"It is a greater miracle, by the word of
preaching, or by the aid of prayer, to convert a sinner from his sin than to
raise the dead to life."
St. Gregory the Great
PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE
WEEK OF DECEMBER 21st:
Date Day
Feast
Rank Color F/A Mass Time and Intention
|
21
|
Sun
|
4th Sunday of Advent
|
sd
|
V
|
|
Mass
9:00 AM; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confession 8:00
|
|
22
|
Mon
|
St.
Frances Xavier Cabrini, V
|
d2cl
|
W
|
|
Mass
8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
|
|
23
|
Tue
|
St. Thomas, Ap
[From Dec. 21st]
|
d2cl
|
R
|
|
Mass
8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
|
|
24
|
Wed
|
Vigil of the Nativity
|
|
V
|
F/A
|
Mass
8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
|
|
25
|
Thu
|
Nativity of Our Lord
Christmas Day
St. Anastasia, M [2nd
Mass]
|
d1cl
|
W
|
|
Mass 9:00 AM; Rosary of
Reparation 8:30 AM
|
|
26
|
Fri
|
St. Stephen, First Martyr
Within
the Octave
|
d2cl
|
R
|
A
|
Mass
8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
|
|
27
|
Sat
|
St. John, Ap
Within
the Octave
|
d2cl
|
W
|
|
Mass
9:00 AM; Confession 8:00; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM
|
|
28
|
Sun
|
The
Holy Innocents, Mm
Within the Octave
|
d2cl
|
R
|
|
Mass
9:00 AM; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confession 8:00
|
Christmas
Message:
“Without faith, it is
impossible to please God.” The primary duty of every Catholic is to profess and
defend the Catholic faith. Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission defends
the right of every Catholic to the immemorial ecclesiastical traditions, in particular,
the “received and approved rites customarily used in the solemn administration
of the sacraments” (Council of Trent), that without which the faith can neither
be known nor communicated to others. This is done, and can only be done, by
defending Catholic dogmas as dogma.
That is, revealed truths of divine revelation that have been formally and
infallibly defined by the Magisterium and constitute the proximate rule of
faith for every Catholic. Many Catholics are granted by legal concession a
privilege to practice the traditions of our Church on the condition that they
will regard these traditions as matters of mere discipline, that is, simple
accidents that can be changed or eliminated at the discretion of the legislator
at any time and for any reason, and what is worse, they agree to keep their
mouths shut when the dogmas of our faith are trampled underfoot by enemies of
the Catholic faith within the hierarchy of the Church. Simply said, these
Catholics have traded the Catholic faith for crumbs from the table pleading
that obedience will excuse their supine cowardice. Our gift to them this
Christmas is to let them know that it will not.
“Neither hath it entered into
the heart of man what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” Why
cannot the thought of the good things God has prepared for us enter into our
hearts? Is it that pride lifts up the heart and grace cannot flow in? It would
seem so, for every proud spirit, like Satan, exalts itself above God. God
wishes His will to be done; the proud man prefers to do his own. What folly!
God desires His will to be carried out only in those things which reason
approves; the proud man will have his will accomplished without reason, and
even contrary to reason. This is a height to which the streams of grace cannot
rise. “Unless you be converted, and become as this little child,” says our
Lord, “you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” He is Himself the
little and humble Child whom He sets for our Model. He is the Fountain of life,
in whom dwelleth and from whom floweth the fullness of all grace. Prepare,
then, the way for the waters of grace. Cast down the heights of earthly and
proud thoughts. Be conformed to the Son of man, not to the first and fallen
man, for the streams of grace cannot “enter into” the heart of the proud and
carnal—that is, of the earthly-minded man. Cleanse your “eye,” that you may be
capable of beholding the most pure light of faith. Incline your “ear” to the
call of obedience, that you may one day attain to perpetual rest and peace upon
peace. That future life is called “light” because of its serenity, peace
because of its tranquility, a fountain because of its abundance and its
eternity.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
Sermon on the Vigil of the Nativity
"He that cometh to God, must believe
(Heb 11, 6). Faith is the proximate and
proportionate means whereby the soul is united with God; for such is the
likeness between itself and God, that seeing God and believing in Him… God
manifests Himself to the soul in divine light which passes all
understanding. And therefore, the
greater the faith of the soul, the more closely is it united with
God."
St. John of the Cross
Today, Holy Mother Church makes a last effort
to stir up the devotion of her children.
She leads them to the desert; she shows them John the Baptist, upon
whose mission she instructed them on the third Sunday. The voice of the austere Precursor resounds
through the wilderness, and penetrates even into the cities. It preaches penance, and the obligation men
are under of preparing by self-purification for the coming of Christ. Let us retire from the world during these
next few days; or if that may not be by reason of our external duties, let us
retire into the quiet of our own hearts and confess our iniquities, as did
those true Israelites, who came, full of compunction and faith in the Messiah,
to the Baptist, there to make perfect their preparation for worthily receiving
the Redeemer on the day of His appearing to the world.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year,
Fourth Sunday of Advent
BEHOLD THE SAVIOR COMES FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT
PRESENCE OF GOD ‑ I place myself at the
feet of Jesus and ask Him to prepare my heart for His imminent coming.
MEDITATION:
I.
“Call together the nations, tell it among the people and say: Behold our Savior
cometh!” (RB). The message becomes more and more urgent: in a few days,
the Word of God made flesh will show Himself to the world. We must hasten our
preparations and make our hearts worthy of Him.
The incarnation of the Word is the greatest
proof of God’s infinite love for men; today’s liturgy very appropriately
recalls to our mind the wonderful words: “I have loved thee with an everlasting
love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee” (Jer. 3I: 3).
Yes, God has loved man from all eternity, and in order to draw him to Himself,
He did not hesitate to send “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom
8: 3). With hearts full of love, we must run to meet Love who is about to
appear “incarnate” in the Infant Jesus. May it be a love that is faithful in
great things as well as in small, an ingenious love that is always seeking
opportunities to repay God’s infinite love. “Love is repaid by love!” This is
the motto which has made saints, and spurred a multitude of souls to greater
generosity.
With this love prepare for Christmas, be in
this love faithful, for as St. Paul says in the Epistle (I Cor 4: 1‑5),
“What we desire is that everyone may be found faithful.”
2. “Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight His paths. Every valley shall be filled; and every mountain and
hill shall be brought low.” The voice of John the Baptist, the great Advent
preacher, is heard again in today’s Gospel (Lk 3: 1-16), inviting us to
prepare “the way of the Lord.”
This invitation is especially a call to
humility; John was not only the herald of this virtue, but its model too. We
know, by the testimony of Jesus Himself, that he was “more than a prophet” and that “there hath not
risen among them, that are born of women, a greater than John the Baptist” (Mt
11: 9-11). John claimed to be nothing more than a mere voice, “the voice of
one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord,” and declared
that he baptized only with water, while another would come who would baptize in
the Holy Spirit, another of whom John protested himself unworthy to loose “the
latchet of His shoe” (Jn 1:23-27). And further, speaking of the Savior’s
coming, John adds, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (ibid. 3:30).
