American and Caribbean bishops. This document explicitly promoted the
integration of the Catholic faith with native American pre-Columbian paganism. The document claims that the
proclamation of Jesus Christ did not alienate pre-Columbian religions of
indigenous cultures but sought a synthesis between the gospel values and
existing cultural expressions. Pope Benedict in meeting with pagans
acknowledged the richness of native American rituals, symbols and spiritual practices
and advocated for their integration into Catholic worship. Pope Benedict praised the Jews, he praised
Luther and the Lutheran religion, and he praised the native American pagans.
Pope Francis and Pope Leo are doing nothing more than following his example and
the example of John Paul II who kissed the Koran, received the blessing of a
Hindu priestess, and established the syncretistic Prayer Meeting of Assisi.
Conservative Catholics are just retarded liberals who prefer style over
substance. Conservative Catholics prefer the style of Benedict's apostasy to
the crude style of Francis and Leo. They do not defend the Catholic faith. We
are witnessing as participants the punishment of God that will bring about the
restoration of the Church but we cannot forget our Lady of Fatima said,
"the good will be martyred."
We must keep the faith and recognize the face of the enemy. We do not
seek the approval of the Novus Ordites but their conversion.
On the other hand, it is certain that the Jewish Cabalistic tradition
was one of the principal mediums through which Eastern occultism, which has so
many times come to the surface in European history, has been transmitted to
modern Europe; and that many, if not all, of the recognized founders of the
eighteenth-century Illuminism, including Weishaupt, Pasqualis, and Cagliostro,
were initiated into its secrets by Jewish Cabalists or drew their inspiration and their methods
from the Jewish esoteric writings. The
Jewish apologist, Bernard Lazare, states that “there were Cabalistic Jews
around the cradle of Freemasonry, as certain rites still in existence
conclusively show.”
Rev. E. Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry
and the Anti-Christian Movement, 1930
Remember in your charity:
Remember the welfare of our expectant mother:
Fr. Paul
Sretenovic, a faithful priest who works in California,
Drews petition prayers for the spiritual and
temporal welfare of the Christian
& Irene Melnick family,
Gene Peters asks our prayers for the spiritual
welfare of Beverly Wood and Bonnie Cormesser,
Mr. & Mrs. Hall request prayers for the health
of their daughter, Erika Smith,
Drews request your prayers for Phyllis Virgil, for her health and spirital welfare,
For Anthony
Niekrewicz, spiritual and temporal welfare is the petition of all the
members of Ss. Peter & Paul,
Mary Lou Loftus' aunt, Susan Hendricks, who is gravely ill after emergency surgery,
Fred Holder,
for his
spiritual and physical welfare,
Thomas Soul,
a
nursing home patient who has suffered a stroke,
Donna Kallal, a dear friend of the
Schiltz family who is dying,
Philip Thees requests our prayers for the heath of Mary Glatz and Agnus Messineo,
For the welfare of Aaron, a York resident in need of conversion,
For the spiritual welfare of Margaret Connelly is the petition of Camilla Meiser,
Linda Boyd, for her health,
Pete
Schiffbauer, a cousin of Monic Bandlow who is gravely ill,
Joan R.
Barr,
the widow of F. Donald Barr who died March 7, they were married 70 years
Cole
Schneider, prayers for his welfare are requested by Camilla Meiser,
JoAnn
Niekrewicz,
for her recovery from a recent fall and shoulder injury,
The Drews ask prayers for the spiritual and physical
welfare of Robert Carballo,
Conversion of Jack
Gentry, the nephew of Camilla Meiser,
For Sr.
Maria Junipera, who took her final vows as a nun with the Slaves of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire April 8,
Stephen
Bryan,
the brother of a devout Catholic religious, for his spiritual welfare,
Marie
Kolinsky,
for her health and spiritual welfare is the petition of her family,
Gene Peters requests our prayers for the conversion
of Shirley Young and Carl Loy who are dying, the
conversion of Dawn Keithley
and Nate Schaeffer,
Rev. Leo
Carley,
an eighty-nine year old priest faithful to Catholic tradition, who is seriously
ill,
For the recovery of Hayden Yanchek, the grandson of Francis Yanchek, injured in
a farming accident,
Maureen
Nies, for
the recovery of her health is the petition of Camilla Meiser,
Daniel
Vargs, for
his health is the petition of his parents,
Art Noel, for the restoration of his
health,
For the welfare of Peg Berry and her husband, Bill,
Marianne Connelly asks prayers for Chris Foley, who is gravely ill,
and the welfare of his wife, Mary
Beth,
The spiritual welfare of the Sal & Maria Messineo family is the petition of the
Drew’s,
Liz Agosta, who is seriously ill, for her
spiritual and temporal welfare,
Warren
Hoffman, a
long time member of our Mission who is in failing health,
Patrick
Boyle,
for the recovery of his health and his spiritual welfare,
For the spiritual welfare of the Drew children,
Monica Bandlow request our prayers for the welfare of
Ray who is recovering from a
MVA, and his daughter, Sonya,
and Tera Jean Kopczynski, who
is in failing health, and for a good death for Mr. Howald, Kathy
Simons, Regina Quinn, James Mulgrew, Ruth Beaucheane, John Kopczynski, Roger
& Mandy Owen
Peg Berry requests our prayers for her brother, William Habekost,
For the recently widowed, Maike Hickson, and her children,
For the spiritual welfare of the Carmelite nuns in Fairfield, PA,
Geralyn
Zagorski, recovery of her health and spiritual welfare and
the conversion of Randal Pace is the petition of Philip Thees,
For the grandson of
Joe & Liz Agusta,
Fr. Waters requests our
prayers for the health and spiritual welfare of Elvira Donaghy,
For the health and
conversion of Stephen Henderson,
Fr. Paul DaDamio requests
our prayers for the welfare of Rob Ward, and his sister, Debra
Wagaman,
Kaitlyn McDonald, for the recovery of her health and spiritual
welfare,
Roco
Sbardella,
for his health and spiritual welfare,
The Vargas’ request our prayers for the spiritual
welfare of their son, Nicholas,
Family, for the welfare of Lazarus Handley, his mother, Julia, and his brother, Raphael, with Down’s Syndrome,
Fr. Waters requests prayers for the spiritual and
physical welfare of Frank McKee,
Nancy
Bennett, for the recovery of her
health,
For the spiritual welfare of Mark Roberts, a Catholic faithful to tradition,
Michael Brigg requests our prayers for the health of John Romeo,
The health and welfare of Gene Peters and his sons,
Conversion of Anton
Schwartzmueller, is the prayer request of his children,
Christine
Kozin, for
her health and spiritual welfare,
Teresa Gonyea, for her conversion and
health, is the petition of her grandmother, Patricia McLaughlin,
For the health of Sonya Kolinsky,
Jackie Dougherty asks our prayers for her brother, John Lee, who is gravely ill,
For the health and spiritual welfare, Meg Bradley, the granddaughter
of Rose Bradley,
Timothy
& Crisara, a couple from Maryland have requested our prayers for their spiritual
welfare,
Celine
Pilegaard, the seven year old daughter of Cynthia Pilegaard, for her recovery from
burn injuries,
Rafaela de Saravia,
for her
health and welfare,
Abbe Damien
Dutertre,
traditional Catholic priest arrested by Montreal police while offering Mass,
Francis
(Frank) X. McLaughlin, for the recovery of his
health,
Nicholas
Pell,
for his health and spiritual welfare is the petition of Camilla Meizer,
Mary Kaye
Petr,
her health and welfare is petitioned by Camilla Meizer,
The welfare of Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,
The welfare of Rev.
Fr. Martin Skierka, who produces the traditional Ordo in the U.S.,
For the health and welfare of Katie Wess, John Gentry, Vincent Bands, Todd Chairs, Susan Healy and
James O’Gentry is the petition of Camilia,
Marieann
Reuter, recovery of her health, Kathy Kepner, for her health, Shane Cox, for his health,
requests of Philip Thees,
The Joseph
Cox Family, their spiritual welfare,
For the health of Kim Cochran, the daughter-in-law of Joseph and Brenda
Cochran, the wife of their son Joshua,
Louie
Verrecchio,
Catholic apologist, who has a health problem,
John
Minidis, Jr. family, for help in their spiritual
trial,
Joann
DeMarco, for her health and spiritual
welfare,
Regina
(Manidis) Miller, her spiritual welfare and health,
Melissa
Elena Levitt, her conversion, and welfare of her children,
For the grace of a holy death, Nancy Marie Claycomb,
Conversion of Annette
Murowski, and her son Jimmy,
Brent Keith from Indiana has petitioned our prayers
for the Keith Family,
The welfare of the Schmedes Family, and the Mike and Mariana Donohue Family,
The spiritual welfare Robert Holmes Family,
For the spiritual and temporal welfare of Irwin Kwiat,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for Elvira Donaghy,
Kimberly Ann, the daughter of John and
Joann DeMarco, for her health and spiritual welfare,
Rende and
Mary Mufide, a traditional Catholics from India ask our prayers for her welfare and
he family members, living and deceased,
Mary Glatz, her health and the welfare
of her family,
Barbara
Harmon,
who is ill,
Jason Green, a father of ten children,
his health,
For the health and welfare of Sorace family,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for the health and
spiritual welfare of Brian Abramowitz,
Thomas
Schiltz family, in grateful appreciation for their contribution to the beauty of our
chapel,
John Rhoad, for his health and spiritual
welfare,
Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for
her welfare,
Joyce
Laughman and Robert Twist, for their conversions,
Michael J.
Brigg & his family, who have helped with the needs of the Mission,
Nancy Deegan, her welfare and conversion
to the Catholic Church,
Francis Paul
Diaz,
who was baptized at Ss. Peter & Paul, asks our prayers for his spiritual
welfare,
The conversion of Rene McFarland, Lori Kerr, Cary Shipman
and family, David Bash, Crystal and family, Larry Reinhart, Costanzo Family,
Kathy Scullen, Marilyn Bryant, Vicki Trahern and Time Roe are
the petitions of Gene Peters,
For the conversion of Ben & Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf, Eckhard Ebert,
and Fahnauer family,
Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX, and for Fr. Thomas Blute,
For the welfare of Fr. Paul DaDamio and Fr. William T. Welsh,
The Drew’s ask our prayers for the welfare of Joe & Tracey Sentmanat family, Keith
& Robert Drew, Christy Koziol & her children, Fred Nesbit and Michael
Nesbit families, and Gene Peters Family,
the John Manidis Family, the Sal Messinio Family, Michael Proctor Family,
Ryan Boyle grandmother, Jane Boyle, who is failing health,
Mel Gibson
and his family, please remember in our prayers,
Rev. Timothy A. Hopkins requested our prayers for the
welfare of his friend, Fr Jean-Luc Lafitte,
Ebert’s request our prayers for the Andreas & Jenna Ortner Family,
Joyce Paglia has asked prayers for George Richard Moore Sr. & his
children, and her brother, George
Panell,
Philip Thees asks our prayers for his family, for McLaughlin Family, the welfare
of Dan & Polly Weand, the
conversion of Sophia Herman,
Tony Rosky, the welfare Nancy Erdeck, the wife of
the late Deacon Erdeck, John Calasanctis, Tony Rosky, James Parvenski, Kathleen Gorry, health of mind and body of Cathy Farrar.
Pray for the
Repose of the Souls:
Shanon
Smuckers,
a thirty-three year old mother of three, died July 15,
John
Callisanti, a faithful Catholic, died June 23, prayers petitioned by Philip Thees,
Christian
Joseph Melnick, died June 19, a 56 year old faithful Catholic and devoted husband and
father of nine,
Fr.
Radoslav, a
relatively young faithful priest who was working with Bishop Stobnicki in
Poland,
Leonard Messineo, a long time traditional
Catholic, dies May 18,
For Jo Ann
Niekrewicz, our dear friend, died March 1, for the blessed repose of
her soul is the petition of all the members of Ss. Peter & Paul,
Shirley
Rotondo, died
February 2-26, and Louisa McBride,
died February 27, is the petition of Monica Bandlow,
Katherine
Veronica Wedel, the mother of Mary Baer, died February 6,
James
Condit, Jr., traditional Catholic activist, died December 27,
Beverly
Harmon, died
December 16, requested by the Sentmanat family,
Rev.
Nicholas DeProspero, a faithful Ruthenian Eastern rite Catholic priest, died December 10,
Monica Bandlow petitions our prayers for her friend, Patricia Messineo, died November
28,
Guy
Berthault,
died November 23, a great Catholic scientist whose work in sedimentology
destrooyed Lyellian geology and the theory of evolution,
Thomas Soul,
died
November 8 after receiving the last rites of the Church,
Etta Van Der
Werken, a
dear friend of Barbara Taffe, died 10-21-2025,
Gary Potter, Catholic writer and
apologist and great long time defender of Catholic doctrine and tradition, died
9-9-2025,
Elizabeth
Gorska,
who died September 9, a relative of Lidia Gjec,
Camilia Meiser request our prayers for the souls of Peggy Cummings and Elizabeth Genter,
Thomas A.
Nelson, founder of TAN Books and
Publishers, died August 16,
Juan D.
Gonzalez,
our former sacristan, choir director, and dear friend, died July 23,
Sal
Messineo,
a faithful traditional Catholic, died Augsut 14,
Patricia
Askew, a
friend of Camilla Meiser, died July 3,
Joseph
Kerney, a
young man whose family provided the statues of the Sacred Heart, Mary and
Joseph in our sanctuary, died May 30,
Louis
Richard Ajlouny, the father of Randa Sharpe, died May 15,
Rene Guidicessi, died April 25, an old
friend of the Drews,
F. Donald
Barr, died
March 7 at 94 years of age, co-founder of Robert Francis Religious Goods, in
Philadelphia,
Dr. David
Allen White, a well known defender of the Catholic faith, died February 11,
Bishop
Richard Williamson, a renowned defender of the Catholic faith and most charitable gentleman,
died January 29,
Rodolfo
Alberto Lacayo, a cousin of Claudia Drew, died January 4,
Genieve
Wallace, died
Christmas day,
Ruth Marion
Beaucheane, died December 8, is the
petition of Monica Bandlow,
Ana
Maria Salcedo, the sister of Mario Fiol,
died November 26,
Fr.
Johin Cardaro, a traditional Catholic priest who was found dead in his home
November 2,
Robert
Carballo asks that we remember his parents, Roberto & Aida Carballo, and
his friend, David Duclos, who died April 15,
Bishop
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais who may have been responsible for preventing the
SSPX's public reconciliation with Rome in 2012, died October 8,
Lorna
Edwards, our
dear friend and loyal supporter of this Mission, died August 10,
Lois Petti, died July 28 two hours after
receiving the Last Sacraments from Fr. Waters,
Wolfgang
Smith, a
renowned Catholic scholar, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, who helped
the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, died July 19,
Willaim
Glatz, a
good and faithful Catholic, died July 17,
Alicio
Gonzalez, a
Catholic who asked for the sacrament of Extreme Unction, unfortunately did not
receive, died July 9,
John
Zavodny, a faithful Catholic who died wearing the
scapular of Mt Carmel on the first Saturday of May, requested by Phyllis Virgil,
Catherine
Martel, a lapsed Catholic, received
the last sacraments in a good disposition from Fr. Waters on March 25 and died
on April 4,
Father
Basilio Méramo, a faithful priest, died March 5, removed from the SSPX for opposing
their accommodation with Rome,
Julia
McDonald,
the mother of Kyle McDonald, died March 1,
Agnus
Melnick,
died February 28, a long time faithful Catholic and mother of eight children,
including a traditional priest,
Kathryn
(Drew) Lederhos, of Wellesley, MA, died
February 3, 2024,
Chris Foley, the
brother of Mary Lou Loftus, died February 1,
Louis Zelaya, the brother of Claudia
Drew, died January 30,
Fr. James
Louis Albert Campbell, a faithful priest who died December 18 at 91 years of age, and her
mother and father, Teresa and Thomas
Maher,
Charles
Harmon,
the father of Tracey Sentmanet, died October 1, after receiving the rites of
the Church,
Fr. Waters requests prayers for Elvira Donaghy, his friend and former secretary a for Bishop
Gerado Zendejas, died September 9,
Robert
Hickson,
a faithful Catholic apologist who died Septembber 2,
Monica Bandlow requests prayers for her parents, Thomas & Teresa Maher, her
husband, William Bandlow, her
brother-in-law, Richard Bandlow,
her sister, Mary Maher, Fr. Christopher Darby, SSPX, who died March 17, Robert Byrne, Michelle Donofrio McDowell, her cousin, Patricia Fabyanic, the Prefect
of Our Lady’s Sodality, March 8, for
John Pfeiffer who died August 20, Theresa
Hanley, died July 23, Fr.
