“…this missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used… Accordingly, no one whatsoever is permitted to infringe or rashly contravene this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, direction, will, decree and prohibition.  Should  any person venture to do so, let him understand he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

Pope St. Pius V, Papal Bull, QUO PRIMUM, Tridentine codification of the  “received and approved” immemorial Roman rite of Mass

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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Ss. Cosmas & Damian, Martyrs

September 27, 2026

    The breviary lessons are taken from the book of Judith, whose story St. Ambrose, in the second nocturn, connects with this season of penance, since to the fasting and abstinence of this heroic woman he attributes the wonderful victory that she obtained.

    To persevere with our plan of working out the connection between the missal and breviary, we too may study the Mass of Ember Saturday, formerly of this Sunday, in the light of Judith’s history.

    While Manasses, king of Juda, was in captivity in Babylon, the Assyrian monarch, Nabuchodonosor, sent his general Holofernes to complete the conquest of Chanaan.  This officer besieged Bethulia, whose inhabitants, reduced to the last extremity, decided to surrender the city, unless help came in five days.

    But just then Judith, a widow in Israel of great influence, was living in the place.  “Let us be penitent,” was her advice to the ancients of Israel, “and with many tears let us beg God’s pardon: let us humble our souls before Him and ask that He would show His mercy to us…Let us believe that these scourges of the Lord, with which like servants we are chastised, have happened for our amendment and not for our destruction.”

    Then this holy woman “went into her oratory, and putting on haircloth, laid ashes on her head and falling down prostrated before the Lord, she cried to the Lord.”

    Having finished her prayer, Judith put on her best apparel and left the town with her servant, reaching at daybreak the advanced Chaldean outposts and announced that she had come to surrender herself and her people to Holofernes.  The soldiers took her before the general who was dazzled by her great beauty, which almighty God had been pleased to increase, since she made use of it, not from motives of sensuality but of virtue.

     Holofernes believed everything that Judith told him and made a great feast in her honor, at which, carried away by enjoyment, he drank to greater excess than usual and overcome by intoxication, lay down on his bed and sank into a drunken sleep.  Upon this everyone withdrew, Judith alone remaining with him.  Then, praying that God would strengthen her arm for the deliverance of Israel, she took down the sword which hung over the bed, and with the great courage cut off Holofernes’ head, which she gave to the maid-servant with instructions to hide it in her wallet.  Then they returned the same night to Bethulia.

    When the ancients of the city heard of Judith’s action they cried: “Blessed be the Lord who hath made heaven and earth.”  And the next day the bloodstained head of Holofernes was joisted on the walls of the fortress.  The Chaldeans complained loudly of Judith’s treachery, but being pursued by the Israelites, all fled or were put to the sword.  Meanwhile the High Priest came with the Ancients from Jerusalem, to celebrate the deliverance of the nation and saluted Judith with cries of: “Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honor of our people.”

    In the second nocturn for the fourth Sunday in September, St. Ambrose comments as follows on this portion of the Scriptures: “It was through the strength given by sobriety that Judith cut off Holofernes’ head.  Fortified by fasting, she went boldly into the enemy’s camp.  The fasting of a single woman vanquished the countless hordes of Assyrians.”

    The Mass for Ember Saturday is full of similar expressions.  The prayers implore the divine mercy, while relying on fasting and abstinence which make us stronger than our enemies.  “forgive us our sins, O Lord,” says the first Gradual.  “Help us, O God, our Savior, and for the glory of Thy name, O Lord, deliver us.”  And the second Gradual: “Behold, O Lord, our protector; and look on Thy servants.”  While the third adds: “Return, O Lord, a little, and be entreated in favor of Thy servants.”

    The lessons all allude to the mercy of God towards His penitent people.  “As I purposed to afflict you, when your fathers had provoked Me to wrath, saith the Lord, and I had no mercy: so turning again I have thought in these days to do good to the house of Juda and Jerusalem.”

    The story of the deliverance of the people from Assyrian bondage by Judith (whose name is the feminine of Juda) by prayer and fasting, is a type of the freeing of God’s people by Jesus, of the race of Juda, at Easter after the penances of Lent.

    Since the Book of Esther is read in the breviary of the following Sunday, we can easily understand why St. Ambrose would also find there an illustration well suited to his subject, and in fact he points out that “it was to the fast of three days, thanks to which almighty God increased the grace which adorned her mortified soul, that Esther owed her victory over the wicked Aman and rescued the Jewish people from a cruel persecution.”

    When later on the custom of waiting until the evening to celebrate the Holy sacrifice of Ember Saturday had ceased, the Mass composed in the sixth century for the Dedication of the Church of St. Michael at Rome, and said on the September 29^th, was borrowed for the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.  Consequently all the “Proper” of this Mass refers to the consecration of a church.  “I was rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of Lord” (Verse of the Introit and Gradual).  “Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord” (Offertory).  “Bring up sacrifices and come into his courts: adore ye the Lord in His holy court” (Communion).

    We have here a symbol of heaven whither all nations shall flow at the end of time, referred to on this Sunday and on those which follow at the end of the cycle.  The Alleluia is the same as that of the Sundays after Epiphany which foretell the entry of the Gentiles into the kingdom of heaven.  The Epistle speaks of those who await the revelation of our Lord at His second coming.  They will rejoice forever in the Lord’s presence in the peace which, according to the prophets, He will give to those who await Him (Introit, Gradual); a peace assured to us by our Lord through His death on the cross, which is the true evening sacrifice of which that of Moses is only a type.

     After he had offered a holocaust, the odor of which was pleasing to the Lord, the holy Lawgiver obtained the pardon of his people’s sins, and rejoiced in the vision of God.  In the same way men reconciled to God, by Him who has power to remit sins (Gospel), by their faith in Christ, will share in the unique and sovereign divinity, by beholding it face to face, a privilege granted by God Himself, and will thus be made rich in Christ in all utterance and all knowledge (Epistle).

    Already in the Church all enjoy this pardon and peace, thanks to the power which our Lord has entrusted to His priests, and indeed in this Mass, coming after Ember Saturday, allusion is made to the Priesthood.  Like our divine Redeemer, who went about exercising His ministry, curing the soul of the paralytic at the same time that he healed his body, those who have just been ordained preach the Word of Christ (Epistle), celebrate the Holy Sacrifice (Offertory), and remit sins (Gospel).

    Thus they prepare men to receive their divine Judge in a manner beyond reproach.

 

INTROIT:

Ecclus. 36.  Give peace, O Lord, to them that patiently wait for Thee, that Thy prophets may be found faithful:  hear the prayers of Thy servant, and of Thy people Israel.  

Ps. 121.  I rejoice at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord.  Glory be, etc.  Give peace etc.

 

COLLECT:

Direct our hearts, we pray, O Lord, by the working of Thy mercy; because without Thee we are not able to please Thee. Through our Lord, etc.

 

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we who keep the birthday of Thy holy Martyrs Cosmas and Damian, may through their intercession be delivered from all threatening evils.  Through our Lord, etc.

 

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

 

EPISTLE:  I Cor. 1,4-8

Brethren, I give thanks to my God always for you, for the grace of God that is given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you are made rich in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge: as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that nothing is wanting to you in any grace, waiting for the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ who also will confirm you into the end without crime, in the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

EXPLANATION  St. Paul shows in this epistle that he possesses true love for his neighbor, because he rejoices and thanks God that he enriched the Corinthians with different graces and gifts, thus confirming the testimony of Christ in them, so that they could without fear expect His arrival for judgment.  Do thou also rejoice, with St. Paul, for the graces given to thy neighbor, for this is a mark of true charity.

 

GRADUAL:

Ps. 121.  I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord.  Let peace be within Thy walls, and abundance in Thy towers. 

Alleluia, alleluia.  Ps. 101.  The Gentiles shall fear Thy name, O Lord: and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.  Alleluia

 

GOSPEL:  Matt. 9, 1-8

At that time, Jesus entering into a boat, passed over the water, and came into his own city. And behold, they brought to him one sick of the palsy lying in a bed. And Jesus seeing their faith, said to the man sick of the palsy: Be of good heart, son; thy sins are forgiven thee. And behold, some of the Scribes said within themselves: He blasphemeth. And Jesus seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? whether it is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then said he to the man sick of the palsy): Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house. And he arose, and went into his house. And the multitude seeing it feared, and glorified God who had given such power to men.

EXPLANATION:

I. Those who brought this sick man to Christ, give us a touching example of how we should take care of the sick and help them according to our ability. Christ was so well pleased with their faith and charity, that He cured the man sick of the palsy, and forgave him his sins. Hence we learn how we might assist many who are diseased in their soul, if we would lead them to God by confiding prayer, by urgent admonitions, or by good example.

II. Christ did not heal the man sick of the palsy until He had forgiven him his sins, by this He wished to teach us, that sins are often the cause of sicknesses and other evils, by which we are visited, and which God would remove from us if we were truly repentant. This doctrine Jesus confirmed, when He said to the man, who had been sick for thirty-eight years: Sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee (John 5, 14). Would that this were considered by those who so often impetuously demand of God to be freed from their evils, but do not intend to free themselves from their sins, which are the cause of these evils, by a sincere repentance.

III. "He blasphemeth." Thus thought the Jews, in their perverted hearts, of Christ, because they believed that He in remitting the sins of the sick man, usurped the rights of God and thus did Him a great injury; for it is blasphemy to think, say, or do any thing insulting to God or His saints. But these Jews did not consider that they by their rash judgment calumniated God, since they blasphemed Christ who by healing the sick man, and by numerous other works had clearly proved His God-head. If Christ so severely reprimanded the Jews, who would not recognize Him as God, for a blasphemous thought against Him, what will He do with those Christians who, though they wish to be adorers of God and His Son, nevertheless, utter blasphemies, curses, and profanations of the holy Sacraments?

IV. When Jesus saw their thoughts, He said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? This may be taken to heart by those who think that thoughts are free from scrutiny, and who never think to confess their evil and shameful thoughts. God; the most Holy and most just, will, nevertheless, not leave a voluntary unchaste, proud, angry, revengeful, envious thought unpunished, any more than an idle word (Matt. 12, 36). The best remedy against evil thoughts would be the recollection that God who searches the heart sees them, and will punish them.

PRAYER How great, O Jesus! is Thy love and mercy towards poor sinners, since Thou not only forgavest the sins of the man sick of palsy, but calling him son, didst console and heal him! This Thy love encourages me to beg of Thee the grace, that we may rise from our bed of sins by true penance, amend our life, and through the ways of Thy commandments enter the house of eternal happiness.

 

OFFERTORY:

Ex. 24.   Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord, offering upon it holocausts and sacrificing victims.  He made an evening sacrifice to the Lord God for an odor of sweetness, in the sight of the children of Israel.

 

SECRET:

O God, who by the august fellowship that we have with Thee in this sacrament dost make us partakers of the one supreme Godhead, grant, we pray, that as we know Thy truth, so we may live up to it by worthy behavior.  Through our Lord, etc.

 

May the devout prayers of Thy saints never be wanting to us, O Lord; may they render our offerings agreeable to Thee and ever win Thy pardon for us.  Through our Lord, etc.

 

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

 

COMMUNION:

Ps. 95.  Bring up sacrifices, and come into His courts: adore ye the Lord in His holy court.

 

POSTCOMMUNION:

We render Thee thanks, O Lord, for the life put into us by this sacred gift, and beg Thee of Thy mercy to make us thorough and worthy partakers thereof.  Through our Lord, etc.

 

May Thy people, we pray, O Lord, find strength in the heavenly banquet Thou hast given them, and in the united prayers of Thy saints.  Through our Lord, etc.

 

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

 

 

 

"My Saviour Jesus Christ, by the merits of your Sacred Passion and your most holy Death, give me the grace of perfect contrition for my sins, so that I may never offend or displease you again."

St. Francis de Sales

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then said he to the man sick of the palsy): Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 27^th:

   Date     Day     Feast                                                    Rank  Color F/A    Mass Time/Notes

27	Sun	18th Sunday after Pentecost Ss. Cosmas & Damian, Mm	sd	G		Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions 8:00 AM, Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM
28	Mon	St. Wenceslaus, M	sd	R		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
29	Tue	Dedication of St. Michael Archangel	d1cl	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
30	Wed	St. Jerome, CD	d	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
1	Thu	St. Remigius, BpC	sp	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
2	Fri	Holy Guardian Angels FIRST FRIDAY	dm	W	A	Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass; Benediction & Holy Hour of Reparation
3	Sat	St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, V FIRST SATURDAY	d	W		Mass 9:00 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM; Benediction & Holy Hour of Reparation with Rosary after Mass
4	Sun	19th Sunday after Pentecost St. Francis of Assisi, C	sd	W		Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions 8:00 AM, Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The means to become perfect is to mortify our predominant passion.  As a Captain in the time of battle, in order to gain the victory, endeavours to arrange the soldiers at that point where he sees the greatest dangers are to be overcome, so we should do the same. As long as we strive to overcome our little passions, we shall not be easily overcome by the strong ones.
What is the means to be used to overcome our passions?  It is to meditate on the Passion of our Lord.  A person who is proud, for instance: if he sees that Jesus Christ is derided, mocked, sent from one place to the other and keeping silence, he sees a great motive of humility in Our Lord.  Another is impatient: he may look to the Crucifix and he will find a model of patience."

St. Charles of Mt. Argus, C. P., Sermon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INSTRUCTION ON INDULGENCES

Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee (Matt. 9, 2).

The same that Christ says to the man sick of the palsy, the priest says to every contrite sinner in the confessional, and thus remits the crime or the guilt of his sins, and the eternal punishment, by virtue of the authority given him by God. But since sins not only bring with them guilt and eternal punishment, but also temporal and indeed spiritual or supernatural punishment, such as, painful conditions of the soul, as well in this world as in purgatory, and natural ones, as: poverty, disease, all sorts of adversities and accidents, we should endeavor to liberate ourselves from them by means of indulgences.

What is an indulgence?

It is a total or partial remission of the temporal punishment which man would have to suffer either in this or the next life, after the sins have been remitted.

How do we know that after the remission of the sins there still remains temporal punishment?

From holy Scripture; for our first parents after the forgiveness of their sin, were still afflicted with temporal punishment (Gen. 3). God likewise forgave the sins of the children of Israel, who murmured so often against Him in the desert, but not their punishment, for He excluded them from the Promised Land, and caused them to die in the desert (Num. 14). Moses and Aaron experienced the same, on account of a slight want of confidence in God (Num. 20, 12, Deut. 32, 51-52). David, indeed, received pardon from God through the Prophet Nathan for adultery and murder (II Kings 12), still he had to endure heavy temporal punishment. Finally, faith teaches us, that we are tortured in purgatory for our sins, until we have paid the last farthing (Matt. 5, 26).

Did the Church always agree with this doctrine of Scripture?