Today’s Office gathers up all this magnificent testimony of St. John the
Baptist, as if to give us a concrete idea of the profound sentiments of
humility with which, in our heart, we ought to make smooth “the way of the
Lord.” If the valleys, that is, our deficiencies, are to be filled up by love,
then the mountains and hills, that is, the vain pretenses of pride, must be
made low by humility.
A heart filled with self‑love and pride
cannot be filled with God, and too small will be the place reserved in it for
the sweet Babe of Bethlehem.
COLLOQUY:
“O almighty, omnipotent, eternal God, what
greater proof of love could You give Your poor creatures than the gift of Your
Word, Your only‑begotten Son? For our sake, You clothed with human flesh,
like the flesh of sin, Him who is eternal splendor, the perfect image of Your
substance!
“God of goodness, who art above all goodness,
You alone art sovereign good! You gave us the Word, Your only Son, to live with
us, to assume our evil, corrupt nature. Why did You make us such a gift? Out of
love, because You loved us even before we existed.
“O eternal Greatness, O fathomless Bounty, You
lowered Yourself to ennoble mankind! Wherever I turn, I can see nothing but the
abyss and fire of Your charity” (St. Catherine of Siena).
“Whenever I think of Christ, I should
remember... how great is Your love, O Father, which in Jesus has given us a
pledge of such great tenderness; for love begets love and although I am only a
beginner and very wicked, I shall strive ever to bear this in mind and awaken
my own love. Once You, O Father, do me the favor of implanting this love in my
heart, everything will become easy for me and I shall get things done in a very
short time and with very little labor. O my God, give me this love, since You
know how much I need it, for the sake of the love You bore us and through Your
glorious Son who revealed it to us, at such great cost to Himself” (T.J.
Life, 22).
Love will fill the valleys in my heart, and
humility will level its mountains and hills. Destroy my pride, arrogance, and
vanity, O Lord, by the powerful fire of Your love. By the might of Your all‑powerful
arm, tear out of my heart every fiber which is infected with the poison of self‑love,
and which, therefore, does not belong to You. O Lord, I, too, wish to decrease,
decrease that You may increase in me, so that on Christmas day You may find my
heart entirely empty and free and therefore ready for the total invasion of
Your love.
The place is Bethlehem,
Out of Bethlehem, says the Prophet, shall he come forth that is to be
the Ruler in Israel. The Jewish
Priests are well aware of the prophecy, and in a few days hence will tell it to
Herod. But why was this insignificant
town chosen in preference to every other to be the birth-place of Jesus? Be attentive, Christians, to the
mystery! The name of this City of David
signifies the House of Bread : therefore did he who is the living
Bread come down from heaven, choose it for his first visible home. Our Fathers did eat manna in the desert
and are dead, but lo! Here is the Saviour of the world, come to give life
to his creature Man by means of his own divine Flesh, which is meat indeed. Up to this time the Creator and the creature
had been separated from each other; henceforth they shall abide together in
closest union. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the manna which fed but the
body, is now replaced by the Ark of a New Covenant, purer and incorruptible
than the other : the incomparable Virgin Mary, who gives us Jesus, the Bread
of Angels, the nourishment which will give us a divine transformation; for
this Jesus himself has said : He that eateth my flesh abideth in me, and I
in him.
Dom Gueranger, The
Liturgical Year, The Mystery of Christmas
Christmas Day Mass
December 25, 2025
The Word,
begotten from all eternity by the Father, has raised into personal union with
Himself the blessed Fruit of the virginal womb of Mary; in other words the
human and divine natures are joined in our Lord in the unity of a single Person
– the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
Further, since when we speak of a son we mean a person, Jesus must be
called the Son of God, because as the Son of God He is a Divine Person. From this it follows, that our Lady is called
the Mother of God; not that she has begotten the ‘word but because from her is
derived the humanity that the Word has united to Himself in the mystery of the
Incarnation.
Of this mystery the first manifestation to
the world was the birth of our Lord at Bethlehem. Whence we see the reason why every year at
Christmas the Church says “Puer natus est nobis et Filius datus est nobis.”
(“Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given”). It is the Son of God, who is now begotten of
the Father as Man in the day of the Incarnation: Ego hodie genui te. “By the taking of the Manhood into God,” says
St. Athanasius, the Son of Mary is born to the divine Life. As it was at midnight that our Lady brought
her first-born Son into the world and laid Him in a cradle, so Mass is
celebrated at midnight in St. Mary Major, where the relics of the crib are
kept.
“With great devotion,” says St. Leo, “has
the Incarnate Word given Himself to win for us the fight against Satan, for not
in His divine Majesty but in the weakness of our flesh He waged war against
this cruel enemy.” The victory which He
has gained, in spite of His weakness, shows Him to be God. It is “God of God, Light of Light,” (Credo) who
disperses the darkness of sin. “Christ
is the true Light who comes to enlighten the world, plunged in darkness”
(Collect). “By the mystery of the Word
made Flesh,” says the Preface, “the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the
eyes of our mind: so that while we acknowledge Him as God seen by men, we may
be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen.”
“The grace of God our Savior hath appeared to all men, instructing us to
deny ungodliness and worldly desires…that He might redeem us from all iniquity,
and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, and zealous in good works”
(Epistle). He is made like unto us that
we may become like unto Him (Secret), and by His example may be enabled to live
a holy life (Postcommunion). Thus shall
we live soberly, justly, and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope
and coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ”
(Epistle). As we saw in Advent, the
first Coming of our Lord prepares us for the second.
INTROIT:
Isa.
9: A child is born to us, and a son is given to us; whose government is upon
his shoulder; and his name shall be called the Angel of Great Counsel.
Ps.
97: Sing
ye to the Lord a new canticle, for he hath done wonderful things. Glory be, etc. A
child is born to us, etc.
COLLECT:
Grant,
we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the new birth of Thy only-begotten Son in
the flesh may deliver us who are held by the old bondage under the yoke of sin.
Through the same Jesus Christ, etc.
EPISTLE: Heb. 1:1-12
God, who, at sundry times and in
divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of
all, In these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his
glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of
his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty
on high. Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath inherited a more
excellent name than they. For to which of the angels hath he said at any time,
Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a
Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the first
begotten into the world, he saith: And let all the angels of God adore him. And
to the angels indeed he saith: He that maketh his angels spirits, and his
ministers a flame of fire. But to the Son: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever: a sceptre of justice is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved
justice, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And: Thou in the beginning, O Lord,
didst found the earth: and the works of thy hands are the heavens. They shall
perish, but thou shalt continue: and they shall all grow old as a garment. And
as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art
the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.
INSTRUCTION: The greatness of Jesus Christ, the dignity
of His divinity and humanity, the love and goodness of His Heavenly Father, who
has given Him to us as our teacher, could not be more gloriously described than
in this epistle. Learn from it how much
you are obliged, because of this, to serve God, to be grateful to Him, and to
follow Christ who governs heaven and earth; and whom the angels serve.
ASPIRATION: I thank Thee, a thousand times,
O Heavenly Father, that Thou hast spoken to us through Thy only-begotten Son,
in whom Thou art well pleased. With my
whole heart, O Father of Mercy, will I listen to Him, and be obedient to all
His instructions.