Juan-Carlos Iscara, SSPX, who died December 20, John Kinney, died December 21, Willaim Price, Jr., and Robert Arch Ward, died January 10,
and Myra, killed in a MVA
June 6,
John Sharpe,
Sr.,
died July 20,
Maria
Paulette Salazar, died June 6,
Dale Kinsey requests prayers for his wife, Katherine Kinsey, died May 17,
Richard
Giles,
who died April 29, the father of Traci Sentmanat who converted to the Catholic
faith last All Saints' Day,
Joseph
Sparks,
a devout and faithful Catholic to tradition died February 25,
Joyce Paglia, died
January 21, and Anthony Paglia,
died January 28, who were responsible for the beautiful statuary in our chapel,
Joe Sentmanet request prayers for Richard Giles and Claude Harmon who converted to
the Catholic faith shortly before their deaths,
Rodolfo Zelaya, the
brother of Claudia Drew, died January 9,
Elizabeth Agosta petitions our prayers for Joseph Napolitano, her brother,
who died January 2,
Michael
Dulisse,
died on December 26,
Michael
Proctor, a close friend of the Drews,
died November 9,
Richard
Anthony Giles, the father-in-law of Joe Sentmanat converted to the Catholic faith on
All Saints Day, died November 5,
Robert
Kolinsky,
the husband of Sonja, died September 18,
Gabriel
Schiltz,
the daughter of Thomas & Gay Schiltz, died August 21,
Mary Dimmel, the
mother –in-law of Victoria Drew Dimmel, died July 18,
Michael
Nesbit,
the brother-in-law and dear friend of the Drew's, died July 14,
Thomas
Thees, the brother of Philip, died
June 19,
Carmen Ragonese,
died June 22,
Juanita
Mohler, a friend of Camella Meiser,
died June 14,
Kathleen
Elias, died February 14,
Hernan Ortiz, the
brother of Fr. Juan Carlos Ortiz, died February 3,
Mary Ann
Boyle,
the mother of a second order Dominican nun, a first order Dominican priest, and
a SSPX priest, died January 24,
John DeMarco, who
attended this Mission in the past, died January23,
Charles
O’Brien, the father of Marlene Cox,
died December 30,
Mufide Rende requests our prayers for the repose of
the souls of her parents, Mehmet
& Nedime,
Kathleen
Donelly,
died December 29 at 91 years of age, ran the CorMariae website,
Matthew
O'Hare,
most faithful Catholic, died at age 40 on November 30,
Rev. Patrick
J. Perez, a Catholic priest faithful to
tradition, pastor Our Lady Help of Christians, Garden Grove, CA, November 19,
Elizabeth
Benedek,
died December 14, requested by her niece, Agnes Vollkommer,
Dolores
Smith and Richard Costello, faithful Catholics, died
November,
Frank
D’Agustino,
a friend of Philp Thees, died November 8,
Fr.
Dominique Bourmaud, of the SSPX, Prior of St.
Vincent in Kansas City, died September 4,
Pablo Daniel
Silva, the brother of Elizabeth
Vargas, died August 18,
Rose Bradley, a
member of Ss. Peter & Paul, died July 14,
Patricia
Ellias, died June 1, recently
returned to the Church died with the sacraments and wearing the brown scapular,
Joan Devlin, the sister-in-law of Rose
Bradley, died May 18,
William
Muligan, died April 29, two days after
receiving the last sacraments,
Robert Petti, died
March 19, the day after receiving the last sacraments,
Mark
McDonald, the father of Kyle, who died
December 26,
Perla Otero, died December 2020, Leyla Otero, January 2021,
cousins of Claudia Drew,
Mehmet Rende, died
December 12, who was the father of Mary Mufide,
Joseph
Gravish, died November 26, 100 year
old WWII veteran and daily communicant,
Jerome
McAdams,
the father of, died November 30,
Rev. James
O’Hara, died November 8, requested by
Alex Estrada,
Elizabeth
Batko, the sacristan at St. John the
Baptist in Pottstown for over 40 years, died on First Saturday November 7
wearing the brown scapular,
William Cox, the
father of Joseph Cox, who died September 3,
James Larson, Catholic
apologists, author of War Against Being
publication, died July 6, 2020,
Hutton
Gibson, died May 12,
Sr. Regina
Cordis,
Immaculate Heart of Mary religious for sixty-five years, died May 12,
Leslie Joan
Matatics, devoted Catholic wife and
mother of nine children, died March 24,
Victoria
Zelaya, the sister-in-law of Claudia
Drew, died March 20,
Ricardo
DeSilva,
died November 16, our prayers requested by his brother, Henry DeSilva,
Rev. Fr.
Joseph F. Collins, died April 27, 2019 to whom we are indebted for establishing our
traditional pre-Bugnini Holy Week in all
its beauty,
Roland H.
Allard,
a friend of the Drew’s, died September 28,
Stephen
Cagorski
and John Bogda, who
both died wearing the brown
scapular,
Cecilia
LeBow, a most faithful Catholic,
Rose Cuono, died Oct 23,
Patrick
Rowen,
died March 25, and his brother, Daniel
Rowen, died May 15,
Sandra
Peters, the
wife of Gene Peters, who died June 10 receiving the sacraments and wearing our
Lady’s scapular,
Rev. Francis
Slupski, a
priest who kept the Catholic faith and its immemorial traditions, died May 14,
Martha
Mochan, the
sister of Philip Thees, died April 8,
George
Kirsch,
our good friend and supporter of this Mission, died February 15,
For Fr.
Paul J. Theisz, died October 17, is the petition of Fr. Waters,
Fr. Mecurio
Fregapane,
died Jan 12, was not a traditional priest but always charitable,
Fr. Casimir
Peterson,
a priest who often offered the Mass in our chapel and provided us with sound
advice, died December 4,
Fr.
Constantine Bellasarius, a faithful and always
charitable Eastern Rite Catholic Melkite priest, who left the Roman rite, died
November 27,
Christian
Villegas,
a motor vehicle accident, his brother, Michael, requests our prayers,
John Vennari, the former editor of
Catholic Family News, and for his family’s welfare, April 4,
Mary Butler, the aunt of Fr. Samuel
Waters, died October 17,
Joseph
DeMarco,
the nephew of John DeMarco, died October 3,
John Fergale, died September 25 after
receiving the traditional sacramental rites of the Church wearing the brown
scapular,
John Gabor, the brother of Donna Marbach,
died September 9,
Fr. Eugene
Dougherty,
a faithful priest, fittingly died on the Nativity of the BVM after receiving
the traditional Catholic sacraments,
Phyllis
Schlafly,
died September 5,
Helen
Mackewicz,
died August 14,
Mark A.
Wonderlin,
who died August 2,
Fr. Carl
Cebollero,
a faithful priest to tradition who was a friend of Fr. Waters and Fr. DeMaio,
Jessica
Cortes,
a young mother of ten who died June 12,
Frances
Toriello, a
life-long Catholic faithful to tradition, died June3, the feast of the Sacred
Heart, and her husband Dan,
died in 1985,
John
McLaughlin, a friend of the Drew’s, died May 22,
Angela
Montesano,
who died April 30, and her husband, Salvatore,
who died in July 3, 2013,
Charles Schultz, died
April 5, left behind nine children and many grandchildren, all traditional
Catholics,
Esperanza Lopez de Callejas,
the aunt of Claudia Drew, died March 15,
Fr. Edgardo Suelo, a
faithful priest defending our traditions who was working with Fr. Francois Chazal
in the Philippines, died February 19,
Conde McGinley, a long time
laborer for the traditional faith, died February 12, at 96 years,
The Drew family requests
your prayers for Ida Fernandez and Rita Kelley,
parishioners at St. Jude,
Fr. Stephen
Somerville,
a traditional priest who repented from his work with the Novus Ordo English
translation, died December 12,
Fr. Arturo
DeMaio,
a priest that helped this Mission with the sacraments and his invaluable
advice, died December 2,
J. Paul
Carswell,
died October 15, 2015,
Solange
Hertz, a
great defender of our Catholic faith, died October 3, the First Saturday of the
month,
Paula P.
Haigh,
died October 22, a great defender of our Catholic faith in philosophy and
natural science,
Gabriella
Whalin,
the mother of Gabriella Schiltz, who died August 25,
Mary
Catherine Sick, 14 year old from a large traditional Catholic family, died August 25,
Fr. Paul
Trinchard,
a traditional Catholic priest, died August 25,
Stephen J.
Melnick, Jr., died on August 21, a long-time faithful traditional Catholic husband
and father, from Philadelphia,
Patricia
Estrada,
died July 29, her son Alex petitions our prayers for her soul,
Fr. Nicholas
Gruner,
a devoted priest & faithful defender of Blessed Virgin Mary and her Fatima
message, died April 29,
Sarah E.
Shindle,
the grandmother of Richard Shindle, died April 26,
Madeline
Vennari,
the mother of John Vennari, died December 19,
Salvador
Baca Callejas, the uncle of Claudia Drew, died December 13,
Robert Gomez, who died in a motor vehicle
accident November 29,
Catherine
Dunn,
died September 15,
Anthony
Fraser,
the son of Hamish Fraser, died August 28,
Jeannette
Rhoad,
the grandmother of Devin Rhoad, who died August 24,
John Thees, the uncle of Philip Thees,
died August 9,
Sarah
Harkins, 32 year-old mother of four
children, died July 28,
Msgr. Donald
Adams, who
offered the Indult Mass, died April 1996,
Anita Lopez, the aunt of Claudia Drew,
Fr. Kenneth
Walker,
a young traditional priest of the FSSP who was murdered in Phoenix June 11,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for Gilberte Violette, the mother of
Fr. Violette, who died May 6,
Pete Hays petitions our prayers for his brothers, Michael, died May 9, and James, died October 20, his
sister, Rebecca, died March17, and his mother, Lorraine Hayes who died May 4,
Philip
Marbach,
the father of Paul Marbach who was the coordinator at St. Jude in Philadelphia,
died April 21,
Richard
Slaughtery,
the elderly sacristan for the SSPX chapel in Kansas City, died April 13,
Bernedette Marie
Evans nee Toriello, the daughter of Daniel Toriello, died March 31, a faithful Catholic
who suffered many years with MS,
Natalie
Cagorski,
died march 23,
Anita Lopez
de Lacayo,
the aunt of Claudia Drew, who died March 21,
Mario
Palmaro,
Catholic lawyer, bioethicist and professor, apologist, died March 9, welfare of
his widow and children,
Daniel Boyle, the
uncle of Ryan Boyle, died March 4,
Jeanne
DeRuyscher,
who died on January 25,
Arthur
Harmon,
died January 18,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for the soul of Jeanne DeRuyscher, who died
January 17,
Joseph
Proctor,
died January 10,
Susan Scott, a devote traditional
Catholic who made the vestments for our Infant of Prague statue, died January
8,
Brother
Leonard Mary, M.I.C.M., (Fred Farrell), an early supporter and friend of Fr. Leonard
Feeney, died November 23,
John Fergale, requests our prayers for his sister Connie, who died December 19,
Jim Capaldi, died December 15,
Brinton
Creager,
the son of Elizabeth Carpenter, died December 10,
Christopher
Lussos,
age 27, the father of one child with an expecting wife, died November 15,
Jarett
Ebeyer,
16 year old who died in his sleep, November 17, at the request of the
Kolinsky’s,
Catherine
Nienaber,
the mother of nine children, the youngest three years of age, killed in MVA
after Mass, 10-29,
Nancy Aldera, the sister of Frances
Toriello, died October 11, 2013 at 105 years of age,
Mary Rita
Schiltz,
the mother of Thomas Schiltz, who died August 27,
William H.
(Teddy) Kennedy, Catholic author of Lucifer’s Lodge, died August 14, age 49, cause of
death unknown,
Alfred
Mercier,
the father of David Mercier, who died August 12,
The Robert Kolinsky asks our prayers for his friend, George Curilla, who died August
23,
John Cuono, who had attended Mass at
our Mission in the past, died August 11,
Raymond
Peterson,
died July 28, and Paul Peterson,
died February 19, the brothers of Fr. Casimir Peterson,
Margaret
Brillhart,
who died July 20,
Msgr. Joseph
J. McDonnell, a priest from the diocese of Des Moines, who died June 8,
Patrick
Henry Omlor, who wrote Questioning The Validity of the Masses using
the New, All English Canon, and for a series of newsletters which were
published as The Robber Church, died May 2, the feast of St Athanasius,
Bishop
Joseph McFadden, died unexpectedly May 2,
Timothy
Foley,
the brother-in-law of Michelle Marbach Folley, who died in April,
William
Sanders,
the uncle of Don Rhoad, who died April 2,
Gene Peters ask our prayers for the repose of the
soul of Mark Polaschek, who died
March 22,
Eduardo
Gomez Lopez, the uncle of Claudia Drew, February 28,
Cecelia
Thees,
died February 24,
Elizabeth
Marie
Gerads, a
nineteen year old, the oldest of twelve children, who died February 6,
Michael
Schwartz,
the co-author with Fr. Enrique Rueda of “Gays, Aids, and You,” died February 3,
Stanley W.
Moore,
passed away in December 16, and Gerard (Jerry) R. Pitman, who died January 19,
who attended this Mission in the past,
Louis
Fragale,
who died December 25,
Fr. Luigi
Villa, Th.D. author of Vatican II About
Face! detailing the heresies of Vatican II, died November 18 at the age of 95,
Rev. Michael
Jarecki,
a faithful traditional Catholic priest who died October 22,
Jennie Salaneck, died September 19 at 95
years of age, a devout and faithful Catholic all her life,
Dorothy Sabo, who died September 26,
Cynthia
(Cindy) Montesano Reinhert, the mother of nine children, four who are still at
home, died August 19,
Stanley
Spahalski, who died October 20, and his wife, Regina
Spahalski, who died June 24, and for the soul of Francis Lester, her son,
Julia
Atkinson,
who died April 30,
Antonio P.
Garcia,
who died January 6, 2012 and the welfare of his teenage children, Andriana and
Quentin,
Helen Crane, the aunt of David Drew who
died February 27,
Fr. Timothy
A. Hopkins,
of the National Shrine of St. Philomena, in Miami, November 2,
Frank Smith, who died February 7, and
the welfare of his wife, Delores,
Eduardo
Cepeda,
who died January 26,
Larry Young, the 47 year old father of
twelve who died December 10 and the welfare of his wife Katherine and their
family,
Sister Mary
Bernadette, M.I.C.M., a founding member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, died
December 16,
Joeseph
Elias,
who died on September 28,
William, the brother of Fr. Waters,
who died September 7,
Donald
Tonelli,
died August 1,
Rev. Fr.
Gregory Hesse, of Austria, a great defender of Catholic Truth, died January 25, 2006,
Emma
Colasanti, who died May 29,
Mary
Dullesse,
who died April 12, a Catholic convert who died wearing our Lady’s scapular,
Ruth Jantsch, the grandmother of Andre
Ebert, who died April 7, Derrick and Denise Palengat, his godparents,
Philip D.
Barr,
died March 5, and the welfare of his family,
Judith Irene
Kenealy,
the mother of Joyce Paglia, who died February 23, and her son, George Richard
Moore, who died May 14,
For Joe
Sobran who died September 30,
Fr. Hector
Bolduc,
a great and faithful priest, died, September 10, 2012,
James &
Jean Rowan
and their sons, Patrick & Daniel,
John Vennari asks our prayers for Dr. Raphael Waters who died
August 26,
Stanley
Bodalsky,
the father of Mary Ann Boyle who died June 25,
Mary Isabel
Kilfoyle Humphreys, a former York resident and friend of the Drew’s, who died June 6,
Rev. John
Campion,
who offered the traditional Mass for us every first Friday until forbidden to
do so by Bishop Dattilo, died May 1,
Joseph
Montagne, who
died May 5,
For Margaret
Vagedes, the aunt of Charles Zepeda, who died January 6,
Fr. Michael
Shear, a
Byzantine rite Catholic priest, died August 17, 2006,
Fr. James
Francis Wathen, died November 7, 2006, author of The
Great Sacrilege and Who Shall
Ascend?, a great defender of dogma and liturgical purity,
Fr. Enrique
Rueda,
who died December 14, 2009, to whom our Mission is indebted,
Fr. Peterson asks to remember, Leonard Edward Peterson, his cousin, Wanda, Angelica Franquelli, and the six
priests ordained with him.
Philip Thees petitions our prayers for Beverly Romanick, Deacon Michael Erdeck,
Henry J. Phillips, Grace Prestano, Connie DiMaggio, Elizabeth Thorhas,
Elizabeth Thees, Theresa Feraker, Hellen Pestrock, and James & Rose Gomata,
and Kathleen Heinbach,
Fr. Didier
Bonneterre,
the author of The Liturgical Movement, and Fr. John Peek, both were traditional
priests,
Brother
Francis, MICM, the superior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in
Richmond, NH, who died September 5,
Rodolfo
Zelaya Montealegre, the father of Claudia Drew, who died May 24,
Rev. Francis
Clifford,
a devout and humble traditional priest, who died on March 7,
Benjamin Sorace, the uncle of Sonja Kolinsky.
When our Saviour conquered Satan He left
him power over those who make themselves slaves to the sensual pleasures, and
thus there exists an evil force against the Church, and it will exist to the
end of time. This is a fact that we must keep in view in order to fully
understand and judge the conditions. The realm darkness, Satan’s realm, stands
opposed to the realm of Christ. Satan and his adherents carry on the warfare
against the Church of Christ, as they assaulted Christ Himself. “As they have
persecuted they will also persecute you,” so did Christ prophecy. The Church of
Christ demands the subjection of the flesh; she preaches against luxury, pride
and selfishness. She preaches chastity submission to the commandments of God;
she preaches penance to those of high and low station in life. This angers all
those who would indulge in the evil things of this world. They cry: “Let us break
her bonds asunder; and let us cast away her yoke from us.” But as Christ
foretold the persecution of His Church, so He also foretold that the gates of
hell would not prevail against her. The Church of God will in due time conquer
all her enemies, some will be converted, while others who are obstinate will
perish in the battle. In all these battles and victories of the Church, Mary,
blessed mother of her divine Founder, co-operates with the Church through her
intercession. Mary was already spoken of in paradise as the one who would come
to tread upon the head of the serpent, the spirit of darkness. This she has
done by becoming the mother of God, by bringing forth the Redeemer. And as
Jesus through Mary’s co-operation came into this world, so He desires her
cooperation in ruling the world. The history of the contests and victories of
the Church verify this throughout the centuries.
The evil spirit
has a twofold weapon with which he assails and combats God’s Church; namely, the
godless rulers of the world and heresy. Through the godless authorities of the
world Satan has endeavored since the beginning to crush the Church; through
heresy he attempts to destroy the Church by internal dissension. Both weapons
are used together, for heresy and calumny cannot prevail without substantial
support, and heretics seek worldly power and assistance. On every page
of Church history we find recorded , the clashes planned by these evil forces,
from which the Church always came out not conquered, but a conqueror.
