.....
this missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of
conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may freely
and lawfully be used ..... Nor are
superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or
religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass
otherwise than as enjoined by Us.
..... Accordingly, no one whatsoever is permitted to infringe or rashly
contravene this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept,
grant, direction, will, decree and prohibition. Should any person venture to
do so, let him understand he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the
Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.
Pope
St. Pius V, Papal Bull, QUO PRIMUM,
Tridentine
Codification of the “received and approved” traditional Roman Rite of the Mass.
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria,
Confessor
Within the Octave
July 5, 2026
There
is one ruling thought throughout today’s liturgy, namely, that we may destroy
sin within us by deep repentance and by asking almighty God to give us His
strength that we may fall no more.
Through Baptism we have died to sin and in the Eucharist we are given
the heaven sent energy necessary that we may persevere in the path virtue.
The
Church still wholly penetrated with the thought of the two Sacraments that she
has conferred at Easter and Pentecost, loves to speak of them throughout the
season of Pentecost and if she does for today it is because the Breviary
lesson, with St. Ambrose’s commentary on it, gives her an excellent
opportunity. In the form of a parable
the lessons of the first Nocturn relate the gravity of David’s fault. For in spite of his deep piety, this great
king had let sin enter into his heart.
Wishing to marry a young women of great beauty, by name Bethsabee, he
had given orders that her husband Urias should be sent into the hottest part of
the battle which was being fought against the Ammonites, so that he might be
killed, and being thus rid of him David married Bethsabee, by whom he had a
son.
Then
the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to speak to him by a parable: “There were two men in one city, the one
rich, and the other poor. The rich man
had exceeding many sheep and oxen. But
the poor man had nothing at all but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought
and nourished up, and which had grown up in his house together with his
children, eating of his bread and drinking of his cup, and sleeping in his
bosom and it was unto him as a daughter.
And when a certain stranger was come to the rich man he spared to take
of his own sheep and oxen, to make a feast for that stranger, who was come to
him: but took the poor man’s ewe and dressed it for the man that was come to
him.” And David’s anger being
exceedingly enkindled against that man, he said to Nathan: “As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done
this is a child of death.” And Nathan
said to David: “Thou art the man. Thou
hast killed Urias the Hethite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy
wife when thou couldst have chosen a wife among the maidens of Israel. Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Behold I will raise up evil against thee out
of thy own house.”
And
David said to Nathan: “I have sinned
against the Lord.” And Nathan said to
David: “The Lord also hath taken away
thy sin. Thou shalt not die. Nevertheless because thou hast given occasion
to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, for this thing, the child that is born
to thee shall surely die.”
Sometime
after the child died, and David went to bow down with contrite and humble heart
singing psalms (Communion) of penance, in the house of the Lord.
“David,” Says St. Ambrose, “that great and
glorious king, could not keep upon his soul even for a short time, the sin
which burdened his conscience but by a prompt confession, accompanied by
unbounded contrition, he freed himself from it at the feet of the Lord, who,
moved by such unmeasured grief, forgave him.
Other men, when the priests have occasion to reprove them, aggravate
their sin, seeking either to deny or excuse it, and they experience a greater
fall in the very act by which it was to be hoped they would rise again. The saints of the Lord, burning to continue
the holy war and to finish the course of their salvation, if they chance to
fall, less by determination to sin than by natural frailty, rise again with
greater zeal for the contest, and urged on by the shame of their fall, they
make up for it by a harder fight. So
their fall, instead of to some extent keeping them back, has only served to
spur them on and to make them go forward more quickly” (2nd
Nocturn).
We can, therefore, understand the choice of
the Epistle in which St. Paul speaks of our death to sin. In Baptism we were buried with Christ, and
our old man was crucified with Him, that we might die to sin. And just as our risen Lord went forth from
the tomb, so we must set out on a new life, a life for God in Jesus Christ
(Epistle). And when we have the
misfortune to fall back into sin, we must ask God to be favorable to us and to
deliver us (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Secret), restoring to us the grace of
the Holy Ghost, since from Him comes every perfect gift (Collect). Then we approach the altar (Communion) there
to receive the Eucharist, whose heavenly efficacy will strengthen us against
our enemies (Postcommunion), and maintain our fervor (Collect), for it is the
Lord who will be the strength of His people and rule them forever (Introit).
Therefore
the Church has chosen for the Gospel, the account of the multiplication of the
loaves, a type of the Eucharist, our viaticum.
By
identifying us with the Victim of Calvary, Holy Communion not only completes
the effects of Baptism within us by making us die with our Lord to sin, but
makes us find at the Holy Table the strength we need to prevent us from falling
back into sin and to “perfect our goings in the paths” of the Lord (Offertory).
St.
Ambrose comments on the Gospel: “After
the woman, a figure of the Church, was cured of the issue of blood, the food of
heavenly grace was dispensed. The right
order of the mystery was kept. First a
medicine is provided to cure wounds by the remission of sins, and then food of
the heavenly table is served in abundance.
Our Lord said: ‘If I shall send them away fasting to their home they
will faint by the way.’ Full of
goodness, He maintains the strength of those who follow Him. If anyone faint it is not our Lord’s fault,
but that of the man himself.
Christ
has set within us fortifying agencies; the food He gives is strength and vigor,
so, if through negligence, you have lost the strength you received, you must
not blame the heavenly nourishment, which never fails, but rather
yourself. Was it not through the
sustenance given him, when he was about to fall by the way, that the holy Elias
walked forty days after the angel’s visit?
If
you have preserved the nourishment you received, you will journey for forty
years, emerging at last from the land of Egypt to come to the boundless land
promised to our forefathers, flowing with milk and honey” (3rd Nocturn).
INTROIT:
Ps.
27. The
Lord is the strength of His people, and the protector of the salvation of His
anointed. Save, O Lord, Thy people, and
bless Thine inheritance, and rule them forever.
Ps. Unto Thee
will I cry, O Lord: O my God, be not thou silent to me; lest if Thou be silent
to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Glory be, etc. The Lord is the strength of His people, etc.
COLLECT:
O God of all power and might, to
whom belongeth everything that is best, implant in our hearts the love of Thy
name, and increase within us true religion: that Thou mayest nourish in us
those things that are good, and by the zeal of our devotion mayest preserve
what Thou hast nourished. Through our
Lord, etc.
Make us, O Lord God, in the spirit of Paul
the Apostle, to learn that knowledge of Jesus Christ which surpasseth all
understanding, whereby blessed Antony Mary, being marvelously taught, did
gather together in Thy Church new families of clerks and of virgins. Through our Lord, etc.
O God,
who hast consecrated this day by the martyrdom of Thy Apostles Peter and Paul,
grant that Thy Church may in all things follow their precepts from whom it
first received the faith. Through our
Lord, etc
EPISTLE: Rom. 6, 3-11
Brethren: All we, who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death. For we are buried together with Him by baptism into death: that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ: knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. So do you also reckon that you are dead to sin, but alive unto God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
EXPLANATION The apostle here teaches that in consequence of our baptism we are made members of Christ's body, and must, therefore, die to sin; as Christ by His death died to physical life, but has risen again, so must we bury sin, by constant renewal of baptismal vows, and by self mortification rise to a Christian life. As members of Christ's body we should in a spiritual manner imitate Him. As He permitted His body to be nailed to the cross to atone for our sins, so should we crucify our corrupt nature by self-denial, and as He after His Resurrection lives always, because having risen He dieth no more, so we, risen from the death of sin, should lead a pious life conformable to that of Christ.
ASPIRATION I trust, O Lord Jesus, that by the merits of Thy passion I have risen from the death of sin: grant me Thy grace, that as Thou diest no more, so may I die no more by sin, but live for God, according to Thy law.
GRADUAL:
Ps.
89. Return
to us, O Lord, again, and be entreated in favor of Thy servants. Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from
generation to generation. Alleluia,
alleluia.
Ps
30. In
Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded: deliver me in Thy
justice, and release me; bow down Thine ear to me, make haste to deliver me.
Alleluia.
GOSPEL: Mark 8,
1-9
At that time, when there was a great multitude with Jesus, and they had nothing to eat, calling His disciples together, He saith to them: I have compassion on the multitude; for behold they have now been with Me three days, and have nothing to eat. And if I shall send them away fasting to their home, they will faint in the way: for some of them came from afar off. And His disciples answered Him: From whence can any one fill them here with bread in the wilderness? And He asked them: How many loaves have ye? Who said: Seven. And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And taking the seven loaves, giving thanks, He broke, and gave to His disciples for to set before them, and they set them before the people. And they had a few little fishes and He blessed them, and commanded them to be set before them. And they did eat and were filled, and they took up that which was left of the fragments, seven baskets. And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and He sent them away.
Why did Jesus say, "I have
compassion on the multitude," etc.?
To confirm by acts what He had previously, through St.
Matthew (Matt. 6,33), taught in words, namely, that to them who seek first the
kingdom of God and His justice, all other things shall be added without asking;
and to show us, at the same time, the greatness of God's love, which takes
account of every hour spent in His service, and compassionates every want of
man. The multitude was not solicitous for food, and had not even asked it from
Him, and yet He cared for them
OFFERTORY:
Ps.
16. Perfect
Thou my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps do not slip. Incline Thine ear, and hear my words: show
forth Thy wonderful mercies, Thou who savest them that trust in Thee, O Lord.
SECRET:
Be
appeased, O Lord, by our supplications, and kindly accept these offerings of
Thy people; and that no one’s wish may be disappointed, and no one’s petition
go unanswered, grant that what we faithfully ask we may effectually
obtain. Through our Lord, etc.
Make
us, O Lord, to bring to the heavenly table that purity of soul and body which
marvelously shone forth in blessed Antony Mary when he offered the most holy
sacrifice. Through our Lord, etc.
May the
prayers of Thy Apostles, O Lord, speed the offerings which we present for
consecration to Thy name; and grant that by them we many be purified and
protected. Through our Lord, etc.
COMMUNION:
Ps.
26. I
will go round, and offer up in His tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation; I will
sing and recite a psalm to the Lord.
POSTCOMMUNION:
We are filled,
O Lord, with Thy gifts; grant, we pray, that they may work to make us pure and
help to make us strong. Through our
Lord, etc.
Grant, O Lord Jesus Christ, that the heavenly banquet of which we have
partaken may inflame our hearts with that fire of charity, which inspired
blessed Anthony Mary when he bore the saving host as a standard of victory
against the enemies of Thy Church. Who
livest and reignest, etc.
Thou hast fed us, O Lord, with the
food of heaven; by the intercession of Thy Apostles keep us from all harm. Through our Lord, etc.
He saith to them: I have
compassion on the multitude.
Sin is always a folly and a weakness, no matter of what kind it may be,
or who he be that commits it. The rebel angel,
and fallen man, may, in their pride, make efforts to persuade themselves that,
when they sinned, they did not act as fools, and were not weak; but all their
efforts are vain; sin must ever have this disgrace upon it, that it is folly
and weakness, for it is a revolt against God, a contempt for His law, a mad act
of the creature, who, being made by his Creator to attain infinite happiness
and glory, prefers to debase himself by turning towards nothingness, and then
falls even lower than the nothingness from which he was taken…. But when he
that sins is a creature who has been laden with God’s gifts, and, others in the
order of grace, oh! then the offence he commits against his benefactor is an
injury that has no name. Let this be
remembered by those who, like David, could say that their God has ‘multiplied
His magnificence’ over them…. No one who has still to carry with him the burden
of a mortal body of flesh is safe, unless by exercising a ceaseless
vigilance.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
But the bearers of the
good tidings have been rejected by the obdurant and jealous Jews; they
therefore turn to the Gentiles, and shake off Jerusalem’s dust from their
feet. That dust, however, is to be an
accusing testimony; it is soon to be turned into a rain, showering down on the
proud city a more terrible vengeance that was that of fire, which once fell on
Sodom and Gomorrah. The superiority of
Juda over the rest of the human race had lasted for ages; but now all that
ancient privilege of Israel, and all his rights of primogeniture, are gone; the
primacy has followed Simon Peter to the west; and the crown of Sion, which has
fallen from off her guilty head, now glitters, and will do so for ever, on the
consecrated brow of the queen of nations.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 5th:
Date Day
Feast Rank Color F/A Mass Tim/Notes
|
5 |
Sun |
6th Sunday after Pentecost St. Antony Mary Zaccaria, C Within the Octave of Ss. P & P |
sd |
G |
|
9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of
Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM |
|
6 |
Mon |
Octave Day of Ss. Peter & Paul |
dm |
R |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
|
7 |
Tue |
Ss. Cyril & Methodius, Bpp, Cc |
d |
W |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
|
8 |
Wed |
St. Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, W |
sd |
W |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
|
9 |
Thu |
Ferial Day |
|
G |
|
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
|
10 |
Fri |
Seven Holy Brothers,
Mm Ss. Rufina &
Secunda, VvMm |
sd |
R |
A |
Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass |
|
11 |
Sat |
Our Lady’s Saturday St. Pius I,
PM |
sp |
W |
|
Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions 8:00 AM; Rosary of
Reparation 8:30 AM |
|
12 |
Sun |
7th Sunday after Pentecost St. John Gualbert, Ab Ss. Nabor & Felix, Mm |
sd |
G |
|
9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of
Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM |
The Tridentine Profession of
Faith of Pope Pius IV, Iniunctum Nobis, prescribes adherence to the “received
and approved rites of the Catholic Church used in the solemn administration of
the sacraments.” The “received and approved rites” are the rites established by
custom, and hence the Council of Trent refers to them as the “received and
approved rites of the Catholic Church customarily used in the solemn
administration of the sacraments” (Sess. VII, can XIII). Adherence to the
customary rites received and approved by the Church is an infallible defined
doctrine: The Council of Florence defined that “priests…. must confect the body
of the Lord, each one according to the custom of his Church” (Decretum pro
Graecis), and therefore the Council of Trent solemnly condemned as heresy the
proposition that “the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church
customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments may be changed
into other new rites by any ecclesiastical pastor whosoever.”