Yes; for she always taught, that by the Sacrament of Penance the guilt and eternal punishment, due to sin, are indeed forgiven for the sake of the infinite merits of Jesus, but that temporal punishment still remains, for which the sinner must do penance. Even in the earliest ages she imposed great penances upon sinners for their sins which were already forgiven. For instance, murder or adultery was punished by a penance of twenty years; perjury, eleven; fornication, denial of faith or fortune-telling, by seven years of severe penance with fasting, etc. During this time it was not allowed to travel, except on foot, to be present at the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or to receive the holy Eucharist. If the penitents showed a great zeal for penance and sincere amendment, or if distinguished members of the Church, particularly martyrs, interceded for them, the bishops granted them an indulgence, that is, they remitted the remaining punishment either totally or partially. In our days, on account of the weakness of the faithful, the Church is lenient. Besides the ecclesiastical, the spiritual punishments which would have to be suffered either here or in purgatory for the taking away of sins, are shortened and mitigated by indulgences through he treasure of the communion of saints.

Has the Church the power to remit temporal punishments, or to grant indulgences?

The Council of Trent expressly states, that the Church has power to grant indulgences (Sess. 25), and this statement it supports by the words of Christ. For as Christ protests: Amen, I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; so He also promised, that whatever the Church looses upon earth, is ratified and loosed in heaven. Whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven (Matt. 18, 18). Even an apostle granted an indulgence. In the person and by the power of Christ, that his spirit might be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (II Cor. 2, 10; I Cor. 5, 4-5), St. Paul forgave the incestuous Corinthian, upon whom he had imposed a heavy punishment.

What is meant by saying, indulgences are granted out of the treasury of the saints or of the Church?

By this is meant that God, by the Church, remits the temporal punishment due to sin for the sake of the merits of Christ and the saints, and supplies, as it were, by these merits what is still wanting in our satisfaction.

What kinds of indulgences are there?

Two; plenary and partial indulgences. A plenary indulgence, if rightly gained, remits all ecclesiastical and temporal punishment, which we would otherwise have to expiate by penance. A partial indulgence, however, remits only so many days or years of the temporal punishment, as, according to the penitential code of the primitive ages of the Church; the sinner would have been obliged to spend in severe penance. Hence the name forty day's indulgence, etc.

What is a Jubilee?

It is a plenary indulgence, which the pope grants to the faithful of the entire world, whereby all the temporal punishments of sin, even in cases reserved to the pope or the bishops, are remitted, and forgiven in the name of God, if the sinner confesses contritely and receives the holy Eucharist and has a firm purpose of doing penance.

What is required to gain an indulgence?

First, that we should be in the state of grace, and have already obtained, by true repentance, forgiveness of those sins, the temporal punishment of which is to be remitted by the indulgence; and secondly, that we should exactly perform the good works prescribed for the gaining of the indulgence.

Do indulgences free us from performing works of penance?

By no means: for there are few in the proper state to receive a plenary indulgence in its fullness, since not only purity of soul is necessary but also the inclination to sin must be rooted out, it therefore cannot be the intention of the Church to free us from all works of penance by granting us indulgences. She cannot act contrary to the word of Jesus: Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish Luke 13, 3). She rather wishes to assist our weakness, to supply our inability to do the required penance, and to contribute what is wanting in our penance, by applying the satisfaction of Christ and the saints to us by indulgences. If we, therefore, do not wish to do penance for our own sins, we shall have no part in the merits of others by indulgences.

Can indulgences be gained for the souls of the faithful departed?

Yes, by way of suffrage, so far as we comply with the required conditions, and thus beg of God, for the merits of His Son and the saints, to release the souls in purgatory. Whether God receive this petition or not, remains with Him, He will act only according to the condition of the deceased. We must, therefore, not depend upon the indulgences and good works which may be performed for us after death, but rather endeavor, during our life-time, to secure our salvation by leading a pious life; by our own good works and by the gaining of indulgences.

What follows from the doctrine of the Church concerning indulgences?

That an indulgence is no grant or license to commit sin, as the enemies of the Church falsely assert; that an indulgence grants no forgiveness of sins past or future, much less is permission given to commit sin; that no Catholic can believe that by gaming indulgences he is released from penance, or other good works, free from the fight with his evil inclinations, passions and habits, from compensating for injuries, repairing scandals, from retrieving neglected good, and glorifying God by works and sufferings; but that indulgences give nothing else than partial or total remission of temporal punishment; that they remind us of our weakness and lukewarmness which is great when compared with the zeal and fervor of the early Christians; that they impel us to satisfy the justice of God according to our ability. Finally, they remind us to thank God continually that He gave the Church a means in the inexhaustible treasure of the merits of Christ and His saints, to help our weakness and to supply what is wanting in our penance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Remember, the Lord seeks not only flowers but fruits, that is, not only good desires and resolutions but also holy works."

St. Bernard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

Pope Benedict XVI – The novelty of “Religious Liberty” is elevated to a “Church…Demand.”

“The Catholic Church firmly advocates that due recognition be given to the public dimension of religious adherence. In an overwhelmingly pluralist society, this demand is not unimportant. Care must be taken to guarantee that others are always treated with respect. Mutual respect grows only on the basis of agreement on certain inalienable values that are proper to human nature, in particular the inviolable dignity of every single person. Such agreement does not limit the expression of individual religions; on the contrary, it allows each person to bear witness explicitly to what he believes, not avoiding comparison with others.”
Pope Benedict XVI to the Muslims

 

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – Called for a “Wholesale” Revision of the Texts of Vatican II and said that the text on Religious Liberty is “Contrary to the Magisterium of the Church.”

“The necessity of judging the Second Vatican Council in the light of Tradition and the unchanging Magisterium of the Church, so as to correct the texts that are either incompatible with Tradition or equivocal.”

Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Ratzinger, CDF, July 21, 1982

 

“Considering that the Declaration of Religious Liberty is contrary to the Magisterium of the Church, we ask for a wholesale revision of the text.“We consider likewise indispensable noteworthy revisions of documents like ‘The Church in the Modern World’, ‘Non-Christian Religions’, ‘Ecumenism’, and clarifications of numerous texts presently tending toward confusion.
“Similarly on several points of prime importance, the new Code of Canon Law is unacceptable by its opposition to the definitive Magisterium of the Church.”

Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Ratzinger, CDF, April 17, 1985

NOTE: The Magisterium of the Church is the divine attribute which Jesus Christ endowed His Church to teach infallibly by the authority of GOD on any revealed doctrine of divine faith or moral question. The Magisterium of the Church can only be engaged by the pope and it is one thing always and everywhere. Whenever the pope, from St. Peter the Apostle to this present day, engages the Magisterium of the Church, he is engaging the same power, the same authority and the same infallibility of God. The teaching of the Magisterium of the Church is literally the voice of God. Its teaching is called Dogma. Any Catholic who contradicts the Magisterium of the Church is denying Dogma and is, by definition, a heretic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST           THE POWER AND LOVE OF JESUS                 

PRESENCE OF GOD ‑ O Jesus, grant me the grace to correspond always with the gifts of Your love.

MEDITATION:

    I. A poor paralytic is presented to Our Lord; he probably had himself brought there to ask for bodily health, but in the presence of the purity and holiness which emanates from the Person of Jesus, he realizes that he is a sinner and remains confused and humiliated before Our Lord. Jesus has already read his heart, and seeing his faith and humility, He does not even wait for him to speak, but suddenly says to him with infinite kindness: “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Gosp : Mt 9, I‑8). The first and the greatest miracle has taken place: the man is no longer a slave of Satan; he is a child of God. Jesus, who came to save souls, rightfully healed the soul before the body.

    This miracle, however, does not please the scribes who, not believing in the divinity of Jesus, begin immediately in the secret of their hearts to accuse Him of blasphemy. But the Master, who had read the soul of the paralytic, also reads theirs. “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” If Jesus had seen there even a little humility and faith, He would have been as ready to heal them as He was to heal the heart of the paralytic; but unfortunately, He found nothing but pride and obstinacy. However, He wishes to use every means to soften them, so He gives them the strongest proof of His divinity. “But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins then He said to the man sick of the palsy – ‘Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house.’ And he arose and went into his house.” The miracle was striking and instantaneous. The word of Jesus effected immediately what it expressed. The words of God alone could have such power. But the scribes will not admit that they are defeated when the heart is proud and obstinate not even factual evidence is capable of moving it.

    Let us never say our faith is weak because we do not see or touch with our hand the truth which is proposed for our belief; let us rather admit that it is weak because our heart is not sufficiently docile to grace, nor entirely free from pride. If we want to have strong faith, let us be as humble and simple as children; if we wish to share in the grace of sanctification which was given to the paralytic, let us offer ourselves to Our Lord with contrite, humble hearts, thoroughly convinced that we need His help and forgiveness.

    2. The Gospel presents Jesus to us in all the splendor of His divine personality, possessing all the powers proper to God. The Epistle (I Cor 1, 4‑8) shows Him in the act of putting His divinity at our service, as it were, to sanctify us and make us divine. Jesus continues to do for our souls what He did for the soul of the paralytic, and today’s Epistle is a beautiful synthesis of His action in us, an action far reaching and complete, embracing our whole being. Contemplating this action, St. Paul bursts forth in a hymn of gratitude: “I give thanks to my God always for you, for the grace of God that is given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you are made rich in Him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge ...so that nothing is wanting to you in any grace.” Yes, every grace, every gift comes to us from Jesus, and through them our person and our life are sanctified. By means of sanctifying grace, He sanctifies our soul; through the infused virtues, He sanctifies our faculties; and by actual grace, He sanctifies our activity, enabling us to act supernaturally. Yet even this does not satisfy His liberality: He is not content with setting us on the road to God, supernaturalized by grace and the virtues, but He wishes to substitute His divine way of acting for our human way; therefore, He enriches us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which make us capable of being moved by God Himself. All this is the gift of Jesus to us, the fruit of His Passion. The Holy Spirit is also His gift, the Gift par excellence, which He merited for us by His death on the Cross, the Gift which He and the Father are continually sending to us from heaven to enlighten and direct our souls.

    It seems as if Jesus, the true Son of God, is not jealous of His divinity or His prerogatives, but seeks every possible means to make us share by grace what He possesses by nature.  How true it is that the characteristic of love is to give oneself and to place those one loves on a plane of equality with oneself!

    Let our hearts be filled with gratitude; let us correspond to the infinite love of Jesus and always keep ourselves under its influence, for He wills to “confirm us unto the end without crime, in the day of His coming” (cf. I Cor 1, 8).

COLLOQUY:

    “O Jesus, You have taken away my death by giving me Your life; You have taken my flesh to give me Your Spirit; You have charged Yourself with my sins to bestow grace on me.

    “Thus, O my Redeemer, all Your pains are my treasure, and my wealth. You clothe me with Your purple, You honor me with Your crown, Your sorrows are a gift to me, Your grief sustains me, Your wounds heal me, Your Blood enriches me, Your love inebriates me.

    “You are the repose, the fire, and the desire of my soul. You are the Shepherd, and the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. You are the eternal Pontiff, powerful to appease the wrath of the supreme Father. Who would not praise You, O Lord? Who would not love You with all his heart? O benign Jesus, inflame my soul with this love, show me Your beautiful countenance, make my eyes happy because they see Yours, and refuse not the kiss of peace to one who loves You. You are the Spouse of my soul; it seeks You and calls You tearfully. You, O Holy One, have delivered it from death by Your death, and, wounding it with Your love, You have not despised it. Why does my misery not feel the sweetness of Your presence? Listen, my God and Savior, give me a heart that will love You, for there is nothing sweeter than to burn always with Your love.” (Ven. Louis of Granada).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obedience is governed by the virtue of Religion, which is itself perfected by the Gift of Piety

 

 

 

 

The Quotable St. Jerome

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

An unstable pilot steers a leaking ship, and the blind is leading the blind straight to the pit. The ruler is like the ruled.

Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, 'Why do you not practice what you preach?'

No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.

The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

The scars of others should teach us caution.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

They talk like angels but they live like men.

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.

Preferring to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than hide it in a purse.

Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Joseph’s forgotten role in Fatima’s ‘Miracle of the Sun’

Voice of the Family | 10-5-2017 – The 13 October 2017 will be the centenary of the Miracle of Sun and the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Despite being essential for understanding the period of history that we are now living through, the details of these remarkable events are far too little known, including amongst Catholics. In this article, we wish to draw attention to the much-neglected role of St Joseph during that momentous event.

Following the Miracle of Sun, and at the culmination of Our Lady’s final apparition, St Joseph also appeared to the three young seers. Father John de Marchi, in his book The True Story of Fatima, describes it as follows:

To the left of the sun, Saint Joseph appeared holding in his left arm the Child Jesus. Saint Joseph emerged from the bright clouds only to his chest, sufficient to allow him to raise his right hand and make, together with the Child Jesus, the Sign of the Cross three times over the world. As Saint Joseph did this, Our Lady stood in all Her brilliancy to the right of the sun, dressed in the blue and white robes of Our Lady of the Rosary. Meanwhile, Francisco and Jacinta were bathed in the marvelous colors and signs of the sun, and Lucia was privileged to gaze upon Our Lord dressed in red as the Divine Redeemer, blessing the world, as Our Lady had foretold. Like Saint Joseph, He was seen only from His chest up. Beside Him stood Our Lady, dressed now in the purple robes of Our Lady of Sorrows, but without the sword. Finally, the Blessed Virgin appeared again to Lucia in all Her ethereal brightness, clothed in the simple brown robes of Mount Carmel.

This final apparition at Fatima points us towards three particular forms of devotion towards Our Lady that we are called to practice during this “final battle” against Satan. These are devotion to:

·       her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart

·       the Holy Rosary

·       the Brown Scapular.

However, it is of the greatest importance to note that the final apparition of Fatima also directs us towards the intercession of St Joseph, whom Our Lord intimately associated with Himself in his blessing of the world.

Father de Marchi wrote:

Our Lord, already so much offended by the sins of mankind and particularly by the mistreatment of the children by the officials of the county, could easily have destroyed the world on that eventful day. However, Our Lord did not come to destroy, but to save. He saved the world that day through the blessing of good Saint Joseph and the love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for Her children on earth. Our Lord would have stopped the great World War then raging and given peace to the world through Saint Joseph, Jacinta later declared, if the children had not been arrested and taken to Ourem.

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX, following appeals received from bishops worldwide, had declared St Joseph to be Patron of the Universal Church, “in this most sorrowful time” when “the Church herself is beset by enemies on every side and oppressed by heavy calamities, so that impious men imagine that the gates of Hell are at length prevailing against her.”

Pope Leo XIII, to whom it was revealed in 1884 that Satan would be given, for a time, increased power to work for the destruction the Church, instituted a new devotion to St Joseph in his encyclical letter Quamquan pluries, promulgated on the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1889. The Supreme Pontiff wrote:

During periods of stress and trial – chiefly when every lawlessness of act seems permitted to the powers of darkness – it has been the custom in the Church to plead with special fervour and perseverance to God, her author and protector, by recourse to the intercession of the saints – and chiefly of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God – whose patronage has ever been the most efficacious.