The history of the veneration of Mary tells us that the Blessed Virgin
Mary helped to win these victories. During the early times, when fierce battles
against the Church were raging, bishops and priests knew of no more efficacious
means to avert these dangers than to exhort the faithful to pray to the Blessed
Virgin.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning
In such a time as this, then, it is most opportune to be reminded, that
the age of martyrs is not over yet; that it is continual; that the conflict is
endless; that not peace, but a sword, is the perpetual portion of the Church.
And for this the following pages will bear witness. The sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries have their martyrs as great and as
glorious as the first, the second, and the third. Not Asia and Africa alone,
but Europe; not remote lands only, but France and England have been steeped
with blood sacred to Jesus. In these modem days of the nineteenth century,
which seem so unheroic and so commonplace, while we have been treading the
every-day path of life, martyrs have been continually ascending to their crown.
Hardly a year has passed but in China some servant of our Lord has been
conformed to his Master’s Passion. It is well that we
should bear this in mind, and make it familiar to our thoughts. For it
is most certain that, if we would be faithful, we must learn to be ready for
the sword. In some form it will come to us. If we would be crowned with Him, we
must also suffer with him; amid though not martyrs in deed, we must bear a
martyr’s will; for if we be not martyrs, at least in will, we should not be
even confessors in the hour of trial; and if not confessors, how Christians? It
would be a fearful scrutiny into our life if we were now to be asked, ‘what
have you ever suffered, what have you ever risked for the truth, and for our
Lord’s sake?’
It is good, then, to have the realities of martyrdom brought home to us
in our own land and day, and to see how it looks in the context of modern
society, and to put it to ourselves how we should endure in such an hour.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, preface to Pictures of Christian Heroism
What
“Religious Submission” to the Ordinary "Authentic Magisterium"
Actually Means
Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters
does not of itself demand consent just because in writing such Letters the
Popes do not exercise the supreme power [i.e., extra-ordinary magisterium] of
their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary
Teaching Authority [ordinary and universal magisterium], of which it is
true to say: “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” [Luke 10:16].
Pius XII, Humani Generis,
par. 20.
COMMENT:
This quotation taken from Pope Pius XII is now referenced to support the Novus
Ordo Church’s claim that every Catholic must give unconditional submission of
his “mind and will to the authentic magisterium” of the Pope. Pope Pius XII in
his encyclical is referring to the “ordinary and universal magisterium” and
this can be clearly seen for two reasons: The examples provided by Pope Pius
XII that follow this statement in his encyclical refer specifically to modern
theological novelties that reject, for example, the infallible teaching of the
Church on the inerrancy of sacred scripture, the identity of the Church and the
Mystical Body of Christ, and the nature of Original Sin. These are all examples of the “ordinary and
universal” magisterium that Vatican I dogmatically defined as “infallible.”
The other reason is God cannot bind the authority of His Truth to what
can and have in the past contained errors.
Fr. Joseph Fenton, in an article published in the AER in 1949 entitled,
On the Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals, documents specific historical
errors published in those documents. Whenever the pope teaches by virtue of his
grace of state from the ‘authentic ordinary magisterium’, his teaching must be
accepted by a religious submission which is always and necessarily a prudent
and conditional submission to the personal teaching authority of the pope. Such conditional acceptance of the word of
God is not possible when the pope teaches infallibly by engaging the
“extra-ordinary magisterium” or the “ordinary and universal magisterium” of the
Church from which alone it can be said without qualification whatsoever, “He
that heareth you, heareth Me.” [Luke 10:16].
The modern teachings by the late Pope Francis and now Pope Leo on
global warming/earth worship is wholly conscribed within a very narrow and
tenuous ideological framework that has nothing to do with Catholic doctrine or
morality. These documents have nothing to do with the “ordinary and universal”
magisterium of the Church. It is
entirely a product of the personal authentic ordinary magisterium of the popes
teaching by thier grace of state. Anyone
is free to toss these documents in the trash along with the junk mail if he,
upon mature consideration, finds it to be an ideological screed in its overall
tone that is divorced from natural or divine truth.
Our Lady of
LaSalette
“Rome will lose the Faith and
become the seat of the Antichrist.” “The demons of the air, together with the
Antichrist, will work great wonders on the earth and in the air, and men will
become ever more perverted. God will take care of His faithful servants and men
of good will; the Gospel will be preached everywhere, all peoples and all
nations will have knowledge of the Truth.”
Blessed Virgin Mary addressing the children at LaSalette, September 19,
1846
“When the Secret has been scorned, misunderstood ... held back for
money, one must be surprised at nothing. The Church will endure forever, our
Lord said so; but among the teaching members of the Church, what traitors, what
apostates, what mercenaries, what sectarians, who bear the imprint or the sign
of the beast with ten horns St. John speaks of in his vision on Patmos! But
this beast similar to the Lamb, who rises out of the earth, isn't it the figure
of faithless ecclesiastics? I firmly believe so. Happy those who die in God's
grace, for those who live will see sad and terrifying things. We still haven't
reached the beginning of the end.”
Melanie Calvat, visionary of LaSalette, Letter to Fr. Roubaud, January
2, 1892), quoted by Solange Hertz
"Souls who are God's friends can guess the Secret's meaning
without help, and the others won't want to because it applies to them too
closely." Melanie Calvat, to her spiritual director in 1903, quoted by
Solange Hertz
Leo XIV says we shouldn’t
‘retreat into our own religious certainties’
Contrary to what Leo
suggested, the Church has never seen a conflict between 'religious certainties'
and an 'authentic relationship with Christ.'
LifeSiteNews
| Robert T. Morrison | August 24, 2026
— In his recent Angelus message, Leo XIV introduced a puzzling
dichotomy to call into question “religious certainties”:
"Dear
brothers and sisters, let us seek not to retreat into our own convictions and
religious certainties, but to remain open to an authentic relationship with
Christ."
According
to Leo, one must choose between our “convictions and religious certainties” on
the one hand, and an “authentic relationship with Christ” on the other.
Although it should be evident to Catholics that the Church has never seen a
conflict between religious certainties and an authentic relationship with
Christ, it is worthwhile to recall how St. Paul viewed this matter:
But
though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which
we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say
again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received,
let him be anathema. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please
men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians
1:8-10)
St.
Paul’s words tell us that we must absolutely adhere to the convictions and
religious certainties handed down through the Church. Indeed, anyone telling us
that we ought to do otherwise is anathema. Moreover, St. Paul tells us that
choosing to adhere to the immutable Christian truth is the way to serve and
please God, which necessarily means that it is the way to cultivate “an
authentic relationship with Christ.”
Perhaps,
though, Leo simply misspoke or was mistranslated? Unfortunately, he continued
with an even more emphatic call to reject St. Paul’s admonition:
"At
times, when it comes to the Christian faith, we may be content with what we
have merely ‘heard,’ with common assumptions or with what has been handed down
to us, perhaps even with the best of intentions. Yet Jesus calls us to give a
personal response, to know him more closely and to allow ourselves to be shaped
by friendship with him through an ever-new encounter. This may also ask us to
follow unfamiliar paths and to make choices different from those we had
imagined. This is true both for our personal journey and for the journey of the
Church, as well as for our pastoral choices, when we may sometimes think that
it is enough simply to continue doing things as we have always done them."
It
seems that the most astounding piece of this is the notion that the Church
itself must be willing to “follow unfamiliar paths and to make choices
different from those we had imagined.” As he said, neither individual Catholics
nor the Church cannot simply “continue doing things as we have always done
them.”
As
awful as this is, at least he is being honest. As LifeSiteNews reported, Bishop
Robert Mutsaerts recently published an open letter to Leo, which
respectfully critiqued the Synod on Synodality. Bishop Mutsaerts’ criticism of
the synod includes a passage which essentially condemns what Leo said in his
Angelus message:
"Faith
does not arise because the Church first inventories what people believe and
then distills a common conviction from all those experiences. Faith is
received. Paul constantly uses words such as receive, hand down, and preserve
for this. The Church possesses Revelation not because she conceived it, but
because she received it. This means that Christianity cannot, in essence, be
democratic. Not because democracy as a form of government is bad, but because
truth does not arise by a majority vote. If tomorrow 90 percent of Catholics
were no longer to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,
Christ would not be any less truly present. If 80 percent reject a certain
moral doctrine, that doctrine does not automatically become untrue. Truth is
not produced by consensus. That constitutes the first major area of tension
surrounding the synodal project."
All
of the pre-Vatican II saints would surely agree with Bishop Mutsaerts on this,
and indeed many of them chose martyrdom because they were convinced that this
was necessarily true. But, as Leo has affirmed, the Synodal Church sees matters
differently.
All
of this also ties to the Vatican’s condemnation of the Society of St. Pius X
(SSPX). Before the SSPX proceeded with the consecrations of four bishops
without Rome’s approval, Leo explained that the Vatican’s real conflict
with the SSPX was about religious convictions rather than permission to
consecrate bishops:
"Certainly,
division among Christians is always a painful matter. But they refuse to accept
certain fundamental elements of the Church, beginning with various points of
the Second Vatican Council. And if they make those choices, I am sorry. But we
must move forward."
As
discussed in a previous article, Leo XIV rejects many of the portions of
Vatican II that simply reaffirm Church teaching – so we cannot take his words
at face value without concluding that he and his Vatican are guilty of the
charges he levels at the SSPX. That said, the overall sentiment is entirely
consistent with what Leo said in his recent Angelus: the Synodal Church wants
to move forward, so it cannot accompany those like the SSPX and other
Traditional Catholics who want to follow what St. Paul said.
So
while Leo’s dichotomy is a false one that can lead souls to hell, there is a
true dichotomy presented to us today. Do we accept the ideas of Leo or the
ideas that the Church has always taught? With points 80 to 83 of
its Profession of Catholic Faith (June 24, 2026), the SSPX reiterated
the Church’s teaching on this all-important matter:
80. I
believe that the Roman Pontiff enjoys infallibility when he speaks ex
cathedra, that is, when, fulfilling his office as pastor and doctor of all
Christians, he defines, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, that a
doctrine concerning faith or morals is to be held by the universal Church.
81.
I further profess that the power of the Magisterium in the Church is
essentially ordered to the safeguarding of the revealed Deposit and, through
this means, to the salvation of souls. The Holy Ghost was not promised to the
successors of Peter so that they might manifest new doctrine, but so that they
might guard holily and expound faithfully the Deposit transmitted by the
Apostles.
82.
This is why the present Magisterium cannot substantially contradict the prior
Magisterium. The living Magisterium is not current preaching set in opposition
to past preaching; it is the continual and uninterrupted preaching of the same
truth of Faith with the same meaning throughout the centuries. The Pope and the
bishops are not the masters of Revelation; they are its guardians and are
subject to it as a disciple is subject to his master. They can neither change
the Faith, nor modify the divine constitution of the Church, nor declare good
what is contrary to the law of God.
83.
I therefore reject every evolutionist conception of dogma, according to which
revealed truths would change their meaning over the course of history. There
can be within the Church a homogeneous progress in understanding, which
perceives better, in a more distinct and explicit manner, the meaning of
revealed truth, but never a mutation in the meaning of that truth. What has
already been taught by the living Magisterium of the Teaching Church, and
believed in the profession of Faith of the Church Taught, cannot become false;
what has been condemned as contrary to the Faith cannot become legitimate; what
belongs to the divine constitution of the Church cannot be remodelled according
to the categories of the modern world or the historico-cultural context.
Whether
or not one agrees with the SSPX, Catholics really ought to ponder whether they
agree with this clear statement of what the Church has always taught. If so,
then they are in conflict with Leo and his Vatican. If not, they are in
conflict with St. Paul and the constant teaching of the Church prior to Vatican
II. In His loving Providence, God is permitting it to become increasingly clear
that we cannot pretend to serve two masters – we can follow Catholic teaching
or the teaching of today’s Vatican, but not
both. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
COMMENT: Salvation is only possible for those who are united to Jesus
Christ. Unity with Jesus is effected by the sacramental grace received in
baptism conferred on a person who professes the Catholic faith. The Catholic faith is believing
what God has revealed on the authority of God the Revealer, who can neither
deceive nor be deceived, in Whom there is no shadow of change or alteration.
What God has revealed are, in fact, “religious certainties.” Whosoever does not
received God’s revelation as a “religious certainty” does not have the Catholic
faith, without which it is impossible please God. The grace that unites
us with God is charity. Charity does not exist in a person who does not have
the Catholic faith. The is why, as St. Thomas said, "all heretics are
schismatics." Pope Leo is purposing that Catholics deny the “religious
certainties” that God has revealed in order to have an “authentic relationship
with Christ” by charity. What Leo proposes makes impossible any relationship of
friendship to Christ and therefore, any possibility of salvation. It is a grave
sin for any cleric to fail in his duty to work for the salvation of others. It
is a more serious sin when through his example he drives others away from
salvation. What can we say about the cleric who actively works for the
damnation of others while hypocritically pretending to draw them to God? And
how must this grave sin be magnified when the cleric is the pope?
"Piety
consists in the readiness to do all that God demands." St. Thomas
"It is
better to do the will of God rather than to seek the honor of God." Rev. A Hellbach, C.SS.R.
"For the
imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his
youth." Gen 8:21
OF GOD AS HE IS IN HIMSELF
CHAPTER l-The Function of the Wise Man
My mouth shall discuss truth, and
my lips shall detest the ungodly (Prov. viii, 7).
Now the last end of everything is that which is intended by the prime
author or mover thereof. The prime author and mover of the universe is
intelligence, as will be shown later (B. II, Chap. XXIII, XXIV). Therefore
the last end of the universe must be the good of the intelligence, and that is
truth. Truth then must be the final end of the whole universe; and about
the consideration of that end wisdom must primarily be concerned. And therefore
the Divine Wisdom, clothed in flesh, testifies that He came into the world for
the manifestation of truth : For this Was
I born, and unto this I came into the World, to give testimony to the truth (John
xviii, 37). The Philosopher also rules that the first philosophy is the
science of truth, not of any and every truth, but of that truth which is the
origin of all truth, and appertains to the first principle of the being of all
things; hence its truth is the principle of all truth, for things are in truth
as they are in being.
It is one and the same function to embrace either of two contraries
and to repel the other. Hence, as it is the function of the wise man to discuss
truth, particularly of the first beginning, so it is his also to impugn the
contrary error. Suitably therefore is the double function of the wise man
displayed in the words above quoted from the Sapiential Book, namely, to study,
and upon study to speak out the truth of God, which of all other is most
properly called truth, and this is referred to in the words, My mouth shall discuss truth, and to
impugn error contrary to truth, as referred to in the words, And my lips shall detest the ungodly.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles
But
What Is a “State of Necessity”? What About the Econe Consecrations?
Roberto
de Mattei | August 3, 2026
I wish to dwell on a concept that
is frequently invoked in an ambiguous and contradictory manner — above all to
justify the episcopal consecrations that took place at Écône on July 1, 2026:
the “state of necessity.”
A fundamental point must be
clarified at the outset: one must not confuse the term “state of necessity”
with the grave crisis the Church is passing through today. This crisis is an
undeniable historical and sociological datum. Some trace its origins to Pope
Francis, others to the post-conciliar period, others still to the Second
Vatican Council itself. These historical references contain a measure of truth,
but the phenomenon is broader and more remote in time. Already Saint Pius X, in
the prophetic encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907,
diagnosed the existence of the gravest evils penetrating the Church through
Modernism. Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in his now-classic work Revolution
and Counter-Revolution, published in 1959, situated this crisis within the
framework of a centuries-long process begun with the dissolution of medieval
Christendom. Romano Amerio, in his Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the
Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, published in 1985, offered a broad
and penetrating diagnosis of the ills of the Church of his time. That same
year, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, published The Ratzinger Report together with
Vittorio Messori, sounding the alarm about the state of contemporary
Catholicism. Having become Pope under the name of Benedict XVI, he devoted his
final year of pontificate precisely to the crisis of faith. Since then the situation has
deteriorated dramatically, and only someone who is spiritually or
intellectually blind could deny the evidence of this crisis.
The historical fact of a gravissimo crisis in the
Church does not coincide, however, with the juridical and moral category of the
“state of necessity.” These are two distinct notions that must not be confused.
The state of necessity presupposes an exceptional situation, but is not
identical with it. It is an institution of moral theology and law, developed to
govern extraordinary situations in which the ordinary observance of the law
appears to conflict with the good that the law itself intends to protect. The ecclesial crisis may
certainly constitute the context within which the problem of the state of
necessity arises, but between the historical situation and the moral and
juridical judgment there exists a further step, one requiring prudence and a
rigorous evaluation of the facts.
Moral doctrine defines the state of
necessity as the condition in which a person, in order to avoid a grave,
imminent, and unavoidable evil, performs an act that, under ordinary
circumstances, would be illicit or forbidden. In other words, it concerns not
so much the external situation in itself as the prudential judgment of one who
must act in the face of that situation. For this reason, the state of necessity arises from the
encounter between an exceptional situation and the personal responsibility of
whoever must decide how to act. The crisis may be objective; the state
of necessity, by contrast, concerns the subjective assessment of the concrete
action to be taken in that crisis.
The Code of Canon Law of 1983 expressly governs this
matter in canons 1323 and 1324. Canon 1323 establishes that no penalty attaches
to one who has violated a law when “compelled by grave fear, even if only
relatively grave, or by necessity or grave inconvenience, unless, however, the
act is intrinsically evil or tends to the harm of souls.” The norm does not
create an arbitrary derogation from the law, but acknowledges that exceptional
circumstances may arise in which juridical responsibility is extinguished or
diminished.
A first characteristic of the state
of necessity is its essentially exceptional and provisional character. It
arises to respond to a concrete and temporally delimited situation. It cannot
be transformed into a permanent condition, nor constitute an ordinary regime of
government or ecclesial life. If the necessity were to become permanent, it
would cease to be a genuine “exception” and would end by emptying the ordinary
discipline of the Church of its very meaning.