GRADUAL:
Ps.
97: All the ends of the world have seen
the salvation of our God: sing joyful to God, all the earth. The Lord
hath made known his salvation; he hath revealed his justice in the sight of the
Gentiles.
Alleluia,
alleluia. A sanctified day hath shown
upon us. Come, ye Gentiles, and adore
the Lord for this day a great light hath descended upon the earth. Alleluia.
GOSPEL: John 1, 1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was
made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth
in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from
God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the
light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to
give testimony of the light. That was the true light, which enlighteneth every
man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by
him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him
not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of
God, to them that believe in his name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the
only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
What
does St. John mean by the Word?
That the Son of God, who was begotten and brought forth like a word of
the mouth from the Father, but in a manner incomprehensible and inscrutable to
us, is one with the Father in the divine nature, but different from Him in
person; He is also called Word of the Father, because through Him the Father
has spoken and made known the divine will. (Heb. 1,2; Matt. 17, 5)
What
is meant by : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God?
When all things had their beginning the Son of God already was, not
made or created, but born of the Father from eternity, with whom and in whom He
therefore existed from all eternity. St.
John here teaches the divinity, the eternity, and the equality of Christ with
the Father.
What
is meant by: All things were made by Him?
That the Son of God, Himself true God, with the Father and the Holy
Ghost, has made all things, visible and invisible.
What
is meant by: In Him was the life?
It means: The Son of God is the origin and fountain of the spiritual
life of our souls upon earth, and of the glorious life in eternity. To give this true life to us, He became man,
whereby we are born again, newly created, as it were, from the death of sin to
the life of grace and righteousness.
Why
is this life the light of men?
Because this true life of the soul which Christ has obtained for us,
consists in the ever increasing knowledge of God and his salvation, which knowledge
also comes from Christ, either externally through holy words and examples, or
inwardly by divine inspiration.
How
did the light shine in darkness?
The Son of God has given the necessary grace to find the true faith to
mankind. He still imparts to all men the
necessary light, especially by his holy Word which is preached to them, but the
hardened sinners reject it, because they wish not to hear of faith and
repentance.
How
did St. John the Baptist bear witness of the light?
By announcing the Saviour to the world, and even pointing Him out when
He appeared.
Who
receive Christ?
Those who walk in the light of His grace, cooperate with it, and so
become the children of God.
How
are we to understand: The Word was made flesh?
We are to understand by it that the Word was not changed into human
nature, but that He became incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and
was made man, thus uniting in Himself two natures, the divine and the
human. So Christ is true God, and as the
same time true man, therefore God-Man; consequently there are in Christ two
wills, the divine and the human. In His humanity He is less than the Father
(John 14, 28), in His divinity He is equal to the Father (John 10, 20). His humanity filled Him with a natural terror
of His sufferings, but His divinity was perfectly united with the will of His
Heavenly Father, and could pray: Not my will, but thine be done.
ASPIRATION: O God, our Heavenly Father, who this night hast given to us sinners,
in the form of a child from the immaculate womb of Mary, Thine only-begotten
Son as our Mediator and Redeemer, we give Thee thanks with heart and lips, and
humbly beseech Thee that Thou wilt never permit us to forget such a grace, and
that we may sustain ourselves by it in all temptations; that we may be ever
grateful to Thee for it, and until death praise, honor, and serve Thee in
sanctity. Amen
OFFERTORY:
Ps.
88: Thine are the heavens, and thine is
the earth, the world and the fullness thereof thou hast founded; justice and
judgment are the preparation of thy throne.
SECRET:
Sanctify,
O Lord, our offerings by the new birth of Thine only-begotten Son, and cleanse
us from the stains of our sins. Through
the same Lord, etc.
PREFACE:
It
is truly meet and just, right and profitable unto salvation, that we should at
all times and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father
almighty, everlasting God. For by the
mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the
eyes of our mind: so that while we acknowledge Him as God seen by men, we may
be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen.
And therefore with the angels and archangels, the thrones and dominions,
and the whole host of the heavenly army we sing a hymn to Thy glory, saying
again and again: Holy, Holy, Holy, etc.
THIRD PRAYER OF THE CANON:
We
pray in union with and keep that most holy night, in which the spotless
virginity of the blessed Mary brought forth a Savior to this world; and also
reverence the memory, first of the same glorious Mary, ever virgin, mother of
the same our God and Lord Jesus Christ; likewise of thy blessed apostles and
martyrs, Peter and Paul, etc.
COMMUNION:
Ps.
97: All the ends of the world have seen
the salvation of our God.
POSTCOMMUNION:
Grant, we beseech thee, O almighty
God: that as the Saviour of the world, born today, has regenerated us to a
divine life, so He may further bestow upon us the gift of immortality. Who liveth and reigneth, etc.
LAST GOSPEL: Matt. 2, 1-12
When Jesus therefore was born in
Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold, there came wise men from
the east to Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For
we have seen his star in the east, and are come to adore him. And king Herod
hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling together
all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where
Christ should be born. But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda. For so it is
written by the prophet: And thou Bethlehem the land of Juda art not the least
among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come forth the captain that
shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, privately calling the wise men,
learned diligently of them the time of the star which appeared to them; And
sending them into Bethlehem, said: Go and diligently inquire after the child,
and when you have found him, bring me word again, that I also may come to adore
him. Who having heard the king, went their way; and behold the star which they
had seen in the east, went before them, until it came and stood over where the
child was. And seeing the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And
entering into the house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling
down they adored him; and opening their treasures, they offered him gifts;
gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having received an answer in sleep that they
should not return to Herod, they went back another way into their country.
A Christmas Offering By Our Forefathers In
Our Holy Faith
Diocletian and his colleagues in the Empire had
recently published the famous edict of persecution, which waged against the
Church the fiercest war she had ever sustained.
The edict was torn down from the Emperor’s palace at Nicomedia by one of
the Christians, who paid for the holy daring by a glorious martyrdom. The faithful of the same city were ready for
the combat, and feared not to brave the Emperor’s power by continuing to
frequent their Church, which was condemned to be pulled down. Christmas Day came, and several thousands of
them had assembled there, in order to celebrate, for the last time within those
walls, the Nativity of our Saviour.
Being informed of it, the Emperor became furious, and sent one of the
officers of his court to order the Church doors to be fastened, and a fire to
be enkindled on each side of the building.