He further explained:

We see faith, the root of all the Christian virtues, lessening in many souls; we see charity growing cold; the young generation daily growing in depravity of morals and views; the Church of Jesus Christ attacked on every side by open force or by craft; a relentless war waged against the Sovereign Pontiff; and the very foundations of religion undermined with a boldness which waxes daily in intensity. These things are, indeed, so much a matter of notoriety that it is needless for Us to expatiate on the depths to which society has sunk in these days, or on the designs which now agitate the minds of men. In circumstances so unhappy and troublous, human remedies are insufficient, and it becomes necessary, as a sole resource, to beg for assistance from the Divine power.

More than a century after the promulgation of this encyclical the evils identified by Pope Leo XIII have intensified to a degree that would have been inconceivable to most people in 1889. Thousands of innocent children are slaughtered every day with the approval of the governments that ought to be defending them, the sanctity of marriage is defiled by divorce, adultery and contraception, and the bonds between parents and their children are being deliberately targeted for destruction by the most powerful states and institutions in the world. Worst of all, the Pope himself is responsible for the spread of heresies which are leading the flock away from Christ and towards eternal damnation.

Pope Leo XIII urged the faithful, just as Our Lady would do twenty-eight years later at Fatima, to combat these evils through the prayer of the Holy Rosary:

At this proximity of the month of October, which We have already consecrated to the Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Lady of the Rosary, We earnestly exhort the faithful to perform the exercises of this month with, if possible, even more piety and constancy than heretofore. We know that there is sure help in the maternal goodness of the Virgin, and We are very certain that We shall never vainly place Our trust in her. If, on innumerable occasions, she has displayed her power in aid of the Christian world, why should We doubt that she will now renew the assistance of her power and favour, if humble and constant prayers are offered up on all sides to her? Nay, We rather believe that her intervention will be the more marvellous as she has permitted Us to pray to her, for so long a time, with special appeals.

But then, once more anticipating Fatima, he directed the faithful also towards St Joseph:

But We entertain another object, which, according to your wont, Venerable Brethren, you will advance with fervour. That God may be more favourable to Our prayers, and that He may come with bounty and promptitude to the aid of His Church, We judge it of deep utility for the Christian people, continually to invoke with great piety and trust, together with the Virgin-Mother of God, her chaste Spouse, the Blessed Joseph; and We regard it as most certain that this will be most pleasing to the Virgin herself.

He further explained:

The divine house which Joseph ruled with the authority of a father, contained within its limits the scarce-born Church. From the same fact that the most holy Virgin is the mother of Jesus Christ is she the mother of all Christians whom she bore on Mount Calvary amid the supreme throes of the Redemption; Jesus Christ is, in a manner, the first-born of Christians, who by the adoption and Redemption are his brothers. And for such reasons the Blessed Patriarch looks upon the multitude of Christians who make up the Church as confided specially to his trust – this limitless family spread over the earth, over which, because he is the spouse of Mary and the Father of Jesus Christ he holds, as it were, a paternal authority. It is, then, natural and worthy that as the Blessed Joseph ministered to all the needs of the family at Nazareth and girt it about with his protection, he should now cover with the cloak of his heavenly patronage and defend the Church of Jesus Christ.

Therefore the Holy Father instituted a new prayer to said after the Holy Rosary throughout the month of October. He intended this prayer to be said, not just in October 1889, but in October every year. As we prepare for the centenary of the Miracle of Sun, let us learn the lesson of St Joseph’s apparition at Fatima, and turn to him for help and protection.

St Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us!

 

 

 

 

CATHOLIC HISTORY

“And what is most remarkable is that the enemies of the Church—the movements that rend and crucify her—are in a sense her own offspring and derive their dynamic force from her.” This includes her current enemies who attack from within the household. In the crucible of conflict, saints are forged and crowns won.

Actually, however, Christianity has never accepted these postulates, and the Christian ought to be the last person in the world to lose hope in the presence of the failure of the right and the apparent triumph of evil. For all this forms part of the Christian view of life, and the Christian discipline is expressly designed to prepare us to face such a situation.

Christianity, to a far greater degree than any other religion, is a historical religion and it is knit up inseparably with the living process of history. Christianity teaches the existence of a divine progress in history which will be realized through the Church in the Kingdom of God. But at the same time it recognizes the essential duality of the historical process—the co-existence of two opposing principles, each of which works and finds concrete social expression in history. Thus we have no right to expect that Christian principles will work in practice in the simple way that a political system may work. The Christian order is a supernatural order. It has its own principles and its own laws which are not those of the visible world and which may often seem to contradict them. Its victories may be found in apparent defeat and its defeats in material success.

We see the whole thing manifested clearly and perfectly once and once only, i.e. in the life of Jesus, which is the pattern of the Christian life and the model of Christian action. The life of Jesus is profoundly historical; it is the culminating point of thousands of years of living historical tradition. It is the fulfillment of a historical purpose, towards which priests and prophets and even politicians had worked, and in which the hope of a nation and a race was embodied. Yet, from the worldly point of view, from the standpoint of a contemporary secular historian, it was not only unimportant, but actually invisible. Here was a Galilean peasant who for thirty years lived a life so obscure as to be unknown even to the disciples who accepted his mission. Then there followed a brief period of public action, which did not lead to any kind of historical achievement but moved swiftly and irresistibly towards its catastrophic end, an end that was foreseen and deliberately accepted.

And out of the heart of this catastrophe there arose something completely new, which even in its success was a deception to the very people and the very race that had staked their hopes on it. For after Pentecost—after the outpouring of the Spirit and the birth of the infant Church—there was an event as unforeseen and inexplicable as the Incarnation itself, the conversion of a Cilician Jew, who turned away from his traditions and from his own people so that he seemed a traitor to his race and his religion. So that ultimately the fulfillment of the hope of Israel meant the rejection of Israel and the creation of a new community which was eventually to become the State religion of the Roman Empire which bad been the enemy of Jew and Christian alike.

If you look on all this without faith, from the rationalist point of view, it becomes no easier to understand. On the contrary it becomes even more inexplicable; credo quia incredibile.

Now the life of Christ is the life of the Christian and the life of the Church. It is absurd for a Christian who is a weak human vehicle of this world changing force to expect a quiet life. A Christian is like a red rag to a bull—to the force of evil that seeks to be master of the world and which, in a limited sense, but in a very real sense, is, as St. John says, the Lord of this world. And not only the individual but the Church as an historic community follows the same pattern and finds its success and failure not where the politician finds them, but where Christ found them.

The Church lives again the life of Christ. It has its period of obscurity and growth and its period of manifestation, and this is followed by the catastrophe of the Cross and the new birth that springs from failure. And what is most remarkable is that the enemies of the Church—the movements that rend and crucify her—are in a sense her own offspring and derive their dynamic force from her. Islam, the Protestant Reformation, the liberal Revolution, none of them would have existed apart from Christianity—they are abortive or partial manifestations of the spiritual power which Christianity has brought into history. “I have come to cast fire on the earth and what will I, but that it be kindled.”  Christopher Dawson, Dynamics of World History

 

 

 

 

Explicit Supernatural Faith in God’s Revealed Truth is Necessary as a Necessity of Means for Salvation.

If you do not believe this, you do not possess Supernatural Faith!

Responses of the Holy Office under Pope Clement XI, 1703:
Q. Whether a minister is bound, before baptism is conferred on an adult, to explain to him all the mysteries of our faith, especially if he is at the point of death, because this might disturb his mind. Or, whether it is sufficient, if the one at the point of death will promise that when he recovers from the illness, he will take care to be instructed, so that he may put into practice what has been commanded him.
Resp. A promise is not sufficient, but a missionary is bound to explain to an adult, even a dying one who is not entirely incapacitated, the mysteries of faith which are necessary by a necessity of means, as are especially the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Q.  Whether it is possible for a crude and uneducated adult, as it might be with a barbarian, to be baptized, if there were given to him only an understanding of God and some of His attributes, especially His justice in rewarding and in punishing, according to this passage of the Apostle "He that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder' [Heb . 11:23], from which it is inferred that a barbarian adult, in a certain case of urgent necessity, can be baptized although he does not believe explicitly in Jesus Christ.
Resp. A missionary should not baptize one who does not believe explicitly in the Lord Jesus Christ, but is bound to instruct him about all those matters which are necessary, by a necessity of means, according to the capacity of the one to be baptized.”

COMMENT: The infamous 1949 Holy Office Letter, sent privately to Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston for the purpose of censoring Fr. Lenard Feeney for his belief in the Dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, affirmed the novel doctrine of 'salvation by implicit desire'. The "implicit desire" was to be a "member of the Church" and the evidence of this "implicit desire" was an explicit belief in a 'god who rewards and punishes'. The Letter teaches that the only requirement for salvation is found in St. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews 11:13. No longer were the belief in any revealed truth, the reception of any sacrament, or being a subject of the Roman Pontiff necessary as necessities of means for salvation. This Letter teaches that any "good-willed" Jew as a Jew, Hindu as a Hindu, Mohammedan as a Mohammedan, Protestant as a Protestant, etc., etc. can be members of the Church and can obtain salvation because they believe in a 'god who rewards and punishes'. The Holy Office response of 1703 makes it clear that the belief in a God who rewards and punishes is only the natural philosophical prerequisite for receiving the gospel good-news of salvation and of itself is insufficient grounds for receiving the sacrament of Baptism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Commentary on Matthew 1:1-8

And, behold, certain of the scribes, &c. Within themselves. Syr., in their soul; because He takes away God’s special prerogative of pardoning sin, and claims it for Himself, which would be a grave dishonour done to God, and therefore blasphemy. Thus they thought, supposing Christ was not God, but a mere man. This was their perpetual and obstinate error, which led them perpetually to persecute Him, even unto the death of the Cross. Wherefore S. Mark adds, that they said, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” For sin is an offence against God, a violation of the Divine Majesty, so that no one can pardon it, except God Himself.

And Jesus knowing their thoughts, &c. S. Mark adds that Jesus knew in His Spirit. This was not because another revealed to Him the thoughts and blasphemies of the Scribes, as the prophets knew such things, but by Himself and His own Spirit, pervading and penetrating all things. From this the Fathers rightly prove the Divinity of Christ against the Arians. For He searches the hearts, a thing which God alone can do. Thus S. Jerome, who adds, “Even when keeping silence, He speaks. As though He said, ‘By the same power and majesty by which I behold your thoughts, I am able also to forgive men their sins.’” So too S. Chrysostom and others. Whence Chrysologus says, “Receive the tokens of Christ’s Divinity: behold Him come to the secret hiding-places of thy thoughts.”

You may say, the Scribes might have raised the following objection:—“Thou, O Jesus, indeed knowest and revealest our secret thoughts, but not by Thine own Spirit, for that Thou in no way makest plain to us, but by the Spirit of God. Therefore Thou art a prophet and not God, that thou shouldst remit sins.” I reply, if the Scribes acknowledged Jesus to be a prophet, then surely they ought to have believed that He was speaking the truth when He said that He had, of Himself, power to forgive sins, and therefore that He was God. Again, in the Old Testament, the power of remitting sins was given to none of the prophets, but it was promised to Messiah alone by the prophets. Therefore, they ought to have acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah, and consequently God, as is plain from many passages of Scripture.

Lastly, Christ by His command alone, and proper authority, both healed the paralytic, and forgave him his sins, and so in this, as in all His other miracles, He had this end in view, that He might convince them He was the Messiah—that is, the Son of God, who had come in the flesh, the Saviour of the world, the Redeemer of sinners, who had been foretold by Moses and the prophets.

Whether is easier, &c. You may ask, whether of these two is absolutely the more difficult? I answer—

1. It is, per se, more difficult to forgive sins than to heal a paralytic person, yea, than to create heaven and earth. And there is à priori reason for this: first, because sin, as an enemy of God, is far further away from God than a paralytic, yea, than any created thing, forasmuch as these are in themselves good: yea, further than nothingness, out of which all things were made, itself, for nothingness is only negatively and privatively opposed to entity and God; but sin is diametrically opposed and repugnant to God. For there are no contraries which are so mutually opposed as supreme goodness and supreme badness—that is to say, God and sin.

2. Because remission of sins is something of a higher order than the natural order. It has to do with the supernatural order of grace. Grace is the highest communion with the Divine Nature: for by grace “we are made partakers of the divine nature,” as S. Peter says (2 Pet. i. 4).

I observe, however, secondly: on the contrary, Christ here seems to speak of remission of sins as being easier than the healing of the paralytic. This was so, because the latter was more difficult in respect of the Jews, and it was a more perilous thing besides. For he who saith, I forgive thee thy sins, cannot be convicted of falsehood, whether he remits them or not. For neither sin, nor its remission, are things that can be seen. But he who saith to a paralytic, Arise and walk, exposes both himself and his good name to great peril, if the sick man does not arise. Such a one will be convicted by all of imposture and falsehood. Just as we are accustomed to say, It is easier to write a history of Tartary than a history of Italy: because here a man might be convicted of falsehood by multitudes; but there by no one.

Lastly, the healing of paralysis is a physical operation, and, physically speaking, more difficult than the remission of sins, which is, per se, a moral act, of like nature with sin itself.

Jansen adds, With respect to God, both are equally easy and divine, for both are miraculous, and both require exercise of omnipotent power.

Moreover, although of itself the healing of the paralytic was a less work than the remission of sins, yet Christ conclusively proves by it that He had the power of forgiving sins.

Ver. 6.—But that ye may know, &c. Observe the expression, Son of Man, for Christ forgave sins, not only as He was God, but in that He was man, authoritatively and meritoriously. Because His Humanity was hypostatically united to His Divinity, and subsisted in the Divine Person of the Son of God, therefore He was able to make full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

Rev. Cornelius a Lapide, The Great Commentary, Matthew 9:1-8

 

 

 

 

Remember , O man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

"An excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny." Plato

In a 2022 lecture at Notre Dame, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that the claims and conceptions of universal and inalienable human dignity as reflected in documents such as the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in various post-war European constitutions are puzzling, since this dignity requires a duty of respect to everyone just for being human, no matter their behavior or character, so Stalin the mass murderer has as much dignity and deserves as much respect as Mother Teresa. Aquinas’ view of dignitas as interpreted by Charles De Koninick is a challenge to this view, for it assigns human dignity, not to the mere fact of being human, but to the end to which we are called, which is supernatural, union with God, which might not be attained due to one’s choices on earth against those common goods which enable our attainment of the supernatural end, and so human dignitas could be lost. According to this view, the 20th-century concept of human dignity is much too individualistic, and because it is not based in justice and the common good, can only provide negative prescriptions against the undignified treatment of humans. It is unable to provide positive prescriptions that enable persons to obtain the common goods and the virtues they need to attain their supernatural end. For MacIntyre, we need to speak of human dignity in terms of justice, what we owe to each other for the sake of enabling persons to attain their personal and common goods and final end, which is the knowledge and love of God in this life and the next.