Rev. Paul Kramer, The
Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy
Envy has still other
tactics, for every virtue, having a vice bordering on its limits, into which it
may fall through excess, the envious man makes a malicious use of this
principle, abusing it to serve his own ends.
A firm and courageous person he calls rash and audacious, and the man of
reserved character he reproaches with insensibility. He who conforms to the rules of justice is
styled cruel, and the prudent man, a rogue.
St. Basil the Great, On
Envy
The second favor destined by the Holy Ghost
for the soul that is faithful to Him in action, is the gift of Wisdom, which is
superior to that of understanding. The
two are, however, connected together, inasmuch as the object shown by the gift
of Understanding, is held and relished by the gift of Wisdom. Understanding is light; Wisdom is union. Now union is obtained by the will, that is,
by love, which is in the will. This
seventh gift is called Wisdom, which is taken from its uniting the soul, by
love, to the eternal Wisdom, Jesus Christ.
The apostle St. James urges us to pray for Wisdom: “If any of you want
wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men abundantly, and upbraideth
not; and it shall be given him; but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.”
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year on
the Gift of Wisdom
"Envy conceals itself under
every possible pretext, and takes pleasure in secret and treacherous
schemes. Hinted slanders, calumnies,
betrayal, every kind of fraud and deceit, are its work and portion."
Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet
Such is the admirable harmony between God’s
approach to His creature and its advance towards Him. God is not found save in Jesus; nor Jesus
save in the Church; nor the Church save in Peter. “If you had known me,” said Christ, “you
would without doubt have known my Father also,” but the Jews sought God outside
Jesus, and their efforts were vain.
Since then others have come, wanting to find Jesus whilst setting aside
His Church; but that which God has joined, what man shall put asunder?
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, During
the Octave of Ss. Peter and Paul
Our Lady of Fatima, through
her Immaculate Heart, has promised the conversion of the Russian people to the
Catholic Church
The Slavonic race
spreads ever strong, ever indomitable to the influence of invasion,
maintaining, in the midst of the empires that by force of arms have at last
prevailed over it, a dualism which the conquering nation must be resigned to
endure through the course of centuries as a living menace with her, a very
thorn in her side, such an unparalleled phenomenon is but the product of the
powerful demarcation effected a thousand years ago between this race and the
rest of the world, by the introduction of its national language into the
liturgy by Saints Cyril and Methodius with the approval of Rome. Having thus become sacred, the primitive
Slavonic tongue has undergone none of those variations incident to the idiom of
every other nation; whilst giving birth to the various dialects of the different peoples issuing from the common
stock, it has itself remained the same, following the most insignificant
Slavonic tribes through every phase of their history, and continuing, in the
case of the greater number of them, to group them apart from all other
nationalities at the foot of their own altars.
Beautiful indeed such unity as this, a very glory for holy Church, had
but the desire and the hope of the two saints who based it on the immutable
rock (of Peter) been able to keep it ever fixed thereon!
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, regarding the Slavonic
peoples
INSTRUCTION ON BLESSING
And He blessed them (Mark 8, 7).
Seduced by Satan, the first man violated the holy command of God, and by his sin brought upon himself and his habitation the curse of divine wrath (Gen. 3, 17). Man was made by God, and therefore subject to Him, but was himself master of all created things. After the sin of disobedience, however, all creation revolted against him; the animals fled from him, the fields yielded only thorns and thistles, the herbs became poisonous to him, or refused him their former wholesome power. Innumerable evils followed, all men and even the whole earth suffered from them; the devil drew both into his sphere and made them his servants, and this evil spirit now made use of created things to divert man altogether from God and to cause his eternal ruin. But God decreed that man and earth should not remain in this condition: Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth, redeemed it from the bonds of Satan, and gave all men the power to become once more God's children. The devil was conquered by the cross, but not slain; man and the earth were indeed taken from his dominion, but not from his influence; for he even now, as the apostle writes, goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5, 8); and as he used the forbidden fruit in paradise to seduce man, he now uses the created things of the earth to tempt man, and make him his servant. Man and all creation had to be drawn from this pernicious influence, to be liberated from the bondage of corruption and be brought to the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8, 19). This is done in the Church, to which Christ entrusted the power of binding and loosing, and gave the work of sanctifying through the Holy Ghost, by means of blessing and consecrating. By virtue of the merits of Christ, and with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, the Church, or the priest in her name, therefore blesses and consecrates persons as well as other created things which they are to use, or which she is to apply to the service of God. In this the Church follows the example of Christ and the Apostles. Jesus embraced children and laid His hands upon them, blessing them (Mark 10, 16); He blessed bread and fishes, the food of thousands; blessed bread and wine at the last supper (Matt. 26, 26); was recognized by the disciples in the blessing of bread (Luke 24, 30); blessing the disciples He ascended into heaven (Luke 24, 51); by His command the apostles wished peace to every house into which they stepped (Matt. 10, 12-13); and St. Paul expressly says, that every living thing is sanctified by prayer and the word of God (I Tim. 4, 5). Following the example and command of Christ the Church also introduced blessings and benedictions which were prefigured in the Old Law. God commanded the priests to sanctify and to consecrate whatever was to belong to His service (Levit. VIII), and the Old Law is full of blessings and consecrations which had to be used by the priests (Exod. 29, 36; 30, 25; 11, 9); and if persons and things used for God's service were to be blessed, how much more so in the. New Law which in place of the type, contains the reality and truth. The testimony of Scripture is confirmed by all the holy Fathers, and by the constant practice of the Church which has received from Christ, the power to bless and to consecrate.
The blessing or benediction of the Church is nothing more than a, prayer of intercession which the priest makes in the name of the Church, that for the sake of Christ (therefore the sign of the cross) and the prayers of the saints, God may give His blessings to a person or thing, and sanctify it. Through consecration in which, besides prayer and the sign of the cross, the anointing with holy oil is used, things required for divine service are separated from all other things and especially sanctified. Thus persons, fruits, bread, wine, houses, ships and fields, are blessed; churches, altars, bells, &c., are consecrated.
What virtue have these
blessings?
The chief effects of the blessing of persons are: preservation or liberation from the influence of Satan; preservation of the soul from his temptations and evil suggestions; preservation of the body and of the property from his pernicious malice; forgiveness of venial sins, and strength to suppress concupiscence; curing of sickness and physical evils, whether natural or supernatural; a blessing upon the person and his surroundings; the imparting of the grace of conversion; the advantage of the prayer of the Church and further grace for the remission of temporal and eternal punishment. The blessing of things withdraws them from the influence of the devil, so that he can no longer use them as a means of bringing us into sin, but that they rather serve us as a protection against the evil spirits and as a means for our salvation.
Whence do the blessings derive
their force?
From the merits of Christ who by His death on the cross vanquished Satan. The Church asks God that He will through these merits and through the intercession of the saints bless a person or thing, and make that which is blessed profitable to us for both body and soul. Whether or not the effects manifest themselves in the person who receives the blessing, or makes use of the object blessed, depends on his faith and moral condition, as also on the usefulness or profit of the blessing to him. We should not, then, place obstacles in its way by diffidence in God and the prayers of the Church or by a sinful life, but should always be convinced that these benedictions will serve for our benefit, if according to God's will they are used as the Church intends, as a means to overcome evil, to sanctify ourselves, and to honor God.
Why are salt and water blessed?
This is plainly shown in the prayer the priest says in blessing them; for he asks, in the name of the Church, that God may pour the virtue of His blessing over the water that it may conquer devils, prevent sickness, and that everything which is sprinkled with it, may be preserved from every injury, and that He may bless the salt, so that it may be salutary for the body and soul of all who use it. The salt which Eliseus sprinkled into the unwholesome waters of Jericho healed them (IV King. 2, 20-21), and is a type of blessed salt.
Why are the people sprinkled
with holy water on Sundays?
To remind the people of the interior purity with which they should come to divine service, and fulfill the duties of their calling; and to exhort them to purify themselves from the stains of sin by tears of sorrow, and repentance. Hence the priest in sprinkling the faithful recites the words of the fiftieth psalm: Asperges me hyssopo, etc. Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed; to remind them to preserve the purity and innocence procured by the blood of the Lamb of God, and communicated to them in baptism. Finally, the people are sprinkled that the temptations of the devil may depart from them, enabling them to attend with great fervor and with more recollection to the holy service.
What else is to be remembered
concerning the use of blessed things?
That they are to be used with faithful confidence for the purpose for which the Church blessed them, and are to be treated with great reverence, because they are blessed by the Church in the name of Jesus, a custom almost as old as Christianity itself. The Christian must not believe that blessed things which he possesses, carries, or uses, will make him holy, for he should always remember that things blessed are only a means of sanctification, and are only effectual when the faithful have the earnest will to die rather than sin, to fight with all fervor against the enemies of their salvation, to follow Christ, and be thereby received into the freedom of the children of God, and into heaven.
It is necessary to discern in the Gospel
those things that are of counsel and those which are of precept. To renounce
all that one has and to suffer poverty for the love of God is only of counsel,
but to renounce oneself and to be poor of heart is of precept. And in the same
way certain exterior humiliations may be only of counsel, but the humility of
heart is always of precept, and as it is not only possible to fulfill every
precept of God's, but also by the help of His grace it becomes easy and sweet
to us to practice them; even laymen have many great opportunities of becoming
holy simply by the exercise of humility. To make a worldly-minded man a Saint
it is sufficient to make him a Christian.
When such thoughts as these arise in the
secret recesses of the heart: I have made this fortune by my knowledge, by my
industry; I have acquired this merit, this reputation by my own worth, my
virtue, my ingenuity, it is enough to lift up one's heart to God and say with
the Wise Man: "And how could anything endure, if Thou wouldst not"
(Wisd. 11, 26)? O my God, how could I have done the smallest thing, if Thou
hadst not willed it?
This is true humility, and in this lies
true knowledge and holiness. The soul is holy in measure as it is humble,
because in the same measure that it has holiness it has grace, and in the same
measure that it has grace it has humility, because grace is only given to the
humble.
From the depths of my heart, O my God, I
ask it of Thee, and with the Psalmist I exclaim: "Renew a right spirit
within me" (Ps. 1, 12).
Fr. Cajetan Mary de
Bergamo, Humility of Heart
Reflect every day on
the fact that He Who has granted you the morning has not promised the evening,
and, should He grant this, He gives no assurance of the following morning.
Spend each day, therefore, as if it were the last; cherish nothing but the will
of God, for you will have to render a strict account for every moment.
A final observation
should be made. Although you have transacted a great deal of business and have
undergone many hardships, you may consider the day worthless and your labor
unprofitable, unless you have gained many victories over your passions and your
own will, unless you have gratefully acknowledged the benefits received from
God, particularly His death on the Cross, unless you have accepted as blessings
whatever chastisements the Father of infinite mercy has inflicted as an
expiation for your many sins.
Dom Lorenzo
Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat
THE COMPASSION OF JESUS SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST
PRESENCE
OF GOD ‑
O Jesus, my Lord and Father, have pity on my poor soul and sustain it by Your
grace.
MEDITATION:
I. One thought emerges from
today's liturgy in a special way and dominates all: God is a merciful Father
who takes pity on us and nourishes our souls. Our souls are always famished, we
are always in need of nourishment to sustain our supernatural life.
God
alone can give us the proper nourishment as the Church tells us in the
beautiful prayer of the day: "O God of all power and might, the giver of
all good things; implant in our hearts a deep love of Your name; increase in us
true religion and sincere virtue; nourish us with all goodness and. . . keep us
in Your loving care" (Collect). The heavenly Father graciously hears our
plea and answers by directing us to His divine, only‑begotten Son whom He
sent into the world that we might have life in Him. In the Epistle (Rom 6, 3‑11),
St. Paul reminds us that as "we are baptized in Christ Jesus . . . in His
death . . . so we also may walk in newness of life," that in Him we may "live
unto God." It is in Jesus and in His Redemption that we find everything we
need for the nourishment and life of our souls; it is in Him that we shall find
the grace, love, faith, and the encouragement to virtue which we have
petitioned in the Collect. It is a great joy for us to hear again that we are
reborn in Christ to "newness of life"; it is a great comfort for our
weakness. One point, however, remains obscure. How does it happen that we are
always falling? Why are we always so miserable? A more attentive reading of the
Epistle will reveal the reason: because we are not yet wholly "dead" with
Christ, because the "old man" in us has not yet been "crucified"
to the point of our no longer being "slaves of sin." In a word, if we
wish to live fully the life that Christ acquired for us by His death, we must
first die with Him. As this does not mean material death of the body but
spiritual death to our faults and passions, this death must be continually
renewed: "Quotidie morior," I die daily (I Cor 15, 31). The
weakness of our spiritual life is caused by the insufficiency of this death to
self.