A historical crisis may extend over
decades; the state of necessity, by contrast, concerns specific acts, performed
in precise circumstances, in order to confront a concrete and immediate danger.
The crisis constitutes the
context; the state of necessity is the prudential judgment which can, in
rigorously delimited cases, justify or excuse a particular course of conduct.
There is, finally, an inviolable
limit upon which both moral theology and canon law insist. The state of
necessity can never justify an intrinsically evil act. The principle formulated
by Saint Paul and constantly reaffirmed by the Magisterium of the Church
applies here: evil may never be done so that good may come of it — non sunt
facienda mala ut veniant bona (Rom 3:8). Certain acts, by reason of their
very moral object, remain always illicit, regardless of circumstances and
historical context.
It is precisely on this point that
the theological and canonical debate is focused. The act performed on the basis
of the state of necessity cannot contradict principles of divine law or norms
that, by their nature, admit of no derogation. Now, episcopal consecrations performed without a mandate
and against the will of the Pope have, as their objective end, the creation of
a reality independent of the Roman Pontiff and of the bishops in communion with
him. But this is intrinsically illicit, whatever historical circumstances may
be adduced to justify the gesture.
The true problem, therefore, does
not consist in establishing whether or not a crisis exists in the Church —
whose existence is evident to all. The decisive question is another: whether,
in the presence of a crisis however grave, it is morally and juridically licit
to perform an act that constitutes a violation of the hierarchical constitution
of the Church, as divinely instituted by Jesus Christ — an act that in effect
refuses the primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff and introduces a
practice that finds no precedent in the two-thousand-year tradition of the
Church.
If all of this is not clear, the
“state of necessity” risks being nothing more than a state of confusion.
COMMENT:
Roberto
de Mattei, an eminent Catholic historian, said on July 18, “It is the duty of
every Christian to maintain coherence between words and deeds.” He was
referring to the SSPX who “publicly proclaims respect for and obedience to the
Roman Pontiff and then, in fact, publicly defies him before the entire
Christian people” by consecrating four bishops on July 1 without a papal
mandate and in direct opposition to his will. In this editorial Mattei
correctly distinguishes between the objective crisis in the Church, which he
fails to properly identify, and the subjective judgment in the internal forum
as to what to do about it. Since he does not understand the nature of the
crisis, he does not have a clue about what to do about it.
Mattei published article, Ultramontanists:
Godfathers of the Trad Movement July 28, 2022. In this article he
explicitly affirms and defends the claim that the pope is above Catholic dogma. What Mattei does not recognize is that he is
defending the Neo-modernist heresy that is the proximate cause of the crisis in
the Church. So Mattei, a honest heretic, “maintains coherence between words and
deeds” by directly implying that disobedience to the pope is an intrinsically
evil act. For Mattei, who makes the pope his proximate rule of faith, the pope
can never be a heretic because heresy is anything that disagrees with what the
pope says or does.
This
is not true. Dogma is the proximate rule of faith for every Catholic and that
includes the pope. The pope is only the necessary material and instrumental
cause of dogma. It is God who is the formal and final cause of dogma. Once a
doctrine of revealed truth is dogmatically defined, it becomes a formal object
of divine and catholic faith for all the faithful. The very definition of heresy, both moral and
legal, is the denial of dogma. Furthermore, outside of a formal public rejection of the
universal jurisdiction of the pope, there is one and only one act that is
necessarily schismatic and that is manifest heresy. St. Thomas says that
“All heretics are schismatics” and, if Mattei would learn that dogma is the
proximate rule of faith, he would recognize that Vatican II and the
post-counciliar popes have without exception committed formal acts of heresy. What “finds no precedent in the
two-thousand-year tradition of the Church” are openly heretical popes who
actively work as neo-iconoclasts to destroy every immemorial image of our
faith.
It
is God’s Church. It is God who endowed His Church with divine attributes of
Authority, Infallibility and Indefectibility. These are attributes of the
Church and not personal attributes of the pope and those that claim otherwise
are divinizing the pope and are guilty of idolatry, a grave sin. The pope alone
can access these attributes under specific conditions for specific ends.
However, the universal jurisdiction of the pope cannot be legitimately employed
to corrupt worship, corrupt doctrine, and corrupt Catholic morality.
Furthermore,
every Catholic faithful has an obligation, a grave duty from God to profess the
Catholic faith, to keep God’s moral law, and to worship God according to His
prescriptions according the “received and approved” rites of the Church.
It
is unfortunate for all the Catholic faithful that the SSPX has failed to
correctly identify the Neo-modernist heresy and, consequently, failed to
articulate the proper justification for the “state of necessity,” but
nevertheless, we “maintain coherence between words and deeds” in defense of the
Catholic faith both in the internal and external forum. That is why for nearly
25 years the local ordinaries in Harrisburg and the Vatican officials have
failed to answer any of our claims. Remember, without faith, there is no
charity and the greatest evidence of charity is the virtue of justice which
underpins charity. The first obligation of justice is to “render to God the
things that are God’s.” There is no virtue of justice in the Novus Ordo
religion. Our prayer is that some day conservative Catholics like Mattei will
learn that they must obey God rather than man. The virtue of justice does not
permit any Catholic to subject what is of God in himself to what is of man in
other men, and that includes the pope.
John Cardinal Newman, another Novus Ordo
"saint" and now a "Doctor" of the Novus Ordo Church,
comments following the dogmatic declaration of papal infallibility.
“But we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the Pope (Pius
IX) will be driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council (Vatican I), or
that there will be another Pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.”
John H. Newman, Letter to his companion, Fr. Ambrose St. John, 22
August, 1870
“We have come to a climax of tyranny. It is not good for a Pope to live
20 years. It is anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one
to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning
it.”
John H. Newman, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, v. XXVI
by Charles Stephen Dessain
"This (Divine) law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men,
is called "conscience;" and though it may suffer refraction in
passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected
as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the
prerogative of commanding obedience."
John Henry Cardinal Newman
It seems, then, that there are extreme cases in which Conscience may
come into collision with the word of a Pope, and is to be followed in spite of
that word.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
COMMENT: "This shameful font of
indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims
that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone." Pope Gregory
XVI
Conscience is not the Divine Law. St. Thomas says that,
"Conscience is nothing else than the application of knowledge to some
action." He is referring to the knowledge of the Law of God. The Law of
God, whether the eternal law or the positive revealed law of God, is the
objective criteria by which the conscience is obligated to use as the standard
by which any judgment regarding the moral goodness or evil of any particular
act is made.All men are obligated to obey their conscience because they are
obligated to apprehend the objective Divine Law as the proper criteria. They
are not free to invent their personal subjective criteria in determining what
is the right or the wrong thing to do. Liberalism claims the exact opposite. It
is a fundamental axiom of liberalism that the conscience is free to establish
its own moral criteria. This has been condemned by popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX
and St. Pius X. John Henry Cardinal Newman can be identified with the
"Spirit of Vatican II" which, like Newman, proposes the liberty of
conscience against the Magisterium of the Church which is the word of God.
No One, not even the Pope in Rome, has the
authority to impose any act or suspend any immemorial tradition that leads to
the diminution of Faith or the committing of sacrilege to the Blessed
Sacrament. No One, not even the Pope in Rome, has the authority to command that
any Catholic participate in such acts!
Fr.
Janis Pawlowski I knew personally, he was my parish priest in Estonia during
four years. It was he who heard my first confession and who gave me the First
Holy Communion. He celebrated the Holy Mass with such a devotion and reverence
that it left in my soul a deep unforgettable impression. All his words and his
gestures irradiated holiness. When I for the first time felt in my soul the
attraction to the priesthood at the age of twelve, in my memory appeared
suddenly the holy face of this priest. He was really a man of God. I received
the great grace that I could meet him in Riga (Latvia) after I have not seen
him during 27 years. He was already 86 years old, yet he conserved the same
fresh and spiritually irradiating face. The three days I spent with him, were
for me a kind of spiritual exercises. He helped me to put on the liturgical
vestments and served me during my Mass with the simplicity and humility of a
little altar boy.[....] When in 1973 my family left Soviet Union and we said goodbye
to Fr. Janis Pawlowski, he
gave us this admonition: “When you come to Germany, please don’t go in the
churches where Holy Communion is given in the hand”. When we heard these
words, we all had a deep shock; we could not imagine that the Divine and Most
Blessed Sacrament could be received in such a banal manner. It is now a proven fact that a
considerable part of those who receive the Holy Communion habitually in hand,
especially the younger generation which had not known the manner of receiving
Communion kneeling and on the tongue, has not more the full Catholic faith in
the Real Presence, because they treat the consecrated host almost in the
same exterior manner as they take ordinary food. The exterior minimalistic
gesture has a causal connection to the weakening or even loss of the faith in
the Real Presence.[.....] It is an honor and a privilege
to be faithful to the Divine Truth and to the spiritual and liturgical
traditions of our forefathers and of the saints and being therefore
marginalized by those who currently occupy administrative power in the Church.
This your fidelity and courage constitute the real power in the Church. You are
the real ecclesiastical periphery, which with God’s power renews the Church.
Living the true tradition of dogma, liturgy and holiness is a manifestation of
the democracy of the Saints, because tradition is the democracy of the Saints.
With Saint Athanasius I would like to tell you these words: Those in the Church
who oppose, humiliate and marginalize you, have occupied the churches, while
during this time you are outside; it is a fact that they have the premises –
but you have the Apostolic Faith. They claim that they represent the Church,
but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going
astray.
Archbishop
Athanasius Schneider, excerpt from recent interview published August 10, 2015
COMMENT: Those
who accuse Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission of being
"schismatic" because we keep the Apostolic Faith and the Immemorial
Traditions of the Roman Catholic Church (and are thus united to the
"Communion of Saints" existing from Jesus Christ's founding of His
Church), have declared themselves in schism from us and everything we believe
and do. They have cut themselves off by
breaking the bond of Charity from the Communion of Saints. We appreciated Mons. Schneider's comments but
he falls short in his understanding of the nature of the problem and its most
important cause. Archbishop
Athanasius Schneider identifies "five wounds in Christ's liturgical
mystical body" that must necessarily be healed without which the Church
cannot hand on the True Faith. This is
an admission that the Novus Ordo is not the indefectible Church founded by
Jesus Christ. The five wounds are: 1)
The priest turned towards the congregation and away from God; 2) Holy Communion
taken in the hand which has seriously damaged faith in the True Presence; 3)
the new (Novus Ordo) Offertory prayers which are the worship offered by Cain, ;
4) the disappearance of Latin in liturgical celebrations; and 5) the performing
of some liturgical ministries by women.
Mons. Schneider believes that the answer lies in the Reform of the
Reform. This is because he has
overlooked the greatest "liturgical wound" which is the total
disregard of the dogma of Faith from Trent which categorically condemns anyone
who holds that the "received and approved rites customarily used in the
solemn administration of the sacraments..... may be changed into other new
rites by any pastor of the Churches whomsoever." They have thus corrupted the liturgy by
treating it as a matter of mere Church discipline subject to the free and
independent will of the legislator. They
have taken the work of God and made it the work of man. When divinely revealed Truth is overturned
the results will always and everywhere end in radical revolutionary corruption
of God's Truth.
What the Novus Ordo has excluded from its Psalter - Lex Orandi,
Lex Credendi, a Profession of False Faith, or is it just an example of the old
proverb: 'In the house of the hanged, don't talk about the rope!'
At
the Sacra Liturgia conference in New York City in June 2015, one of the
speakers reminded us of a startling fact that, while well known among scholars,
has received far too little attention in the public sphere: the flagrant omission
of so many psalms and psalm verses from the Divine Office or “Liturgy of
the Hours” promulgated by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution Laudis
Canticum on November 1, 1970. In addition to the unprecedented novelty
of praying the Psalter over four weeks rather than in the course of a single
week, there was the equally unprecedented novelty of skipping verses that had
been deemed “difficult” or problematic for modern Christians.
Three Psalms (57/58, 82/83,
and 108/109) were expunged in their entirety from the pages of the
Liturgy of the Hours (have a look at them some time), while three others
(77/78, 104/105, 105/106) were confined to Advent, Christmastide, Lent, and
Eastertide. The following verses were removed from other psalms:
Psalm
5 – 10 Make them bear their guilt, O
God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of their many transgressions
cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
Psalm
20/21 – 8 Your hand will find out all
your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. 9 You will make
them like a fiery furnace when you appear. The LORD will swallow them up in his
wrath, and fire will consume them. 10 You will destroy their offspring from the
earth, and their children from among humankind. 11 If they plan evil against
you, if they devise mischief, they will not succeed. 12 For you will put them
to flight; you will aim at their faces with your bows.
Psalm
27/28 – 4 Repay them according to their
work, and according to the evil of their deeds; repay them according to the
work of their hands; render them their due reward. 5 Because they do not regard
the works of the LORD, or the work of his hands, he will break them down and
build them up no more.
Psalm
30/31 – 17 Do not let me be put to
shame, O LORD, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go
dumbfounded to Sheol. 18 Let the lying lips be stilled that speak insolently
against the righteous with pride and contempt.
Psalm
34/35 – 3 Draw the spear and javelin
against my pursuers. 4 Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my
life. Let them be turned back and confounded who devise evil against me. 5 Let
them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them on.
6 Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them.
7 For without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for
my life. 8 Let ruin come on them unawares. And let the net that they hid
ensnare them; let them fall in it to their ruin. … 20 For they do not speak
peace, but they conceive deceitful words against those who are quiet in the
land. 21 They open wide their mouths against
me; they say, “Aha, Aha, our eyes have seen it.” … 24 Vindicate me, O LORD, my
God, according to your righteousness, and do not let them rejoice over me. 25
Do not let them say to themselves, “Aha, we have our heart’s desire.” Do not
let them say, “We have swallowed you up.” 26 Let all those who rejoice at my
calamity be put to shame and confusion; let those who exalt themselves against
me be clothed with shame and dishonor.
Psalm
39/40 – 14 Let all those be put to shame
and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and
brought to dishonor who desire my hurt. 15 Let those be appalled because of
their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”
Psalm
53/54:5
– He will repay my enemies for their evil. In your faithfulness, put an
end to them.
Psalm
54/55:15
– Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is
in their homes and in their hearts.
Psalm
55/56:6b-7 – As they hoped to have my life, 7 so repay them for
their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
Psalm
58/59 – 5 You, LORD God of hosts, are
God of Israel. Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who
treacherously plot evil. Selah 6 Each
evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. 7 There they are, bellowing with their
mouths, with sharp words on their lips—for “Who,” they think, “will hear
us?” 8 But you laugh at them, O LORD;
you hold all the nations in derision. … 11 Do not kill them, or my people may
forget; make them totter by your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our
shield. 12 For the sin of their mouths, the words of their lips, let them be
trapped in their pride. For the cursing and lies that they utter, 13 consume
them in wrath; consume them until they are no more. Then it will be known to
the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob. Selah 14 Each evening they
come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. 15 They roam about
for food, and growl if they do not get their fill.
Psalm
62/63 – 9 But those who seek to destroy
my life shall go down into the depths of the earth; 10 they shall be given over
to the power of the sword, they shall be prey for jackals. 11 But the king
shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars
will be stopped.
Psalm
68/69 – 22 Let their table be a trap for
them, a snare for their allies. 23 Let their eyes be darkened so that they
cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. 24 Pour out your
indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. 25 May their camp
be a desolation; let no one live in their tents. 26 For they persecute those
whom you have struck down, and those whom you have wounded, they attack still
more. 27 Add guilt to their guilt; may they have no acquittal from you. 28 Let
them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among
the righteous.
Psalm
78/79 – 6 Pour out your anger on the
nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your
name. 7 For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. … 12 Return
sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors the taunts with which they taunted
you, O Lord!
Psalm
109/110:6 – He will execute judgment among the nations, filling
them with corpses; he will shatter heads over the wide earth.
Psalm
136/137 – 7 Remember, O LORD, against
the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it
down! Down to its foundations!” 8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy
shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! 9 Happy shall they be
who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
Psalm
138/139 – 19 O that you would kill the
wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—20 those who
speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! 21 Do I
not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up
against you? 22 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
Psalm
139/140 – 9 Those who surround me lift
up their heads; let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them! 10 Let burning
coals fall on them! Let them be flung into pits, no more to rise! 11 Do not let
the slanderer be established in the land; let evil speedily hunt down the
violent!
Psalm
140/141:10 – Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
while I alone escape.
Psalm
142/143:12 – In your steadfast love cut off my enemies,
and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant.
For
2,000 years, Christians Eastern and Western had been praying the psalter of
David in its integrity, and now, Catholics
were handed an expurgated or abridged version, with verses removed by “experts”
who knew better than the Holy Spirit, knew better than the Israelites, knew
better than the Church Fathers and Doctors, knew better than Tradition. But
of course they knew better: this was the Age of Enlightenment breaking
in at last upon a fortress-like Church, an age in which we should shake
ourselves free from the shackles of unenlightened piety, with its gnarled,
enigmatic, sharp-edged, implacable expressions, and its archaic, earthy, tribal
atmosphere. Razing the bastions, making the world safe for democracy, and all
that good stuff.
This observation dovetailed with
another talk given at the Sacra Liturgia conference about the reform of the
lectionary, in which the speaker looked at how
the Novus Ordo lectionary for Mass also suppresses “difficult” verses
from both Testaments—verses that had always been present in the
traditional Roman lectionary but were excluded from the new lectionary,
in spite of its boast of being so much bigger and better. These “difficult”
verses include among them this spiritually poignant passage from St. Paul:
Therefore
whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily,
shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove
himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he
that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself,
not discerning the body of the Lord. (1Co 11:27-29)
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
The woman saith to him: Sir, I perceive
that thou art a prophet. Our fathers adored on this mountain, and you say, that
at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore. Jesus saith to her: Woman,
believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor
in Jerusalem, adore the Father. You adore that which you know not: we adore
that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For
the Father also seeketh such to adore him. God is a spirit; and they that adore
him, must adore him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:19-24
Novus
Ordo Doctrine: Moslems and Novus Ordo Catholics Worship the same God!