Thaddeus Kozinski, PhD, Introduction to Article entitled, From Liberal Democracy to Global Totalitarianism, September 26, 2023

NOTE: Alasdair MacIntyre was a professor of philosophy with an emphasis on moral and political philosophy. He converted to the Catholic faith around 1981 in his early fifties. He ended his extensive teaching career as a professor at Notre Dame University in South Bend where he died in 2025 at 96 years of age.  MacIntyre's book, After Virtue, is a dismantling of modern enlightenment morality that is individualistic and subjective and return to a morality that is directed toward a specific end and based upon virtue that is both individual and social. Vatican II not only corrupted the objective  knowable truth of Catholic doctrine, it embraced this corrupted sense of enlightenment moral principles which are based upon individual moral sense and subjective judgment of conscience. They completely deny the obligation to practice virtue. And with the corruption of individual obligation of virtue, there is no possible sense of social virtue. For the Novus Ordo social virtue is 'saving the planet' and 'opposing capital punishment.' To this end they support the establishment of a New World Order with one world government. The Novus Ordo only opposes the Catholic sense of proselytism. They are determined to proselytize the Catholic faithful to their apostasy.  

 

 

 

 

 

After 40 Years of Dialogue, Rabbi identifies papal “conundrum.”

"The real conundrum that faces Benedict XVI on his visit to Israel… is should he be loyal to the Gospels which claim that only acceptance of Christ can bring the messianic age, or should he endorse Vatican II which acknowledges that Jews… can find the kingdom of God via a different route?  Should he look inwards, backwards or forwards?"

Rabbi Jonathan Romain, The Pope’s Jewish Dilemma, The Guardian

 

 

 

 

 

EXCLUSIVE:

Abp. Viganò says Leo XIV has intensified Francis’s agenda, not slowed it

In this exclusive interview, Abp. Viganò argues that changing the way Catholics worship ultimately changes what they believe, making the liturgical reform central to the post-conciliar crisis.

LifeSiteNews— In Part 1 of this interview, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed that the reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council weakened the Church’s role as the katéchon, the force that restrains the spread of the Antichrist’s spirit in history. He discussed the nature of papal authority, the distinction between the papacy as a divine institution and individual popes while critiquing of post-conciliar developments, the rise of synodality, and women in Vatican leadership.

This second part of the interview centers on Viganò’s critique of the post-conciliar Church, focusing on liturgical reform and Traditionis Custodes as instruments of a broader theological transformation. He also discusses the pontificate of Leo XIV, particularly the allegations of networks of protection among ecclesiastical elites, and the influence of ideological and global forces on the contemporary hierarchy.

LifeSiteNews: Throughout this entire crisis, you have always identified the liturgical reform not as a consequence but as a cause. Why is the question of the Mass, in your judgment, prior to and more decisive than the doctrinal one? And what meaning does the relentlessness of Traditionis Custodes, maintained intact by Leo XIV, have in this context?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Because the Church has always known what the modernists deliberately forgot: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (“that the law of prayer may establish the law of belief”). It is the law of prayer that establishes the law of faith, and not vice versa. The Christian people do not learn dogma from manuals: they breathe it in at the altar. A man who for years knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, who has seen the priest turned toward God and not toward the assembly, who witnessed the Consecration in the sacred silence of the Roman Canon, believes in the Real Presence and in the Sacrifice, even if he would not know how to formulate the corresponding dogmas; and no theologian will succeed in taking that faith away from him. Change the way a person prays, and you change what he believes, without him noticing and without anyone ever having to state a single heretical proposition.

That is why I say that the liturgical reform was not a consequence of the crisis: it was its instrument. It was the fastest and safest way to obtain what a definition would never have achieved. Let it be noted: it is the perfect application of that Bergoglian principle according to which “time is superior to space.” Nothing is defined, a process is initiated, and then all it takes is a couple of generations for the rest to fall into place. Anyone who wants confirmation of this method should read the Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, who as early as 1969 warned that the new rite “departs impressively, as a whole and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.” They were not two seditionists: one was the former secretary of the Holy Office [NOTE: Indeed, the office of Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation was reserved to the Pope himself. Ottaviani served as the Congregation’s Secretary] and the other a curial cardinal. They were ignored, and today the statistics on belief in the Real Presence confirm how right they were. Cranmer understood four centuries earlier that changing the Mass is enough to change the religion of a people, and he did not need to deny any dogma in order to eradicate the Holy Sacrifice from England.

As for Traditionis Custodes, it is the most eloquent confession our adversaries could have made. If the two rites truly expressed the same faith [the vetus ordo and novus ordo], persecuting one of them would be an inexplicable whim: they persecute it because they know perfectly well that they do not express the same faith, and that as long as a single altar safeguards the ancient lex orandi, the new one cannot claim victory.

It should also be noted that under Prevost, Traditionis Custodes has neither been withdrawn nor mitigated: instead, it has been applied even more rigidly, with a meticulousness that Bergoglio did not have time to exercise. That Leo himself – who speaks so much of welcome and listening – should be so relentless in opposing the Mass of all time proves to those who still hoped in him that in the synodal church there is room for everything except the rite in which the Church prayed for centuries.

LifeSiteNews: Prevost was elected thanks to those who hoped for a restoration of the juridical order, but in fact he seems to be continuing his predecessor’s agenda, simply slowing its pace and delegating the most contentious decisions to the Curia. Does this more phlegmatic and “dialoguing” style not risk being even more insidious for the defense of dogma than Francis’s direct authoritarianism?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: I must correct the premise of the question, because it is precisely the misunderstanding on which Prevost relies. It is not at all accurate to say that Leo is proceeding “little by little.” He is proceeding by means of forced marches, without the slightest concern for reactions – also because negative reactions are few, and those few are promptly suppressed. What changed, if compared with Bergoglio, is not the speed: it is the face. Bergoglio shouted, and whoever shouts wakes people up; Prevost smiles, and whoever smiles puts people to sleep. But it is an icy smile, the smirk of one who knows he will meet no resistance.

Bottom of Form

Look at the facts, not at the manner. The agenda has not been slowed down: it has been intensified on every front – synodality, environmentalism, pro-immigration policies, syncretic ecumenism, normalization of LGBT ideology. And above all, look at the appointments, which are the acid test of a pontificate: there is not a single one that makes an exception; not one man of sound doctrine promoted, not one enemy of the faith removed. On every front, Prevost has gone beyond his predecessor.

On August 13, in Cusco, at a conference preparing for Prevost’s journey to Peru, Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu – pontifical commissioner of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – placed coca leaves in an offering to the infernal idol Pachamama together with Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera, auxiliary bishop of Cusco and secretary general of CELAM, and Bishop Miguel Ángel Cadenas, bishop of Iquitos. Under Bergoglio, the Pachamama entered the Vatican Gardens and St. Peter’s Basilica as a scandalous gesture; under Prevost, the Pachamama entered the dicastery whose task ought to be to condemn it – and that idol entered it at the hands of the man who, within that dicastery, administers justice. This is not a slowing down: it is an institutionalization.

Leo’s style is measured only in appearance. The Latin here and there, the mozzetta worn even in inappropriate circumstances – even when getting off the plane – the courteous tone: these are anesthetics administered to a body now incapable of reacting. And the anesthetic does not lessen the violence: the anesthetic is what makes the violence possible.

The conservatives have allowed themselves to be enchanted by the form. But in truth there is not even that. Those who were satisfied by the mozzetta got the mozzetta and nothing else, and are now paying for that piece of cloth with silence about everything else.

Finally, there is the aspect that reveals the authentically tyrannical nature of this government, and that is delegation. Prevost delegates to the Curia, to the dicasteries, to episcopal conferences, to the “synodal processes,” so that no decision bears his signature and each one can be presented as the fruit of collective discernment. This is not mildness: it is the most perfect form of absolute power, one that exercises command without assuming responsibility for it. The ancient tyrant signed his edicts and bore the hatred they generated; the synodal tyrant has others deliberate and remains above them, an arbiter and never the accused. It is the dissolution of the pope’s personal responsibility – exactly what synodality sets out to achieve – and whoever never makes decisions can never be contradicted. The pope who does not decide is the pope who decided to let others act, and who found a way not to be held accountable by anyone.

LifeSiteNews: You intervened publicly in the case of Eleuterio Vásquez González, known as Lute, the Peruvian priest accused of serious abuse of girls in the Diocese of Chiclayo. When Leo XIV was bishop of that diocese, the canonical investigation was described by an ecclesiastical delegate as “a farce”; yet today the Pope has as his personal secretary Edgard Rimaycuna, a priest who was raised precisely within Lute’s pastoral and vocational circle.

Another prominent prelate, the Venezuelan Edgar Peña Parra – formerly Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State and now Apostolic Nuncio to Italy and San Marino – was reported by you in 2002 over extremely serious allegations, ranging from the abuse of underage seminarians to alleged links to violent deaths, allegations that were then systematically ignored by Bergoglio.

In light of these and other cases, do you believe that under Bergoglio a genuine “network” of reciprocal protection among men of power has become consolidated in the Church, in which omissions and responsibilities are covered up in order to preserve internal balances? And, if so, how extensive is this phenomenon at the highest levels of the Holy See?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The Lute case reproduces with astonishing precision the modus operandi of other extremely serious cases, from McCarrick to Rupnik: victims who report and are not heard; an investigation conducted in such a way as to find nothing; the dicastery that closes the case by invoking the statute of limitations; the accused who not only remains unpunished, but is actually protected.

Alongside this, the necessary reverse side: whoever exposes the crimes and defends the victims is destroyed. Bishop Ricardo Coronado, the canon lawyer who had taken up the defense of the three young women, had his ecclesiastical forensic authorization revoked by the Peruvian Episcopal Conference in August 2024, and four months later was dismissed from the clerical state by a decree that – please note – did not bear Bergoglio’s handwritten signature.

Whoever accuses loses the priesthood; whoever is accused keeps everything. There is nothing to interpret here: the bishop of Chiclayo who conducted that investigation, described as “a farce” by those who knew the details closely, now sits on the Chair of Peter, and he has chosen beside him, as his personal secretary, a priest formed within Fr. Lute’s circle. These are not biographical details or unfortunate coincidences: they are proof that in this system, proximity to certain circles is not an obstacle to a career, but in fact the very condition for having one.

Also, observe a coincidence that is no coincidence. The same Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu who offered coca leaves to Pachamama in Cusco is the man who, in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, inaugurated – and justified in principle – that interpretation of canon law whereby ordinary procedures, with the safeguards they guarantee to the accused, are replaced by parallel structures and extraordinary commissarial powers. It is the juridical doctrine that makes the fate of Bp. Coronado possible: wherever procedure gives way to the will of the commissioner, whoever causes trouble is lost from the outset, and is not even left with the right to defend himself. Before being dismissed from the clerical state, Coronado was accused of infamous acts without a shred of evidence.

This is not an isolated case. When a Peruvian priest, Father Omar Sánchez, publicly criticized Bertomeu’s handling of matters, 22 days later an allegation of abuse against him appeared in the press – an allegation that the supposed complainant subsequently publicly denied, declaring that he had never filed any complaint.

Whoever raises his voice against the system discovers that he has a file already opened against him. And the man who places coca leaves before Pachamama is the same man who strips the priesthood from the man who defended the three young victims of Fr. Lute in Chiclayo. This gives us the measure of what the Holy Office has now become.

As for Peña Parra, allow me a clarification that I consider important. I dealt with his case much earlier, when I was Delegate for Pontifical Representations at the Secretariat of State. The allegations – his seduction of two underage seminarians in Maracaibo in September 1990, and his connection with the circumstances surrounding two violent deaths in August 1992 – had been transmitted to the Secretariat of State in 2002 by the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy. But this did not prevent Peña Parra’s career from advancing. And I will add a detail that says much about the role of the media: I spoke about that case in a lengthy interview with the Washington Post, and it was precisely the part concerning the Venezuelan abuser that never saw the light of day. Bergoglio wanted him as Substitute; and Prevost has now sent him as nuncio to Italy.

Yes, a network exists. I do not say this as a conjecture. I know it to be true from direct experience of decades in the Roman Curia and in nunciatures. It is founded on a simple principle: whoever can be blackmailed can be controlled by whoever holds the blackmail material. Moral corruption is not an accident of the system: it is the glue that holds the entire system together. That is why the guilty party or accomplice is promoted, while the person who reports him is isolated and struck down.

How extensive is this network of corruption? You need only to see how many among McCarrick’s “progeny” still occupy positions of authority in the United States and in the Vatican; how many of the cardinals created by Bergoglio were chosen precisely for their corruption and susceptibility to blackmail; and how many, in the Secretariat of State and in the dicasteries, owe their position not to doctrine or holiness, but to membership in a faction. The answer lies in the facts, and the facts speak for themselves.

LifeSiteNews: Who benefits from this mechanism? Was Bergoglio its architect, or did he become entangled in it against his will?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Neither one nor the other, in the terms in which the question is posed. Bergoglio was not a victim of a system, but neither was he its inventor: he was its beneficiary and then its guarantor. He was elected thanks to the Mafia of Saint Gallen, that is, thanks to a network that spent years planning its own seizure of power, and that found in him the right man because he was unscrupulous, devoid of doctrinal scruples, and extraordinarily skilled in the use of power – qualities refined through a long Jesuit formation whose method he retained throughout his life: ostensible obedience united with subterranean maneuvering, outwardly proclaimed poverty while simultaneously wielding absolute command.

Once elected, he did what every illegitimate power does: he surrounded himself with men who could not betray him because he knew their corruption and crimes, and he removed those who, being in no way blackmailable, could not be controlled. It is no coincidence that his closest collaborators – from Zanchetta to Peña Parra – are figures burdened by extremely serious allegations, which he systematically covered up and promoted.

Above all, the case of Marko Rupnik, S.J., is no coincidence: expelled from the Society of Jesus, already excommunicated for absolving an accomplice, and nevertheless protected for years, along with the entire faction that owes its position to that protection – beginning with the then-Cardinal Vicar Angelo De Donatis, whose transfer from the Vicariate of Rome to the Apostolic Penitentiary took place precisely in the wake of that case. That was not at all a promotion, as people wanted to make it appear, but a way of shielding him, removing him from the questions he would no longer have been able to evade in Rome.

Who benefits? Internally, it benefits a clerical caste that made the Church its private property and that needs impunity in order to survive. Externally, it benefits those financial, political, and supranational powers – that is, globalists – who have an interest in keeping the Catholic Church under blackmail, because a blackmailed Church does not speak, condemn, or evangelize: it collaborates. The link between deep church and deep state is not a theory: it is the reason why the Holy See docilely supported every globalist agenda – from climate to migration, from the pandemic to universal fraternity, from vaccine advocacy to pan-sexualism – and why it has signed and stubbornly renewed the secret agreement with Communist China, handing over faithful bishops and the underground Church to their persecutors, while remaining silent about everything that the Gospel ought to require it to proclaim loudly.

Moral corruption and doctrinal corruption are two sides of the same coin. Whoever betrays the faith also betrays morality, and whoever is blackmailable on morality is willing to betray the faith – even to the point of idolatry, as the coca leaves placed at Cusco by an official of the former Holy Office demonstrate to anyone who has eyes to see.