2. In the Gospel (Mk 8, 1‑9)
we hear the words of Jesus, so full of kindness: "I have compassion on the
multitude." Jesus has compassion on us, our weakness, our cowardice, our
unstable wills. He sees that our souls are weary, hungry, in need of help, and
as He spoke to the crowds who gathered to hear Him, so He repeats to us: "I
have compassion!" Jesus pities first of all our spiritual needs. Although
His Passion and death have abundantly provided for them, He still continues to
take care of us every day in the most direct and personal way‑by offering
Himself as food for our souls. The Gospel speaks to us about the second
multiplication of the loaves. However, we are more fortunate than the people of
Palestine; Jesus has reserved for us a bread infinitely more nourishing and
precious: the Eucharist.
Fascinated
by the words of Jesus, the crowd had followed Him, forgetting even their
necessities; three days they remained with Him and had nothing to eat. What a
lesson for us who are often much more solicitous for our material food than for
our spiritual nourishment! And Jesus, after having provided abundantly for the
needs of their souls, thought also of their bodily needs. His disciples,
however, were astonished: "From whence can anyone fill them with bread
here in the wilderness?" They had already assisted at the first
multiplication of the loaves, but here they seemed to have no remembrance of it
and remained distrustful. How many times have we too seen miracles of grace and
the wonders of divine Providence! And yet, when we are placed in new,
bewildering, or difficult circumstances, how often we remain hesitant; it seems
as if we doubted God's almighty power. Let us think, for example, of our
spiritual life: there are still things to be overcome or surmounted . . . we
have tried so many times, and perhaps we no longer have the courage to begin again.
Oh! if our faith were only greater, if we would only cast ourselves upon God
with more confidence! One good act of total abandonment might be all we need to
win the victory! Jesus is looking at us and saying, "I have compassion on
the multitude" and His compassion is not sterile, but is vital action,
help, and actual grace for our soul: why, then, do we not have more confidence
in Him?
COLLOQUY:
“Ah! my Lord, Your help is absolutely
necessary for me; without You I can do nothing. In Your mercy, O God, do not
allow my soul to be deceived and to give up the work it has begun. Give me
light to know that my whole welfare depends on perseverance.
"Make
me understand that my faith in You must rise above my misery and that I must
never be alarmed if I feel weak and fearful. I must make allowance for the
flesh, remembering what You said, O Jesus, in Your prayer in the garden: `The
flesh is weak. . .' If You said that Your divine and sinless flesh was weak,
how can I expect mine to be so strong that it does not feel afraid? O Lord, I
do not wish to be preoccupied with my fears nor to be discouraged at my
weakness. On the contrary, I wish to trust in Your mercy, and to have no
confidence whatever in my own strength, convinced that my weakness comes from
depending on myself " (T. J. Int C II, I ‑ Con, 3) .
"In You, O Lord, have I
hoped; let me never be confounded; deliver me in Your justice. Bow down Your
ear to me; make haste to deliver me! Be unto me a God, a protector, and a house
of refuge to save me. For You are my strength and my refuge; and for Your
Name's sake You will lead me and nourish me. Into Your hands I commend my
spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth. I will be glad and
rejoice in Your mercy. For You have regarded my humility, You have saved my
soul out of distress. And You have not shut me up in the hands of the enemy:
You have set my feet in a spacious place. I have put my trust in You, O Lord,
save me in Your mercy. Let me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon
You. How great is the multitude of Your sweetness, O Lord, which You have
hidden for them that fear You, which You have wrought for them that hope in
You. Have courage, and let your heart be strengthened, all you that hope in the
Lord" (Ps. 30).
When good is forced on
the knowledge of a wicked man, he suffers a species of torture in his inmost
heart, and therefore endeavors to dim with the breath of his hateful suspicions
the luster which has dazzled him.
St. Gregory the Great
You have wearied the
Lord with your words, and you said: Wherein have we wearied him? In that you
say: Every one that doth evil, is good in the sight of the Lord, and such
please him: or surely where is the God of judgment?
Malachias 2:1
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
Outside the
Catholic Church There Is No Salvation
It is
impossible for the most true God, who is Truth itself, the best, the wisest
Provider, and the Rewarder of good men, to approve all sects who profess false
teachings which are often inconsistent with one another and contradictory, and
to confer eternal rewards on their members… by divine faith we hold one Lord,
one faith, one baptism… This is why we profess that there is no salvation
outside the Church.
Pope Leo
XII, Ubi Primum, 1824
We address all of you who are still removed
from the true Church and the road to salvation. In this universal rejoicing,
one thing is lacking: that having been called by the inspiration of the
Heavenly Spirit and having broken every decisive snare, you might sincerely
agree with the mother Church, outside of whose teachings there is no
salvation.
Pope Leo
XII, Quod hoc ineunte, 1824
With the admonition of the apostle, that “there
is one God, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5), may those fear who contrive the
notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion
whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who
are not with Christ are against Him,” (Lk. 11:23) and that they disperse
unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore, “without a doubt, they will
perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate”
(Athanasian Creed).
Pope
Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832
Finally some of these misguided people
attempt to persuade themselves and others that men are not saved only in the
Catholic religion, but that even heretics may attain eternal life.
Pope
Gregory XVI, Summo Iugiter Studio, 1832
For there is one universal Church outside of
which no one at all is saved; it contains regular and secular prelates along
with those under their jurisdiction, who all profess one Lord, one faith and
one baptism.
Pope Pius
IX, Ubi primum, 1847
In particular, ensure that the faithful are
deeply and thoroughly convinced of the truth of the doctrine that the Catholic
faith is necessary for attaining salvation. (This doctrine, received from
Christ and emphasized by the Fathers and Councils, is also contained in the
formulae of the profession of faith used by Latin, Greek and Oriental
Catholics).
Pope Pius
IX, Nostis et Nobiscum, 1849
Man may, in the observance of any religion
whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. –
Condemned.
Pope Pius
IX, Syllabus of Modern Errors, Proposition 16, 1864
Christ is man’s ‘Way’; the Church also is
his ‘Way’… Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led
astray and strive in vain.
Pope Leo
XIII, Tametsi futura prospicientibus, 1900
Yet at the same time We cannot but remind
all, great and small, as Pope St. Gregory did, of the absolute necessity of
having recourse to this (Catholic) Church in order to have eternal salvation…
Pope St.
Pius X, Iucunda sane, 1904
The Church alone possesses together with her
magisterium the power of governing and sanctifying human society. Through her
ministers and servants (each in his own station and office), she confers on
mankind suitable and necessary means of salvation.
Pope St.
Pius X, Editae saepe, 1910
The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the
true worship. This is the fount of truth, this is the house of faith, this is
the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it,
he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation.
Pope Pius
XI, Mortalium Animos, 1928
For since
the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one,
compacted and fitly joined together, it were foolish and out of place to say
that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered
abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it,
neither is he in communion with Christ its head.
Pope Pius
XI, Mortalium Animos, 1928
The New Ecumenical Ecclesiology
Normally, it
will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious
traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the
members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in
Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their
Saviour.
Pope John Paul II
For those, however, who have not received the
Gospel proclamation, as I wrote in the Encyclical Redemptoris Missio,
salvation is accessible in mysterious ways, inasmuch as divine grace is granted
to them by virtue of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, without external membership
in the Church, but nonetheless always in relation to her (cf. RM 10). It is a
mysterious relationship. It is mysterious for those who receive the grace, because they do not
know the Church and sometimes even outwardly reject her.
Pope
John Paul II
The Church is only one, and
this one true Church is the congregation of men bound together by the
profession of the same Christian Faith, and by the communion of the same
Sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate pastors and especially under the
one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff. From this definition, it can
easily be ascertained which men belong to the Church and which do not. For
there are three parts to this definition: 1) the profession of the true Faith,
2) the communion of the Sacraments, 3) and subjection to the legitimate Pastor,
the Pope. By reason of the first part, all infidels are excluded, as well as
those who have never been in the Church, such as Jews, Mohammedans, and pagans,
and such as have been in the Church but fallen away, such as heretics and
apostates. By reason of the second part, catechumens and excommunicates are
excluded, because the former are not to be admitted to the communion of the
Sacraments and the latter have been cut off from them. By reason of the third
part, schismatics are excluded, who have faith and sacraments, but are not
subject to the lawful Pastor, the Roman Pontiff; therefore, they profess faith
and receive Sacraments outside the Church.
St. Robert Bellarmine
On the
Immutability of Catholic Dogmatic Truth
On
the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the
Modernists offers nothing new - we find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius
IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: Divine revelation is imperfect,
and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with
the progress of human reason; and condemned still more solemnly in the
Vatican Council: The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not
been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a
philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ
to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence the sense, too, of
the sacred dogmas is that which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared,
nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound
comprehension of the truth.
St.
Pius X, Pascendi
But though we, or an angel
from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you,
let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach
to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. For
do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased
men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
St. Paul, Gal. 1, 8-10.
Why We Should “Go To
Mass”
There are many reasons why we should "go to
Mass." It is hoped that one or another of the following reasons will
motivate us to a better participation in the Eucharistic celebration.
§ Since the work of our salvation is
commemorated and continued in the Mass, gratitude demands that we
§ take part in the Eucharistic
liturgy.
§ Christ saved us, but he did not
intend to save us without our cooperation. The purpose of the Eucharist is not
only to renew Christ's sacrifice, but also to join the sacrifice of ourselves
to his, in order to indicate our desire and cooperation to be saved.
§ If we believe that Christ redeemed
us, we should desire to publicly profess this belief by taking an active part
in the Mass which continues his redemptive work.
§ Since Christ distributes his
redemptive graces most abundantly in the Mass, it is necessary that we should
come into vital contact with him in the Mass, in order to receive all the
graces he desires to impart to us.
§ At Baptism we have received a
share in the divine life, but we need Jesus in Holy Communion in order to
maintain and develop this life; for, as he said: "I tell you most
solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you will not have life in you" (Jn. 6:53).
§ Through Baptism we share in the priesthood
of Christ. The function of the priesthood is to worship and offer sacrifice.
Hence, it is our vocation, privilege, and duty to offer the Eucharistic
sacrifice.
§ Only perfect worship is worthy of
the heavenly Father, and only the Mass is perfect worship. Not even the
greatest amount of prayers, recited with the greatest devotion, can come close
to the value of even one Mass.
§ Finally, some may say, "Why
should I go to church? I can pray anywhere, and I can pray by myself."
True, we can pray anywhere and by ourselves, but we should also worship with
others because through Baptism we have become members of the Christian
community. We should go to church in order to receive Holy Communion which is
necessary for our spiritual life. We should go to church because, aside from a
few exceptions, we do there something which we do not do anyplace else, namely,
offer the best prayer, the best form of worship, the holy sacrifice of the
Mass.
Rev. Maynard Kolodziej, Understanding the Mass
The result is very plain-----namely, Though God
Almighty has been pleased to ordain that none shall be saved who have not the
True Faith of Jesus Christ, and are not in communion with His Holy Church, yet
this is no way inconsistent with the infinite goodness of God, because He gives
to all sufficient graces, by which they may, if they correspond with them, be
brought to the True faith and Church of Christ; and that, if any are lost, it
is not owing to any want of goodness in God, but to their own abuse of the
graces bestowed upon them. On some, indeed, He bestows these graces more
abundantly, giving them five talents-----to others He gave more
sparingly, to some two, and to some only one; but He gives to all sufficient
for their present wants, and will give more if those be improved, till at last
He brings them to the knowledge of His truth and to salvation.
Bishop George Hay, The Sincere Christian
Never forget Him Who died for
love of you. You will only love Him in so far as you know how to suffer in
silence, preferring Him to creatures and eternity to time.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
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
The greatness
of our love of God must be tested by the desire we have of suffering for His
love.
St. Philip
Neri
"Important Currents"
- Why?
Because many Catholics have been drowned in their undertow.
The Latin American ecclesial and
theological movement known as 'Liberation Theology', which spread to other
parts of the world after the Second Vatican Council, should in my opinion be
included among the most important currents in 20th century Catholic theology.
Archbishop
Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith
Our Lord has said, “Love one
another, as I have loved you.” This
means that, as Jesus has always preferred us to Himself, and still does so when
He gives Himself to us in the most Holy Sacrament, so it is His will that we
should always prefer others to ourselves.
St. Francis de Sales
And will not God revenge his
elect who cry to him day and night: and will he have patience in their
regard? I say to you, that he will quickly
revenge them. But yet the Son of man,
when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?
Luke 18, 7-8
"How pleasant it is
when brothers live in unity."
Pope Benedict XVI at the
Jewish Synagogue of Rome
The
typical bishop today has more in common with Judas than with Christ!
With the insufficient data given us by the Gospels, it is difficult to
analyze the character and motives of Judas Iscariot. He is, and will remain to
the end of time, a mystery of evil. It is frightening to compare the pinnacle
of greatness to which he was called with the abyss of wickedness to which he
plunged. What could have led him to such depths of evil?
As we have seen, Judas was a thief, as well as an opportunist who
joined Christ because he believed that he was the Messias and that, as one of
his earliest followers, he would assure himself an important place in his
kingdom. On the one hand, Judas must have been deeply impressed by Christ’s
miracles, but, on the other hand, repelled by his refusal to accept honors, by
his teaching of humility, charity, and self-sacrifice, by his poverty and
complete indifference to worldly goods and comforts, his revelation of a
Messianic kingdom completely devoid of all that Judas imagined it should be,
and, above all, his adoption of the role of a suffering and dying Messias.