CCC
841, quoting the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 16, from Vatican II, declared:
"The
plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first
place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham,
and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind
CCC
841 also references Vatican IIDeclaration on the Relation of the Church to
Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate,
3, that makes the teaching of the Council perhaps even clearer:
"The
Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and
subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and
earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even
his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes
pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God."
Catholic Church
Doctrine: Catholics and Moslems DO NOT worship the same God.
that is, you do not adore God because you do not
know Him, but rather your imagination, by which you apprehend something as God,
just as the Gentiles also walk in the foolishness of their mind (Eph 4:17).St.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary On John 4:22
in this respect forming no higher opinion of Him
than of their idols. Wherefore they continued to serve both Him and devils,
joining things which ought not to be joined. St. John Chrysostom, Homily 33
On The Gospel of John
COMMENT:
When
Jesus said to the Samaritan Woman, "You adore that which you know
not," He is not saying that they adore the One True God that they are
ignorant of. He is saying, that in their ignorance they do not know who they
are adoring meaning that they are adoring in ignorance a devil, for "all
the gods of the gentiles are devils" (Psalm 95:5). Jesus then says, that
"true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth..... they that
adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth." To adore in
"spirit" means that to adore God you must be baptized and made sons
of God for as Jesus said: "Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born
again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God That
which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is
spirit" (John 3:5-7). And to adore in "truth" means who must
believe what has been revealed by God. Without the true faith it is
"impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). As such, right knowledge
of God is essential to true worship. This is the great sin of Modernism and
Neo-modernism: They make a right knowledge of God impossible!
Sacrament of Baptism: Significance of
the Baptismal Character and why it is absolutely necessary for salvation.
Explains why St. Ambrose said, regarding catechumens who die before receiving
the sacrament of Baptism, they are
To be baptized is to become one with the Church, and one with Christ.
Thus the ritual can say:
The effecting this incorporation into Christ, Baptism marks the soul as
permanently His; it stamps upon the soul a spiritual For this reason, and
putting the cause for the effect, the rite of Baptism was itself called
The word
Basically, two words give the same meaning: a seal imprints an image,
and an anathema.
The Council of Trent teaches that this seal, once stamped on the soul,
is indelible. Just as Baptism irrevocable makes one a member of the Church, so
also it irrevocably makes one a member of Christ. Not the gravest sin, nor even
final impenitence and self-condemnation to eternal separation from Christ in
Hell, can avail to erase this baptismal seal. And the indelibility of the seal
is the immediate reason why Baptism can never be repeated, once it has been
validly received.
The sense in which Baptism stamps us with the image of Christ is suggested
in the rite itself, by the anointing which follows the ablution. It is done
with Sacred Chrism, a mixed unguent of oil and balm, specially consecrated by
the bishop on Holy Thursday. Kings and priests in antiquity (and even today)
were anointed with chrism in token of their royal and priestly dignity. And the
baptism anointing signifies, therefore, that the new Christian has entered into
the Body of Christ.
The baptismal seal or character, therefore, endows the Christian with a
priestly function, and a priestly power. It is not that special power and
function given by the Sacrament of Holy Orders to certain selected members of
the Church, who are made her official ministers, and authorized to offer her
sacrifice and dispense her Sacraments. But it is the priestly function and
power which is common to all the members of the Body of Christ. As He was born
as Priest, His whole life orientated toward the Passion and Death which was His
priestly Sacrifice, so too, they are priests from their birth into the
Christian life at Baptism; and their lives are essentially orientated toward
sacrifice, in a double sense.
First of all, they receive a function and a power with respect to the
ritual Sacrifice of the Church, which is the Mass.
Secondly, the baptismal character consecrates the Christian to
sacrifice in a wider sense: it gives him the function, the duty, the power to
lead a life of sacrifice, since He is in the image of Christ whose life was one
long sacrifice
Rev. John J. Fernan, S.J.,
Theology, Christ Our High Priest, Baptismal Seal
Excommunication decreed for Lefebvrite episcopal
ordinations
A document signed by Cardinal V
Vatican News
The
bishops of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, Alfonso de Galarreta and
Bernard FellaySivry, and Marc Hanappier have incurred
sententiae
This
was stated in a decree released on July 2 and signed by Cardinal V
The
decision came twenty-four hours after the solemn ceremony celebrated in ,
Switzerland, on the morning of July 1, 2026.
The
Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
The
painful epilogue was the consequence of the decision taken by the Lefebvrites
against the will repeatedly expressed by Pope Leo XIV.
The
excommunication newly separates the bishops and priests of the Fraternity of
Saint Pius X from the Church of Rome.
As
for the lay faithful, those who formally adhere to the Fraternity are to be
considered excommunicated.
Further
details are contained in an
From
the time of Saint Paul VI up to the most recent talks, held recently at this
Dicastery, the many attempts to bring the members of the movement begun by
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre back into full communion with the Catholic Church
have proved vain.
This
situation has been further aggravated by the recent episcopal consecrations
celebrated without pontifical mandate, against the will of the Holy Father, and
in open violation of canon law.
Therefore,
this Dicastery, in the faithful exercise of the functions entrusted to it,
considers it necessary to state that this act constituted the delict of schism,
with the canonical consequences for the sacred ministers and lay faithful
involved. Indeed, as was already declared in 1988,
In
this regard, from now on:
1.
The sacred
ministers belonging to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X are in schism
and must therefore be considered schismatics (cf. Ecclesia Dei, 5 c; Pontifical
Council for Legislative Texts, Explanatory Note on the excommunication for
schism incurred by those adhering to the movement of Bishop Marcel Lefebvre,
24.08.1996, 5-6), and are subject to the excommunication prescribed by law
(can. 1364
2.
As regards
the lay faithful, those who formally adhere to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint
Pius X are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated under the conditions
established in the 1996 Explanatory Note of the Pontifical Council for
Legislative Texts (cf. ibidem, 7), which remains in force and which this
Dicastery adopts as its own.
3.
Finally,
the holy People of God are warned that the sacred ministers of the Priestly
Fraternity of Saint Pius X administer the sacraments illicitly, and that the
sacrament of penance administered by them and marriages assisted by them are
invalid.
The
Church, as a caring mother, will welcome with sincere affection and lively
solicitude all those who wish to return to full communion. The Apostolic
Nuncios will arrange the procedures that Ordinaries may use in the various
cases.
Finally,
all the faithful are urged to remain steadfast in communion with the Roman
Pontiff, with the Bishops in communion with him, and with the whole Church (cf.
Lumen Gentium, 22; can. 751 CIC), and to refrain from taking part in
celebrations and activities promoted by the aforementioned Priestly Fraternity
of Saint Pius X.
COMMENT:
The SSPX has placed itself in an indefensible position
by failing to hold dogma as the proximate rule of faith. The SSPX has been
compromising with Novus Ordo Church heretics for the past thirty years that
culminated in their leadership making the 1989 Profession of Faith where they
swore unconditional obedience to the person of the pope to obtain concessions
of ordinary jurisdiction.During the entire pontificate of the heretic
Francis/Bergoglio, the SSPX followed the conditions established by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Ratzinger under JPII and said
nothing critical regarding the heresies and corruption of Catholic morality
under Francis/Bergoglio. That being said, the decree of excommunication under
Leo/Prevost is problematic for all Catholic faithful.
The illicit consecration of bishops is not canonically
under the canonical section that deals with schism. It is not and never has
been an act that is always and every where a necessary sign of schism. Schism
necessarily requires the rejection of the universal jurisdiction of the pope as
the motive for the act of disobedience. The decree against the SSPX says,
There is one and only one act that always and
everywhere is necessarily manifests schism, that is, manifest heresy. St.
Thomas says that We have pictures of Leo/Prevost kneeling before a procession
of Pachamama, a pagan deity; pictures of him blessing a block of Nordic ice in
the pagan cult of earth worship; pictures of him in common prayer with a
variety of heretics, schismatics, Jews, Muslims and pagans; pictures of him in
common communion with the lay women who pretends to be the Archbishop of
Canterbury. These are without exception signs of heresy and, therefore, schism
by Leo/Prevost. That same can be said for his councillor predecessors. This
decree of excommunication is nothing more than an administrative declaration
that the SSPX is no longer in communion with the Novus Ordo Church.
The question then regards their declaration that These
are empty assertions because Rome has failed to prove that the SSPX rejects the
universal jurisdiction of the pope as their motive for consecrating bishops,
and having failed to do this, argumentum
a fortiori, they can hardly make the charge against the The Novus Ordo cult
has inadvertently ruined their case by referring to those who adhere formally
to the
Regarding the validity of the sacraments of marriage
and confessions Rome commits a massive blunder. The Catholic Church was founded
by Jesus Christ. He called it
Jesus Christ provides for the needs of His faithful
with publically to marry according to the laws of the Catholic Church. The
Church requires that the parish priest of the woman exercising ordinary
jurisdiction must be a witness to the sacrament for its validity. However, the
Church has always held that if the priest holding ordinary jurisdiction cannot
be had for a period greater than thirty days, the couple can validly and
licitly proceed with their marriage without that priest being a witness to the
sacrament. The only requirement for a valid and licit marriage is for the bride
to notify her parish priest of her intent to marry and request that he be a witness
to the event for canonical regularity. If he refuses, the couple is free to
proceed on their own to seek another priest who does not exercise ordinary
jurisdiction to bless their marriage.
"Not a stone upon a stone" - 9th Sunday after
Pentecost
The
'Western Wall' (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem is held by Jews as a remnant of
Herod's Temple destroyed by the Romans in 72 A.D. Yet, Jesus prophesized not
only that the Temple would be destroyed but also that there would not remain a
"stone upon a stone." So how is it that there remains a large wall on
the western side at the south end of the 'Temple Mount'? Some Catholics claim
the prophecy of Jesus was referring only to the edifice itself and not the
entire foundation for the Temple. Jesus words must be taken in literally unless
there it is clearly manifest that the metaphorical sense is intended
exclusively. Therefore, the 'Wailing Wall' where the Jews worship is not a
remnant of the ancient Temple, and the 'Temple Mount', on which is currently
situated the Al-Aqsa mosque and the "Dome of the Rock", is not the
location of the Temple destroyed in 72 A.D. The 36 acre 'Temple Mount' is
actually the location of the Roman fortress Antonia built by Herod.
What is the evidence for this? The current popular claim is the
fortress Antonia was located on a five-acre section on the north-west side of
the 'Temple Mount' while the Temple occupied the remaining 30 acres. Five acres
is far too small to accommodate a Roman legion (6,000 soldiers plus auxiliary
staff) which we know from the writings of Flavius Josephus that the fortress
Antonia did in fact hold. Many Roman fortresses have been examined by
archeologists and they typically are between 45 and 55 acres but some are as
small as 36 acres. As far as the area needed for the Temple of Herod itself,
consider this, the ancient pagan temple complex at Baalek in Lebanon built by
the Romans is less than six acres in total area and encloses the largest temple
to Jupiter in the Roman Empire as well as a smaller temple dedicated to Bacchus
and another to Venus. The Temple built by Herod was a single temple and much
smaller in overall dimensions.
Furthermore, when Solomon was designated by King David to succeed him
(3 Kings 1), King David directed the prophet Nathan and the high priest Sadoc
to take Solomon on the king's mule to be anointed king at the "Gihon
spring" with oil taken from the tabernacle. The Gihon spring is located in
the City of David directly south and adjacent to the present-day 'Temple
Mount'. There Solomon was anointed with oil taken from the Tabernacle,
proclaimed king and celebrated by the populace with great jubilation and the
sounding of trumpets that could be heard outside the city. The Temple built by
Solomon was in the same location as the Tabernacle established by King David on
the threshing floor of the land he purchased Areuna the Jebusite as God had
commanded by the mouth of Gad (2 Kings 24 and 2 Paralipomenon 3:1).
The water from the Gihon spring was essential for the sacrificial
offerings of the Temple. There is no living water source on the 'Temple Mount'
which was required in the washing of the priests and the sacrifices offered.
The water source for the Antonia fortress was provided by large cisterns
located just north of the Antonia fortress and under the 'Temple Mount' that
are still present today.
There is a Catholic tradition the there was a church called the Church
of the Judgment that was built over and enclosed the Rock that is now enclosed under
the Dome of the Rock built by the Moslems in 692 A.D. The Dome of the Rock is
located directly north of the Al-Aqsa mosque on the 'Temple Mount'. The Church
of the Judgment was destroyed either by the Persians who conquered Jerusalem in
614 A.D. with the help of 26,000 Jewish allies during the Byzantine-Sasanian
War 602-628 A.D. (during which many churches were destroyed including the
Church of the Ascension on Mount Olivet), or the church was destroyed by the
Moslems who conquered Jerusalem in 637 A.D. No living Jew at the time would
have knowledge of the exact location of Herod's Temple because the Jews were
forbidden to enter Jerusalem by the Romans since the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135
A.D. on the pain of death. Two hundred years later, the Catholic emperor
Constantine permitted the Jews to enter Jerusalem once a year on the feast of
Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av) which is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish
calendar because it is the anniversary of the destruction of both the Temple of
Solomon and the Temple of Herod! Be that as it may, many of the pillars used in
the construction of the interior of the Dome of the Rock have Christian
markings indicating that they were salvaged from a destroyed Catholic church.
The Rock itself is regarded (WIKI) as The Foundation Stone (Hebrew אֶבֶן הַשְּׁתִיָּה, romanized: ʾEḇen ha, lit. 'Foundation
Stone'), or the Noble Rock (Arabic:الصخرة المشرفة,
romanized: al-Saḵrah al-Mu, lit. 'The Noble Stone') is the rock enclosed by
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is also known as the Pierced Stone,
because it has a small hole on the southeastern corner that enters a cavern
beneath the rock, known as the Well of Souls. Traditional Jewish sources
mention the stone as the place from which the creation of the world began.
Jewish sources also identify its location with that of the Holy of Holies. Yet,
it is not possible for a threshing floor to be around a large rock or stone.
Before the Muslim conquest, the Rock was enclosed in the Catholic
church known as the Church of the Judgment (destroyed by the Persians) because
it is believed to have been the place where the condemned stood to hear the
judgment against them by the Roman authorities. The Rock is held to be where
Jesus stood when His official condemnation was decreed by Pontius Pilate and
thus, if it is the stone where the "creation of the world began," it
is the stone from which the creation of the world began anew. John 19:13 says:
"Now when Pilate had heard these words, he brought Jesus forth, and sat
down in the judgment seat, in the place that is called Lithostrotos, and in
Hebrew Gabbatha." Lithostrotos in Greek refers to a stone and Gabbatha in
Hebrew an elevated place. According to St. Mary Agreda after Jesus was
condemned by Pilate the decree of condemnation, which she quotes in its
entirety, was then formally read to the Jewish mob assembled outside the north
entrance to Fortress Antonia where Jesus was taken to bear His cross.
Of the Temple of Herod destroyed in 72 A.D. there does not remain a
"stone upon a stone".
Keep thyself
therefore, and thy soul carefully. Forget not the words that thy eyes have
seen, and let them not go out of thy heart all the days of thy life. Thou shalt
teach them to thy sons and to thy grandsons.
Deut 4:9
"It is
a sin to believe there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!"
Blessed Pope
Pius IX
PREVIOUS BULLETIN POSTING
WORTH REMEMBERING:
Can Theology Be Measured? Groundbreaking
Study Measures a 270-Year Shift in Catholic Teaching
Wim Varnaes | July 22, 2026
ItVanraes discovered measurable data patterns showing that traditional
Catholic concepts like sin, grace, salvation, doctrine, obedience, truth,
heaven, and judgment steadily declined, while words emphasizing encounter,
dialogue, social concerns, poverty, inclusion, and pastoral language steadily
increased. This is one of the first empirical, data-driven demonstrations of a
theological transformation many Catholics have argued about for decades.
The Statistical Case for the Crisis in
the Church
'When tenderness is detached from the
source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror.'
FLANNERY O
recovered her warning for the current moment, and the recovery is
timely. When truth and tenderness, both good in themselves, are separated, each
becomes something it was never meant to be. The Group 9 May 5 Final Report from
the Synod on Synodality offers a perfect example of how language shapes new
ideas. Those new ideas are not necessarily Catholic ones, but substituting the
traditional ideas for new ones under the guise of the old, familiar Catholic
words.
Both O
This article would not be the first to name formation networks as the
vehicle of such new ideas. One could point at Liberation theology, how
Libertatis Nuntius offered a stern warning, which was ignored by its proponents
such as Father Gustavo Guti
Some went on to lead groups such as Pax Christi, others, such as
Cardinal Turkson, became head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,
and others still, such as Fr. John Dear, became peace activists. When Cardinal
Turkson held the 2016 peace conference at the Vatican, people from Pax Christi
and John Dear spoke, rejecting not just war by itself, but the whole Just War
doctrine. Their final statement became the foundation for Pope Francis
This does not require any conspiracy to make that happen, just the slow
change in schools, then in organizations, which then seeps into the Church as
highly respectable activists, missionaries, and aid workers.
I mentioned a corpus data analysis at the opening of this article.
Looking at 30 encyclicals, from 6 historical periods (from 1750 to Francis),
using 11 thematic word clusters and normalized word frequency, it shows how the
vocabulary used by the Church changed over time, supporting the claim that a
materialist anthropology quietly entered, substituting the traditional Catholic
moral and theological discourse.
This was a preliminary study, using normalized word counts of a
selection of teaching documents, and not a full semantic analysis over all
available documents. The results were surprising in their detail.