LifeSiteNews: While the 2025 Papal Conclave was underway, a high-ranking Masonic authority told me confidentially during an investigation I was conducting: “You will see that they will elect Francis’s useful idiot.” When I asked for an explanation, this Freemason contact – who was, in fact, very close to the circles of the Roman Curia – told me that Francis appointed cardinals “with skeletons in their closets” from the peripheries of the world, with the request that they elect “his man” and preserve his “synodal legacy.” When Prevost was elected, this same Freemason told me sarcastically: “Habemus Papam! They elected him.” At first I was very cautious, and even hopeful about Prevost. Now that one year and several months have passed, I wonder how far this Masonic authority’s interpretation was from reality… What do you think?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: I cannot confirm words that I did not hear, nor am I interested in giving credence to the boasts of circles that have always enjoyed attributing to themselves credit for governing the Church. But I can say that this reading coincides exactly with what the facts make evident to anyone willing to look at them.

Bergoglio created the overwhelming majority of the College of Cardinals, choosing men whom no one knew, with very poor formation, coming from irrelevant sees, whose only qualification was personal loyalty to Bergoglio and, almost always, a vulnerability that made them controllable. A conclave composed in this way could only elect a man like Prevost, that is, a man who would guarantee the continuity of Bergoglio’s “synodal legacy.”

Freemasonry takes pleasure in this election, and this is not surprising at all: it also rejoiced at the election of John XXIII. For three centuries now it has pursued a single design, namely to demolish the Catholic Church: first by emptying her of her supernatural dimension and reducing her to a philanthropic organization, then by subverting her from within, and finally by transforming her into the anti-church, that is, into the Universal Religion of Humanity, which is its true goal.

Synodality, as a permanent revolution and the quintessence of all the demands of modernism, is the closest thing to that project ever accomplished from within. There is no need to imagine conspiracies: it is enough to read the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, which describes a century and a half in advance a pope formed in the ideas of the revolution, elected by cardinals formed in the same ideas.

If a Masonic authority rejoiced at Prevost’s election, it is because what was being sought was achieved. The regret belongs to those cardinals and faithful who, for a few months, wanted to delude themselves. The expression “useful idiot” is offensive, and I would not make it my own; but I fear that whoever used it knows well the nature of the usefulness expected from the man they elected.

 

 

 

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. 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,

Fr. Paul DaDamio, ordained conditionally by Bishop Richard Williamson, and warmly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, died March 27, 2026,

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 destroyed 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COMMENT: The Novus Ordo Church has canonize Bishop Fulton J. Sheen a Catholic prelate very popular with conservative Catholics. The miracle in support of his canonization is a "stillborn" infant who may very well not in fact been dead. Like the recent Novus Ordo canonization of Cardinal John Henry Newman, Sheen is thought by conservatives to represent an example for faithful Catholics but the Novus Ordo Church recognizes that he endorsed many modernist heretical first principles and thus can be used as a weapon against the Catholic faith. Bishop Sheen, while participating in the Sabbath service, did not remind his Jewish hosts of their need to convert to the Catholic faith to save their souls. Cheers to Fulton Sheen!

Bishop Sheen Pulpit Guest at New York Synagogue Sabbath Services

Jewish Telegraphic Agency | January 19, 1968

The Mount Neboh Synagogue here conferred a brotherhood award on Fulton J. Sheen, Bishop of Rochester, at its regular Friday Sabbath service. The ceremony marked the first time in the New York Archdiocese that a Catholic prelate has addressed worshippers from a Jewish pulpit on the Hebrew Sabbath.

The award, an illuminated parchment scroll with doves of peace in 14th century character lettering, opened with an inscription from Psalm 133: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Bishop Sheen accepted the award from Dr. Edward Jacobs, president of the Metropolitan Conference of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods, and hailed recent advances in ecumenicity within Christianity. He emphasized a growing rapprochement between Jews and Christians. Rabbi Philip Hiat, spiritual leader of the congregation, stressed that “with all our so-called differences, there is a host of aims and goals toward which both faiths can work together in perfect harmony.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXCERPT: The Vatican has been covering-up the crimes of homosexual pederasts since 1922 but the practice became actively enforced policy since 1962!!!

The total payouts by the Catholic Church for sex abuse claims in the United States have exceeded $5 billion over the past two decades with almost all of this for homosexual crimes.

FROM FORGIVENESS, TO SILENCE... TO BETRAYAL, By Michael Kenny

THE FEAR OF SCANDAL: A DEEPENING MOTIF

As the Church gained public visibility and institutional structure, the fear of scandal – that is, anything that could bring shame or doubt upon the Church – grew proportionally. This concern is not without biblical foundation. Apparently Christ Himself warned that:

“Scandals must come, but woe to the one through whom they come.”

In a world where the Church was often maligned, the temptation to protect its reputation – even at the cost of truth – grew strong.

This approach reached its most formal expression in the 20th century.

CRIMEN SOLICITATIONIS: CODIFYING SECRECY

In 1962, the Vatican issued a secret instruction titled CRIMEN SOLICITATIONIS. Which laid out procedures for dealing with priests accused of using the confessional to solicit sexual acts (an update of canon 904 in 1741). While its original focus was on confessional abuse – a particularly grievous offense – it extended its protocols to cover ALL sexual misconduct by clergy, including child abuse.

This document mandated strict secrecy:

“Cases of this nature are subject to the strictest pontifical secret – under pain of excommunication.”

This meant the victims, witnesses, and Church authorities were all bound by silence, ostensibly to protect the sacrament and the dignity of the Church. But in practice, this secrecy protected the perpetrators and silenced the victims.

The same theological instinct that once prompted Origen to counsel forgiveness now found its legal expression in institutional concealment.

The Church fathers were not wrong to value forgiveness. But forgiveness without justice is not sanctity – it is surrender. And the Church must never surrender the innocent to the sins of the powerful.

THE COST OF MISAPPLIED MERCY

What unites the early Christian response to personal violation with the institutional culture of silence centuries later is a tragic misapplication mercy – a prioritizing of the Church's image, or of the offender's soul, over the immediate demands of justice and the protection of the innocent.

In the name of forgiveness, the Church failed to act.

In the name of avoiding scandal, it created a greater one.

In the name of unity, it tolerates wolves among the sheep.

The very teachings of Christ – meant to uphold truth, protect the weak, and heal the broken – were twisted into realizations for secrecy and inaction.

TOWARD A NEW ETHOS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The path forward must involve more than policy reform. It requires a re-examination of the Church's spiritual instincts – a return to the full Gospel, where mercy and justice walk hand in hand.

Forgiveness does not mean the abandonment of truth.

Compassion does not mean the protection of the predator.

The Church must rediscover the moral courage to expose evil, even when it dwells in its own house.

EPILOGUE: A WAR ON INNOCENCE

There is a deeper layer to this crisis. Darker than secrecy. Worse than betrayal. It is diabolical.

Satan hates God. This hatred is total, consuming and unrelenting. But Satan can't hurt God directly – God is beyond his reach. So he strikes where it hurts most: at what God loves – CHILDREN.

Jesus told us to let the children come to Him. Jesus warned about the millstone. So, what then is a perfect way for Satan's followers to do his bidding and please him, and hate God at the same time...

VIOLATE A CHILD, and do it wearing the robes of Christ

In this perverse inversion of the priesthood, the altar becomes a hunting ground, and the confessional, a trap. [....]

COMMENT: From the 1917 Code of Canon Law, clerical homosexual predators and other sex offenders  who were found guilty were laicized and turned over to the state for suffer criminal penalties. Such a response was necessary to restore justice, protect the faithful, and begin the hard work of rebuilding. Everything changed in 1922 with a new canon law which required all bishops of the world to violate mandatory reporting laws of the state by concealing child abuse and homosexuality by clerics from criminal state law enforcement. This document, Crimens Sollicitationis, was included in the 1983 Code of Canon Law and remained in force until 2001.

Abp. Carlo Maria Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, was required first by Crimens Sollicitationis and then by Sacramentum Sanctitatis Tutela of 2001 and then by Graviora Delicta of 2010 to conceal any knowledge of sexual crimes by clergy from public disclosure. The “Spotlight” investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in 2002 revealed that many clerics found guilty of child sexual abuse were repeatedly returned to Catholic ministry where they repeated their crimes on new adolescent victims. Following this investigation, the United States was the only country that received an exemption from the Vatican policy to conceal sexual abuse from state criminal law enforcement.

The problem was magnified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law protecting homosexual predators. Canon 1341 of the current 1983 Code of Canon Law, requires bishops whenever possible to ask priests to please stop committing crimes, instead of punishing them for their criminal actions. What is perhaps worse, Canon 1324 in the 1983 Code is used to decrease punishment for pedophiles on the grounds that pedophiles have less freedom than non-pedophiles to control their perverse passions. Thus, a diagnosis of pedophilia lessens culpability and imputability of the crime of pedophilia!!! As a result, bishops have concluded pedophiles should receive a lesser punishment for pedophilia than other sex offenders. Their hypocrisy is evident when compared to the treatment given to Fr. Samuel Waters. Homosexual predators are given the full canonical rights of due process while Fr. Waters was denied canonical due process for the "crime" of offering the "received and approved" immemorial Roman rite of Mass and "administratively laicized" which itself is a violation of canon law!

The SSPX follows the 1983 Code and has used it cover up sexual offenders within the SSPX. This includes the former district superior in the United States for the SSPX, Fr. Arnaud Rostand who was sentenced to a French prison after conviction of homosexual pederasty in France, Spain and Switzerland against seven boys on scouting trips between 2002 and 2018. The purpose of this is not detraction of the SSPX but to point out an ugly fact that every faithful Catholic should be aware of when receiving their sacraments, attending their schools or participating in their supervised camps and other summer activities. They as an organization have followed the Vatican policy to cover up any crimes of sexual abuse of children. Perhaps, now that they have been "excommunicated" from the Novus Ordo they will stop following the Novus Ordo code of canon law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surrogacy magnate to bring child trafficking to Poland

The Ukrainian company BioTexCom will hold a surrogacy fair from September 12–13 in Warsaw.

LifeSiteNew | Sep 7, 2026 -

ORDO IURIS Publication—  Here is a harrowing testimony from a woman born through surrogacy:

“I was programmed to be abandoned. My mother was supposed to disappear from my life. This separation was not accidental. It was the purchase of a product (…)

Throughout my childhood I felt a sense of abandonment, rejection, and emptiness. I had the feeling that something very important was missing. (…) I spent years trying to escape this pain through alcohol, drugs, and self-destructive behavior, and at one point I even tried to take my own life.”

These words from Olivia Maurel shook those gathered at the June Ordo Iuris Converence. They resonated powerfully within the walls of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, lending emotional weight to the voices of international experts demanding the global outlawing of surrogacy.

The need to ban “womb renting” – which leads to child trafficking, to the enslavement of women, and also to the growth of abortion and the IVF industry – was argued at the time by experts from Poland, France, Chile, and the United Kingdom, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem.

After the conference, the Ordo Iuris publishing house reached an agreement with Olivia Maurel to publish her book in Poland – a powerful testimony and a professional analysis of the terrible mechanisms of the global surrogacy industry.

Ordo Iuris took up this important issue literally moments before the surrogacy industry’s assault on Poland.

The surrogacy business wants to enter Poland

In just a few days, a surrogacy fair is set to take place in Poland—in the very center of Warsaw.

The Ukrainian company BioTexCom has announced that on September 12–13 it will hold a conference in Poland’s capital, at which attendees will be able to learn about its offer of so-called surrogate parenthood.

Surrogacy is 21st-century slavery. Poor women are treated like living incubators, and children are sold like goods. “Defective” goods are killed, and “used-up” surrogate mothers are thrown out onto the street. The fuel for this inhuman industry is supplied by well-off couples (often same-sex) who buy themselves children at surrogacy fairs.

Until recently, these modern-day slavery fairs took place only in Germany, Belgium, or France. Protests led to the fairs being driven out of Paris, which gave hope for a broad condemnation of this repugnant practice. All along, it seemed that Poland was a country free from surrogacy barbarism.

The September fair organized by the Ukrainian surrogacy magnate is meant to change that. And it is counting on the leniency of the Polish authorities.

That is why we have a duty to speak loudly about what surrogacy truly is.

As lawyers, we must also state clearly that surrogacy should meet with a firm response from criminal law. That is why, for years, we have been helping to build the international group of experts behind the “Casablanca Declaration;” they are demanding the global, treaty-based outlawing of surrogacy. Proof of the effectiveness of these efforts is the resolute ban on surrogacy in Italy, where both domestic surrogacy and “surrogacy tourism” are subject to punishment.

Surrogacy is a barbaric practice

The links between surrogacy and abortion cannot be emphasized enough. Recent weeks provide an example. On August 12 of this year, little Gabriel was born in Texas – a boy with a heart defect, miraculously saved from abortion. His mother is the surrogate McKenna West, who refused to carry out the contract and kill the child that his biological parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, no longer wanted. The surrogate had to flee to Texas, where the law protected the child’s life.

And so, for “failing to perform the contract” and refusing an abortion, she was sued for $250,000 in damages. For now, a court has barred the surrogate mother from contact with the child…

Gabriel was very lucky, but thousands of other children are not given such a chance. If they fail to meet the excessive expectations of those who commissioned them, they fall victim to abortion.

In the surrogacy procedure, the killing of children and trafficking in them very often go hand in hand with the modern-day enslavement of women. Surrogate mothers are subjected to humiliating selection and control. Very often they must live on so-called surrogacy farms – isolated from their families. And immediately after giving birth, they are forced to hand over the child at once.

According to the price list on BioTexCom’s website, the “standard” package costs €39,900, “standard plus” €49,900, and “VIP” €64,900. For that price, BioTexCom gives its clients access to a database with photographs, video interviews, and 3D footage – so they can view the women from various angles. The company’s clients themselves select both the egg donor and the woman who is to carry the pregnancy and give birth to the child.

Ordo Iuris against surrogacy

In Poland, surrogacy is illegal. That is why Ordo Iuris lawyers have prepared a notification to prosecutors of a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

In it, we point out that surrogacy-based child trafficking meets the conditions of Art. 189a § 2 of the Criminal Code, which provides for a penalty of up to 5 years’ imprisonment for preparing to commit the offense of human trafficking.

We also cite Art. 211a § 1, § 2(a), and § 3 of the Criminal Code, which provide that the illegal organizing of a child’s adoption for financial gain is an offense punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment. The same penalty applies to everyone involved in the transaction – including those who “buy” the child by declaring their intention to assume parental authority over it.

In addition – because the operating model of the “surrogacy business” is not a one-off but constitutes an entire, well-coordinated industry – we direct the prosecutors’ attention to Art. 258 § 1 and § 3 of the Criminal Code, concerning the direction of and participation in an organized criminal group. Those taking part in the activities of such a group face up to 8 years’ imprisonment, while those performing leadership roles face up to 15 years’ imprisonment.

We have launched an online information campaign revealing what surrogacy really is, along with a petition, "No to Surrogacy in Poland", in which we call on Poland’s Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General, Waldemar Żurek, to intervene urgently in this matter.