This being done, the clang of the trumpets was heard, and then a
herald’s voice proclaiming to the faithful, in the Emperor’s name, that they
who wished to save their lives would be permitted to leave the Basilica, on the
condition of their offering incense on an altar of Jupiter, which had been
placed near the door; but that otherwise all were to be left a prey to the
flames. One of the Christians thus
answered, in the name of the whole assembly; ‘We are all of us Christians; we
honour Christ as the one only God and King; and we are all ready to lay down
our lives for him on this Day.’ The
soldiers were commanded to set fire to the Church which was soon an immense
flame. Whence was offered to the Son of
God – who deigned to begin in this same day the human life he had assumed- the
generous holocaust of these thousands of lives, laid down as witness to his
having come into this world.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year
The Martyrs shall bear the closest resemblance to
their Lord and King. They shall be, as
he said, like Lambs among wolves. The
world shall be strong, and they shall be weak and defenseless: so much the
grander will be the victory of the Martyrs, and the greater the glory of God
who gives them to conquer. The Apostle
tells us that Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of the God, the
Martyrs, immolated, and yet conquerors of the world, will prove, with a
testimony which even the world itself will understand, that the Christ whom
they confessed, and who gave them constancy and victory, is in very deed the
power and the wisdom of God. We repeat,
then it is just that the Martyrs should share in all the triumphs of the
Man-God, and that the liturgical Cycle should glorify them as does the Church
herself, who puts their sacred Relics in her altar-stones; for thus the
Sacrifice of their glorified Lord and Head is never celebrated without they
themselves being offered together with him in the unity of his mystical
Body.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of
St. Stephen, Martyr
The first recompense given by Jesus to his Beloved
John, a profound penetration into divine Mysteries: The Word Was God, and this
Word Was Made Flesh for the salvation of mankind. The second was the imparting to him of a most
ardent charity, which was equally a grace consequent upon his angelic purity,
for purity unburdens the soul from groveling egotistic affections, and raises
it to a chaste and generous love. John
had treasured up in his heart the Discourses of his Master: he made them
known to the Church, and especially that divine one of the Last Supper, wherein
Jesus had poured forth his whole Soul to his own, whom he had always
tenderly loved, but most so at the end. He wrote his Epistles, and Charity is
his subject: God is Charity- he that loveth not, knoweth not God- perfect
Charity casteth out fear.
Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of St.
John the Apostle
"Full of Grace" - This is only said of Our Lord, the Blessed
Virgin Mary and, St. Stephen
And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude,
did great wonders and signs among the people. [....] And all that sat in the council, looking
on him, saw his face as if it had been the face of an angel. Acts 6: 8 & 15
The Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of our Emmanuel,
blesses, in his name, a Sword and Helmet, which are to be sent to some Catholic
warrior who has deserved well of the Christian world. The sword is sent to some Prince, whom the
Vicar of Christ wishes to honour in the name of Jesus, who is King : for the
Angel said to Mary : the Lord will give unto him the Throne of David his
father. It is from him alone that
the power of the sword comes, for God said to Cyrus : I have girded thee
with the sword; and the Psalmist thus speaks to Christ of God : Gird thy
Sword upon thy thigh, O thou most Mighty!
And because the Sword should not be drawn save in the cause of justice,
it is for that reason that a Sword is blessed on the Night, in the midst of
which rises, born unto us, the divine Sun of Justice. On the Helmet, which is both the ornament and
protection of the head, there is worked, in pearls, the Dove, which is the
emblem of the Holy Ghost; and this to teach him who wears it that it is not
from passion or ambition that he must use his sword, but solely under the
guidance of the divine Spirit, and from a motive of spreading the Kingdom of
Christ.
Cardinal Reginald Pole to Queen Mary of England and to
Philip II of Spain, her husband.
“Herod, sending, killed all
the Children!”
O
God, whose praise the holy Martyrs, the Innocents, published this day, not by
speaking, but by dying; mortify our vicious inclinations: that we may show
forth in our actions Thy faith which we profess with our lips.
Roman
Missal, Collect, Feast of the Holy Innocents
Let us, my Brethren, rejoice this day is sacred, not
because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of him who is the
invisible Creator of the sun… He chose this day whereon to be born, as he chose
the Mother of whom to be born, and he made both the day and the Mother. The day he chose was that on which the light
begins to increase, and it typifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior
man day by day. For the eternal Creator
having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony
with the rest of his creation.
St. Augustine
We must regard
pride as the king of all vices and follow the wise advice given by the king of Syria
to his captains: "You shall not fight against any, small or great, but
against the king only" (3 Kings, 23, 31). Judith too, by killing the
proud Holofernes, conquered the whole Assyrian army. And David triumphed over
all the Philistines by slaying the proud Goliath; and in like manner we shall
also triumph, because by conquering pride we shall have subdued all other
vices. King David erred in one thing, for knowing Absalom to be the chief of
the rebels he yet commanded that he should neither be killed nor hurt:
"Save me the boy Absalom" (2 Kings, 17, 15). Alas, how many imitators
he has found! We know full well that pride is the chief rebel among all our
passions, but notwithstanding it is the one which we seem to respect the most,
and which we almost fear to offend displaying even a tendency to encourage it.
Fr. Cajetan Mary
da Bergamo, Humility of Heart
Of course charity itself is
impossible without faith and hope. Could
anyone love a man if he did not believe it was possible to be or become his
friend? Or if he despaired of ever
gaining his friendship? So it is with
man in relation to God as He is in Himself.
Man must believe it is possible to attain a perfect friendship with God
in Heaven and he must hope to attain this friendship through God’s power before
he can love God as his supernatural destiny.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P., My
Way of Life, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas
Those therefore who after the manner of
wicked heretics dare to set aside Ecclesiastical Traditions, and to invent any
kind of novelty, or to reject any of those things entrusted to the Church, or
who wrongfully and outrageously devise the destruction of any of those
Traditions enshrined in the Catholic Church, are to be punished thus: IF THEY
ARE BISHOPS, WE ORDER THEM TO BE DEPOSED; BUT IF THEY ARE MONKS OR LAY PERSONS,
WE COMMAND THEM TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THE COMMUNITY. Second Council of Nicaea 787
A.D.
The Church is built on the Rock
of Peter, and he who eats the Lamb outside this holy dwelling has no part with
God.
Blessed Pope Pius IX
THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD CHRISTMAS DAY ‑ THE SAVIOR HAS APPEARED
PRESENCE OF GOD ‑ Behold, I am at the
feet of my Incarnate God, who has become a Child for love of me! I adore, I
thank, I love!
MEDITATION:
I.
God is charity: He has loved us with an everlasting love! "I think God
must have said to Himself: Man does not love Me because he does not see Me; I
will show Myself to him and thus make him love Me. God's love for man was very
great, and had been great from all eternity, but this love had not yet
become visible.... Then, it really appeared; the Son of God let Himself be seen
as a tiny Babe in a stable, lying on a little straw" (St. Alphonsus).
This is the mystery of the Nativity; this is St. Paul's exultant cry: "The
grace of God our Savior hath appeared to all men .... The goodness and kindness
of God our Savior appeared" (Ep Ist and 2nd Masses: (Tim 2, 11‑15;
3, 4‑7). These are the blessed tidings "of great joy" brought
by the Angel to the shepherds; "This day is born to you a Savior, who is
Christ the Lord!" (Gosp 1st Mass: Lk 2,1‑14). The texts in today's
liturgy, following each other in tones of increasing exultation, sing the
praises of the sweet Child Jesus, the Word made Man, living and breathing among
us: "Whom have you seen, O shepherds? Speak and tell us who has appeared
on earth? We saw the new‑born Child and choirs of angels loudly praising
the Lord" (RB). "Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth exult
in the presence of the Lord!" (RM). Our God is here in the midst of
us, He has become one of us. "A Child is born to us, a Son is given to us
.... His name is Admirable, God, Prince of peace, Father of the world to
come!... Rejoice, O daughter of Sion, sing, O daughter of Jerusalem....