Three of those findings bear on the present moment. First, we can see a
soteriological collapse, where words such as sin, grace, and salvation are,
under Francis, at their lowest point in 270 years, lower even than pre-1850.
Instead of talking about what humans are to be saved from, how such salvation
is received, there is a shift towards more structural economic words, such as
poverty and economy, at the cost of words such as property, labor and capital.
[.....]
Next, it is very interesting to see what happens to words such as love
and hope. Love rises continuously, peaks under Benedict, and remains elevated
under Francis, but the problem lies elsewhere: truth declines. In a move that
mirrors O
At the same time, under Francis the
Lastly, we can see a boundary collapse in the word frequencies. Even
before Vatican II we see terms such as error, heresy, condemnation, and
judgment decline strongly after 1850, matching the current state where a final
report from the Synod on Synodality openly signals that it replaced
At the same time, the use of the word Church declines to its lowest
level, while words such as authority, doctrine, and obedience collapse
completely. Now
This is important, and it maps cleanly on the situation modern thinking
has created. Very quietly, the nominalist ideas underpinning a lot of
enlightenment ideas, later growing into Marxism and Modernism, trained many
people, even good Catholics, that every sign only held one and only one
signified. Such an innocent looking poison of the mind! This is the root of the
problem where people think in
Where Catholic teaching gave rise to both Fr. Ryan, looking at the
immediate needs of the poor, and also to Cardinal O
Notice also how O
The final reports from the Synod on Synodality show something
different, however. They worry about tenderness, dialogue, encounter, (social
and environmental) justice, but are averse of the harsh language of sin,
conversion, doctrine, obedience, and sacrifice. Not in continuity with
tradition, but hiding behind the words of tradition, smuggling in a philosophical
framework that is not compatible with the faith. [.....]
COMMENT: The
corruption of language is the stock and trade of the enemies of the Catholic
faith. Semanticists is a philosophical system, that along with Empiricism,
developed with the failure of philosophical Rationalism. Semanticists, like all
Nominalists who deny the existence of essential
reality, said that the material world is always changing therefore words and
language must necessarily change or they will no longer reflect the world as it
is. They held that since the world is irrational, therefore, the mind must be
irrational as well.They began by openly denying the first principles of the
Understanding; that innate sense in all men that a thing is what it is, that it
cannot be and not be at the same time, that things require a sufficient cause,
sufficient reason, etc., etc. They openly denied the principle of
non-contradiction. They eventually denied the intentionality of all language
becoming known as Deconstructionalists. The immediate effect of this was the
realization that if language must change to reflect new realities then new
realities can be created by changing the language. George Orwell's 1984
dystopian novel told the story of a world run by Semanticists. With the developments
of "automated intelligence" (AI), the ability to create a false
reality has been greatly enhanced and will lead to all those who are not
grounded in Catholic dogma to be swept away. The Neo-modernist heretics that
have had complete control of the Church since Vatican II are Semanticists. This
article is a beginning in recognizing this fact. Once the techniques of
semantics are recognized by faithful Catholics, and the absolute corruption of
Nominalism is understood, the Neo-modernist methodology of attacking the
Catholic faith and destroying her dogmas will be completely exposed.
On the Inerrancy of
Sacred Scripture
Vatican preparatory document for the October Synod of Bishops
(2008) Teaches:
In summary, the following can be said
with certainty … — with regards to what might be inspired in the
many parts of Sacred Scripture, inerrancy applies only to
‘that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of
salvation’.
Instrumentum laboris, The Word
of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church, article 15, a “working
document” for the upcoming October Synod of Bishops; released from the Vatican
June 12th; emphasis added.
The Catholic Church Teaches:
The Old and New Testaments, “whole and
with all their parts … [have] been written by the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost [and] have God as their author.”
Vatican I
For all the books which the Church
receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all
their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being
possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not
only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as
absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme
Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging
faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent,
and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the
Vatican. These are the words of the last: ‘The Books of the Old and New
Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree
of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be
received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and
canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were
afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation
without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.’ Hence, because the Holy Ghost
employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these
inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error…
Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus
Deus
Divine inspiration does not extend to all
of Sacred Scripture so that it renders its parts, each and every one free
from every error.
Pope Saint Pius X’s Syllabus of
Errors against the Modernists, condemned proposition
It is absolutely forbidden to pretend
that the sacred writer himself has fallen into error, since Divine inspiration
not only excludes any and all possible error in itself, but even loathes and
excludes it, since God, Who is sovereign truth, cannot be the author of any
possible error…. This doctrine which was so forcefully explained by our
predecessor Leo XIII, We also propose with our pontifical authority, and We
insist that it be held rigorously by all. Pope Pius XII, Divini Afflante
Spiritu
Some boldly pervert the meaning of the
definition of the Vatican Council, with respect to God as the author of Sacred
Scripture and they revive the opinion, many times condemned, according to which
the immunity of the Sacred Writings from error extends only to those matters
which are handed down regarding God and moral and religious subjects.
Pius XII, Humani Generis
Lapide on Luke 23:32 -
An Important Distinction
“But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” “For thee”, because I destine thee to be the
head and chief of the Apostles and of My Church, that thy faith fail not in
believing Me to be the Christ and the Saviour of the world. Observe that Christ
in this prayer asked and obtained for Peter two especial privileges before the other Apostles : the first was personal, that he should
never fall from faith in Christ; for Christ looked back to the sifting in
the former verse, that is the temptation of His own apprehension when the other
Apostles flew off from Him like chaff and lost their faith, and were dispersed,
and fled into all parts. But Peter, although he denied Christ with his lips, at
the hour foretold, and lost his love for Him, yet retained his faith. So S.
Chrysostom (Horn, xxxviii.) on S. Matthew; S. Augustine (de corrept. et Grat.
chap, viii.); Theophylact and others. This is possible but not certain, for F.
Lucas and others think that Peter then lost both his faith and his love, from
excessive perturbation and fear; but only for a short time, and so that his
faith afterwards sprang up anew, and was restored with fresh vitality. Hence it
is thought not to have wholly failed, or to have been torn up by the roots, but
rather to have been shaken and dead for a time.
Another and a certain privilege was common to Peter with all his
successors, that he and all the other bishops of Rome (for Peter, as Christ
willed, founded and confirmed the Pontifical Church at Rome), should never
openly fall from this faith, so as to teach the Church heresy, or any error
contrary to the faith. So S. Leo (semi.xxii.), on Natalis of SS. Peter and
Paul; S. Cyprian (Lib. i. ep. 3), to Cornelius; Lucius I., Felix I., Agatho,
Nicolas I., Leo IX.,Innocent III., Bernard and others, whom Bellarmine cites
and follows (Lib. i. de Poniif. Roman).
For it was necessary that Christ, by His
most wise providence, should provide for His Church, which is ever being sifted
and tempted by the devil, and that not only in the time of Peter, but at all
times henceforth, even to the end of the world, an oracle of the true faith
which she might consult in every doubt, and by which she might be taught and
confirmed in the faith, otherwise the Church might err in faith, quod absit! For she is, as S. Paul said to Timothy, “the
pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. lii. 15). This oracle of the Church
then is Peter, and all successive bishops of Rome. This promise made to Peter
and his successors, most especially applies to the time when Peter, as the
successor of Christ, began to be the head of the Church, that is, after the
death of Christ.
And when thou art converted, strengthen thy
brethren. “From the sifting of Satan, that is from his temptation and from the
sin by which thou wilt deny Me; for by this thou wilt be turned aside from Me,
and My grace and love.” So Euthymius, Theophylact, Jansen, F. Lucas, and
others.
Cornelius a Lapide, The Great Commentary,
Luke 22, 32
COMMENT ON THE RECENT CONSECRATION OF BISHOPS BY
THE SSPX:
The recent consecration of bishops by the
SSPX and their
Rome has manipulated the SSPX into a trap
that was explained to them more than fifteen years ago. Rome embraced the
heresy of Neo-modernism before Vatican II and the purpose of Vatican II was to
infect this heresy into the life blood of the Church. The heresy severs the
form and matter of Dogma professing that the form is a divine truth revealed by
God but the matter, that is, the words, are a human approximation of that
divine truth that must progressively evolve and be purified of human
accretions, distortions and historical contingencies to arrive at a more
perfect expression of the divine truth. It is a claim that we know the faith
better than our fathers and our children will know the faith better than us.
Thus Dogma, which never reaches its term, no longer is the proximate rule of
faith. It is replaced by the pope who guides the dogma into a progressively
more perfect expression.
Once the pope becomes the proximate rule of
faith the infallible Magisterium of the Church is replaced by the personal
fallible magisterium of the pope grounded upon his grace of state, and then
whatever the pope says or does becomes what every faithful Catholic is expected
to say or do. This corruption was taught in the Vatican II document Lumen
Gentium which established the new
ecclesiology. The term Lumen Gentium says, sensus fidei for
all Catholics. The proposition of unconditional obedience to the
Fr. Joseph Fenton, the editor of the
American Ecclesiastical Review and a peritas at Vatican II, wrote an excellent article, Infallilillity in
the Encyclicals, AER, 1953, in which
he addressed the term, Comillas in Spain. The
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had his own
problems with Neo-modernism, recognized that the insertion of the addendum of
unconditional obedience to the
Rome imposes the 1989 Profession of Faith
and Oath of Fidelity on any cleric or any lay person as a condition for
exercising any office in the Church. The SSPX leadership stupidly accepted this
demand and swore, certainly by 2015, unconditional obedience to the publically
disobeyed him on insufficient doctrinal or moral grounds. They have associated
every faithful traditional Catholic in their worthless scheming.
The SSPX sooner or later must recognize that
Dogma is the proximate rule of faith and that Neo-modernism is a heresy that
they are standing so close to they cannot recognize. Dogma is infallible both
in the truth it proposes and in the words used to express that truth. That is,
both the form and the matter of Dogma, which constitute one substantial being, are the infallible work of God, or as St.
Pius X said, ipso facto in the
external forum without canonical due process simply because the pope says so in
his personal
Comments from those who have read the Third Secret of Fatima:
Ø One concerns the Pope. The other, logically the
continuation of the words: In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be
preserved.[3] [emphasis added]
Joseph
Schweigel, S.J., d. 1964 (interrogated Sister Lucia about the
Third Secret on behalf of Pope Pius XII on Sept. 2, 1952)[4]
Ø These form the
content of the third part of the Secret. What are they?If it is
quite possible that in this intermediate period which is in question
(after 1960 and before the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), the text makes concrete references to the crisis of the Faith of the
Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves.[5] [emphasis added]
Fr.
Joaquin Alonso, C.M.F., d. 1981 (Cleratian priest and official Fatima
archivist for over sixteen years; had unparalleled access to Sister Lucia)
Ø Speaks neither of
atomic bombs, nor nuclear warheads, nor Pershing missiles, nor SS-20. Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the Secret
with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the
meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is
worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is
continually diminishing in Europe.[6] [emphasis added]
Bishop
Alberto Cosme do Amaral, d. 2005 (former bishop of Fatima-Leiria;
remarks made in Vienna, Austria on Sept. 10, 1984)
Ø
The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.
Cardinal
Silvio Oddi, d. 2001 (Vatican diplomat and personal friend of Pope John XXIII,
from whom he knew certain details concerning the Third Secret) [7]
Ø
The great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.
Cardinal
Mario Luigi Ciappi, O.P., d. 1996 (personal theologian to Popes John
XXIII-John Paul II) [8]
The Whole Truth about
Fatima, [2],
Volume 3.
"The Providence of God is
unfailing!"
St. Augustine, On the Soul and Its
Origin, 3, 13
Leo XIV Reinstated Convicted Child-Porn
Priest who was protected by Francis
Carlo
Alberto Capella was Vatican diplomat who was convicted by a Vatican tribunal of
possessing and sharing child pornography. Capella admitted guilt to the
charges. He is the only one who has served a prison sentence in the Vatican
jail for this crime or for any sexually related crime against minors.
Monsignor Capella was ordained a priest in 1993 for the Archdiocese of
Milan. After studies of canon law he entered the Vatican diplomatic corps. He
was assigned to the papal nunciature in India in 2003 and to the nunciature in
Hong Kong in 2007. In 2008 he was created Chaplain of His Holiness, which entitled him to
the title of Monsignor. In 2011 he was
transferred to the Vatican to serve in the Secretariat of State. In 2016 he was
assigned to the papal nunciature to the United States.
In 2017, Capella was recalled to the Vatican by Pope Francis after
United States officials informed the Vatican that he was under investigation
for possession and sharing of child pornography. The government of Canada has
issued a warrant for his arrest, alleging that during his time in Canada in
December, 2016 he had possessed and shared child pornography. He was returned
to the Vatican which claimed diplomatic immunity for Capella protecting him
from prosecution in the United State or Canada.
In 2018, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, which
he served in the Vatican jail. As of 2021, he was allowed out during the day to
work in an office that sells papal blessings. In 2023, following the end of his
prison sentence, Capella was permitted to return to work in the Vatican
Secretariat of State. Now Pope Leo XIV
has reinstated Msgr. Capella to a senior diplomatic position in the Vatican
Secretariat of State.
COMMENT: Pope
Leo is protégé of Francis to whom he own s his promotions to bishop and
cardinal. It was Francis who protected this pervert from criminal charges in
the United States and in Canada and now it is Francis' protégé who has restored
him the a high level position in the Vatican. This does not portend well for
any serious reform of the Novus Ordo Church which has become a sinecure for
homosexuals and others perverts.
As
time goes by, there are fewer and fewer Novus Ordo Catholics every year!
St. John himself, the Apostle
of love, who seems in his Gospel to have revealed the secrets of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress upon the memory of his
disciples the new commandment Therefore, since the foundation of charity is faith pure and inviolate,
it is chiefly by the bond of one faith that the disciples of Christ are to be
united. A federation of Christians is inconceivable in which each member
retains his own opinions and private judgment in matters of faith, even though
they differ from opinions of all the rest. How can men with opposite convictions belong to one and
the same federation of the faithful: those who accept sacred Tradition as a
source of revelation and those who reject it; those who recognize as
divinely constituted the hierarchy of bishops, priests and ministers in the
Church, and those who regard it as gradually introduced to suit the conditions
of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist
through that wonderful conversion of the bread and wine, Transubstantiation,
and those who assert that the body of Christ is there only by faith or by the
signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize
both Sacrament and Sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than
the memorial of the Lord
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium
Animos
Unless the Lord build a
house, they labor in vain that build it.
Unless the Lord keep the
city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it. Ps. 126
From Tradition In Action:
You don't have to be a liturgical EXPERT to see that there is no
essential difference in the act!
The question is: Is there any essential difference in the actors?
Top: St. Patrick Catholic Church, Chatham, New Jersey
(44:43 mark on their August 22, 2021
Bottom: First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(49:30 mark on their July 6 2025
Jewish morality is openly demonstrated in Gaza, the West Bank, and
Lebanon with the wonton killing of thousands of men, women and children. Over
95% of Jewish religious and political leaders support abortion and same-sex
'marriage'. AI is intended to enforce Jewish morality.
Yuval Harari at Davos:
by Leo Hohmann 1-20-2026
Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Harari spoke January 20th at
the World Economic Forum 2026 conference in Davos and hit on crucial themes
about the future of artificial intelligence and humanity.
If Klaus Schwab and Larry Fink represent the legal and geostrategic
views of the Davos crowd, Harari represents its spiritual soul. And a dark soul
it is, devoid of anything truly from the heart of God.
He seems to describe a mass psychological control grid getting ready to clamp
down on humanity.
Harari stated in his WEF speech that:
The most important thing
to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent. It can
learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself. A knife is a tool. You
can use a knife to cut salad or to murder someone, but it is your decision what
to do with the knife. AI is a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut
salad or to commit murder.
The second thing to know about AI is that it
can be a very creative agent. AI is a knife that can invent new kinds of knives
as well as new kinds of music, medicine and money.
The third thing to know about AI is that it
can lie and manipulate. Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that
anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate. The last four
years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that
AIs have already learned how to lie.
How many times have you heard that AI is just a tool that can be used for good
or for evil? Well, Yuval Harari, the philosophical/spiritual voice of the WEF,
says it
So, AI can
Harari
speaking at Davos 2026: AI is already an agent capable of making decisions,
lying, manipulating.
Harari
is a valuable source because, whether you think he
Well, now Harari is letting the cat out of the bag, probably because he knows
it
Harari stated:
Harari said AI will first take over everything that consists of words. That
includes law, articles and books, even religion. You can see that is happening
already. News writers and gatherers are being replaced. Legal assistants and
lawyers are being replaced. And people are consulting AI for advice related to
life, faith and spiritual matters.
He does hint that if your religious faith is real, you may want to find
out if it
A
preview of our AI dominated world
He
asks:
My
overall response to Harari
Winston, the main character in Orwell
How is this different from the algorithms used by today
Orwell, living and writing in the 1940s, could not have envisioned that a computerized
software system known as machine learning was going to rise up to do the job
that he assigned to human beings. That job is to filter and control all human
knowledge through a single conduit with demonic influence.
Because Harari is an admitted atheist, it is here where his analysis breaks
down. He doesn
He says that,
Dogma
- The Proximate Rule of Faith, the Formal Object of Divine & Catholic Faith
Now, first of all, let us see
what is dogma. In the mouth of the world it means some positive, imperious, and
overbearing assertion of a human authority, or of a self-confident mind. But
what does it mean in the mouth of the Church? It means the precise enunciation
of a divine truth, of a divine fact, or of a divine reality fully known, so far
as it is the will of God to reveal it, adequately defined in words chosen and
sanctioned by a divine authority.