In any case, the day finally arrived when Judas no longer believed in
Christ or loved him. The latter period of Judas’ life is a frightening illustration
of the power of the human will to resist grace. Judas looked upon Christ day
after day; he talked with him and supped with him; he slept alongside him under
the stars at night; he listened to him teach the lessons of his Kingdom; he
watched him work miracles of compassion; he heard him denounce the hypocrisy of
the Scribes and Pharisees; he trudged wearily alongside him as he climbed the
steep hills of Judea to the holy city for the great feasts of the religious
year; he enjoyed all the intimacies of a friend and confidant of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.
And yet, after more than two years of this, he refuses to open the
doors of his soul to the rays of Christ’s divine grace. The evil that Judas did
was compounded a thousandfold by the fact that it was conceived and born in the
very presence of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Ralph Gorman, C.P., The Last
Hours of Jesus
“In his Confessions of a Revolutionist, M. Proudhon (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1809-1865, French
socialist, politician, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist
philosophy and is considered the "father of anarchism") wrote
these remarkable words: “It is wonderful how we ever stumble on theology in all
our political questions.” There is nothing here to cause surprise, but the
surprise of M. Proudhon. Theology, inasmuch as it is the science of God, is the
ocean which contains and embraces all sciences, as God is the ocean which
contains and embraces all things. […..]”
Donoso Cortes, Marquis of
Valdegamas, Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism
Unintended
Consequences –
or
why the best policy is always do what the right thing and leave the
consequences to God.
When Napoleon crossed the
Rhein, the German princes panicked, knowing that Napoleon’s first goal was the
confiscation of their wealth. As a
result, the Prince of Hesse-Cassel gave his gold to Mayer Amschel Rothschild,
who then sent it out of the country, to his son Nathan, who was living in
London at the time. Having inside
information about Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (and having
effectively spread the rumor that Wellington was defeated), Nathan made a
fortune by using the Prince of Hesse-Cassel’s gold to speculate on the British
consol (i.e.: Government bonds). As a result,
he became the richest man in England.
Over the course of the next century, the Rothschild family and other
Jewish usurers used that wealth to enslave the English aristocracy with
debt. The most prominent example was the
Churchill family. When Winston
Churchill’s father died (of syphilis), he was 60,000 pounds in debt to Natty
Rothschild. By forgiving the Randolph’s
debt, Natty Rothschild made his son Winston a pawn of Jewish interests, a fact
which led indirectly to World War I, (not to even mention World War II).
E. M. Jones, Ph.D., Culture Wars Magazine
Tyranny
– 'Cruel, unjust, oppressive, unreasonable and arbitrary forceful imposition of
absolute authority.'
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept
of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human
life."
Justice Anthony Kennedy, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, defending
the crime of abortion and sodomy and rejecting the authority of Natural Law.
"[Anthony Kennedy’s] famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage …. the
passage that ate the rule of law."
Antonin Scalia, mocking Kennedy’s judicial mindlessness
The Voters have “become so corrupt” as to
“entrust the government to scoundrels and criminals.”
If the people have a sense of moderation and responsibility, and are
most careful guardians of the common weal, it is right to enact a law allowing
such a people to choose their own magistrates for the government of the
commonwealth. But if, as time goes on, the same people become so corrupt as to
sell their votes, and entrust the government to scoundrels and criminals; then
the right of appointing their public officials is rightly forfeit to such a
people, and the choice devolves to a few good men.
St. Augustine, De Lib. Arb. i, 6
The customs of God’s people and the institutions of our ancestors are
to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the
Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God.
St. Augustine, Ep. ad Casulan. xxxvi
All law proceeds from the reason and will of the lawgiver; the Divine
and natural laws from the reasonable will of God; the human law from the will
of man, regulated by reason. Now just as human reason and will, in practical
matters, may be made manifest by speech, so may they be made known by deeds: since
seemingly a man chooses as good that which he carries into execution. But it is
evident that by human speech, law can be both changed and expounded, in so far
as it manifests the interior movement and thought of human reason. Wherefore by
actions also, especially if they be repeated, so as to make a custom, law can
be changed and expounded; and also something can be established which obtains
force of law, in so far as by repeated external actions, the inward movement of
the will, and concepts of reason are most effectually declared; for when a
thing is done again and again, it seems to proceed from a deliberate judgment
of reason. Accordingly, custom has the force of a law, abolishes law, and is
the interpreter of law.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Paul
VI playing the part of Judas!
“This change
has something astonishing about it, something extraordinary. This is because
the Mass is regarded as the traditional and untouchable expression of our
religious worship and the authenticity of our faith.”
Pope Paul VI,
introducing his Novus Ordo Missa
COMMENT: The "received and
approved" immemorial Roman rite of Mass, whose integrity was dogmatically
affirmed at Trent and codified by St. Pius V after the Council, is the
“untouchable expression of our religious worship and the authenticity of our
faith,” and yet, he could not refrain from the “astonishing” and
“extraordinary” act of overturning Catholic dogma and laying his filthy hands
on it!
As
time goes by, there are fewer and fewer Novus Ordo Catholics every year!
St. John himself, the Apostle of
love, who seems in his Gospel to have revealed the secrets of the Sacred Heart
of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress upon the memory of his disciples the
new commandment “to love one another,” nevertheless strictly forbade any
intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt form of Christ’s
teaching: “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not
into the house, nor say to him, God speed you” (II John 1:10). Therefore, since the foundation
of charity is faith pure and inviolate, it is chiefly by the bond of one faith
that the disciples of Christ are to be united. A federation of
Christians is inconceivable in which each member retains his own opinions and
private judgment in matters of faith, even though they differ from opinions of
all the rest. How can men
with opposite convictions belong to one and the same federation of the
faithful: those who accept sacred Tradition as a source of revelation and those
who reject it; those who recognize as divinely constituted the hierarchy
of bishops, priests and ministers in the Church, and those who regard it as
gradually introduced to suit the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ
really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that wonderful conversion of
the bread and wine, Transubstantiation, and those who assert that the body of
Christ is there only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the
Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize both Sacrament and Sacrifice,
and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial of the Lord’s
Supper; those who think it right and useful to pray to the Saints reigning with
Christ, especially to Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and
those who refuse such veneration as derogatory to the honor due Jesus Christ,
“the one mediator of God and men” (I Tim 2:5).
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos
Getting
What We Deserve
THE MOST EVIDENT MARK of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation
He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to
fall into the hands of clerics’ who are priests more in name than in deed,
priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and
affection of devoted shepherds.
Instead of nourishing
those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally.
Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into
hell in their train. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the
light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness.
St. Gregory the Great
says that priests and pastors will stand condemned before God as
the murderers of any souls lost through neglect or silence. Tot occidimus, quot ad mortem ire tepidi et
tacentes videmus. Elsewhere St. Gregory asserts that nothing more
angers God than to see those whom He set aside for the correction of
others, give bad example by a wicked and depraved life.
Instead of
preventing offenses against His Majesty, such priests become themselves
the first to persecute Him, they lose their zeal for the salvation of
souls and think only of following their own inclinations. Their affections
go no farther than earthly things, they eagerly bask in the empty praises
of men, using their sacred ministry to serve their ambitions, they
abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world, and
in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and
worldly pursuits.
When God permits such
things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with
His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That
is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, “Return, O ye revolting children . . . and
I will give you pastors according to my own heart” (Jer. 3, 14-15). Thus,
irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon
the people in consequence of sin.
St. John Eudes, The Priest: His Dignity and Obligations
'A
Fish Rots From the Head'
I'm not interested in converting Evangelicals to Catholicism. I want
people (excepting traditional Catholics) to find Jesus in their own
community. There are so many doctrines
we will never agree on. Let’s not spend
our time on those. Rather, let’s be
about showing the love of Jesus.
Pope Francis, Ecumenical Dinner Meeting with garden variety of
Protestant ministers, June 23, 2014
We
have can be grateful to Pope Francis for this! Francis ended the conservative
claim that the "documents" of Vatican II were good and
"spirit" of Vatican II bad. Francis said they are both the same! Both
bad!
“There is one thing… I would
like to say. I openly affirm this: from the Catholic point of view the Abu Dhabi Document (which
affirms that the existence of pagan, heretical, and schismatic religions is
positively willed by God) does not move one millimeter away from the
Second Vatican Council. It is even cited several times (in the Council
documents). The Document was crafted in the spirit of the Second Vatican
Council.”
Pope Francis the Destroyer
The
Likeness of God
God, who is the perfect and infinite intelligence—that is, the infinite
and perfect reason—created man to His own likeness, and gave him a reasonable
intelligence, like His own. As the face in the mirror answers to the face of
the beholder, so the intelligence of man answers to the intelligence of God. It
is His own likeness. What, then, is the revelation of faith, but the
illumination of the Divine reason poured out upon the reason of man? The
revelation of faith is no discovery which the reason of man has made for
himself by induction, or by deduction, or by analysis, or by synthesis, or by
logical process, or by experimental chemistry. The revelation of faith is a
discovery of itself by the Divine Reason, the unveiling of the Divine Intelligence,
and the illumination flowing from it cast upon the intelligence of man; and if
so, I would ask, how can there be variance or discord? How can the illumination
of the faith diminish the stature of the human reason? How can its rights be
interfered with? How can its prerogatives be violated? Is not the truth the
very reverse of all this? Is it not the fact that the human reason is perfected
and elevated above itself by the illumination of faith?
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, The
Revolt of the Intelligence Against God
The
United States Empire is no different!
The imperial city (Rome) endeavours to communicate her language
(religion, philosophy, law, government and general cultural values) to all the
lands she has subdued to procure a fuller society and a greater abundance of
interpreters on both sides. It is true, but how many lives has this cost! And
suppose that done, the worst is not past, for… the wider extension of her
empire produced still greater wars… Wherefore he that does but consider with
compassion all these extremes of sorrow and bloodshed must needs say that this
is a mystery. But he that endures them without a sorrowful emotion or thought
thereof, is far more wretched to imagine he has the bliss of a god when he has
lost the natural feelings of a man.
St. Cyprian, Epistle to Donatus
“What is
banditry but a little kingdom?... (As the pirate said to Alexander the Great)
‘Because I do it, with a little ship, I am called a robber, and you, because
you do it with a great fleet, are called an emperor.”
St. Augustine,
City of God
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:
‘AI is not just another tool…It has the ability to lie and manipulate’ and will
take over all world religions
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’s more than that. And he doesn’t say it has the potential to be more
than that. It already is.
So, AI can “lie and manipulate.” That’s what some of us have been warning from
the start, and yet so many of our brothers and sisters rely on it every day to
inform their work, their businesses, their personal lives. They will become
dependent on it, and at some point they will be deceived by it.
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’s evil or you
think he’s good, he doesn’t water down his message like so many corporate CEOs
in the tech world do. The CEOs and analysts in the business world have lied to
us and said AI will not replace human work; it will only enhance human work.
That was a lie and they knew it, but they also knew that if they told us the
truth it would cause a mass uprising.
Well, now Harari is letting the cat out of the bag, probably because he knows
it’s too late to do anything to stop this beast system from fully rising up and
taking over the world.
Harari stated:
“Four billion years of
evolution has 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. “Now,
one big open question about AI is, whether it can think. I think, therefore I
am, as René Descartes said. We rule the world because we can think better than
anyone else on the planet. Will AI challenge our supremacy in the field of
thinking. That depends on what thinking means…”
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.
“Some people argue AI is
just glorified auto speech. It barely predicts the next words in a
sentence,” Harari said. “But is that so different from what the human
mind does? As far as putting words in order, AI already thinks better than many
of us. Therefore, anything made of words will be taken over by AI. If
laws are made of words, then AI will take over the legal system. If books are
just combinations of words, then AI will take over books. If religion is built
from words, then AI will take over religion. This is particularly true of
religions made up of books like Islam, Judaism and Christianity.”
He does hint that if your religious faith is real, you may want to find out if
it’s based solely on words you have memorized or if it’s something real that
you have internalized in your heart.
A preview of our AI dominated world
He asks:
“What happens to the holy
books when the greatest expert of the book is an AI? Everything made of words
will be taken over by AI.”
My overall response to Harari’s speech about AI being more than a tool,
and that it’s fully capable of lying and manipulating, is that AI is an
automated version of what George Orwell presented in his famous dystopian
novel, 1984.
Winston, the main character in Orwell’s novel, held a middle-management
position in the Ministry of Truth. His job was to sift through all of the news
of the day, all of the history books, science books, legal analyses, everything
that people referred to for information, and weed out that which the
all-powerful state did not want people to know. He dropped the forbidden
information down the “memory hole” and he advanced up the chain to be
distributed the information which jibed with the official narrative of Big
Brother.
How is this different from the algorithms used by today’s AI?
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’t understand anything about the spiritual battles raging in the
world.
He says that, “If we continue to define ourselves by our ability to think in
words, our identity will collapse.”
As followers of Jesus Christ, we must, if we want to retain our humanity, get
our identity from God the Father, our Creator, and his Son Jesus. All else will
be overwhelmed by the coming beast system.