Rejoice, ye inhabitants of the earth! Come, ye nations, adore the Lord!" (RB).
Come! Come, adore, listen, and rejoice! Jesus, the Word of the Father, speaks
to us a wonderful word: God loves you!
2.
The three Christmas Masses place before us a majestic picture: the touching
description of the birth of Jesus as man alternates with the sublime one of the
eternal birth of the Word in the bosom of the Father; and there are also
allusions to Christ's birth in our souls by grace. However, this three‑fold
birth is but one single manifestation of God who is Charity. No one on earth
could know God's love; but the Word, who is in the bosom of the Father, knows
it and can reveal it to us. The Word was made flesh and has shown to us the
love of God. Through the Word, God's incomprehensible, invisible charity is
made manifest and tangible in the sweet little Babe, who from the manger holds
out His arms to us. Today's Preface solemnly declares it: "O eternal God,
because of the mystery of the Word made flesh, the light of Thy glory hath
shone anew upon the eyes of our mind: that while we acknowledge Him to be God
visible, He may draw us to the love of things invisible." Yes, this "Child,
wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger" is our God, who, for
us, has made Himself visible: our God, who shows us in the most concrete way
His infinite charity. One cannot contemplate little Jesus without being
captivated and enraptured by the infinite love which has given Him to us. The
Infant Jesus reveals to us God's love, He manifests it in the clearest, most
touching way. St. Paul says in the Epistle of the Third Mass (Heb 1, 1‑12):
"God, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son . . . the brightness of
His glory, and the figure of His substance." Jesus, the Incarnate Word, in
His silence as a helpless Child, speaks to us and reveals to us the substance
of God: His charity.
COLLOQUY:
"O all‑powerful and eternal
Trinity! O sweet, ineffable charity! Who would not be inflamed by such love?
What heart could keep itself from being consumed by You?
"O abyss of charity! You have so closely
bound Yourself to Your creatures that it seems that You cannot live without
them! Nevertheless You are our God! You have no need of us. Our good adds
nothing to Your greatness, for You are immutable. Our misfortune cannot harm
You, O God, sovereign, eternal Goodness! Then what urges You to such mercy?
Love ‑ for You have no obligation toward us and no need of us. Then, O
infinite God, who brings You to me, a little creature? No one but Yourself, O
Fire of Love! Love alone has always urged You, and love still urges You!
"O sovereign sweetness, You have deigned
to unite Yourself to our bitterness; You, brilliance, with our darkness; You,
wisdom, with our stupidity; You, life, with death; You, who are infinite, with
us who are finite!" (St. Catherine of Siena)
O sweet Incarnate Word, O most amiable Infant
Jesus, behold me at last at Your feet; let me contemplate You; permit me to
delight in Your beauty, Your goodness, Your immense charity! In this little
Child who smiles, and holds out His baby arms to me, I find Your infinite love,
living, breathing ‑ for this Babe is You, O my God! How can I ever thank
You for Your exceeding love? How can I ever make You a return of love?
"You, who are so great and rich, have
made Yourself little and poor for us! You chose to be born far from home, in a
stable, to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, to be nourished at Your Virgin
Mother's breast, to be laid in a manger between an ox and an ass. Today is the
dawn of the new redemption, of the old restoration, of eternal happiness;
today, the heavens have distilled honey throughout the whole world! Then, O my
soul, kiss this divine manger, press your lips to the Infant’s feet and embrace
them. Meditate on the shepherds watching
their flocks, contemplate the angelic hosts, prepare to join in the heavenly
melody singing with your lips and with your heart: 'Glory to God in the
highest, and peace on earth to men of good will'"! (St. Bonaventure)
“I will praise the Lord at all
times; His praise shall be always in my mouth”
To thank God, finally, is,
moreover, salutary, that is, promotes the temporal and eternal welfare,
inasmuch as it enriches the soul with great blessings and precious graces.
Gratitude opens to us the treasures of the divine liberality. Inasmuch as we
sincerely thank God for benefits received, we draw down new and more special
graces upon ourselves. God takes complacency in a grateful heart; nothing shall
be wanting to it. Hence gratitude is salutary, profitable and rich in
blessings; while ingratitude is a scorching wind that dries up the spring of
divine goodness, the dew of heavenly mercy and the streams of grace. “The gifts
of grace cannot abound or flow in us, because we are ungrateful to the Giver;
and because we do not return them all to the fountain-head. For grace will ever
be given him who dutifully returns thanks. Be grateful then for the least, and
thou shalt be worthy to receive greater things” (Imit. of Chr. II, 10). To
cultivate a spirit of gratitude toward God is, therefore, a practice “truly
meet and just, right and salutary”: but how far must we go — what is the extent
of this thanksgiving? This is made known by the words, that we “should always
and in all places” (semper et ubique)
give thanks. There is no time or place in which we should not from the fulness
of our heart say: Deo gratias! — “Thanks be to God!” Even in the hour of tribulation and in the
night of adversity, even when on the couch of suffering and in a home of direst
poverty, gratitude towards God should never be silent on our lips or in our
heart. When St. Elizabeth on a cold winter’s night wandered about an outcast
and forsaken, she entered a Franciscan church and had the Te Deurn sung, to thank the Lord for the tribulations wherewith He
had in His mercy visited her. Hence do you also repeat with the Psalmist: “I
will praise the Lord at all times; His praise shall be always in my mouth” (Ps.
33, 2).
Rev. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
St. Francis de
Sales, on his Catholic Mission
In writing to you it is
unnecessary to explain my difficulties and the needs of this diocese, I look
upon Geneva as a wretched daughter of Babylon, as a city sucked into the jaws
of heresy. As for myself I am as one sent to preach to an apostate people, hard
of countenance and hard of heart, and am as a dweller in the abode of fierce
scorpions. Wherefore I beseech you to intercede for me with the Holy See, and
help me against the workers of iniquity. Do you, with the spirit of the mouth
of Christ, with the two-edged sword of the Annals, which you have wielded with
such power hitherto, do what you can to procure protection for me, living in
the midst of this heretical people.
St. Francis de Sales, Letter to
Cardinal Cesare Baronius, the author of the Annals,
shortly before the Cardinals death
Purity means that crystalline,
morning-fresh artlessness and selflessness in relating to the world, as it
becomes a reality in the person when the shock of a deep pain brings him to the
limits of existence or when the nearness of death touches him. In Sacred Scripture it says, “Serious illness
sobers the soul” (Sir. 31:2); this sobriety belongs to the essence of purity…
Purity is the unreserved openness of the entire being, from which alone the
word can be spoken: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk. 1:38)….purity not
only is the fruit of purification but also comprises in itself the readiness to
accept God’s purifications, perhaps terrible and deadly, with the brave
openness of a trusting heart and so experiences its fertile and transforming
power.
Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human
Heart
"Catholics who remain faithful to TRADITION
even if they are reduced to but a handful, they are the True Church of Jesus
Christ." St. Athanasius
It is indeed the most powerful means to arouse a man, to make this
serious reflection: I am going to perform the holy Consecration, to hold God in
my hands, to converse with Him and to receive Him into my heart. Who will not be inflamed with love by making
the reflection to himself: I am on the point of receiving the Infinite
Goodness? Who does not tremble and
shudder out of a loving awe toward Him, before whom the heavenly Powers
themselves shudder and tremble? Who does
not tremble with the fear of offending Him, and does not tremble with the
desire to praise and serve Him? Who does
not experience sorrow, confusion and remorse for having offended the Divine
Master, whom he beholds before him? Who
is not filled with confidence by such a pledge?
Who does not endeavor - having such a Viaticum with him in the desert of
this world - to do penance? In short,
such a meditation, dictated by the spirit of God, entirely transforms man, and
carries him away and beside himself, - at one time by a sense of reverence, now
by love, again by other powerful emotions.
How cautions should we not be to keep ourselves wholly and unreservedly
for Christ, who so greatly honors us, as to descend unto us and place Himself
in our hands, when the words of Consecration are pronounced.
St. John of the Cross, Reflection for priests about to offer the Holy
Mass
WITH ALL HER
HEART - DEVOUT SOUL SHOULD DESIRE UNION WITH CHRIST IN THE SACRAMENT
THE DISCIPLE:
LET it be granted me to find You
alone, O Christ, to open to You my whole heart, to enjoy You as my soul
desires, to be disturbed by no one, to be moved and troubled by no creature,
that You may speak to me and I to You alone, as a lover speaks to his loved
one, and friend converses with friend.
I pray for this, I desire
this, that I may be completely united to You and may withdraw my heart from all
created things, learning to relish the celestial and the eternal through Holy
Communion and the frequent celebration of Mass.
Ah Lord God, when shall I be
completely united to You and absorbed by You, with self utterly forgotten? You in me and I in You? Grant that we may remain so together. You in truth are my Beloved, chosen from
thousands, in Whom my soul is happy to dwell all the days of her life. You are in truth my pledge of peace, in Whom
is the greatest peace and true rest, without Whom there is toil and sorrow and
infinite misery.
You truly are the hidden
God. Your counsel is not with the
wicked, and Your conversation is rather with the humble and the simple.
O how kind is Your spirit,
Lord, Who in order to show Your sweetness toward Your children, deign to feed
them with the sweetest of bread, bread come down from heaven! Surely there is no other people so fortunate
as to have their god near them, as You, our God, are present everywhere to the
faithful, to whom You give Yourself to be eaten and enjoyed for their daily
solace and the raising of their hearts to heaven.
Indeed, what other nation is
so renowned as the Christian peoples?
What creature under heaven is so favored as the devout soul to whom God
comes, to feed her with His glorious Flesh?
O unspeakable grace! O wonderful
condescension! O love beyond measure,
singularly bestowed upon man!
What return shall I make to
the Lord for this love, this grace so boundless? There is nothing I can give more pleasing
than to offer my heart completely to my God, uniting it closely with His. Then
shall all my inner self be glad when my soul is perfectly united with God. Then will He say to me: "If you will be
with Me, I will be with you." And I
will answer Him: "Deign, O Lord, to remain with me. I will gladly be with You. This is my one desire, that my heart may be
united with You."
Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of
Christ, Thanksgiving after Holy Communion
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
Pope
Francis' Ideological Opinion:
For me, ecumenism is a priority. Today, there's the ecumenism of blood.
In some countries they kill Christians because they wear a cross or have a
Bible, and before killing them they don't ask if they're Anglicans, Lutherans,
Catholic or Orthodox. The blood is mixed. For those who kill, we're Christians.
We're united in blood, even if among ourselves we still haven't succeeded in taking
the necessary steps towards unity and perhaps the moment hasn't arrived. Unity
is a grace that we have to ask for. In Hamburg [Germany], I knew a pastor who
was working on the beatification cause of a Catholic priest sent to the
guillotine by the Nazis because he was teaching catechism to children. After
him in the line-up of the condemned was a Lutheran pastor killed for the same
reason. Their blood was mixed. The pastor told me he'd gone to his bishop and
said to him: 'I'll continue to pursue the cause, but both of them together, not
just the Catholic.' That's the ecumenism of blood. It exists today too, all you
have to do is read the papers. Those who kill Christians don't ask for our ID
cards to know which church you were baptized in. We have to take this reality
into consideration.
Pope Francis, interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa
reporter, Andrea Tornielli
Catholic
Dogmatic Truth:
The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that
none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also
Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that
they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his
angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is
the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this
unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone
can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other
works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let
his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for
the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and
the unity of the Catholic Church.
Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino
The
“Traditional Evangelization” – Conversion to the True Faith in the Catholic
Church
· Go
ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth
and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Jesus Christ, Mark 16, 15-16
· “There
is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is
saved.” Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council 1215
· “We
declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the
salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Pope
Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam,
1302
· “The
most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of
those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and
heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will
go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless
before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of
this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit
by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an
eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of
Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his
almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the
Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity
of the Catholic Church.” Pope Eugene IV, Cantate
Dominio, 1441
The “Old-New
Evangelization” of Vatican II – Ecumenical Convergence replaced Conversion
[According to Lumen Gentium] the Catholic Church has
no right to absorb the other Churches... [A] basic unity — of Churches that
remain Churches, yet become one Church — must replace the idea of conversion,
even though conversion retains its meaningfulness for those in conscience
motivated to seek it.
Fr. Josef Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II
All popes
since Vatican II have rejected Proselytism
The “Old-New
Evangelization” of Vatican II – Ecumenical Convergence replaced Conversion
[According to Lumen Gentium] the Catholic Church has
no right to absorb the other Churches... [A] basic unity — of Churches that
remain Churches, yet become one Church — must replace the idea of conversion,
even though conversion retains its meaningfulness for those in conscience
motivated to seek it.
Fr. Josef Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II
The fruit of
the ‘old post-Vatican II evangelization’ in the U. S.
No other major
faith in the U.S. has experienced greater net losses over the last few decades as
a result of changes in religious affiliation than the Catholic Church. Nearly
one-third (31.4%) of U.S. adults say they were raised Catholic. Today, however,
only 23.9% of adults say they are affiliated with the Catholic Church, a net
loss of 7.5 percentage points. Overall, roughly one-third of those who were
raised Catholic have left the church, and approximately one-in-ten American
adults are former Catholics.
Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life
For care must be taken lest, in the so-called
"irenic" spirit of today, through comparative study and the vain
desire for a progressively closer mutual approach among the various professions
of faith, Catholic doctrine - either in its dogmas or in the truths which are
connected with them - be so conformed or in a way adapted to the doctrines of
dissident sects, that the purity of Catholic doctrine be impaired, or its
genuine and certain meaning be obscured.
Also they must restrain that dangerous manner of speaking which
generates false opinions and fallacious hopes incapable of realization;
for example, to the effect that the teachings of the Encyclicals of the Roman
Pontiffs on the return of dissidents to the Church, on the constitution of the
Church, on the Mystical Body of Christ, should not be given too much importance
seeing that they are not all matters of faith, or, what is worse, that in
matters of dogma even the Catholic Church has not yet attained the fullness of
Christ, but can still be perfected from outside.