The response to the surrogacy fair in the center of the Polish capital is part of a strategy pursued for years, aimed at introducing an effective ban on surrogacy – both at the national and international level.

We must stand up in defense of the victims of surrogacy.

No one will do it for us.

COMMENT:

The company, BioTexCom, is NOT a "Ukrainian" company. BioTexCom is a Swiss‑registered fertility clinic based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its registered owner is Albert Tochilovsky. Tochilovsky is an Ashkenazi Jew. Tochilovsky says that the three dynamic trends in reproductive medicine are genome editing to produce designer babies; mitochondrial replacement to enable women in their 50s and 60s to become pregnant; and ectogenesis, or artificial wombs. He said, "I think that we will acquire ectogenesis within 5-7 years, and our clinic keeps working in this direction. I doubt, though, that Ukraine will let us do something like that because Ukraine is afraid of everything. Most likely, ectogenesis will be allowed in the mentioned above America and Great Britain.... This is a highly developed society, where women build their careers before they reach the age of 40-45, after that they want to have children. Nowadays, immigrants help to solve this issue. I believe, in future this problem will be solved through the use of ectogenesis and mitochondrial replacement."

So the "Ukraine is afraid of everything" while Poland is expected to not "afraid" of offending God? This technology is so offensive to God that only the Godless will dive in. The Jews were the main profiteers and promoters of the slave trade historically. They are largely responsible for bringing abortion to the United States.  They were in the forefront of promoting pornography, homosexual "marriage," "no-fault divorce," the 'Epstein Class' and anything else that destroys the traditional family and Catholic morality. 

The Jewish intellectual, Yuval Noah Harari, is a featured speaker at the Davos Forum for the elites who plan of the New World Order. In 2016 Harari spoke about the Fourth Industrial Revolution where "humanity will be divided between a superelite of improved humans and a mass of 'useless people'" that will have "power is in the hands of those who control the algorithms" (WIKI).  Harari says he was influenced greatly by the Jewish writer, Jared Diamond, author of the popular best-seller, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. Unlike the Catholic historian, Christopher Dawson, Diamond holds that religion and the spiritual life have nothing to do with civilization and culture. It is purely a mechanical determinist process. Harari believes that through the use of technologies like that of BioTexCom they will someday determine all human life forms. This is the technology that Tochilovsky hopes to bring into Poland. In the United State it is already a multi-billion dollar industry.

Surely God cannot permit this destruction of humanity to proceed.  Pray God that this foul pestilence is prohibited from Poland.

 

 

EXCLUSIVE:

Abp. Viganò says Leo XIV has intensified Francis’s agenda, not slowed it

In this exclusive interview, Abp. Viganò argues that changing the way Catholics worship ultimately changes what they believe, making the liturgical reform central to the post-conciliar crisis.

LifeSiteNews— In Part 1 of this interview, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed that the reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council weakened the Church’s role as the katéchon, the force that restrains the spread of the Antichrist’s spirit in history. He discussed the nature of papal authority, the distinction between the papacy as a divine institution and individual popes while critiquing of post-conciliar developments, the rise of synodality, and women in Vatican leadership.

This second part of the interview centers on Viganò’s critique of the post-conciliar Church, focusing on liturgical reform and Traditionis Custodes as instruments of a broader theological transformation. He also discusses the pontificate of Leo XIV, particularly the allegations of networks of protection among ecclesiastical elites, and the influence of ideological and global forces on the contemporary hierarchy.

LifeSiteNews: Throughout this entire crisis, you have always identified the liturgical reform not as a consequence but as a cause. Why is the question of the Mass, in your judgment, prior to and more decisive than the doctrinal one? And what meaning does the relentlessness of Traditionis Custodes, maintained intact by Leo XIV, have in this context?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Because the Church has always known what the modernists deliberately forgot: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (“that the law of prayer may establish the law of belief”). It is the law of prayer that establishes the law of faith, and not vice versa. The Christian people do not learn dogma from manuals: they breathe it in at the altar. A man who for years knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, who has seen the priest turned toward God and not toward the assembly, who witnessed the Consecration in the sacred silence of the Roman Canon, believes in the Real Presence and in the Sacrifice, even if he would not know how to formulate the corresponding dogmas; and no theologian will succeed in taking that faith away from him. Change the way a person prays, and you change what he believes, without him noticing and without anyone ever having to state a single heretical proposition.

That is why I say that the liturgical reform was not a consequence of the crisis: it was its instrument. It was the fastest and safest way to obtain what a definition would never have achieved. Let it be noted: it is the perfect application of that Bergoglian principle according to which “time is superior to space.” Nothing is defined, a process is initiated, and then all it takes is a couple of generations for the rest to fall into place. Anyone who wants confirmation of this method should read the Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, who as early as 1969 warned that the new rite “departs impressively, as a whole and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.” They were not two seditionists: one was the former secretary of the Holy Office [NOTE: Indeed, the office of Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation was reserved to the Pope himself. Ottaviani served as the Congregation’s Secretary] and the other a curial cardinal. They were ignored, and today the statistics on belief in the Real Presence confirm how right they were. Cranmer understood four centuries earlier that changing the Mass is enough to change the religion of a people, and he did not need to deny any dogma in order to eradicate the Holy Sacrifice from England.

As for Traditionis Custodes, it is the most eloquent confession our adversaries could have made. If the two rites truly expressed the same faith [the vetus ordo and novus ordo], persecuting one of them would be an inexplicable whim: they persecute it because they know perfectly well that they do not express the same faith, and that as long as a single altar safeguards the ancient lex orandi, the new one cannot claim victory.

It should also be noted that under Prevost, Traditionis Custodes has neither been withdrawn nor mitigated: instead, it has been applied even more rigidly, with a meticulousness that Bergoglio did not have time to exercise. That Leo himself – who speaks so much of welcome and listening – should be so relentless in opposing the Mass of all time proves to those who still hoped in him that in the synodal church there is room for everything except the rite in which the Church prayed for centuries.

LifeSiteNews: Prevost was elected thanks to those who hoped for a restoration of the juridical order, but in fact he seems to be continuing his predecessor’s agenda, simply slowing its pace and delegating the most contentious decisions to the Curia. Does this more phlegmatic and “dialoguing” style not risk being even more insidious for the defense of dogma than Francis’s direct authoritarianism?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: I must correct the premise of the question, because it is precisely the misunderstanding on which Prevost relies. It is not at all accurate to say that Leo is proceeding “little by little.” He is proceeding by means of forced marches, without the slightest concern for reactions – also because negative reactions are few, and those few are promptly suppressed. What changed, if compared with Bergoglio, is not the speed: it is the face. Bergoglio shouted, and whoever shouts wakes people up; Prevost smiles, and whoever smiles puts people to sleep. But it is an icy smile, the smirk of one who knows he will meet no resistance.

Bottom of Form

Look at the facts, not at the manner. The agenda has not been slowed down: it has been intensified on every front – synodality, environmentalism, pro-immigration policies, syncretic ecumenism, normalization of LGBT ideology. And above all, look at the appointments, which are the acid test of a pontificate: there is not a single one that makes an exception; not one man of sound doctrine promoted, not one enemy of the faith removed. On every front, Prevost has gone beyond his predecessor.

On August 13, in Cusco, at a conference preparing for Prevost’s journey to Peru, Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu – pontifical commissioner of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – placed coca leaves in an offering to the infernal idol Pachamama together with Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera, auxiliary bishop of Cusco and secretary general of CELAM, and Bishop Miguel Ángel Cadenas, bishop of Iquitos. Under Bergoglio, the Pachamama entered the Vatican Gardens and St. Peter’s Basilica as a scandalous gesture; under Prevost, the Pachamama entered the dicastery whose task ought to be to condemn it – and that idol entered it at the hands of the man who, within that dicastery, administers justice. This is not a slowing down: it is an institutionalization.

Leo’s style is measured only in appearance. The Latin here and there, the mozzetta worn even in inappropriate circumstances – even when getting off the plane – the courteous tone: these are anesthetics administered to a body now incapable of reacting. And the anesthetic does not lessen the violence: the anesthetic is what makes the violence possible.

The conservatives have allowed themselves to be enchanted by the form. But in truth there is not even that. Those who were satisfied by the mozzetta got the mozzetta and nothing else, and are now paying for that piece of cloth with silence about everything else.

Finally, there is the aspect that reveals the authentically tyrannical nature of this government, and that is delegation. Prevost delegates to the Curia, to the dicasteries, to episcopal conferences, to the “synodal processes,” so that no decision bears his signature and each one can be presented as the fruit of collective discernment. This is not mildness: it is the most perfect form of absolute power, one that exercises command without assuming responsibility for it. The ancient tyrant signed his edicts and bore the hatred they generated; the synodal tyrant has others deliberate and remains above them, an arbiter and never the accused. It is the dissolution of the pope’s personal responsibility – exactly what synodality sets out to achieve – and whoever never makes decisions can never be contradicted. The pope who does not decide is the pope who decided to let others act, and who found a way not to be held accountable by anyone.

LifeSiteNews: You intervened publicly in the case of Eleuterio Vásquez González, known as Lute, the Peruvian priest accused of serious abuse of girls in the Diocese of Chiclayo. When Leo XIV was bishop of that diocese, the canonical investigation was described by an ecclesiastical delegate as “a farce”; yet today the Pope has as his personal secretary Edgard Rimaycuna, a priest who was raised precisely within Lute’s pastoral and vocational circle.

Another prominent prelate, the Venezuelan Edgar Peña Parra – formerly Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State and now Apostolic Nuncio to Italy and San Marino – was reported by you in 2002 over extremely serious allegations, ranging from the abuse of underage seminarians to alleged links to violent deaths, allegations that were then systematically ignored by Bergoglio.

In light of these and other cases, do you believe that under Bergoglio a genuine “network” of reciprocal protection among men of power has become consolidated in the Church, in which omissions and responsibilities are covered up in order to preserve internal balances? And, if so, how extensive is this phenomenon at the highest levels of the Holy See?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The Lute case reproduces with astonishing precision the modus operandi of other extremely serious cases, from McCarrick to Rupnik: victims who report and are not heard; an investigation conducted in such a way as to find nothing; the dicastery that closes the case by invoking the statute of limitations; the accused who not only remains unpunished, but is actually protected.

Alongside this, the necessary reverse side: whoever exposes the crimes and defends the victims is destroyed. Bishop Ricardo Coronado, the canon lawyer who had taken up the defense of the three young women, had his ecclesiastical forensic authorization revoked by the Peruvian Episcopal Conference in August 2024, and four months later was dismissed from the clerical state by a decree that – please note – did not bear Bergoglio’s handwritten signature.

Whoever accuses loses the priesthood; whoever is accused keeps everything. There is nothing to interpret here: the bishop of Chiclayo who conducted that investigation, described as “a farce” by those who knew the details closely, now sits on the Chair of Peter, and he has chosen beside him, as his personal secretary, a priest formed within Fr. Lute’s circle. These are not biographical details or unfortunate coincidences: they are proof that in this system, proximity to certain circles is not an obstacle to a career, but in fact the very condition for having one.

Also, observe a coincidence that is no coincidence. The same Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu who offered coca leaves to Pachamama in Cusco is the man who, in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, inaugurated – and justified in principle – that interpretation of canon law whereby ordinary procedures, with the safeguards they guarantee to the accused, are replaced by parallel structures and extraordinary commissarial powers. It is the juridical doctrine that makes the fate of Bp. Coronado possible: wherever procedure gives way to the will of the commissioner, whoever causes trouble is lost from the outset, and is not even left with the right to defend himself. Before being dismissed from the clerical state, Coronado was accused of infamous acts without a shred of evidence.

This is not an isolated case. When a Peruvian priest, Father Omar Sánchez, publicly criticized Bertomeu’s handling of matters, 22 days later an allegation of abuse against him appeared in the press – an allegation that the supposed complainant subsequently publicly denied, declaring that he had never filed any complaint.

Whoever raises his voice against the system discovers that he has a file already opened against him. And the man who places coca leaves before Pachamama is the same man who strips the priesthood from the man who defended the three young victims of Fr. Lute in Chiclayo. This gives us the measure of what the Holy Office has now become.

As for Peña Parra, allow me a clarification that I consider important. I dealt with his case much earlier, when I was Delegate for Pontifical Representations at the Secretariat of State. The allegations – his seduction of two underage seminarians in Maracaibo in September 1990, and his connection with the circumstances surrounding two violent deaths in August 1992 – had been transmitted to the Secretariat of State in 2002 by the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy. But this did not prevent Peña Parra’s career from advancing. And I will add a detail that says much about the role of the media: I spoke about that case in a lengthy interview with the Washington Post, and it was precisely the part concerning the Venezuelan abuser that never saw the light of day. Bergoglio wanted him as Substitute; and Prevost has now sent him as nuncio to Italy.

Yes, a network exists. I do not say this as a conjecture. I know it to be true from direct experience of decades in the Roman Curia and in nunciatures. It is founded on a simple principle: whoever can be blackmailed can be controlled by whoever holds the blackmail material. Moral corruption is not an accident of the system: it is the glue that holds the entire system together. That is why the guilty party or accomplice is promoted, while the person who reports him is isolated and struck down.

How extensive is this network of corruption? You need only to see how many among McCarrick’s “progeny” still occupy positions of authority in the United States and in the Vatican; how many of the cardinals created by Bergoglio were chosen precisely for their corruption and susceptibility to blackmail; and how many, in the Secretariat of State and in the dicasteries, owe their position not to doctrine or holiness, but to membership in a faction. The answer lies in the facts, and the facts speak for themselves.

LifeSiteNews: Who benefits from this mechanism? Was Bergoglio its architect, or did he become entangled in it against his will?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Neither one nor the other, in the terms in which the question is posed. Bergoglio was not a victim of a system, but neither was he its inventor: he was its beneficiary and then its guarantor. He was elected thanks to the Mafia of Saint Gallen, that is, thanks to a network that spent years planning its own seizure of power, and that found in him the right man because he was unscrupulous, devoid of doctrinal scruples, and extraordinarily skilled in the use of power – qualities refined through a long Jesuit formation whose method he retained throughout his life: ostensible obedience united with subterranean maneuvering, outwardly proclaimed poverty while simultaneously wielding absolute command.

Once elected, he did what every illegitimate power does: he surrounded himself with men who could not betray him because he knew their corruption and crimes, and he removed those who, being in no way blackmailable, could not be controlled. It is no coincidence that his closest collaborators – from Zanchetta to Peña Parra – are figures burdened by extremely serious allegations, which he systematically covered up and promoted.

Above all, the case of Marko Rupnik, S.J., is no coincidence: expelled from the Society of Jesus, already excommunicated for absolving an accomplice, and nevertheless protected for years, along with the entire faction that owes its position to that protection – beginning with the then-Cardinal Vicar Angelo De Donatis, whose transfer from the Vicariate of Rome to the Apostolic Penitentiary took place precisely in the wake of that case. That was not at all a promotion, as people wanted to make it appear, but a way of shielding him, removing him from the questions he would no longer have been able to evade in Rome.