Remember in your charity:
Remember the welfare of our expectant mother: Nao Miyata,
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 Bev Wood and Bonnie
Cormesser,
Mr. & Mrs. Hall request prayers for the health
of their daughter, Erika Smith,
Drews request your prayers for Phyllis Virgil, for her health and spirital welfare,
For Anthony
Niekrewicz, spiritual and temporal welfare is the petition of all the
members of Ss. Peter & Paul,
Mary Lou Loftus' aunt, Susan Hendricks, who is gravely ill after emergency surgery,
Fred Holder,
for his
spiritual and physical welfare,
Thomas Soul,
a
nursing home patient who has suffered a stroke,
Donna Kallal, a dear friend of the
Schiltz family who is dying,
Philip Thees requests our prayers for the heath of Mary Glatz and Agnus Messineo,
For the welfare of Aaron, a York resident in need of conversion,
For the spiritual welfare of Margaret Connelly is the petition of Camilla Meiser,
Linda Boyd, for her health,
Pete
Schiffbauer, a cousin of Monic Bandlow who is gravely ill,
Joan R.
Barr,
the widow of F. Donald Barr who died March 7, they were married 70 years
Cole
Schneider, prayers for his welfare are requested by Camilla Meiser,
JoAnn
Niekrewicz,
for her recovery from a recent fall and shoulder injury,
The Drews ask prayers for the spiritual and physical
welfare of Robert Carballo,
Conversion of Jack
Gentry, the nephew of Camilla Meiser,
For Sr.
Maria Junipera, who took her final vows as a nun with the Slaves of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire April 8,
Stephen
Bryan,
the brother of a devout Catholic religious, for his spiritual welfare,
Marie
Kolinsky,
for her health and spiritual welfare is the petition of her family,
Gene Peters requests our prayers for the conversion
of Shirley Young and Carl Loy who are dying, the
conversion of Dawn Keithley
and Nate Schaeffer,
Rev. Leo
Carley,
an eighty-nine year old priest faithful to Catholic tradition, who is seriously
ill,
For the recovery of Hayden Yanchek, the grandson of Francis Yanchek, injured in
a farming accident,
Maureen
Nies, for
the recovery of her health is the petition of Camilla Meiser,
Daniel
Vargs, for
his health is the petition of his parents,
Art Noel, for the restoration of his
health,
For the welfare of Peg Berry and her husband, Bill,
Marianne Connelly asks prayers for Chris Foley, who is gravely ill,
and the welfare of his wife, Mary
Beth,
The spiritual welfare of the Sal & Maria Messineo family is the petition of the
Drew’s,
Liz Agosta, who is seriously ill, for her
spiritual and temporal welfare,
Warren
Hoffman, a
long time member of our Mission who is in failing health,
Patrick
Boyle,
for the recovery of his health and his spiritual welfare,
For the spiritual welfare of the Drew children,
Monica Bandlow request our prayers for the welfare of
Ray who is recovering from a
MVA, and his daughter, Sonya,
and Tera Jean Kopczynski, who
is in failing health, and for a good death for Mr. Howald, Kathy
Simons, Regina Quinn, James Mulgrew, Ruth Beaucheane, John Kopczynski, Roger
& Mandy Owen
Peg Berry requests our prayers for her brother, William Habekost,
For the recently widowed, Maike Hickson, and her children,
For the spiritual welfare of the Carmelite nuns in Fairfield, PA,
Geralyn
Zagorski, recovery of her health and spiritual welfare and
the conversion of Randal Pace is the petition of Philip Thees,
For the grandson of
Joe & Liz Agusta,
Fr. Waters requests our
prayers for the health and spiritual welfare of Elvira Donaghy,
For the health and
conversion of Stephen Henderson,
Fr. Paul DaDamio requests
our prayers for the welfare of Rob Ward, and his sister, Debra
Wagaman,
Kaitlyn McDonald, for the recovery of her health and spiritual
welfare,
Roco
Sbardella,
for his health and spiritual welfare,
The Vargas’ request our prayers for the spiritual
welfare of their son, Nicholas,
Family, for the welfare of Lazarus Handley, his mother, Julia, and his brother, Raphael, with Down’s Syndrome,
Fr. Waters requests prayers for the spiritual and
physical welfare of Frank McKee,
Nancy
Bennett, for the recovery of her
health,
For the spiritual welfare of Mark Roberts, a Catholic faithful to tradition,
Michael Brigg requests our prayers for the health of John Romeo,
The health and welfare of Gene Peters and his sons,
Conversion of Anton
Schwartzmueller, is the prayer request of his children,
Christine
Kozin, for
her health and spiritual welfare,
Teresa
Gonyea,
for her conversion and health, is the petition of her grandmother, Patricia
McLaughlin,
For the health of Sonya Kolinsky,
Jackie Dougherty asks our prayers for her brother, John Lee, who is gravely ill,
For the health and spiritual welfare, Meg Bradley, the granddaughter
of Rose Bradley,
Timothy
& Crisara, a couple from Maryland have requested our prayers for their spiritual
welfare,
Celine
Pilegaard, the seven year old daughter of Cynthia Pilegaard, for her recovery from
burn injuries,
Rafaela de
Saravia, for
her health and welfare,
Abbe Damien
Dutertre,
traditional Catholic priest arrested by Montreal police while offering Mass,
Francis
(Frank) X. McLaughlin, for the recovery of his
health,
Nicholas
Pell,
for his health and spiritual welfare is the petition of Camilla Meizer,
Mary Kaye
Petr,
her health and welfare is petitioned by Camilla Meizer,
The welfare of Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,
The welfare of Rev.
Fr. Martin Skierka, who produces the traditional Ordo in the U.S.,
For the health and welfare of Katie Wess, John Gentry, Vincent Bands, Todd Chairs, Susan Healy and
James O’Gentry is the petition of Camilia,
Marieann
Reuter, recovery of her health, Kathy Kepner, for her health, Shane Cox, for his health,
requests of Philip Thees,
The Joseph
Cox Family, their spiritual welfare,
For the health of Kim Cochran, the daughter-in-law of Joseph and Brenda
Cochran, the wife of their son Joshua,
Louie
Verrecchio,
Catholic apologist, who has a health problem,
John
Minidis, Jr. family, for help in their spiritual
trial,
Joann
DeMarco, for her health and spiritual
welfare,
Regina
(Manidis) Miller, her spiritual welfare and health,
Melissa
Elena Levitt, her conversion, and welfare of her children,
For the grace of a holy death, Nancy Marie Claycomb,
Conversion of Annette
Murowski, and her son Jimmy,
Brent Keith from Indiana has petitioned our prayers
for the Keith Family,
The welfare of the Schmedes Family, and the Mike and Mariana Donohue Family,
The spiritual welfare Robert Holmes Family,
For the spiritual and temporal welfare of Irwin Kwiat,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for Elvira Donaghy,
Kimberly Ann, the daughter of John and
Joann DeMarco, for her health and spiritual welfare,
Rende and
Mary Mufide, a traditional Catholics from India ask our prayers for her welfare and
he family members, living and deceased,
Mary Glatz, her health and the welfare
of her family,
Barbara
Harmon,
who is ill,
Jason Green, a father of ten children,
his health,
For the health and welfare of Sorace family,
Fr. Waters asks our prayers for the health and
spiritual welfare of Brian Abramowitz,
Thomas
Schiltz family, in grateful appreciation for their contribution to the beauty of our
chapel,
John Rhoad, for his health and
spiritual welfare,
Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for
her welfare,
Joyce
Laughman and Robert Twist, for their conversions,
Michael J.
Brigg & his family, who have helped with the needs of the Mission,
Nancy Deegan, her welfare and conversion
to the Catholic Church,
Francis Paul
Diaz,
who was baptized at Ss. Peter & Paul, asks our prayers for his spiritual
welfare,
The conversion of Rene McFarland, Lori Kerr, Cary Shipman
and family, David Bash, Crystal and family, Larry Reinhart, Costanzo Family,
Kathy Scullen, Marilyn Bryant, Vicki Trahern and Time Roe are
the petitions of Gene Peters,
For the conversion of Ben & Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf, Eckhard Ebert,
and Fahnauer family,
Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX, and for Fr. Thomas Blute,
For the welfare of Fr. Paul DaDamio and Fr. William T. Welsh,
The Drew’s ask our prayers for the welfare of Joe & Tracey Sentmanat family, Keith
& Robert Drew, Christy Koziol & her children, Fred Nesbit and Michael
Nesbit families, and Gene Peters Family,
the John Manidis Family, the Sal Messinio Family, Michael Proctor Family,
Ryan Boyle grandmother, Jane Boyle, who is failing health,
Mel Gibson
and his family, please remember in our prayers,
Rev. Timothy A. Hopkins requested our prayers for the
welfare of his friend, Fr Jean-Luc Lafitte,
Ebert’s request our prayers for the Andreas & Jenna Ortner Family,
Joyce Paglia has asked prayers for George Richard Moore Sr. & his
children, and her brother, George
Panell,
Philip Thees asks our prayers for his family, for McLaughlin Family, the welfare
of Dan & Polly Weand, the
conversion of Sophia Herman,
Tony Rosky, the welfare Nancy Erdeck, the wife of
the late Deacon Erdeck, John Calasanctis, Tony Rosky, James Parvenski, Kathleen Gorry, health of mind and body of Cathy Farrar.
Pray for the
Repose of the Souls:
John
Callisanti, a faithful Catholic, died June 23, prayers petitioned by Philip Thees,
Christian
Joseph Melnick, died June 19, a 56 year old faithful Catholic and devoted husband and
father of nine,
Fr.
Radoslav, a
relatively young faithful priest who was working with Bishop Stobnicki in
Poland,
Leonard Messineo, a long time traditional
Catholic, dies May 18,
For Jo Ann
Niekrewicz, our dear friend, died March 1, for the blessed repose of
her soul is the petition of all the members of Ss. Peter & Paul,
Shirley
Rotondo, died
February 2-26, and Louisa McBride,
died February 27, is the petition of Monica Bandlow,
Katherine
Veronica Wedel, the mother of Mary Baer, died February 6,
James
Condit, Jr., traditional Catholic activist, died December 27,
Beverly
Harmon, died
December 16, requested by the Sentmanat family,
Rev.
Nicholas DeProspero, a faithful Ruthenian Eastern rite Catholic priest, died December 10,
Monica Bandlow petitions our prayers for her friend, Patricia Messineo, died November
28,
Guy
Berthault,
died November 23, a great Catholic scientist whose work in sedimentology
destrooyed Lyellian geology and the theory of evolution,
Thomas Soul,
died
November 8 after receiving the last rites of the Church,
Etta Van Der
Werken, a
dear friend of Barbara Taffe, died 10-21-2025,
Gary Potter, Catholic writer and
apologist and great long time defender of Catholic doctrine and tradition, died
9-9-2025,
Elizabeth
Gorska,
who died September 9, a relative of Lidia Gjec,
Camilia Meiser request our prayers for the souls of Peggy Cummings and Elizabeth Genter,
Thomas A.
Nelson, founder of TAN Books and
Publishers, died August 16,
Juan D.
Gonzalez,
our former sacristan, choir director, and dear friend, died July 23,
Sal
Messineo,
a faithful traditional Catholic, died Augsut 14,
Patricia
Askew, a
friend of Camilla Meiser, died July 3,
Joseph
Kerney, a
young man whose family provided the statues of the Sacred Heart, Mary and
Joseph in our sanctuary, died May 30,
Louis
Richard Ajlouny, the father of Randa Sharpe, died May 15,
Rene Guidicessi, died April 25, an old
friend of the Drews,
F. Donald
Barr, died
March 7 at 94 years of age, co-founder of Robert Francis Religious Goods, in
Philadelphia,
Dr. David
Allen White, a well known defender of the Catholic faith, died February 11,
Bishop
Richard Williamson, a renowned defender of the Catholic faith and most charitable gentleman,
died January 29,
Rodolfo
Alberto Lacayo, a cousin of Claudia Drew, died January 4,
Genieve
Wallace, died
Christmas day,
Ruth Marion
Beaucheane, died December 8, is the
petition of Monica Bandlow,
Ana Maria Salcedo, the sister of Mario Fiol, died November 26,
Fr. Johin Cardaro, a
traditional Catholic priest who was found dead in his home November 2,
Robert Carballo asks that we
remember his parents, Roberto & Aida Carballo, and his friend, David
Duclos, who died April 15,
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais who may have been responsible for preventing the SSPX's public reconciliation with Rome in 2012, died October 8,
Lorna
Edwards, our
dear friend and loyal supporter of this Mission, died August 10,
Lois Petti, died July 28 two hours after
receiving the Last Sacraments from Fr. Waters,
Wolfgang
Smith, a
renowned Catholic scholar, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, who helped
the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, died July 19,
Willaim
Glatz, a
good and faithful Catholic, died July 17,
Alicio
Gonzalez, a
Catholic who asked for the sacrament of Extreme Unction, unfortunately did not
receive, died July 9,
John
Zavodny, a faithful Catholic who died wearing the
scapular of Mt Carmel on the first Saturday of May, requested by Phyllis Virgil,
Catherine
Martel, a lapsed Catholic, received
the last sacraments in a good disposition from Fr. Waters on March 25 and died
on April 4,
Father
Basilio Méramo, a faithful priest, died March 5, removed from the SSPX for opposing
their accommodation with Rome,
Julia
McDonald,
the mother of Kyle McDonald, died March 1,
Agnus
Melnick,
died February 28, a long time faithful Catholic and mother of eight children,
including a traditional priest,
Kathryn
(Drew) Lederhos, of Wellesley, MA, died February
3, 2024,
Chris Foley, the
brother of Mary Lou Loftus, died February 1,
Louis Zelaya, the brother of Claudia
Drew, died January 30,
Fr. James
Louis Albert Campbell, a faithful priest who died December 18 at 91 years of age, and her mother
and father, Teresa and Thomas Maher,
Charles
Harmon,
the father of Tracey Sentmanet, died October 1, after receiving the rites of
the Church,
Fr. Waters requests prayers for Elvira Donaghy, his friend and former secretary a for Bishop
Gerado Zendejas, died September 9,
Robert
Hickson,
a faithful Catholic apologist who died Septembber 2,
Monica Bandlow requests prayers for her parents, Thomas & Teresa Maher, her
husband, William Bandlow, her
brother-in-law, Richard Bandlow,
her sister, Mary Maher, Fr. Christopher Darby, SSPX, who died March 17, Robert Byrne, Michelle Donofrio McDowell, her cousin, Patricia Fabyanic, the Prefect
of Our Lady’s Sodality, March 8, for
John Pfeiffer who died August 20, Theresa
Hanley, died July 23, Fr.