Pius XII, Instruction of the Holy Office on
Ecumenism, Dec. 20, 1949
The first monastic virtue is to
despise the judgment of men, and always to bear in mind the words of the
Apostle, "If yet I pleased men I should not be the servant of
Christ." Some such saying, too, did God address to the Prophets when He
told them that He would make their face as a city of brass, and an adamantine
stone, and an iron pillar, that they might not tremble at the threats of the
people, but with unmoved brow tread underfoot the impudent jeers of their
adversaries.
St. Jerome
The Holy
Sacrifice is something so great that three eternities would be needed to offer
it worthily: the first to prepare for it, the second to celebrate it, the third
to make a suitable thanksgiving for it.
St. John Eudes,
Apostle of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, ordained December 20, 1625 and
waited until Christmas to offer his first Mass at the Midnight Mass.
We shall never
know how many acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of seeming not
sufficiently progressive.
Charles Péguy,
French poet, essayist and Catholic convert
"Life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a
saint."
Charles Péguy
Is
there a difference in malice between the sin of attributing the work of the
Holy Ghost to the Beelzebub and the sin of attributing the work of the
Beelzebub to the Holy Ghost?
Therefore I say to you: Every sin and
blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall
not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall
not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.
Matthew 12:31-32
Biblical
Commentary:
[31] The blasphemy of the Spirit: The sin here spoken of is that
blasphemy, by which the Pharisees attributed the miracles of Christ, wrought by
the Spirit of God, to Beelzebub the prince of devils. Now this kind of sin is
usually accompanied with so much obstinacy, and such wilful opposing the Spirit
of God, and the known truth, that men who are guilty of it, are seldom or never
converted: and therefore are never forgiven, because they will not repent.
Otherwise there is no sin, which God cannot or will not forgive to such as
sincerely repent, and have recourse to the keys of the church.
“Our
help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth!” Psalm 123:8
I could go on for ever, if I began to quote here all the texts from
Holy Scripture in which God commends to you the virtue of trust. It seems as if
He were not satisfied even with the thousand instances in Holy Scripture by
which He proves how dear and delightful this holy virtue is to Him, and how
much He loves and favors those who place their trust In His goodness and
abandon themselves entirely to the fatherly care of His Divine Providence. You
may read in the third book of Intimations of Divine Piety, by St. Gertrude,
that Jesus once told her that the filial confidence of a Christian soul is the
eye of the holy spouse, of which the Divine Bridegroom says in the Canticle of
Canticles: Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa: vulnerasti cor meum in uno
oculorum tuorum. “Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse: thou hast
wounded my heart by one of thine eyes” (Cant. 4, g). In other words, the soul
that has firm confidence in Christ, and trusts that He can and desires to help
it faithfully in all things, pierces His heart right through with an arrow of
love; and such confidence does such violence to the piety of Jesus that He can
in no way absent Himself from it. St. Mechtilde’s Book of Special Grace tells
us that Jesus said to her also: “It is a special delight to Me when men trust
in My goodness and rely upon Me. And so, whoever shall have great trust in Me,
yet always with humility, shall be favored by Me in this life, and in the next
receive more than he deserves. The more anyone trusts in Me and avails himself
of My goodness, the greater will be his gain, since it is impossible for a man
not to obtain what he believes with holy conviction, and hopes to gain because
it has been promised him. And so it is most advantageous to a man to have firm
trust in Me when he hopes for great things from Me!” And again, when St.
Mechtilde asked God what was the main thing she should believe of His ineffable
goodness. He replied: “Firmly believe that after death I will receive you as a
father receives a dear son, and that no father ever so faithfully and lovingly
gave all his possessions to an only son, as I will make you a sharer in all
that is Mine. Whoever shall believe this of My goodness firmly and with humble
charity, will be happy indeed.”
St. John Eudes, The Life and
Kingdom of Jesus
It is unlawful
to alter the established customs of the Church… Remove not
the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set.
St. Peter
Damien
For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the
same is a perfect man. He is able also with a bridle to lead about the whole
body. For if we put bits into the mouths of horses, that they may obey us, and
we turn about their whole body. Behold also ships, whereas they are great, and
are driven by strong winds, yet are they turned about with a small helm, whithersoever
the force of the governor willeth. Even so the tongue is indeed a little
member, and boasteth great things. Behold how small a fire kindleth a great
wood. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is placed among
our members, which defileth the whole body, and inflameth the wheel of our
nativity, being set on fire by hell.
James 3:2-6
“To question
what the united Church practices as a rule is the most daring madness.”
The very ancient practice of the Church of celebrating Mass in the West,
not in the living language of the country, but in a dead language, that is, in
Latin, for the most part a language unintelligible to the people, has since the
twelfth century to the present epoch been frequently made the subject of
attack. Such attacks originated
principally in an heretical, schismatical, proudly national spirit hostile to
the Church, or in a superficial and false enlightenment, in a shallow and arid
rationalism entirely destitute of the perception and understanding of the
essence and object of the Catholic liturgy, especially of the profoundly
mystical sacrifice. In the attempt to
the Latin language of the liturgy and to replace it by the vernacular, there
was a more or less premeditated scheme to undermine Catholic unity, to loosen
the bond of union with Rome, to weaken the Catholic spirit, to destroy the
humility and simplicity of faith.
Therefore, the Apostolic See at all times most persistently and
inflexibly resisted such innovation; for it is an invariable principle of the
Church never to alter the ancient liturgical language, but inviolably to adhere
to it, even thought it be no longer the living language spoken or understood by
the people…. For as St. Augustine remarks, “to question what the united Church
practices as a rule is the most daring madness.” In all such general decrees and usages
appertaining to divine worship, the Church is directed and preserved from
injurious blunders by the Holy Ghost.
Rev. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Dogmatically,
Liturgically and Ascetically Explained
Conspiracy Theory
...Modernists have not
abandoned their schemes of disturbing the peace of the Church. In fact, they
have never stopped looking for new followers, whom they gather together in
secret associations.
St. Pius X, Sacrorum
Antistitum, 9-1-1910
Usury – a sin
that cries to heaven for vengeance is the reason for the global debt crisis
If you had borrowed one dollar
at the time of Christ at 6% (compound) interest, how much money do you think
you would owe today, 2000 years later?