Who benefits? Internally, it benefits a clerical caste that made the Church its private property and that needs impunity in order to survive. Externally, it benefits those financial, political, and supranational powers – that is, globalists – who have an interest in keeping the Catholic Church under blackmail, because a blackmailed Church does not speak, condemn, or evangelize: it collaborates. The link between deep church and deep state is not a theory: it is the reason why the Holy See docilely supported every globalist agenda – from climate to migration, from the pandemic to universal fraternity, from vaccine advocacy to pan-sexualism – and why it has signed and stubbornly renewed the secret agreement with Communist China, handing over faithful bishops and the underground Church to their persecutors, while remaining silent about everything that the Gospel ought to require it to proclaim loudly.

Moral corruption and doctrinal corruption are two sides of the same coin. Whoever betrays the faith also betrays morality, and whoever is blackmailable on morality is willing to betray the faith – even to the point of idolatry, as the coca leaves placed at Cusco by an official of the former Holy Office demonstrate to anyone who has eyes to see.

LifeSiteNews: While the 2025 Papal Conclave was underway, a high-ranking Masonic authority told me confidentially during an investigation I was conducting: “You will see that they will elect Francis’s useful idiot.” When I asked for an explanation, this Freemason contact – who was, in fact, very close to the circles of the Roman Curia – told me that Francis appointed cardinals “with skeletons in their closets” from the peripheries of the world, with the request that they elect “his man” and preserve his “synodal legacy.” When Prevost was elected, this same Freemason told me sarcastically: “Habemus Papam! They elected him.” At first I was very cautious, and even hopeful about Prevost. Now that one year and several months have passed, I wonder how far this Masonic authority’s interpretation was from reality… What do you think?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: I cannot confirm words that I did not hear, nor am I interested in giving credence to the boasts of circles that have always enjoyed attributing to themselves credit for governing the Church. But I can say that this reading coincides exactly with what the facts make evident to anyone willing to look at them.

Bergoglio created the overwhelming majority of the College of Cardinals, choosing men whom no one knew, with very poor formation, coming from irrelevant sees, whose only qualification was personal loyalty to Bergoglio and, almost always, a vulnerability that made them controllable. A conclave composed in this way could only elect a man like Prevost, that is, a man who would guarantee the continuity of Bergoglio’s “synodal legacy.”

Freemasonry takes pleasure in this election, and this is not surprising at all: it also rejoiced at the election of John XXIII. For three centuries now it has pursued a single design, namely to demolish the Catholic Church: first by emptying her of her supernatural dimension and reducing her to a philanthropic organization, then by subverting her from within, and finally by transforming her into the anti-church, that is, into the Universal Religion of Humanity, which is its true goal.

Synodality, as a permanent revolution and the quintessence of all the demands of modernism, is the closest thing to that project ever accomplished from within. There is no need to imagine conspiracies: it is enough to read the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, which describes a century and a half in advance a pope formed in the ideas of the revolution, elected by cardinals formed in the same ideas.

If a Masonic authority rejoiced at Prevost’s election, it is because what was being sought was achieved. The regret belongs to those cardinals and faithful who, for a few months, wanted to delude themselves. The expression “useful idiot” is offensive, and I would not make it my own; but I fear that whoever used it knows well the nature of the usefulness expected from the man they elected.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vatican Council I listing the beneficial Fruits of the Council of Trent which are in every detail exactly the opposite which we have seen from Vatican Council II

Now this redemptive providence appears very clearly in unnumbered benefits, but most especially is it manifested in the advantages which have been secured for the Christian world by ecumenical councils, among which the council of Trent requires special mention, celebrated though it was in evil days.

Thence came:

1.     a closer definition and more fruitful exposition of the holy dogmas of religion and

2.     the condemnation and repression of errors; thence too,

3.     the restoration and vigorous strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline,

4.     the advancement of the clergy in zeal for

·  learning and

·  piety,

5.     the founding of colleges for the training of the young for the service of religion; and finally

6.     the renewal of the moral life of the Christian people by

·  a more accurate instruction of the faithful, and

·  a more frequent reception of the sacraments. What is more, thence also came

7.     a closer union of the members with the visible head, and an increased vigour in the whole Mystical Body of Christ.

Thence came:

1.     the multiplication of religious orders and other organisations of Christian piety; thence too

2.     that determined and constant ardour for the spreading of Christ’s kingdom abroad in the world, even at the cost of shedding one’s blood.

While we recall with grateful hearts, as is only fitting, these and other outstanding gains, which the divine mercy has bestowed on the church especially by means of the last ecumenical synod, we cannot subdue the bitter grief that we feel at most serious evils, which have largely arisen either because

o the authority of the sacred synod was held in contempt by all too many, or because

o its wise decrees were neglected.

First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Faith, listing some of the manifold beneficial fruits from the Council of Trent!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding the Crime of Schism and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

        There are no manifest acts of schism with one and only one important exception which will be identified below. This means there are no acts that are necessarily always and everywhere evidence of a schismatic motive in the internal forum excepting one. Contrasted, for example, with abortion and blasphemy which are acts that are manifest sins because they can never be done with a morally right intention; the act itself reveals the intent of the internal forum as being vicious. These are always and everywhere necessarily mortal sins. As St. Paul says, "Some men's sins are manifest, going before to judgment: and some men they follow after" (1Tim 5:24). St. Paul gives specific examples of "manifest sins": "Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind (sodomites), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:10). What exactly is the schismatic motive that a contentious canonical process must discover for conviction and attribution of imputability of the crime?

        The canonical definition for both heresy and schism are taken directly almost verbatim from St. Thomas Aquinas: "Schismatics are those who refuse to submit to the Sovereign Pontiff, and to hold communion with those members of the Church who acknowledge his supremacy." Schism is the repudiation of the universal jurisdiction of Sovereign Pontiff and communion with those who accept it. It is the burden of the canonical trial to prove the schismatic intention for all schismatics are disobedient to the Sovereign Pontiff but not all who are disobedient to the Sovereign Pontiff are schismatics. St. Thomas' in his examination identifies schism as a specific species of sin. St. Thomas says, "Hence the sin of schism is, properly speaking, a special sin, for the reason that the schismatic intends to sever himself from that unity which is the effect of charity: because charity unites not only one person to another with the bond of spiritual love, but also the whole Church in unity of spirit." The genus to which schism belongs is acts opposed to peace which is the fruit of "that unity which is the effect of charity." Regarding peace, St. Thomas continues: "Peace implies a twofold union... The first is the result of one's own appetites being directed to one object; while the other results from one's own appetite being united with the appetite of another: and each of these unions is effected by charity." All acts that disturb the fruit of peace are directed against the cause of peace which is charity."

        Acts of disobedience against properly constituted authority are only acts of schism when the intention is to overturn the peace of unity caused by charity. This intention constitutes the species difference of schism from other acts opposed to peace, as St. Thomas says, the schismatic "intends to separate himself from the unity that charity makes" (Q.39, a.1.) among the faithful. St. Thomas is offering an essential definition of schism which is the best of all definitions because it is the most intelligible because it identifies the essence. Schism, just as other acts opposed to peace enumerated by St. Thomas, which include discord, contention, war, strife and sedition, requires contextualization. Specifically for the case of Archbishop Viganò, St. Thomas says that morality of contention, which is the opposition to another in speech, is determined by the intention: "As to the intention, we must consider whether he contends against the truth, and then he is to be blamed, or against falsehood, and then he should be praised." Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's "contention" against Pope Francis is the contention of truth against falsehood and is therefore praiseworthy and not schismatic. This is why a canonical trial is called "contentious" for it is intended to reveal who is contending for truth.

        The poles of contention are truth-falsehood which is the same for dogmas of faith. As St. Jude admonishes: "I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3). Schism is the rejection of the divinely revealed truth of papal universal jurisdiction, a dogma of faith since Vatican I. Schism is manifested by disobedience but all disobedience is not schism. Obedience to God is unqualified. All other acts of obedience are morally good only to the degree that they are properly regulated by the virtue of Religion which is the primary subsidiary virtue under Justice. Any act of obedience that violates the virtue of Religion is a sin. The virtue of Religion above all requires that we "give unto God the things that are God's." This first and necessary act of obedience is to believe all that God has revealed and to keep his commandments. Without this first necessary condition, it is impossible to keep the greatest commandment to love God above all things and it is impossible to have "the unity that charity makes."

        Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was administratively "excommunicated" for "schism" because the administrative process avoided the canonical requirement to prove that his intent was to "separate himself from the unity that charity makes" among the faithful. They denied the right of Archbishop Viganò to defend himself in a contentions forum against the charge which would obviously have included discussing the heretical acts of Pope Francis which are manifest. The ultimate purpose of the canonical process is to determine truth and bring those who have deviated from truth back from error. But for many the contention itself irrespective of truth or falsehood is the manifest evidence of schism. The reason for this will become clearer after discussing the relationship in the context of faith and charity, and heresy and schism.

        Schismatics "refuse to submit to the Sovereign Pontiff" because they deny that the pope possesses universal jurisdiction conferred  by God for the legitimate exercise of the papal office which produces unity and peace. Universal jurisdiction of the pope is a divinely revealed truth that was dogmatized at Vatican I Council. St. Thomas says:

"Heresy and schism are distinguished in respect of those things to which each is opposed essentially and directly. For heresy is essentially opposed to faith, while schism is essentially opposed to the unity of ecclesiastical charity. Wherefore just as faith and charity are different virtues, although whoever lacks faith lacks charity, so too schism and heresy are different vices, although whoever is a heretic is also a schismatic, but not conversely."

        Since the universal jurisdiction of the pope has become a dogma at Vatican Council I, a schismatic is now also conversely always a heretic. Importantly, faith precedes charity. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11-6) because "whoever lacks faith lacks charity." The keys of universal jurisdiction were promised to St. Peter after his profession of faith which is its proximate material cause. Many Church Fathers, such as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom, describe an analogical identity of the rock (petra) with divine faith, with St. Peter, with Jesus Christ the "cornerstone," and the Church itself. The faith proceeds and is the proximate cause of the universal jurisdiction conferred by Jesus Christ because faith is indispensible to the bond of unity which is charity.  Cardinal Henry Edward Manning wrote:

“The interpretation by the Fathers of the words ‘On this rock; etc. is fourfold, but all four interpretations are not more than four aspects of one and the same truth, and all are necessary to complete its full meaning. They all implicitly or explicitly contain the perpetual stability of Peter’s faith...:’

“In these two promises [i.e. Lk 22:32, Mt 16:18] a divine assistance is pledged to Peter and to his successors, and that divine assistance is promised to secure the stability and indefectibiity of the Faith in the supreme Doctor and Head of the Church, for the general good of the Church itself.”

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, “The Vatican Council and Its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy”, p. 83-84, 1870

All this is nicely summed up by St. Paul who admonishes "that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called; With all humility and mildness, with patience, supporting one another in charity. Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. 4:1-5).  The primary and essential cause and sign of the unity in the Church is the faith. The pope is only secondarily and accidentally the sign and cause of unity in the Church. If the pope falls from the faith he is to be confronted as St. Paul did to St. Peter when he "walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel" and accommodated the Judaizers leading others into "dissimulation" (Gal. 2:11). If the pope is a heretic he "lacks faith (and) lacks charity". Without charity he breaks the bond of unity in the Church and necessarily becomes schismatic. Manifest Heresy is the one and only sin that identifies a schismatic because it manifests a schismatic intent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Tikkun Olam has led in the past and is now leading in Gaza

OPINION: Stalin’s Jews

We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish

Israel News | ynetnews | Sever Plocker

Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: More than 100 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags.

Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself.

In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World," Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was directed internally.

Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.

All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their Stalinist past.

And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."

Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.

Stalin's close associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move Kaganovich.

Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist.

In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.

The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things.

Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COMMENT: GREAT INTERVIEW! Archbishop Viganò clearly understands and articulates the current problems in the Church, their causes, and the modus operandi of the apologists of evil. Now that the enemy is stripped naked, it is much easier matter to clean his mess up. 

Archbishop Viganò says restraint on Antichrist loosened at Vatican II

In Part 1 of an interview with LifeSiteNews, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò discusses Leo XIV, the Antichrist, women in Vatican leadership roles, and more.

LifeSiteNews  | Sep 10, 2026  — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has become one of the most controversial and, for many Catholics attached to Tradition, courageous voices in the contemporary ecclesial crisis. After serving as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016, Viganò definitively entered the center of ecclesial debate in August 2018 when he published his denunciation concerning the case of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, accusing Pope Francis and several members of the Curia of having ignored information already available about the conduct of the then-prelate and calling for Francis’ resignation.

Subsequently, his opposition to the Francis pontificate became increasingly radical, eventually raising fundamental questions on Petrine authority, the Second Vatican Council, and the legitimacy of the post-conciliar ecclesial direction. In July 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith declared him guilty of schism and announced his excommunication latæ sententiæ, specifically charging him with refusing to recognize the Pontiff and the legitimacy of Vatican II.

It is precisely in light of this long and dramatic affair that his new book, The Capital Schism: When the Pope Is the First Enemy of the Papacy, should be read. READ: Archbishop Viganò publishes book on ‘when the pope is the first enemy of the papacy’ Published in August, the essay represents Viganò’s reflection on the crisis in the Church. He distinguishes between the papacy understood as a divine institution and the person who occupies its Chair, culminating in the thesis that the current crisis represents a profound rupture between the Petrine office and the one who exercises it.

The book also addresses such themes as a state of necessity, resistance to commands deemed illicit, and the eschatological dimension of the ecclesial crisis through the biblical figure of the katéchon, “the one who restrains” the Antichrist spirit that is already at work in the world. LifeSiteNews interviewed Archbishop Viganò to discuss these issues and, above all, the theme that runs throughout the entire book: what happens when the crisis no longer concerns merely certain men of the Church or certain decisions, but the one who sits upon the Throne of St. Peter?

LIFESITENEWS: Your Excellency, in your new book you argue that today the first enemy of the papacy is the Pope himself. How do you explain this paradox?