Juan-Carlos Iscara, SSPX, who died December 20, John Kinney, died December 21, Willaim Price, Jr., and Robert Arch Ward, died January 10,
and Myra, killed in a MVA
June 6,
John Sharpe,
Sr.,
died July 20,
Maria
Paulette Salazar, died June 6,
Dale Kinsey requests prayers for his wife, Katherine Kinsey, died May 17,
Richard
Giles,
who died April 29, the father of Traci Sentmanat who converted to the Catholic
faith last All Saints' Day,
Joseph
Sparks,
a devout and faithful Catholic to tradition died February 25,
Joyce Paglia, died
January 21, and Anthony Paglia,
died January 28, who were responsible for the beautiful statuary in our chapel,
Joe Sentmanet request prayers for Richard Giles and Claude Harmon who converted to
the Catholic faith shortly before their deaths,
Rodolfo
Zelaya, the brother of Claudia Drew,
died January 9,
Elizabeth Agosta petitions our prayers for Joseph Napolitano, her brother,
who died January 2,
Michael
Dulisse,
died on December 26,
Michael
Proctor, a close friend of the Drews,
died November 9,
Richard
Anthony Giles, the father-in-law of Joe Sentmanat converted to the Catholic faith on
All Saints Day, died November 5,
Robert
Kolinsky,
the husband of Sonja, died September 18,
Gabriel
Schiltz,
the daughter of Thomas & Gay Schiltz, died August 21,
Mary Dimmel, the
mother –in-law of Victoria Drew Dimmel, died July 18,
Michael
Nesbit,
the brother-in-law and dear friend of the Drew's, died July 14,
Thomas
Thees, the brother of Philip, died
June 19,
Carmen Ragonese,
died June 22,
Juanita
Mohler, a friend of Camella Meiser,
died June 14,
Kathleen
Elias, died February 14,
Hernan Ortiz, the
brother of Fr. Juan Carlos Ortiz, died February 3,
Mary Ann
Boyle,
the mother of a second order Dominican nun, a first order Dominican priest, and
a SSPX priest, died January 24,
John DeMarco, who
attended this Mission in the past, died January23,
Charles
O’Brien, the father of Marlene Cox,
died December 30,
Mufide Rende requests our prayers for the repose of
the souls of her parents, Mehmet
& Nedime,
Kathleen Donelly, died December 29 at 91
years of age, ran the CorMariae website,
Matthew
O'Hare,
most faithful Catholic, died at age 40 on November 30,
Rev. Patrick
J. Perez, a Catholic priest faithful to
tradition, pastor Our Lady Help of Christians, Garden Grove, CA, November 19,
Elizabeth
Benedek,
died December 14, requested by her niece, Agnes Vollkommer,
Dolores
Smith and Richard Costello, faithful Catholics, died
November,
Frank
D’Agustino,
a friend of Philp Thees, died November 8,
Fr.
Dominique Bourmaud, of the SSPX, Prior of St.
Vincent in Kansas City, died September 4,
Pablo Daniel
Silva, the brother of Elizabeth
Vargas, died August 18,
Rose Bradley, a
member of Ss. Peter & Paul, died July 14,
Patricia
Ellias, died June 1, recently
returned to the Church died with the sacraments and wearing the brown scapular,
Joan Devlin, the sister-in-law of Rose
Bradley, died May 18,
William
Muligan, died April 29, two days after
receiving the last sacraments,
Robert Petti, died
March 19, the day after receiving the last sacraments,
Mark
McDonald, the father of Kyle, who died
December 26,
Perla Otero, died December 2020, Leyla Otero, January 2021,
cousins of Claudia Drew,
Mehmet Rende, died
December 12, who was the father of Mary Mufide,
Joseph
Gravish, died November 26, 100 year
old WWII veteran and daily communicant,
Jerome
McAdams,
the father of, died November 30,
Rev. James
O’Hara, died November 8, requested by
Alex Estrada,
Elizabeth
Batko, the sacristan at St. John the
Baptist in Pottstown for over 40 years, died on First Saturday November 7
wearing the brown scapular,
William Cox, the
father of Joseph Cox, who died September 3,
James Larson, Catholic
apologists, author of War Against Being
publication, died July 6, 2020,
Hutton
Gibson, died May 12,
Sr. Regina Cordis, Immaculate Heart of Mary
religious for sixty-five years, died May 12,
Leslie Joan
Matatics, devoted Catholic wife and
mother of nine children, died March 24,
Victoria
Zelaya, the sister-in-law of Claudia
Drew, died March 20,
Ricardo
DeSilva,
died November 16, our prayers requested by his brother, Henry DeSilva,
Rev. Fr.
Joseph F. Collins, died April 27, 2019 to whom we are indebted for establishing our
traditional pre-Bugnini Holy Week in all
its beauty,
Roland H.
Allard,
a friend of the Drew’s, died September 28,
Stephen
Cagorski
and John Bogda, who
both died wearing the brown
scapular,
Cecilia
LeBow, a most faithful Catholic,
Rose Cuono, died Oct 23,
Patrick
Rowen,
died March 25, and his brother, Daniel
Rowen, died May 15,
Sandra
Peters, the
wife of Gene Peters, who died June 10 receiving the sacraments and wearing our
Lady’s scapular,
Rev. Francis
Slupski, a
priest who kept the Catholic faith and its immemorial traditions, died May 14,
Martha
Mochan, the
sister of Philip Thees, died April 8,
George
Kirsch,
our good friend and supporter of this Mission, died February 15,
For Fr.
Paul J. Theisz, died October 17, is the petition of Fr. Waters,
Fr. Mecurio
Fregapane,
died Jan 12, was not a traditional priest but always charitable,
Fr. Casimir
Peterson,
a priest who often offered the Mass in our chapel and provided us with sound
advice, died December 4,
Fr.
Constantine Bellasarius, a faithful and always
charitable Eastern Rite Catholic Melkite priest, who left the Roman rite, died
November 27,
Christian
Villegas,
a motor vehicle accident, his brother, Michael, requests our prayers,
John Vennari, the former editor of
Catholic Family News, and for his family’s welfare, April 4,
Mary Butler, the aunt of Fr. Samuel
Waters, died October 17,
Joseph
DeMarco,
the nephew of John DeMarco, died October 3,
John Fergale, died September 25 after
receiving the traditional sacramental rites of the Church wearing the brown
scapular,
John Gabor, the brother of Donna
Marbach, died September 9,
Fr. Eugene
Dougherty,
a faithful priest, fittingly died on the Nativity of the BVM after receiving
the traditional Catholic sacraments,
Phyllis
Schlafly,
died September 5,
Helen
Mackewicz,
died August 14,
Mark A.
Wonderlin,
who died August 2,
Fr. Carl
Cebollero,
a faithful priest to tradition who was a friend of Fr. Waters and Fr. DeMaio,
Jessica
Cortes,
a young mother of ten who died June 12,
Frances
Toriello, a
life-long Catholic faithful to tradition, died June3, the feast of the Sacred
Heart, and her husband Dan, died
in 1985,
John
McLaughlin, a friend of the Drew’s, died May 22,
Angela
Montesano,
who died April 30, and her husband, Salvatore,
who died in July 3, 2013,
Charles Schultz, died
April 5, left behind nine children and many grandchildren, all traditional
Catholics,
Esperanza Lopez de Callejas,
the aunt of Claudia Drew, died March 15,
Fr. Edgardo Suelo, a
faithful priest defending our traditions who was working with Fr. Francois
Chazal in the Philippines, died February 19,
Conde McGinley, a long time laborer
for the traditional faith, died February 12, at 96 years,
The Drew family requests
your prayers for Ida Fernandez and Rita Kelley,
parishioners at St. Jude,
Fr. Stephen
Somerville,
a traditional priest who repented from his work with the Novus Ordo English
translation, died December 12,
Fr. Arturo
DeMaio,
a priest that helped this Mission with the sacraments and his invaluable
advice, died December 2,
J. Paul
Carswell,
died October 15, 2015,
Solange
Hertz, a
great defender of our Catholic faith, died October 3, the First Saturday of the
month,
Paula P.
Haigh,
died October 22, a great defender of our Catholic faith in philosophy and
natural science,
Gabriella
Whalin,
the mother of Gabriella Schiltz, who died August 25,
Mary
Catherine Sick, 14 year old from a large traditional Catholic family, died August 25,
Fr. Paul
Trinchard,
a traditional Catholic priest, died August 25,
Stephen J.
Melnick, Jr., died on August 21, a long-time faithful traditional Catholic husband
and father, from Philadelphia,
Patricia
Estrada,
died July 29, her son Alex petitions our prayers for her soul,
Fr. Nicholas
Gruner,
a devoted priest & faithful defender of Blessed Virgin Mary and her Fatima
message, died April 29,
Sarah E.
Shindle,
the grandmother of Richard Shindle, died April 26,
Madeline
Vennari,
the mother of John Vennari, died December 19,
Salvador
Baca Callejas, the uncle of Claudia Drew, died December 13,
Robert Gomez, who died in a motor vehicle
accident November 29,
Catherine
Dunn,
died September 15,
Anthony
Fraser,
the son of Hamish Fraser, died August 28,
Jeannette
Rhoad,
the grandmother of Devin Rhoad, who died August 24,
John Thees, the uncle of Philip Thees,
died August 9,
Sarah
Harkins, 32 year-old mother of four
children, died July 28,
Msgr. Donald
Adams, who
offered the Indult Mass, died April 1996,
Anita Lopez, the aunt of Claudia Drew,
Fr. Kenneth
Walker,
a young traditional priest of the FSSP who was murdered in Phoenix June 11,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for Gilberte Violette, the mother of
Fr. Violette, who died May 6,
Pete Hays petitions our prayers for his brothers, Michael, died May 9, and James, died October 20, his
sister, Rebecca, died March17, and his mother, Lorraine Hayes who died May 4,
Philip
Marbach,
the father of Paul Marbach who was the coordinator at St. Jude in Philadelphia,
died April 21,
Richard
Slaughtery,
the elderly sacristan for the SSPX chapel in Kansas City, died April 13,
Bernedette
Marie Evans nee Toriello, the daughter of Daniel Toriello, died March 31, a
faithful Catholic who suffered many years with MS,
Natalie
Cagorski,
died march 23,
Anita Lopez
de Lacayo,
the aunt of Claudia Drew, who died March 21,
Mario
Palmaro,
Catholic lawyer, bioethicist and professor, apologist, died March 9, welfare of
his widow and children,
Daniel Boyle, the
uncle of Ryan Boyle, died March 4,
Jeanne
DeRuyscher,
who died on January 25,
Arthur
Harmon,
died January 18,
Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for the soul of Jeanne DeRuyscher, who died
January 17,
Joseph Proctor, died January 10,
Susan Scott, a devote traditional
Catholic who made the vestments for our Infant of Prague statue, died January
8,
Brother
Leonard Mary, M.I.C.M., (Fred Farrell), an early supporter and friend of Fr. Leonard
Feeney, died November 23,
John Fergale, requests our prayers for his sister Connie, who died December 19,
Jim Capaldi, died December 15,
Brinton
Creager,
the son of Elizabeth Carpenter, died December 10,
Christopher
Lussos,
age 27, the father of one child with an expecting wife, died November 15,
Jarett
Ebeyer,
16 year old who died in his sleep, November 17, at the request of the
Kolinsky’s,
Catherine
Nienaber,
the mother of nine children, the youngest three years of age, killed in MVA
after Mass, 10-29,
Nancy Aldera, the sister of Frances
Toriello, died October 11, 2013 at 105 years of age,
Mary Rita
Schiltz,
the mother of Thomas Schiltz, who died August 27,
William H.