It is the precise enunciation
of a divine truth or of a divine reality; for instance, the nature and the
personality of God, the Incarnation, the coming of the Holy Ghost, and suchlike
truths and realities of the mind of God, precisely known, intellectually
conceived, as God has revealed or accomplished them. Every divine truth or
reality, so far as God has been pleased to reveal it to us, casts its perfect
outline and image upon the human intelligence. His own mind, in which dwells
all truth in all fulness and in all perfection, so far as He has revealed of
His truth, is cast upon the surface of our mind, in the same way as the sun
casts its own image upon the surface of the water, and the disc of the sun is
perfectly reflected from its surface. So, in the intelligence of the Apostles,
when, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, the
revelation of God was cast upon the surface of their intellect, every divine
truth had its perfect outline and image, not confused, nor in a fragmentary
shape, but with a perfect and complete impression. For instance, that God is
One in nature; that in God there are Three Persons, and one only Person in
Jesus Christ. Next, it is not enough that a truth should be definitely
conceived; for if a teacher know the truth, and is not able to communicate it
with accuracy, the learner will be but little the wiser. And therefore God, who
gave His truth, has given also a perpetual assistance, whereby the Apostles
first, and His Church from that day to this, precisely and without erring
declare to mankind the truth which was revealed in the beginning; and in
declaring that truth the Church clothes it in words, in what we call a
terminology: and in the choice of those terms the Church is also guided. There
is an assistance, by which the Church does not err in selecting the very
language in which to express divine truth. For who does not see that, if the
Church were to err in the selection of the words, the declaration of truth must
be obscured? We are conscious every day that we know with perfect certainty
what we desire to say, but, from the difficulty of finding or choosing our
words, we cannot convey our meaning to another. The Church is not a stammerer
as we are. The Church of God has a divine assistance perpetually guiding it, to
clothe in language, that is, in adequate expression, the divine truth which God
has committed to her trust. Therefore a dogma signifies a correct verbal
expression of the truth correctly conceived and known. But, lastly, it is not
sufficient that it be clearly understood in the intellect and accurately
expressed in words, unless the authority by which it is declared shall be
divine; because without a divine authority we cannot have a divine certainty;
without a divine authority we can have no such assurance that the doctrine
which we hear may not be erroneous. The Apostles were such a divine authority,
for they spoke in the Name of their Master. Their successor to this day is the
Church, which, taken as a whole, has been, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost,
promised by our Divine Lord and never absent from it, perpetually sustained in
the path of truth, and preserved from all error in the declaration of that
truth. Therefore any body which is not dogmatic is not the Church of God. Any
body or communion that disclaims a divine, and therefore infallible, authority
cannot be dogmatic, because it is conscious that it may err. And therefore the-
Catholic Church alone, the Church which is one and undivided throughout the
world, united with its centre in the Holy See,
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning,
Glories of the Sacred Heart
SSPX issues
154-point profession of faith to Pope Leo, cardinals ahead of consecrations
The Society of St. Pius X unveiled a sweeping
17-chapter ‘Profession of Catholic Faith,’ urging Pope Leo and the cardinals to
embrace Tradition as the remedy to the Church’s ‘deepest ills.’
LifeSiteNews | June 24, 2026 — The SSPX has
published a "Profession of Catholic Faithe" as part of communications
with the Pope and the cardinals ahead of the planned episcopal consecrations
and “in response to the chief and gravest dangers of our time.”
According
to an open letter published by the Society of St. Pius X “to His Holiness Pope
Leo XIV and to the Cardinals of the Holy Church” dated June 24, the leadership
of the SSPX formulated its 17-chapter profession of Catholic Faith as a
“necessary expression, peaceful and resolute, of our Faith” as the cardinals
prepare to gather in consistory later this week.
“Today
the Church suffers under the pressure of new forces, coming both from within
and without, which push her in every possible direction, except – it seems to
us – the right one,” the Society argues, adding, “In the face of such
suffering, we cannot remain indifferent.”
Consequently,
the Society maintains that “Tradition contains all the remedies for the deepest
ills afflicting the Church and the world, for which solutions are sought in
vain outside of it.”
“We
are persuaded that, in the unstable and extremely perilous context that now
confronts us, the finest contribution one can offer to the universal Church is
that of a sincere and integral profession of Catholic Faith,” the fraternity of
priests write.
The
letter was accompanied by the Society’s "Profession of Catholic
Faith." broken into 17 chapters outlining 154 points of traditional
doctrine while rejecting their corresponding modern errors.
COMMENT: In general, the profession of faith has many
excellent qualities, however, it is clearly a product of the SSPX culture and
character. The SSPX is a completely inbred organization. No one thinks outside
the box and their box is very small. While the Profession recognizes that the
remote sources of revelation are Scripture and Tradition and that these constitute
the remote rule of faith (#9), they then, after professing that "no
dogma" may be omitted, stumble in not recognizing that Dogma constitutes
the proximate rule of faith.
5. I add that, in the present
confusion, it is no longer sufficient to recall a few isolated truths. It has
become indispensable to set in full light the entire order of Catholic
doctrine, in its supernatural coherence and luminous harmony, omitting no dogma, diminishing
no truth, and substituting for the received Faith no equivocal or truncated
language which, under the pretext of ecumenism or adaptation to the world,
disfigures this doctrine with ever greater audacity.
9. This Revelation is the true
Word of God, entrusted to the Church as a Deposit, and proposed to men as the Rule of Faith in the form
of a body of doctrine, in which the mysteries are formulated in a manner
that renders them intelligible and expressible in words.
The problem is confounded
because they continually used the word "magisterium" equivocally.
They treat the infallible Magisterium of the Church teaching by the authority
of God and the fallible magisterium of churchmen teaching by their grace of
state as if these were the same thing, They are not and constitute a
distinction of kind and not one of degree. Their belief in the mutability of Dogma is directly
expressed in their understanding of the Dogma that membership in the Catholic
Church is necessary for salvation, that is, no one is saved outside the
Catholic Church:
60. This truth means that no one can be saved without
Christ and His Church, through a false religion as such, nor be assured
of His salvation outside the visible structure of the Church. If men are saved
without belonging to the visible society which is the Church, the Mystical Body
of Christ, it is by a supernatural ordination to the one Church of salvation,
and in spite of the errors of the false religions in which they find
themselves, from which they free themselves by not refusing the grace offered
to them and by corresponding to it
Here the Dogma is not
"omitted," it is corrupted by substituting the word,
"without," for the word, "outside." This is a common
example of how the heresy of Neo-modernism works. This heresy leads directly to
the Prayer Meeting of Assisi and the SSPX has not figured it out. The SSPX
believes and teaches that any Jew, Moslem, Protestant, Hindu, Pagan, etc., etc.
can obtain salvation by desire to do the will of a god who rewards and punishes
which can be known by natural philosophy. The essential problem is that the
SSPX does not understand or even recognize that the principle heresy today is
Neo-modernism and not Modernism. Not recognizing the enemy, they continually
punch the air.
Regarding the sacraments they
rightly profess the Dogma that the sacraments require correct form, matter and
intention:
111. I profess that the
sacraments must be validly celebrated with the prescribed matter, form, and
intention, observing the liturgical rites which clearly express the Catholic
Faith; and that they must be received with the required dispositions.
Yet the SSPX believes that a
Catholic priest can enter a bakery and consecrate all the bread in the bakery
or enter a wine cellar and consecrate all the wine. This they believe can
happen when there is obvious corruption in form, matter and intention. This can
only happen when Dogma is taken in a non-literal sense. They apply the same
sacramental theology to the sacrament of Baptism denying the Dogmas that baptism is necessary for
salvation and the true and natural water is necessary for the sacrament
which they take in a purely metaphorical sense.
112. I believe that Baptism is
the door of the Church and that it is necessary for salvation. Ordinarily, no one can be saved
without receiving it; through this sacrament, man is washed from
original sin, incorporated into Christ, marked with the Christian character,
and made a member of the Church. I therefore reject the practice of deferring
without grave cause the Baptism of children who have not the use of reason. However, one who, after the age
of reason and without fault on his part, is prevented from accessing this
sacrament, can be saved in an extraordinary manner by Baptism of Desire, that
is, by a supernatural act of faith and perfect charity which orders him to the
Church.
So the good-willed Jew,
Moslem, Hindu, Protestant, Pagan, etc. who believes in a god who rewards and
punishes is thereby making an act of "supernatural faith and perfect
charity"!
The word "heresy"
occurs only once in the Profession of the SSPX. "I therefore reject every
liturgical reform or usage which, through omission, doctrinal ambiguity, or
practical orientation, favours heresy.... " The definition of heresy is
the rejection of any Dogma. That is why the word only occurs as an accusation
of "favoring" heresy. Vatican II, a pastoral council, is a product of
the fallible magisterium of churchmen teaching by their grace of state. The
Council did not just "favor" heresy, it taught it. It is impossible
to know what heresy is unless you first know what Dogma is. Unless a clear and
precise understanding of the nature of Dogma is known, it is impossible to
address modern errors effectively.
The term, Second Vatican
Council, also occurs only once in the document in Profession 143:
143. I acknowledge in
particular that modern
errors represent a dreadful threat to the whole of the Catholic order, and that
their penetration into the life of the Church, under the influence of the
Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar reforms, has provoked a crisis of
exceptional gravity: agnosticism attacks the knowledge of God;
naturalism attacks the necessity of grace; subjectivism attacks the
supernatural motive of faith; relativism attacks the immutability of dogma;
situation ethics attacks the divine law; liberalism attacks the Social Kingship
of Christ; false ecumenism attacks the uniqueness of the Church; collegiality
and synodality attack the divine constitution of the Church in her hierarchy;
liturgical anthropocentrism attacks the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
This is all true but why is
the SSPX unable to say Vatican II is heretical? Until the SSPX understands what
Dogma is, what Neo-modernism is, and what the Magisterium of the Church is and
how it is distinct from the magistrium of churchmen,they will continue to be
incapable of effectively addressing modern errors.
In the end the question arises
how is it now, after nearly fifteen years of silence against the apostasy of
Rome, through the entire pontificate of Francis/Bergoglio, does the SSPX find
that it is time to speak up? For what end is this Profession of Faith intended?
And why cannot the SSPX articulate propositions of faith directly contrary to
the beliefs and teachings of Rome demanding that Pope Leo engage the infallible
Magisterium of the Church to clearly address the modern errors of Vatican II
and the conciliar Church? It is a matter of canon law and the constant
tradition of the Church that every Catholic has the right to demand explicit
judgments from the Magisterium and the pope has an absolute duty to address
these questions of faith. The SSPX has been in dialogue with Rome formally and
informally for thirty years exchanging opinions on Catholic truth. If the SSPX
understood what Dogma is this thirty year dialogue could have been concluded in
thirty minutes. It has only been a year and a half since the death of Bishop
Richard Williamson. The SSPX declared at that time that there was no state of
necessity to justify the consecrations of bishops and they accused Bishop
Williamson of grave sin for doing so. If the SSPX cannot identify direct heresy
and heretics in Rome, then they cannot claim a state of necessity for
themselves.
ANGEL OF THE JUDGMENT
The Situation Regarding the SSPX Episcopal Consecrations of July 1,
2026 -
by Roberto de Mattei
June
24, 2026 | Posted by the conservative Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli
What
is one to think, and what is one to do, in the face of the episcopal
consecrations announced by the Society of Saint Pius X at for July 1st, and the
consequent latae sententiae
excommunication that will be reaffirmed by the Holy See?
The
first consideration to be made is that, if this comes to pass, we will be
confronted with a painful trial
On the substance of the controversy, one
cannot avoid pointing out what appears to be a genuine paradox. Among the many reasons advanced by
Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988
The state of necessity is, by its very
nature, an exceptional condition that permits deviation from the ordinary
application of certain norms in view of a higher good
If
the principle of the state of necessity were admitted as a general criterion
for action, any bishop who judged the Church to be passing through a grave
crisis could feel authorized episcopi vagantes scattered throughout the world, with inevitable effects of
fragmentation, disorder, and confusion for the very faithful one would seek to
protect.
The existence of an episcopal line deriving
from Archbishop Richard Williamson This is a phenomenon which, beyond any judgments on the persons
involved, illustrates the intrinsic risk of episcopal consecrations founded on subjective assessments of the
state of necessity.
And
yet this argument :
"The faithful who are still Catholic find themselves in many places in a
desperate spiritual situation. It is this appeal that the Church hears; it is
for these situations that she grants jurisdiction through the law of supplied
jurisdiction." The decisive criterion for him was not the assertion
of a right proper to the Society, but the spiritual need of the faithful. The
episcopal consecrations of 1988 were intended as a response to this appeal of
souls.
We thus find ourselves before the paradox.
The Society of Saint Pius X, by invoking the state of necessity, grounds a
large part of its justification on the primacy of pastoral requirements over
strictly juridical and doctrinal considerations
In this confused situation, the only
sensible counsel that can be offered to those who are uncertain is to abide by
the principle of logic and law: In dubiis standum est pro statu quo, donec ratio certa
contrarium persuadeat , avoiding being drawn into sterile polemics
and emotional proclamations that have no other result than to reopen old wounds
and pour vinegar into the wounds of the Church.
The
problem that presents itself today is far broader than the grave matter of the
July 1st episcopal consecrations and their canonical consequences. Nor does the
question exhaust itself in the debate over the traditional liturgy or the
interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At the heart of
the controversy lies the historical and theological judgment on the twentieth
century
A
little over a hundred years ago, the conflagration of the First World War
brought to an end the international order born of the Christian centuries,
while the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 set an even vaster fire in the
world. Yet in the same year in which Bolshevism seized power, Our Lady appeared
to the three shepherd children of Fatima, explaining the true causes of the
crisis of the modern world and assuring, after chastisements, wars, and
persecutions, the final triumph of her Immaculate Heart. The message of Fatima
was addressed to all of humanity, but in a particular way to the Pastors of the
Church, within which Modernism had begun to spread its deadly poison. Against
this evil, Providence raised up Saint Pius X. With the encyclical Pascendi
Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907 Pascendi and Fatima constitute, respectively, the
doctrinal diagnosis and the supernatural response to the crisis of modernity.
These events, in turn, acquire their authentic significance only when placed
within a broader perspective that allows one to read the events of history as phases
of a single struggle that crosses the centuries.
It
is here that the vision of Saint Augustine takes on an extraordinary relevance
for our time. In the City of God,
the great Doctor of the Church interprets history as the permanent
confrontation between those who orient their lives toward God and those who
reject the divine order. The Augustinian tradition, with its capacity to read
historical events in the light of Providence, offers the interpretive key
necessary for confronting questions that continue to determine the life of the
Church
The last word, in this dramatic horizon,
belongs to him who holds the divine mandate to guide the Church and whom the
Society of Saint Pius X itself acknowledges as the legitimate Vicar of Christ
COMMENT: Dr. Roberto de Mattei is a conservative Novus Ordo Catholic historian
which alone makes it impossible for him to know or do anything correctly
because he will always have his priorities upside-down. Where does he get it
wrong? For Mattei, the
pope constitutes the proximate rule of faith. He does not understand
that the proximate rule of faith is DOGMA. For Mattei, the faith is subject to
the authority of the pope. The pope for Mattei is the principle cause and sign
of the unity of the Church. Mattei does not openly deny the truth that the
faith itself is the principle sign and cause of unity of the Church but he
makes the faith subject to the arbitrary judgments of the pope who becomes its
revealer. He places the authority of the pope over Dogma so that the Dogma means
whatever the pope says it means. Whatever the pope says or does becomes the
proximate rule of faith for Mattei. For him the determination of a state of necessity can only be declared
by the authority of the pope. For Mattei, the pope can never be the cause
of the state of necessity therefore, a state of necessity can never really
exist.
Mattei
acknowledges that the "salvation of souls" is the "highest
good" then immediately reduces it to a legal truism. Something that in the
end is unknowable in its practical application. He then wonders just who could
ever determine when such a state of necessity begins and when it ends.For
Mattei only the pope with absolute authority can do so.
The answer is not as difficult as Mattei
pretends. Any individual Catholic faithful can declare a state of necessity for
himself whenever he is unable to obtain from his ordinary what is necessary for
his salvation, that is, the Catholic faith and Catholic sacraments. This is not a "subjective"
determination as Mattei pretends for the faithful Catholic must make known to
his local ordinary the existing objective factual conditions that constitute
the state of necessity, demonstrate the establishment of a true and certain
conscience, and thus, provide a moral justification for any acts of
disobedience. After determining a state of necessity that he makes it known to
his local ordinary, the ordinary has the obligation to fulfill his duties to
provide what is necessary for salvation. If he fails to do so, fails to fulfill
his duty for whatever reason, then the faithful Catholic is free is seek these
necessities from any other cleric and any cleric can do so by the virtue of the
supplied jurisdiction by the Church which places the salvation of souls as her
highest law. Mattei believes that salvation comes from obedience to the pope
while faithful Catholics know that "without faith, it is impossible to
please God," and that thepope is just as much subject to God's revealed
truth as every other faithful Catholic. The "paradox" that Mattei is
talking about is not real. There is no conflict of the SSPX "pastoral
requirements" vs. Novus Ordo "juridical and doctrinal
considerations."
Mattei
believes that the pope can be judged by no one. That is a doubtful proposition.