Archbishop Archbishop Viganò: The paradox is only apparent, and it is resolved as soon as one distinguishes what Catholic theology always distinguished: the Papacy as a divine institution, willed by Our Lord when He said to Peter, “Tu es Petrus,” and the individual person who at any given moment in history occupies the Chair of Peter. The Papacy is indefectible, because it is of Christ; the person of the Pope is a man, with his free will, who may correspond to the grace of state or reject it. On the other hand, the Church prays for the Supreme Pontiff, asking the Divine Majesty to preserve the Domnum Apostolicum in Holy Religion, precisely because she knows that his perseverance in the Faith is not automatically guaranteed by the office. If this were not so, that is, if the Pope were exempt from the possibility of failing in his mandate, praying for him would make no sense. When a Pontiff uses the authority that has been conferred upon him ad ædificationem to instead demolish what that authority is called to safeguard — doctrine, liturgy, discipline, the very monarchical and hierarchical constitution of the Church — he places himself in contradiction with his own munus. He is no longer the servant of the Papacy: he becomes its first adversary, because no external enemy could wound the Church as much as one who wounds her from within, clothed in the garment of Peter. I have called this phenomenon a capital schism in the proper sense of the word: a schism that begins from the caput, from the head. Classical schism is the separation of a portion of the body from the head; here we witness the opposite: it is the head that separates itself from the mystical body and from the Tradition that precedes it, that rebels against what its predecessors taught and what it would have the obligation to transmit intact. Saint Paul says it in words that admit no reply: sed licet nos aut angelus de cœlo evangelizet vobis præterquam quod evangelizavimus vobis, anathema sit (Gal 1:8-9). Not even an angel, not even an Apostle, not even the Successor of the Apostle Peter may proclaim another gospel. The Pope is the custodian of the Depositum, not its owner; and he who, from custodian, makes himself owner, betrays the very reason for which Our Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Papacy in vicarial form.

LIFESITENEWS: You compare the current situation to the removal of the katéchon spoken of by Saint Paul (cf. 2 Thess 2:6-8). What role does the figure of Leo XIV play in this dramatic removal of the “restraint” on iniquity?

Archbishop Archbishop Viganò: The Fathers and the great commentators understood the katéchon, “the one who restrains,” as both the Christian Roman Empire and, together with it, the authority of the Church, and eminently the authority of the Papacy, which for centuries had opposed a barrier to the mysterium iniquitatis. That restraint began to be loosened from the moment when the hierarchy, with the Second Vatican Council, renounced exercising its authority in the sense willed by Christ, in order to seek reconciliation with the world, with modern thought, with the Revolution. From then on, those who should have restrained began to accommodate. Leo XIV fits into this process not as an innovator, but as the one who consolidates it and makes it presentable. Bergoglio dismantled the Papacy violently; Prevost gives that dismantling an institutional, “orderly,” almost reassuring form. His task — and I believe he is perfectly aware of it — is to make synodality irreversible, that is, that “permanent revolution” which brings the Council to its extreme consequences, and to ensure that the Catholic Church definitively ceases to be an obstacle to the Masonic and globalist project. When the Pope is no longer a restrainer but an accelerator, the removal of the katéchon is not a future event: it is happening right now before our very eyes. And the Lord warned us: tunc revelabitur ille iniquus. I do not say this with apocalyptic relish, but with the sorrow of a Bishop seeing the Bride of Christ handed over to her enemies by those who should defend her.

LIFESITENEWS: In the face of canonical sanctions, you invoke a state of necessity, just as the Society of Saint Pius X has done for its new episcopal consecrations. How do you respond to the many conservatives who accuse you of formal disobedience to the Pope? Archbishop Viganò: I respond that obedience is a virtue, not an idol. Obedience is to be given to a legitimate command given by a legitimate authority for the purpose for which that authority exists. When a command is contrary to the Faith, divine law, or the good of souls, it not only does not bind, but obliges one not to obey: obœdire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus (Acts 5:29). This principle is not an invention of traditionalists: it is taught by Saint Peter, it is taught by Saint Thomas, it is taught by the perennial Magisterium, it is demonstrated in practice by the conduct of the Saints who resisted Pontiffs when they erred, from Saint Paul who resisted Peter in faciem, to Saint Athanasius, to Saint Catherine of Siena. A state of necessity is not an invention for evading the law: it is a principle of law itself, according to which the salus animarum, which is the supreme law, prevails over positive norms when these, applied literally, would produce irreparable harm to souls. The Society of Saint Pius X, in consecrating its Bishops this past July, did exactly what Archbishop Lefebvre did in 1988, and for the same reason: Rome is not giving Tradition the bishops it needs, and without bishops there are no priests, and without priests there are no Sacraments. And it is significant that, in threatening the Society, Prevost let the pretext of the Consecrations fall away in order to confess that the real fault is the rejection of the Council. In doing so he revealed — perhaps involuntarily — the fraud: canonical sanctions are a political instrument, wielded against those who remain Catholic and never against those who openly deny the Faith. To the conservatives who reproach me I say with affection: you obey a man who asks you to disobey Our Lord, and you call this contradiction “fidelity.” I have never intended to separate myself from Apostolic Communion; I have asked and continue to ask Leo XIV to tell me in what way I contradict the Depositum Fidei. I have received no answer. Which of the two, then, is in a state of schism?

LIFESITENEWS: In a now-distant 1999 address to the European bishops given by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini – pioneer of the St. Gallen Mafia and, as he liked to define himself, not an antipope, but the “antepapa” (the one who would prepare the way for the “new” pope) – Martini declared that the Church, in order to “update” itself, had to urgently untie a series of knots. And he identified the first knot as the “shortage of ordained ministers,” to be untied by abolishing celibacy or at least making it optional. Recently, Bishop Johan Bonny in Antwerp announced that he will ordain married men by 2028. Not to mention that the Vatican has just appointed a new archbishop of Vienna, Josef Grünwidl, a former member of the dissident movement “Call to Disobedience,” which has advocated for the same abolition of clerical celibacy. Rome watches all of this in silence and, unlike in other situations, does not threaten sanctions even though canon law is systematically trampled upon. It almost seems that Rome is encouraging all this. What do you think?

Archbishop Viganò: It does not “seem” that Rome is encouraging this – Rome is encouraging this. Rome is not a distracted spectator of a process that is escaping it; it is the director. The method is the one tested by the conciliar Revolution: disobedience is allowed to begin from the periphery, it is allowed to consolidate itself as a “fait accompli,” and then the center intervenes not to repress it but to “accompany” it, invoking synodality, listening, pastoral needs. The Bonny Case is emblematic: a Bishop publicly announces that he will violate the law of the Church, and no Dicastery calls him to account. The Grünwidl case is even more eloquent, because it is not a matter of tolerating a dissident, but of promoting him to one of the most important sees in Europe. Someone who belonged to a movement literally called “Call to Disobedience” is rewarded by a Pontiff who excommunicates those who ask to be able to obey the Church of all time. But the question goes deeper than celibacy. The “shortage of ordained ministers” is the poisoned fruit of sixty years of emptying the Priesthood of its substance. When people ceased to believe that the priest is the alter Christus, that he ascends the altar to renew the Sacrifice of the Cross, celibacy ceased to make sense, because it makes sense only as total configuration to Christ the High Priest. Cardinal Martini knew this well: the list of his “knots” is not a list of problems to be solved, but a program of demolition, in which each point is a stepping stone to the next. First celibacy is abolished, then women are admitted, then morality is rewritten, then marriage is dissolved… It is a plan, and its executors are called by other names today but pursue the same design. The fact that Martini called himself “antepapa” says much about the awareness with which the St. Gallen Mafia prepared what we see today.

LIFESITENEWS: The second knot identified by Martini concerned the role of women and the question of women’s ordination. The bishops promoted by Leo XIV — I am thinking of Mackinlay, Grögli, Satué, Grünwidl, and many others — have openly expressed support for the female diaconate. The Vatican Commission on the subject reiterated “no” to the sacramental ordination of women, but it defined this judgment as “not definitive.” Consequently, numerous bishops today avoid addressing the question directly, preferring to enhance women’s presence in the governance of dioceses or to propose “inclusive” liturgical reforms. In your view, is this strategy aimed at progressively shifting the Overton Window on the issue of women’s ordination?

Archbishop Viganò: It is exactly the Overton Window technique, and not even particularly disguised. John Paul II, with his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, did not define something new: he declared that this doctrine belongs to the Depositum Fidei and has been taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium — as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed in its Responsum of 1995. To say today that this judgment is “not definitive” therefore means not reopening a disciplinary question, but denying the very infallibility of the ordinary and universal Magisterium. The female diaconate is the lever, because the Sacrament of Orders is one in its three degrees: admitting a woman to the diaconate means admitting that she is capable of receiving Orders, and at that point exclusion from the priesthood would appear to be nothing more than discrimination to be removed. It is no coincidence that the admission of women to orders is promoted by anti-Catholic movements in the name of gender equality, which the synodal church embraces and makes its own. The neo-modernists know this perfectly well, and for this reason they do not immediately ask for priestly ordination: they ask for governing roles, a presence in the Curias, “instituted ministries,” “inclusive” liturgies. Each step prepares the next, and each step is presented as harmless. The Bishops appointed by Prevost were not chosen despite their positions on the female diaconate, but precisely because of them: whoever appoints a Bishop knows his ideas, and whoever appoints many with the same ideas is building an Episcopate that, at the appropriate moment, will ask “from below” for what the Pope wishes to grant “from above.” This is synodality: the staging of a play in which actors present a demand whose answer has already been decided. To all this is added an aspect that I consider even more serious, and about which there is a culpable silence: the promotion of women to head Roman Dicasteries. We have two religious sisters, Sister Simona Brambilla and Sister Tiziana Merletti, respectively Prefect and Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, who now command authority over Cardinals, Bishops, Abbots and priests; another religious sister, Sister Reffaella Petrini, President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and President of the Governatorate; a laywoman, Maria Montserrat Alvarado, at the head of the Dicastery for Communication, which is coordinating and reorganizing the entire communications system of the Holy See; and also women appointed as members and consultants of various Dicasteries, including the Congregation for Bishops, that is, called upon to decide on promotions to the Episcopate. Now, the power of governance in the Church is not an administrative function that can be attributed to just anyone by decree: by its nature it is connected to sacra potestas, which flows from the Sacrament of Orders, because in the Church — which is a supernatural society and not a business corporation — one governs insofar as one is configured to Christ the King and High Priest. Separating jurisdiction from Orders, by conferring upon those who cannot receive Orders the power to govern those who have received them, means overturning the hierarchical constitution that Our Lord gave to His Church. This is why I say that Bergoglio, and now Prevost, do much more and much worse than conferring Holy Orders upon these women. An invalid ordination would be a sacrilege, but it would remain a null act; here, instead, the sacramental order is being dismantled piece by piece, sacra potestas is being rendered a superfluous accessory, and the clergy are being accustomed to obeying those who have no divine title whatsoever to command them. It is a deadly assault on the divine constitution of the Church, that is once again being carried out in practice, without the need to touch a single dogma.

LIFESITENEWS: The third and fourth knots identified by Martini concerned, respectively, sexual morality and the discipline of marriage. In his official book-length interview with Elise Ann Allen, Leo XIV stated that people’s “attitudes” must be “changed” before doctrine itself is changed. In your opinion, what are the means that the neo-modernists in power intend to use to bring about this change?

Archbishop Viganò: That sentence deserves to be weighed, because it is a confession. “Changing attitudes before changing doctrine” is to admit that doctrine will be changed — just not at first. Doctrine will be changed last, when by then no one believes in it anymore, and its formal abrogation will appear as a mere notarial act. It is the modernist method described by Saint Pius X in Pascendi: one does not attack dogma head-on, one transforms the mentality that sustains it, one separates faith from life, and one allows life, thus separated, to drag faith along with it. In reality, it is not even necessary to change the dogma: one renders it irrelevant through pastoral practice. And this method today has its theoretical charter, which almost no one has wanted to read for what it is. In Evangelii Gaudium, Bergoglio set out four principles, and the first of them — “time is greater than space” — is the key that opens all the others: “giving priority to time means being concerned with initiating processes rather than possessing spaces.” In other words: do not define, but initiate; do not establish a result, but trigger a dynamic that no one will ever again be able to stop. Space is the bounded territory; the boundary, the dogmatic definition, the canon that says how far it is permissible to go; time is the process that erodes that boundary without ever declaring an intention to tear it down. And note the cunning: whoever guards a space must defend a position, and a position can be besieged, debated, refuted; whoever initiates a process has no positions to defend, and is therefore unassailable. Nothing can be opposed to him, because he has not yet asserted anything. Someone will object that this is not Hegel but Romano Guardini, whose writings Bergoglio studied extensively without ever completing his doctoral thesis. Guardini’s polarity — the Gegensatz — is conceived precisely against dialectical contradiction, since tensions are to be held together and not resolved in a higher synthesis. Whether one calls it Hegelian synthesis or an unfinished process, the result is that no truth remains a fixed point, but becomes a mere moment in a process of becoming. And what in Hegel was philosophy of history, and in Marx became revolutionary praxis (praxis preceding the principle, judging it and subverting it), in the synodal church is now simply called “pastoral ministry.” And here is the work taking place before our eyes: Amoris Lætitia does not abrogate the indissolubility of Marriage, it merely opens a “process”; Fiducia Supplicans does not declare an irregular union licit, it simply “blesses” those who are in one; the synodal path decides nothing, and precisely for this reason it decides everything. Doctrine is never formally touched, and precisely for this reason there is no new doctrine that can ever be formally challenged. There is no proposition to censure, no heresy to condemn, nothing upon which to pronounce an anathema. The faithful are left with the intact wording of a dogma that no longer prevails in the life of the Church. But this is precisely what the First Vatican Council condemned with an anathema, forbidding that the dogmas proposed by the Church should ever be attributed a meaning different from that which she understood and understands: eodem sensu eademque sententia. The means are those that we have seen at work for decades. The first is language: “sin” is replaced with “fragility,” “conversion” with “journey,” “truth” with “discernment,” “law of God” with “ideal.” The second is pastoral practice, deliberately made ambiguous: Amoris Lætitia with its footnotes, Fiducia Supplicans with its blessings that bless without blessing; and now Prevost’s strategy, which has not withdrawn any of this but allows it to operate “calmly.” The third is formation: seminaries, theological faculties, catechesis, in which for sixty years it has been taught that Catholic morality is a historical remnant to be overcome. The fourth is the choice of pastors: those who practice ambiguity and error are promoted, while those who speak clearly are marginalized. And beneath all this there is an alliance that I never hesitated to denounce: that between the synodal church and the globalist agenda. This is not one ideology among others, but the synthesis of all the ideologies of the right and the left, which for two centuries have pretended to fight one another while leading men toward the same destination; a synthesis of neo-Malthusian origin, which no longer sees in man the image of God but an excess to be managed, and which is therefore anti-human even before it is anti-Christian. We know its components, and each strikes a precise aspect of the order willed by the Creator: the dissolution of the natural family; pansexualism and gender ideology, which deny man created masculum et feminam; vaccinism, which makes the body the property of the State; environmentalism, which replaces the worship of the Creator with that of the creature; mass immigration ideology, which dissolves nations and with them Christian peoples; and at the summit transhumanism, which promises man divinization without God, already promised in Eden by the serpent: eritis sicut dii. The conciliar church does not suffer this process: it participates in it. She has renounced judging the world and accepted being judged by it; she stopped converting it, and allowed herself to be converted by it. This is why Martini’s third and fourth knots are not knots to be untied at all: indissoluble marriage and sexual morality are not the historical shell of a bygone age, but the very flesh of the Gospel, and they are the words of Our Lord — quod ergo Deus coniunxit, homo non separet. Whoever claims — as Pope — to change them does not reform the Church: he founds another religion, and founds it upon the ruins of the one he received into his custody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

“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

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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?

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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 12^th; 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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