(Teddy) Kennedy, Catholic author of Lucifer’s Lodge, died August 14, age 49, cause of
death unknown,
Alfred
Mercier,
the father of David Mercier, who died August 12,
The Robert Kolinsky asks our prayers for his friend, George Curilla, who died August
23,
John Cuono, who had attended Mass at
our Mission in the past, died August 11,
Raymond
Peterson,
died July 28, and Paul Peterson,
died February 19, the brothers of Fr. Casimir Peterson,
Margaret
Brillhart,
who died July 20,
Msgr. Joseph
J. McDonnell, a priest from the diocese of Des Moines, who died June 8,
Patrick
Henry Omlor, who wrote Questioning The Validity of the Masses using
the New, All English Canon, and for a series of newsletters which were
published as The Robber Church, died May 2, the feast of St Athanasius,
Bishop
Joseph McFadden, died unexpectedly May 2,
Timothy
Foley,
the brother-in-law of Michelle Marbach Folley, who died in April,
William
Sanders,
the uncle of Don Rhoad, who died April 2,
Gene Peters ask our prayers for the repose of the
soul of Mark Polaschek, who
died March 22,
Eduardo
Gomez Lopez, the uncle of Claudia Drew, February 28,
Cecelia
Thees,
died February 24,
Elizabeth
Marie
Gerads, a
nineteen year old, the oldest of twelve children, who died February 6,
Michael
Schwartz,
the co-author with Fr. Enrique Rueda of “Gays, Aids, and You,” died February 3,
Stanley W.
Moore,
passed away in December 16, and Gerard (Jerry) R. Pitman, who died January 19,
who attended this Mission in the past,
Louis
Fragale,
who died December 25,
Fr. Luigi
Villa, Th.D. author of Vatican II About
Face! detailing the heresies of Vatican II, died November 18 at the age of 95,
Rev. Michael
Jarecki,
a faithful traditional Catholic priest who died October 22,
Jennie Salaneck, died September 19 at 95
years of age, a devout and faithful Catholic all her life,
Dorothy Sabo, who died September 26,
Cynthia
(Cindy) Montesano Reinhert, the mother of nine children, four who are still at
home, died August 19,
Stanley
Spahalski, who died October 20, and his wife, Regina
Spahalski, who died June 24, and for the soul of Francis Lester, her son,
Julia Atkinson, who died April 30,
Antonio P.
Garcia,
who died January 6, 2012 and the welfare of his teenage children, Andriana and
Quentin,
Helen Crane, the aunt of David Drew who
died February 27,
Fr. Timothy
A. Hopkins,
of the National Shrine of St. Philomena, in Miami, November 2,
Frank Smith, who died February 7, and
the welfare of his wife, Delores,
Eduardo
Cepeda,
who died January 26,
Larry Young, the 47 year old father of
twelve who died December 10 and the welfare of his wife Katherine and their
family,
Sister Mary
Bernadette, M.I.C.M., a founding member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, died
December 16,
Joeseph
Elias,
who died on September 28,
William, the brother of Fr. Waters,
who died September 7,
Donald
Tonelli,
died August 1,
Rev. Fr.
Gregory Hesse, of Austria, a great defender of Catholic Truth, died January 25, 2006,
Emma
Colasanti, who died May 29,
Mary
Dullesse,
who died April 12, a Catholic convert who died wearing our Lady’s scapular,
Ruth Jantsch, the grandmother of Andre
Ebert, who died April 7, Derrick and Denise Palengat, his godparents,
Philip D.
Barr,
died March 5, and the welfare of his family,
Judith Irene
Kenealy,
the mother of Joyce Paglia, who died February 23, and her son, George Richard
Moore, who died May 14,
For Joe
Sobran who died September 30,
Fr. Hector
Bolduc,
a great and faithful priest, died, September 10, 2012,
James &
Jean Rowan
and their sons, Patrick & Daniel,
John Vennari asks our prayers for Dr. Raphael Waters who died
August 26,
Stanley
Bodalsky,
the father of Mary Ann Boyle who died June 25,
Mary Isabel
Kilfoyle Humphreys, a former York resident and friend of the Drew’s, who died June 6,
Rev. John
Campion,
who offered the traditional Mass for us every first Friday until forbidden to
do so by Bishop Dattilo, died May 1,
Joseph
Montagne, who
died May 5,
For Margaret
Vagedes, the aunt of Charles Zepeda, who died January 6,
Fr. Michael
Shear, a
Byzantine rite Catholic priest, died August 17, 2006,
Fr. James
Francis Wathen, died November 7, 2006, author of The
Great Sacrilege and Who Shall
Ascend?, a great defender of dogma and liturgical purity,
Fr. Enrique
Rueda,
who died December 14, 2009, to whom our Mission is indebted,
Fr. Peterson asks to remember, Leonard Edward Peterson, his cousin, Wanda, Angelica Franquelli, and the six
priests ordained with him.
Philip Thees petitions our prayers for Beverly Romanick, Deacon Michael Erdeck,
Henry J. Phillips, Grace Prestano, Connie DiMaggio, Elizabeth Thorhas,
Elizabeth Thees, Theresa Feraker, Hellen Pestrock, and James & Rose Gomata,
and Kathleen Heinbach,
Fr. Didier
Bonneterre,
the author of The Liturgical Movement, and Fr. John Peek, both were traditional
priests,
Brother
Francis, MICM, the superior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in
Richmond, NH, who died September 5,
Rodolfo
Zelaya Montealegre, the father of Claudia Drew, who died May 24,
Rev. Francis
Clifford,
a devout and humble traditional priest, who died on March 7,
Benjamin
Sorace, the
uncle of Sonja Kolinsky.
Feast of the
Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Seven Offerings of the
Precious Blood
1. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the
propagation and exaltation of my dear Mother the Holy Church, for the safety
and prosperity of her visible Head, the Holy Roman Pontiff, for the cardinals,
bishops and pastors of souls and for all the ministers of the sanctuary.
Glory be to the Father, etc.; Blessed and praised forevermore be Jesus Who
hath saved us by His Precious Blood!
2. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the
peace and concord of nations, for the conversion of the enemies of our holy
Faith, and for the happiness of all Christian people.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
3. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for the
repentance of unbelievers, the extirpation of all heresies and the conversion
of sinners.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
4. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all my
relations, friends and enemies, for the poor, the sick, and those in
tribulation, and for all those for whom You will that I should pray, or know
that I ought to pray.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
5. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all
those who shall this day pass to another life that You may preserve them from
the pains of Hell and admit them the more readily to the possession of Your
Glory.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
6. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all
those who are lovers of this Treasure of His Blood, and for all those who join
with me in adoring and honoring It, and for all those who try to spread
devotion to It.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
7. Eternal Father, I offer You the merits of
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, Your Beloved Son and my Redeemer, for all my
wants, spiritual and temporal, for the holy souls in Purgatory and particularly
for those who in their lifetime were most devoted to this Price of our
Redemption and to the sorrows and pains of our dear Mother, Mary most holy.
Glory be... Blessed and praised...
Blessed and exalted be the Blood of Jesus,
now and always, and through all eternity! Amen
There is but one universal Church of the Faithful,
outside which no one at all can be saved.
Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215
The Virtue of Supernatural Hope
Natural hope springs from man's youthful power and dries up along with it.
For supernatural hope, however, the reverse is true: it not only is not tied to
being naturally young but also is itself the basis for a much more substantial
youthfulness. It endows a person with a " not yet" that simply
surpasses and is remote from the decline of natural powers of hope.
And the supernatural vigor of hope overflows and radiates even into the
rejuvenated powers of natural hope. Nothing assures and establishes
"eternal youth" (in the most literal sense of the word) as does the
theological virtue of hope. It alone is able to provide man with the unalienable possession of that inner tension
that is both relaxed and taut, that elasticity and agility, that stouthearted
freshness, that resilient joyousness, that composed bravery of confidence,
which distinctly characterize a young person and thus make him lovable.
Since supernatural hope implants in man the new "future" of a
simply inexhaustible " not yet", it establishes a new youthfulness,
which can be destroyed only together with hope itself. In the two forms of
hopelessness, in despair as well as in presumption, this youthfulness of the
hoping person comes to nothing all the same, but in different ways: in despair,
in the way of the senile; in presumption, in the way of the infantile.
In despair as in presumption, the truly human quality stiffens and
songeals, and only hope is able to preserve it in radiant litheness. Both forms
of hopelessness are in the real sense inhuman and deadly. "These two
things kill the soul: despair and perverted hope", says St.
Augustine.
Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart
Dogma - The
Proximate Rule of Faith, the Formal Object of Divine & Catholic Faith
Now, first of all, let us see what is
dogma. In the mouth of the world it means some positive, imperious, and
overbearing assertion of a human authority, or of a self-confident mind. But
what does it mean in the mouth of the Church? It means the precise enunciation
of a divine truth, of a divine fact, or of a divine reality fully known, so far
as it is the will of God to reveal it, adequately defined in words chosen and
sanctioned by a divine authority.
It
is the precise enunciation of a divine truth or of a divine reality; for
instance, the nature and the personality of God, the Incarnation, the coming of
the Holy Ghost, and suchlike truths and realities of the mind of God, precisely
known, intellectually conceived, as God has revealed or accomplished them.
Every divine truth or reality, so far as God has been pleased to reveal it to us,
casts its perfect outline and image upon the human intelligence. His own mind,
in which dwells all truth in all fulness and in all perfection, so far as He
has revealed of His truth, is cast upon the surface of our mind, in the same
way as the sun casts its own image upon the surface of the water, and the disc
of the sun is perfectly reflected from its surface. So, in the intelligence of
the Apostles, when, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost on the Day of
Pentecost, the revelation of God was cast upon the surface of their intellect,
every divine truth had its perfect outline and image, not confused, nor in a
fragmentary shape, but with a perfect and complete impression. For instance,
that God is One in nature; that in God there are Three Persons, and one only
Person in Jesus Christ. Next, it is not enough that a truth should be
definitely conceived; for if a teacher know the truth, and is not able to
communicate it with accuracy, the learner will be but little the wiser. And
therefore God, who gave His truth, has given also a perpetual assistance,
whereby the Apostles first, and His Church from that day to this, precisely and
without erring declare to mankind the truth which was revealed in the
beginning; and in declaring that truth the Church clothes it in words, in what
we call a terminology: and in the choice of those terms the Church is also
guided. There is an assistance, by which the Church does not err in selecting
the very language in which to express divine truth. For who does not see that,
if the Church were to err in the selection of the words, the declaration of
truth must be obscured? We are conscious every day that we know with perfect
certainty what we desire to say, but, from the difficulty of finding or
choosing our words, we cannot convey our meaning to another. The Church is not
a stammerer as we are. The Church of God has a divine assistance perpetually
guiding it, to clothe in language, that is, in adequate expression, the divine
truth which God has committed to her trust. Therefore a dogma signifies a
correct verbal expression of the truth correctly conceived and known. But,
lastly, it is not sufficient that it be clearly understood in the intellect and
accurately expressed in words, unless the authority by which it is declared
shall be divine; because without a divine authority we cannot have a divine
certainty; without a divine authority we can have no such assurance that the
doctrine which we hear may not be erroneous. The Apostles were such a divine
authority, for they spoke in the Name of their Master. Their successor to this
day is the Church, which, taken as a whole, has been, by the assistance of the
Holy Ghost, promised by our Divine Lord and never absent from it, perpetually
sustained in the path of truth, and preserved from all error in the declaration
of that truth. Therefore ‘He that heareth you heareth Me’ is true to this day.
He that hears the voice of the Church hears the voice of its Divine Head, and
its authority is therefore divine. This, then, is a dogma: a divine truth
clearly understood in the intellect, precisely expressed in words and by a
divine authority. There are many things which follow from this. First, it
proves that the Church of God must be dogmatic: and that any body which is not
dogmatic is not the Church of God. Any body or communion that disclaims a
divine, and therefore infallible, authority cannot be dogmatic, because it is
conscious that it may err. And therefore the- Catholic Church alone, the Church
which is one and undivided throughout the world, united with its centre in the
Holy See,—this, and this alone, is a dogmatic Church (as the world
reproachfully reminds us), and on that I build my proof that it alone is the
Church of God. A teaching authority which is dogmatic and not infallible is a
tyranny and a nuisance: a tyranny, because it binds the consciences of men by
human authority, liable to err; and a nuisance, because as it may err, in the
long-run it certainly will, and ‘if the blind lead the blind, shall they not
both fall into the ditch?’ We see, then, what dogma means. The Holy Catholic
Church always has been and always must be dogmatic. In this, and in no other
sense, is it dogmatic; for it delivers nothing to us to be believed except upon
divine authority, and that which it so delivers was revealed by God.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart
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 Écône 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 — not only for the world of Catholic
Tradition, of which the Society of Saint Pius X has been a part since its
foundation on November 1, 1970, by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, but also for
Pope Leo XIV. The Pontiff has indeed identified the internal reconciliation of
the Church as one of the principal objectives of his pontificate, and he would
find himself, barely more than a year after his election, having to confront a
new tearing of the ecclesial fabric, with the risk of aggravating divisions
that have been awaiting a resolution for decades.
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
— and now taken up again by the Society of Saint Pius X to justify episcopal
consecrations without a pontifical mandate — the argument from the state of
necessity of the faithful in the face of the gravity of the ecclesial crisis
is, at one and the same time, both the weakest and the strongest argument.
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 — which, in
the case of the Church, is the salvation of souls. But who has the authority to
verify the existence of such a state and to determine its beginning and end? It
is evident that this assessment cannot be left to the judgment of the Society
of Saint Pius X itself. Were that the case, one would have to conclude that the
state of necessity ceases when the Society deems it to have ceased —
effectively attributing to it a power of judgment over the Holy See that is
incompatible with the hierarchical and visible constitution of the Church. The
result would be a situation in which a particular body sets itself up as the
ultimate criterion for evaluating the actions of the supreme authority.