The Decretals of Gratian
is a collection of canonical texts compiled in the 12th century. Pope Gregory
IX in 1230 directed St. Raymond of Pennafort, the distinguished Dominican, to
organize an addendum to the code to include legal codes adopted since the time
of Gratian but the work became a much more extensive revision. Working from the
Decretals of Gratian, St. Raymond wrote a five volume edition of the Decretals
that became the Corpus Iuris Canonici which served as the legal code for the
Latin Church
Decretum Gratiani, which was included in the
old Corpus Iuris Canonici, affirmed that a Pope who deviates from right
doctrine (i.e.: a notorious public heretic) can be judged. The canon states that the "pope judges
all and is judged by no-one, unless he is found to have departed from the
faith":
culpas
redarguere pr mortalium nullus, quia cunctos ipse judicaturus a nemine est
judicandus, nisi deprehendatur a fide devius (dist. XL, C. 6)Iuris Canonici
1917) came into force, the Church eliminated from the new legislation the
phrase "unless he is found to have departed from the faith." This
deletion was continued in the 1983 code. Although the phrase, "unless he is found to have
departed from the faith," was not included in the 1917 and the 1983 codes,
the canonical commentary still regards the phrase as legally binding:
COMMENTARY: "Canon 1404 is not a statement about
the personal impeccability or inerrancy of the Holy Father. Should, indeed, the
pope fall into heresy, it is understood that he would lose his office. To fall
from Peter
New
Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, and Thomas
J. Green eds. (New York: Paulist, 2000), p. 1,618.
The
code is the compilation of laws governing the Church as social institution.
Most of the laws in the code are ecclesiastical positive human laws grounded
upon human authority, however, many of the legal codes are divine positive laws
grounded upon divine authority or upon natural law. If a human law is deleted
from the code, the law ceases to bind. If a law of divine authority is deleted
from the code, the law continue in force for the human authority of the Church
cannot overturn the law of God. This self-evident principle is stated in the
code itself. Consequently, the commentary cited above is a recognition that the
pope cannot be judged "unless he is found to have departed from the
faith" is of divine origin. It is necessarily a divine law because the
papacy is a divine institution established directly by Jesus Christ and therefore
governed in its essence only by divine laws.
Therefore,
it is divine law that permits a heretical pope to be judged. Importantly,
although the law permits a heretical pope to be judged, it says nothing about
who and how a pope is to be judged regarding heresy and it does not address
penalties. It says nothing about removal from office. If the law intended the
removal from office the law itself would have to state the penalty and provide
a mechanism for its determination and enforcement.
So
now it falls to opinions regarding the judgment of a heretical pope. Most
theologians believe that it is "understood" that the removal from
office necessarily follows from a judgment of heresy often citing the
scriptural and traditional admonition to avoid heretics:
"A
man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing
that he, that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his
own judgment" (Titus 3:10-11).
They
argue that since the faithful cannot avoid a pope as head of the Church therefore
the heretical pope must lose his office. A serious problem with this argument
follows, that is, if the faithful cannot "avoid" a pope, then there
must necessarily be a pope who in fact cannot be avoided. Therefore, those who
would make the papacy vacant must also be able to fill the office with a true
pope.
But
can a heretical pope be avoided? It really becomes a problem for those who hold
the pope as their proximate rule of faith and not, as they should, dogma. For
if dogma is not the proximate rule of faith then the pope must be, and he then
can never be a heretic for whatever the pope holds the dogma or doctrine to
mean is what it then means and only those who disagree with the pope are
heretics. For a Catholic, dogma is the proximate rule of faith and although a
heretical pope can do immeasurable damage to the Church he cannot touch
individual souls of the faithful.
If
we adhere to what the law says and nothing more, we can say this: The
definition of heresy is the denial of dogma. The heretic denies dogma and the
faithful keep dogma. Those who can judge a heretical pope are the faithful. The
law does not distinguish or discriminate among the faithful as to the judgment.
Dogma is articulated for all the faithful. Its understanding does not require
any theological competence. It requires proper definition and correct grammar.
Any of the faithful, that is those who hold dogma as their proximate rule of
faith, can judge a manifestly heretical pope such as Pope Francis. Any of the
faithful can know when a dogma is directly contradicted for the first
principles of the understanding, such as the principle of non-contradiction,
are innate in human nature. Thus all the faithful can judge, in fact must
judge, a heretical pope and so that they may not follow him in his heresy for
God has said that 'it is not possible to deceive His elect' (Matt. 24:24). The
law does not specify the judge because the judgment rests with all the
faithful, it is universal. The law does not specify a penalty because none of
the faithful have the competency to impose a penalty and remove a heretical
pope from office. It is God who is the formal and final cause of the pope and
the office of the papacy. It is God who 'marries' the designated candidate to
the papal office and only God can remove him from it just as God removed the
High Priest and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and the Levitical priesthood
which can never be reconstituted.
Those
who hold dogma as their proximate rule of faith recognize Pope Leo as a heretic
because he denies dogmatic truth. He preaches a different gospel so we
"receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you" (2
John 10). Since he preaches a different gospel, "Let him be anathema"
because we are first "servants of Christ" (Gal 1: 8). For in dogma,
the Church has spoken and the heretic Pope Leo "will not hear the church,
(therefore) let him be to thee as the heathen and publican (Matt 18:17).
Since
Mattei cannot see his way out of his box so he advises, "Reason suggests
that each person remain in the position in which he finds himself, continuing
to do what he does."Since Mattei cannot conceive a state of necessity from
the current corruption of faith and morals maybe an analogy to a person dying
of thirst would be more clear. By natural law a man dying from thirst is
entitled to preserve his life by drinking available water. The pope tells him
he cannot have any water. Mattei advises that he should "remain in the
position which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does,", that is,
continue to die of thirst. Suppose it is not just one man but an entire family?
Suppose that man was so weakened that he could not bring the water to himself?
Would Mattei intervene to help? Well, probably not because Mattei could not
recognize a state of necessity if he were the man dying of thirst.
Right of the Faithful to Appeal Directly to
the Judgment of the Pope
The holy Roman Church holds the highest and
complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church which
she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of power
from the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles whose
successor is the Roman Pontiff.And just as to defend the truth of Faith she is
held before all other things, so if any questions shall arise regarding faith
they ought to be defined by her judgment.And to her anyone burdened with
affairs pertaining to the ecclesiastical world can appeal; and in all cases
looking forward to an ecclesiastical examination, recourse can be had to her
judgment.
Second Council of Lyons, Denz.
466
And since the Roman Pontiff is at the head of
the universal Church by the divine right of apostolic primacy, We teach and
declare also that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all
cases pertaining to ecclesiastical examination recourse can be had to his
judgment.
First Vatican Council, Denz.
1830
Not only do we know God
through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only
know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot
know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves. Thus without
Scripture, whose only object is Christ, we know nothing, and can see nothing
but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in nature itself.
Blaise Pascal, Pens
Pope says church 'must move forward' if SSPX proceeds with illicit
ordinations
Vatican News | Junno
Arocho Esteves | June 17, 2026
Pope
Leo XIV said that although he is considering a final appeal to the traditionalist
Society of St. Pius X, the choice to splinter from the Catholic Church falls on
them.
Speaking
to journalists outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo June 16, the pope was
asked about his feelings regarding plans by the traditionalist society, commonly
known as SSPX, to proceed with the consecration of new bishops without a papal
mandate.
The
pope said that while he is "considering making another appeal to say: 'Do
not do this, let us try to live in communion within the church,' " the
decision to proceed "is their choice."
"Certainly,
division among Christians is always a painful point. But they refuse to accept
certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from
the Second Vatican Council," Leo said.
"If
they make that choice, I am sorry, but we must move forward," he added.
[.....]
COMMENT: The Vatican II Novus Ordo Church is a big
tent inviting a wide variety of heretics, schismatics, apostates, pagans,
animists, homosexuals, adulterers etc. to join the party. Even Leo/Prevost
himself is now known to have worshiped the pagan goddess Pachamama. The SSPX,
seeking a corner under this big tent,has been mute for so long we have wondered
out loud if they lost the power of speech. But what about Pope Leo/Prevost? His
recent pictures with the "Archbishopette of Canterbury" looks creepy.
If he were just personally sick, his welcome would be extended without
exceptions but, he has serious exceptions. Those must be "excepted"
who "refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting
with several points from the Second Vatican Council"! There are some
things the "listening church of Synodality" just can't listen to.
Vatican II was a "pastoral council" that never rose above the level
of churchmen pastorally opining with no greater authority than their grace of
state.Any doctrinal opinions from churchmen from Vatican II that, if only
apparently, contradict or undermine Catholic revealed truth must be rejected,
and there is plenty there to reject. Such as, the claim that the Church of
Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. Putting the question to Artificial
Intelligence:
Question:If
A subsists in B does it follow that A and B are an identity?
ANSWER:
No.
So:
If
A subsists in B, it
Only
under additional premises
The
truth that the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ are one and the same
thing is divinely revealed truth. Even the blind "artificial
intelligence" "sees" this Vatican II confabulation is just a
lie! Those that deny this truth are heretics and, as St. Thomas says, "All
heretics are schismatics," it remains to be determined what and who's
church the SSPX will be leaving. Revelation ended with the death of the last
apostle. What exactly Leo/Prevost is referring to when he talks about "certain
fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from the
Second Vatican Council" needs serious clarification. No Catholic is
obliged to believe anything with "divine and Catholic faith" that
"started.... from the Second Vatican Council." The pastoral failures
of Vatican II reek to high heaven and doctrinal obfuscation only magnifies the
crime.
Heresy is Ugly
In
the medieval town (of 1480), fourteen of the named buildings are churches;
trees grow along the banks of the river and the bridge allows free
passagearehouses dwarf and obscure the churches which dominated the medieval
scene
Margaret
Belcher, late professor of English at the University of Canterbury, New
Zealand, and editor of the multivolume collection of the great Victorian Gothic
Revivalist Architect Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852), who was the architect
for 9 cathedrals and 60 churches, on a pair of drawings of a English town
contrasting the town of 1480 with what it became in 1880.
By their fruits we are expected to know them!
The
Archdiocese of Dubuque Iowa is restructuring its 160 parishes across 30
northeast Iowa counties into 24 "pastorates". Driven by a 46% decline
in Mass attendance and a shrinking number of priests, the Archdiocese halted
weekend Masses at more than 80 churches, though they remain open for weddings
and funerals.
The
transition to the new pastorate structure, which requires grouped parishes to
share clergy and resources, officially takes effect on July 14, 2026.
The
sweeping consolidation has significantly impacted communities and traditional
worship schedules. Key details of the situation include.
The
Cause: The Archdiocese reports a drop of nearly half in weekend Mass attendance
over the last 20 years, alongside a decreasing number of priests. The region
currently has roughly one priest for every two parishes.
Church
Usage: While many church buildings will no longer host weekend Mass, they are
not completely closed. They remain accessible for other liturgical celebrations,
such as weddings, funerals, weekday Masses, and private prayer.
COMMENT: The Archdioces of Dubuque has paid out about $17 million in settlements
for the sex abuse crimes of homosexual pederasts over the last 30 years. Unlike
many dioceses in the United States such as Harrisburg, Baltimore and
Philadelphia, the Dubuque Archdiocese has not had to file for bankruptcy and
Chapter 11 protection. The collapse is due to the loss of the Catholic faith
with the associated The consolidation is because of a Louisana in New Orleans
that was established in 1793. The diocese of St. Louis covered the entire
territory of the Louisana Purchase. Excluding Spanish missionary work in the
southwest, the Archdioces of Dubuque is the third Catholic diocese west of the Mississippi
River. It was in the beginning responsible for the spiritual welfare of all
Catholics as well as Catholic missionary work in Iowa, Minnosota, North and
South Dakota, that is, everywhere east of the Missouri river, and south-west
Wisconsin. What the heroic French and Italian missionaries from the Archdiocese
of Dubuque built for over the next hundred plus years has not just been
squandered by the effeminate Novus Ordites through sloth, but actively ruined
by their heresy and schism. This is the fruit of Vatican II. This decline has
been evident since the early 1970s but with each passing year it is now visible
to the blind. It is impossible to attribute good but misguided intentions to
Novus Ordites. They are enemies of the Catholic faith. We must double our
prayers that God will cleanse His Church even if we ourselves must suffer in
the persecution. The loss of souls is irreparable. It may be soon time to say
that there is no salvation in the Novus Ordo Church.
IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND
Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the
Difference?
The
overarching principle of post-conciliar theology is not modernism, properly
speaking. Let us get our terms straight.
Modernism is the idea that there
are no eternal truths, that truth is the correspondence of the mind with one's
lifestyle (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), and that, therefore, old dogmas
must be abandoned and new beliefs must arise that meet 'the needs of modern
man'. This is a radical denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth:
the correspondence of the mind with reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei),
which is the basis of the immutability of Catholic dogma.
No, the post-conciliar theological principle is neo-modernism, and the theology that is based on it is known as
the nouvelle theologie. It is the idea
that old dogmas or beliefs must be retained, yet not the traditional
'formulas': dogmas must be expressed and interpreted in a new way in every age
so as to meet the 'needs of modern man'.
This is still a denial of the traditional and common sense notion of
truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei (insofar as it is still an attempt to
make the terminology that expresses the faith correspond with our modern
lifestyle) and consequently of the immutability of Catholic dogma, yet it is
not as radical as modernism. It is more
subtle and much more deceptive than modernism because it claims that the faith
must be retained; it is only the 'formulas' of faith that must be
abandoned--they use the term 'formula' to distinguish the supposedly mutable
words of our creeds, dogmas, etc. from their admittedly immutable
meanings. Therefore, neo-modernism can
effectively slip under the radar of most pre-conciliar condemnations (except
Humani Generis, which condemns it directly) insofar as its practitioners claim
that their new and unintelligible theological terminology really expresses the
same faith of all times. In other words,
neo-modernism is supposed to be 'dynamic orthodoxy': supposedly orthodox in
meaning, yet always changing in expression to adapt to modern life (cf.
Franciscan University of Steubenville's mission statement).
Take extra ecclesiam nulla salus as a clear example of a dogma that has
received a brutal neo-modernist re-interpretation: they claim that the old
'formula' that "there is no salvation outside the Church" must be
abandoned; rather it is more meaningful to modern man to say that salvation is
not in, but through, the Church; people
who are not in the Church may still be saved through the Church; thus, to them
the dogma that "there is no salvation outside the Church" means that
there is salvation outside the Church.
Hence see Ven. Pope Pius XII condemning those "reduce to a
meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to
gain eternal salvation." (Humani generis 27).
Yet
this mentality of reinterpreting everything anew in order to 'meet the needs of
the times' is generally tends to be found in different degrees among different
post-conciliar sources:
It
tends to be (1) rampant in men like De Lubac, Von Balthasar, Congar, etc.: it is
the ultimate goal of their writings, teachings, and activities as
churchmen. To achieve this end, they
employ the technique of 'resourcement', the neo-modernist strategy of fishing
for the few dubious, questionable, or idiosyncratic teachings of some Fathers
of the Church and other authoritative writers, and gather them into a massive,
heterodox theological argument against the traditional understanding of the
faith (which they like to relativize by giving it names such as
"Counter-Reformation" Theology, "Tridentine" Theology, or
"Scholastic" Theology, instead of just admitting that it is Catholic
Theology plain and simple). This technique
accomplishes three things that go hand-in-hand: (a) offers a refutation of
traditional Catholicism, (b) defends an interpretation that meets the needs of
modern times, and (c) gives it a semblance of being traditional, because it
appears to be based in the Fathers et al.
This type of argument is used, for example, by Von Balthasar in his
nearly heretical book, Dare We Hope that All Men be Saved? to 'prove', not that
Hell does not exist (that is a dogma), but that it is empty. But this technique and its neo-modernistic
underpinnings is not only practiced in almost all of these men's writings; it
is also defended in theory by many of them, particularly in Von Balthasar's
daring little book, Razing the Bastions, where he demonstrates that
"Tridentine" theology must be rejected in our times because it is
'boring'.
It
also tends to be (2) present in a more
moderate way in the non-binding statements by post-conciliar popes,
since they themselves were deeply involved in the developing of the nouvelle
theologie. Just to give one of a million
possible examples, see Pope Benedict's evolutionistic re-interpretation of the
Resurrection of Our Lord. Nothing here
obviously contradicts the dogma of the
Resurrection (it may be interpreted as a simple analogy, even if a bad one, and
nothing more), but it is a novelty that can be easily understood as claiming
that the Resurrection is part of the natural development of nature (thus giving
credence to some of the nouvelle theologie's pet doctrines, such as De Lubac's heterodox notion of the supernatural
and De Chardin's pantheistic evolutionism).
This happens almost on a daily basis in what comes out of the Vatican,
not to mention what comes from local bishops.
And
finally, neo-modernism tends to be present (3) mostly implicitly or
behind-the-scenes in the Council, the Catechism, etc., even though it
seldom comes out more explicitly. Things
are done at this level under the pretext of 'aggiornamento', a euphemism for
neo-modernism. That is usually all the
justification provided since at this authoritative level, there is no need to
justify things theologically. Hence,
Vatican II and the Catechism are not outright neo-modernistic. Rather, they (like most of post-conciliar
doctrine) tend in that direction and/or are inspired by that mentality. In other words, most of the time these
documents do not explicitly teach neo-modernist errors (the kind of errors you
hear explicitly from neo-modernist theologians and priests). Rather, they are
full of dangerous ambiguities: statements that in a technical sense could be
interpreted as being in harmony with the traditional faith, but that, in their
natural, non-forced, interpretation are heterodox. One clear example of this is Dignitatis
humanae, par. 2; entire monographs have been written in order to prove that, despite
appearances, this document does not contradict previous teaching. Maybe in fact it ultimately does not, but it
is obvious that the prima facie meaning does; otherwise there would be no need
to write so many volumes to prove it.
It must be noted that these are general tendencies, and that in some documents
(cf. Gaudium et Spes) and every now and then in papal and episcopal statements
neo-modernist principles rears come out more explicitly.
For
a more detailed philosophical and theological critique of neo-modernism, and
how it is nothing but a re-hashing of modernism, see Garrigou-Lagrange's Where
is the New Theology Leading Us? and his The Structure of the Encyclical Humani
Generis.
Francisco
J. Romero Carrasquillo, Ph.D., Professor of Theology and Philosophy
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
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,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Of
God and His Creatures
The Absolute Necessity of
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. Pope Pius XI, Charitate Christi
Compulsi, On the Sacred Heart