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 — or even morally obligated — to consecrate
other bishops without a pontifical mandate, in order to ensure the continuity
of the faith and the sacraments. The consequence would be a proliferation of
parallel jurisdictions and 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 — one of the four
bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 and subsequently expelled
from the Society of Saint Pius X — shows concretely how the logic of the state
of necessity, once detached from a higher principle of authority capable of
delimiting and regulating it, can generate further divisions. 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 — so fragile on the theological and canonical
level — presents itself as the strongest on the pastoral level. Archbishop
Lefebvre was not a speculative theologian or a canonist, but a missionary and a
pastor of souls. In his letter to priests of April 27, 1987, he wrote: "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 —
thereby embracing that very primacy of pastoral practice which is a
foundational mandate of Vatican II. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the
Faith, by contrast, invokes Vatican II, yet does not acknowledge the weight of
the pastoral argument and employs against the Society the terms and concepts of
pre-conciliar theology, in the name of the binding force of doctrine and law.
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 — "In cases of doubt, one must hold
to the existing state of affairs, until certain proof demonstrates the
contrary." Reason suggests that each person remain in the position in
which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does, 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 century that profoundly marked the destiny of the Church
and of the contemporary world.
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 — ten years before the apparitions at Fatima — the great
Pontiff denounced with prophetic clarity the process of self-dissolution of the
decades that would follow. 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 — with its apostasies, its persecutions, and its acts of heroism.
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 — the reigning Pope, Leo XIV. No solution to the
grave problems afflicting the Mystical Body of Christ will be found outside of
him or against him.
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 the pope 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’s canon law from that time
until the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917.
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": ‘Hujus culpas redarguere
præsumit mortalium nullus, quia cunctos ipse judicaturus a nemine est
judicandus, nisi deprehendatur a fide devius (dist. XL, C. 6)’. This is the
professed law of the Church from time immemorial until 1917. When the revised
Code of Canon Law (Codex 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:
‘Canon 1404 – The First See is judged by no
one.‘
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’s faith is to fall
from his chair."
New Commentary on
the Code of Canon Law, John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, and Thomas J. Green eds.
(New York: Paulist, 2000), p. 1,618.
The code is the compilation of laws governing the Church as social
institution. Most of the laws in the code are ecclesiastical positive human
laws grounded upon human authority, however, many of the legal codes are divine
positive laws grounded upon divine authority or upon natural law. If a human law is deleted from
the code, the law ceases to bind. If a law of divine authority is deleted from
the code, the law continue in force for the human authority of the Church
cannot overturn the law of God. This self-evident principle is stated in
the code itself. Consequently, the commentary cited above is a recognition that
the pope cannot be judged "unless he is found to have departed from the
faith" is of divine origin. It is necessarily a divine law because the
papacy is a divine institution established directly by Jesus Christ and
therefore governed in its essence only by divine laws.
Therefore, it is
divine law that permits a heretical pope to be judged. Importantly,
although the law permits a heretical pope to be judged, it says nothing about
who and how a pope is to be judged regarding heresy and it does not address
penalties. It says nothing about removal from office. If the law intended the
removal from office the law itself would have to state the penalty and provide
a mechanism for its determination and enforcement.
So now it falls to opinions regarding the judgment of a heretical pope.
Most theologians believe that it is "understood" that the removal
from office necessarily follows from a judgment of heresy often citing the
scriptural and traditional admonition to avoid heretics:
"A man that
is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he,
that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own
judgment" (Titus 3:10-11).
They argue that since the faithful cannot avoid a pope as head of the
Church therefore the heretical pope must lose his office. A serious problem
with this argument follows, that is, if the faithful cannot "avoid" a
pope, then there must necessarily be a pope who in fact cannot be avoided. Therefore, those who would make
the papacy vacant must also be able to fill the office with a true pope.
But can a heretical pope be avoided? It really becomes a problem for
those who hold the pope as their proximate rule of faith and not, as they
should, dogma. For if dogma is not the proximate rule of faith then the pope
must be, and he then can never be a heretic for whatever the pope holds the
dogma or doctrine to mean is what it then means and only those who disagree
with the pope are heretics. For a Catholic, dogma is the proximate rule of
faith and although a heretical pope can do immeasurable damage to the Church he
cannot touch individual souls of the faithful.
If we adhere to
what the law says and nothing more, we can say this: The definition of
heresy is the denial of dogma. The heretic denies dogma and the faithful keep
dogma. Those who can judge a heretical pope are the faithful. The law does not
distinguish or discriminate among the faithful as to the judgment. Dogma is
articulated for all the faithful. Its understanding does not require any
theological competence. It requires proper definition and correct grammar. Any
of the faithful, that is those who hold dogma as their proximate rule of faith,
can judge a manifestly heretical pope such as Pope Francis. Any of the faithful
can know when a dogma is directly contradicted for the first principles of the
understanding, such as the principle of non-contradiction, are innate in human
nature. Thus all the faithful can judge, in fact must judge, a heretical pope
and so that they may not follow him in his heresy for God has said that 'it is not possible to deceive
His elect' (Matt. 24:24). The law does not specify the judge because the
judgment rests with all the faithful, it is universal. The law does not specify
a penalty because none of the faithful have the competency to impose a penalty
and remove a heretical pope from office. It is God who is the formal and final
cause of the pope and the office of the papacy. It is God who 'marries' the
designated candidate to the papal office and only God can remove him from it
just as God removed the High Priest and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and
the Levitical priesthood which can never be reconstituted.
Those who hold dogma as their proximate rule of faith recognize Pope
Leo as a heretic because he denies dogmatic truth. He preaches a different
gospel so we "receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed
you" (2 John 10). Since he preaches a different gospel, "Let him be
anathema" because we are first "servants of Christ" (Gal 1: 8).
For in dogma, the Church has spoken and the heretic Pope Leo "will not
hear the church, (therefore) let him be to thee as the heathen and publican
(Matt 18:17).
Since Mattei cannot see his way out of his box so he advises, "Reason suggests that each person remain in the position in which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does." Since Mattei cannot conceive a state of necessity from the current corruption of faith and morals maybe an analogy to a person dying of thirst would be more clear. By natural law a man dying from thirst is entitled to preserve his life by drinking available water. The pope tells him he cannot have any water. Mattei advises that he should "remain in the position which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does,", that is, continue to die of thirst. Suppose it is not just one man but an entire family? Suppose that man was so weakened that he could not bring the water to himself? Would Mattei intervene to help? Well, probably not because Mattei could not recognize a state of necessity if he were the man dying of thirst.
Right of the Faithful to Appeal Directly to the
Judgment of the Pope
The holy Roman Church holds the highest
and complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church
which she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of
power from the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles
whose successor is the Roman Pontiff.
And just as to defend the truth of Faith she is held before all other
things, so if any questions shall arise regarding faith they ought to be
defined by her judgment. And to her anyone burdened with affairs
pertaining to the ecclesiastical world can appeal; and in all cases looking
forward to an ecclesiastical examination, recourse can be had to her judgment.
Second Council of Lyons, Denz. 466
And since the Roman Pontiff is at the head of the universal Church by the divine right of apostolic primacy, We teach and declare also that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases pertaining to ecclesiastical examination recourse can be had to his judgment.
First Vatican Council, Denz. 1830
Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know
ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus
Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our
death, of God or of ourselves. Thus without Scripture, whose only object is
Christ, we know nothing, and can see nothing but obscurity and confusion in the
nature of God and in nature itself.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
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.
“As A subsists in
B” usually means A is (in some manner) realized, embodied, or found within
B—not that they are numerically identical. For identity you need a strong
equivalence claim: that they have exactly the same being/existence and are the
very same entity.
So:
If A subsists in
B, it’s consistent that A is distinct from B even if A is present in B (e.g., a
part in a whole, an instance in a substrate, a property inhering in a thing).
Only under
additional premises—often something like “A subsists in B and B subsists in A”
plus an argument that this forces sameness—would identity follow.
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
passage… [By contrast to] the consistent practice of the Gothic style in the
old town… the structures of the new town (of 1880) are uniform only in their
harsh, monotonous ugliness… [A] vast jail… occupies what used to be open land
available for the enjoyment of all. The peaceful old churchyard has been
enclosed and converted into ‘Pleasure Grounds’ for the family at the new
parsonage. The river-banks have been turned into wharfs, the trees felled… the
bridge is closed by a toll-gate… [T]he marks of a free and generous community
have disappeared; the evidence here is for social exclusiveness, a competing
proliferation of [religious] sects, mechanized, dirty and noisy industry, the
pursuit of money, the advent of madness and crime… [W]arehouses 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.
Remember
in your prayers the welfare of Bishop Michel Stobnicki and his apostolate
throughout Poland and central Europe.
“By
their fruits you shall know them”.
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 “shrinking number of priests.”
The Archdiocese is consolidating from 160 to 80 parishes and these 80 parishes
with be consolidated into 24 “pastorates” which means that most priests will cover
three parishes and a few will cover four. The consolidation is because of a “46% decline in Mass
attendance”… “over the last 20 years.” There are four dioceses in the
State of Iowa and Dubuque is the Archdiocese and the metropolitan see for the
State of Iowa because it is the first diocese in the area, established in 1837.
It was initially part of the diocese of St. Louis which itself was established
in 1826 from the Diocese of 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
“Only take heed to yourself and guard your
soul diligently.” Deut 4:9
"It is a sin to believe there is
salvation outside the Catholic Church!"
Blessed Pope Pius IX
PREVIOUS
BULLETIN POSTING WORTH REMEMBERING:
If
men are “obligated” to a “right faith” then “Religious Liberty” is lie!
That by Divine
Law Men are obliged to a Right Faith
As sight by the bodily eye is the principle of the bodily passion of
love, so the beginning of spiritual love must be the intellectual vision of
some object of the same. But the vision of that spiritual object of
understanding, which is God, cannot be had at present by us except through
faith, because God exceeds our natural reason, especially if we consider Him in
that regard under which our happiness consists in enjoying Him.
a.) The divine law directs man to be entirely subject to God. But as
man’s will is subjected to God by loving Him, so his understanding is subjected
to Him by believing Him,—but not by believing anything false, because no
falsehood can be proposed to man by God, who is the truth: hence he who
believes anything false does not believe God.
b.) Whoever holds an erroneous view about a thing, touching the essence
of the thing, does not know the thing. Thus if any one were to fix on the
notion of irrational animal, and take that to be man, he would not know man.
The case would be otherwise, if he was mistaken only about some of the
accidents of man. But in the case of compound beings, though he who errs about
any of the essentials of a thing does not know the thing, absolutely speaking,
still he knows it in a sort of a way: thus he who thinks man to be an
irrational animal knows him generically: but in the case of simple beings this
cannot be,—any error shuts out entirely all knowledge of the thing. But God is
to the utmost degree simple. Therefore whoever errs about God does not know
God. Thus he who believes God to be corporeal has no sort of knowledge of God,
but apprehends something else instead of God. Now as a thing is known, so is it
loved and desired. He then who errs concerning God, can neither love Him nor
desire Him as his last end. Since then the divine law aims at bringing men to
love and desire God, that same law must bind men to have a right faith
concerning God. Hence it is said: Without faith it is impossible to please God
(Heb. xi, 6); and at the head of all other precepts of the law there is
prescribed a right faith in God: Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one Lord
(Deut. vi. 4).
St. Thomas Aquinas, Of God and
His Creatures
The Absolute
Necessity of “Prayer And Penance”
However, in the face of this satanic hatred
of religion, which reminds Us of the "mystery of iniquity" [Thess. 2,
7] referred to by St. Paul, mere human means and expedients are not enough, and
We should consider ourselves wanting in Our apostolic ministry if We did not
point out to mankind those wonderful mysteries of light, that alone contain the
hidden strength to subjugate the unchained powers of darkness. When Our Lord,
coming down from the splendors of Thabor, had healed the boy tormented by the
devil, whom the disciples had not been able to cure, to their humble question:
"Why could not we cast him out?" He made reply in the memorable
words: "This kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting" [Matth.
17, 18-20]. It appears to Us, Venerable Brethren, that these Divine words find
a peculiar application in the evils of our times, which can be averted only by
means of prayer and penance.
Mindful then of our condition, that we are
essentially limited and absolutely dependent on the Supreme Being, before
everything else let us have recourse to prayer. We know through faith how great
is the power of humble, trustful, persevering prayer. To no other pious work
have ever been attached such ample, such universal, such solemn promises as to
prayer: "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and
it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that
seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened" [Matth. 7,
7]. "Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name He
will give it you."
And what object could be more worthy of our
prayer, and more in keeping with the adorable person of Him who is the only
"mediator of God and men, the Man Jesus Christ" [I Tim. 2, 5], than
to beseech Him to preserve on earth faith in one God living and true? Such
prayer bears already in itself a part of its answer; for in the very act of
prayer a man unites himself with God and, so to speak, keeps alive on earth the
idea of God. The man who prays, merely by his humble posture, professes before
the world his faith in the Creator and Lord of all things; joined with others
in prayer, he recognizes, that not only the individual, but human society as a
whole has over it a supreme and absolute Lord. …..The Divine Heart of Jesus
cannot but be moved at the prayers and sacrifices of His Church, and He will
finally say to His Spouse, weeping at His feet under the weight of so many
griefs and woes: "Great is thy faith; be it done to thee as thou
wilt" [Matth. 15, 28.]. Pope Pius
XI, Charitate Christi Compulsi, On the Sacred Heart