Let’s do the math: 1.06^2000 =
$4.09 x 10^50, or
$409.006,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s orders of magnitude more money than
there is in the whole world! To put that
in perspective, if there were 10 billion people on the earth each earning $1
trillion dollars a second, for every second of every minute of every hour of
every day from the beginning of time, 15 billion years ago, their combined
earning would only amount to $4.07 x 10^39. It would take another 86 billion earths each
full with 10 billion people earning $1 trillion dollars a second for every
second from the beginning of time before you would come close to having enough
money to pay back the interest due on a measly $1 loan at a low 6% interest for
a mere 2000 years. Anthony Santelli,
Ph.D., What is Usury?,
Culture Wars Magazine
The
Fundamentals of the Spiritual Life
Union with God, union with
Jesus, is the preliminary and indispensable requisite for the efficacy of any apostolic
life. This union is accomplished by
means of sanctifying grace, it grows with the fervent reception of the
sacraments and with the generous practice of the virtues; it is established
more firmly and strengthened by prayer, and is consolidated and preserved by
recollection and detachment. The more
one’s union with God increases, the more the action which flows from it will
bear fruit for souls… “Without Me, you can do nothing”… “He who abides in Me
bears much fruit”… “Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die,
itself remaineth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary
Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy
If we are guilty of pride let us try and amend and not flatter ourselves that
we possess the smallest degree of humility, until by our good resolutions
carefully carried out we have mortified our evil tendency to speak ill of our
neighbor. Let us hearken to the Holy Ghost: “Where pride is there also shall be
reproach, but where humility is there also is wisdom.” [Prov. 11, 2]
The proud man is scornful and arrogant in his speech; and the humble alone
knows how to speak well and wisely. If there is humility in the heart it will
be manifested in the speech, because “A good man out of the good treasure of
his heart bringeth forth that which is good.” [Luke 6, 45]
Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo, Humility of Heart
Oh, unbounded riches of holy
Mass! Grasp well this truth, one and
all: It is possible for you to gain more favor with God by attending or
celebrating one single Mass, considered in itself, and in its intrinsic worth,
than by opening the treasure of your wealth, and distributing the whole to the
poor, or by going on a pilgrimage over the whole world, and visiting with the
utmost devotion the most famous sanctuaries, such as Rome, Compostela, Loreto,
and Jerusalem; and this, indeed, follows most reasonably from the proposition
laid down by the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas, when he says that in Mass are
contained all the fruits, all the graces – yes, all those immense treasures
which the Son of God poured out so abundantly upon the Church, His Spouse, in
the bloody sacrifice of the cross.
St. Leonard of Port Maurice
Invincible or Inculpable
Ignorance Neither Saves nor Damns a Person
by Father Michael Müller, C.Ss.R.
“But, suppose”, someone will say, “a
person, in his inculpable ignorance, believes that he is on the right road to
Heaven, though he is not a Catholic; he tries his best to live up to the
dictates of his conscience. Now, should he die in that state of belief, he
would, it seems, be condemned without his fault. We can understand that God is
not bound to give Heaven to anybody, but, as He is just, He certainly cannot
condemn anybody without his fault.”
Whatever question may be made still
in regard to the great truth, in question is sufficiently answered in the
explanation already given of this great truth. For the sake of greater
clearness, however, we will answer a few more questions. In the answers to
these questions we shall be obliged to repeat what has already been said.
Now, as to the question just
proposed, we answer with St. Thomas and St. Augustine: “There are many things
which a man is obliged to do, but which he cannot do without the help of divine
grace: as, for instance, to love God and his neighbor, and to believe the
articles of faith; but he can do all this with the help of grace; and ‘to
whomsoever God gives His grace He gives it out of Divine Mercy: and to
whomsoever He does not give it, He refuses it out of divine justice, in
punishment of sin committed, or at least in punishment of original sin,” as St.
Augustine says. (Lib. de correptione et gratia, c. 5 et 6; Sum. 22. q. ii art.
v.) “And the ignorance of these things of salvation, the knowledge of which men
did not care to have, is, without doubt, a sin for them; but for those who were
not able to acquire such knowledge, the want of it is a punishment for their
sins”, says St. Augustine; hence both are justly condemned, and neither the one
nor the other has a just excuse for being lost.” (Epist. ad Sixtum, Edit. Maur.
194, cap. vi., n. 27.)
Moreover, a person who wants to go
east, but, by an innocent mistake, gets on a train going west, will, as soon as
he finds out his mistake, get off at the next station, and take a train that
goes east. In like manner, a person who walked on a road that he, in his
inculpable ignorance, believed was the true road to Heaven, must leave that
road, as soon as he finds out his mistake, and inquire for the true road to Heaven.
God, in His infinite mercy, will not fail to make him find out, in due time,
the true road to Heaven, if he corresponds to His grace. Hence we asked the
following question in our Familiar Explanation:
“What are we to think of the
salvation of those who are out of the pale of the Church without any fault of
theirs, and who never had any opportunity to know better?”
To this question we give the following answer:
“Their inculpable (invincible)
ignorance will not save them; but if they fear God and live up to their
conscience, God, in His infinite mercy, will furnish them with the necessary
means of salvation, even so as to send, if needed, an angel to instruct them in
the Catholic Faith, rather than let them perish through inculpable ignorance.”
(St. Thomas Aquinas)
No attribute of God can be our
stay nor give us peace and quiet, except His love and His goodness. We naturally fear His power; His holiness
shames our sinfulness. But who can resist
God’s love? It wins us over to Him by
showing us a God descending to our level; and only in so far as God appears in
a state of humiliation can we dare to approach Him and to unite ourselves to
Him. Only then are we able to look on
Him as one of ours, and to call Him a brother…. We recognize love in this, that
it is lavish of its gifts. When it has
nothing to offer, it gives itself. Thus,
Our Lord, after giving all that He had, has left us His adorable Person. He who communicates understands this gift; he
knows by experience, so to speak, that God has loved him ‘unto the end.’ And with this thought in mind, he promises
Our Lord in the morning to be virtuous in thanksgiving for his Communion; and
in the afternoon he redoubles his devotion and fervor of spirit that he may
receive worthily on the morrow. All his
actions become as flowers which he hastens to offer to our Lord before they
fade. And thus his piety is a living
one; for his heart is always ascending to God, and motion is a sign of life.
St. Peter Julian Eymard
When men adore Christ, they truly
adore God. Christ is Emmanuel, that is
God-with-us. In Christ we can, so to
speak, see the face of God. It is His
human face, it is true. But even this
vision is a foretaste of the beatific vision of God which is the inheritance of
all those who are members of Christ’s Body, the Church. It is their inheritance because Christ is the
perfect Mediator between God and men. He
stands between God and men - He mediates between them - because He brings God’s
gifts to men and He takes men to God. As
man, He is the perfect Mediator because He occupies a position midway between
God and men. As man He is not God, and
so He stands below God. But as a man
possessing the fullness of grace, knowledge and power, He stands above
men. He is thus in a perfect position to
mediate between God and men. And this is
what Christ is doing ceaselessly for men in and through His Body, the Church.
The Incarnation is God’s answer to the misery of men without God. God stoops to man to raise him to
Himself. “And I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all things to Myself.” Man has only
to accept freely Christ as his Mediator.
Not even Christ saves a man against his will. Because man is proud, God has stooped down to
him. Since man is disobedient, God has
given him the example of the perfect obedience of Christ. As man is ignorant and in error, God has
given him Christ, the perfect teacher.
Could the love of God do more for man?
“By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath
sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may have live by him.”
Rev. Walter Farrell, O. P.,
S.T.M. and Rev. Martin Healy, S.T.D., My
Way of Life, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas
The devil has little
hold on souls that are given to prayer and mortification. It would be presumptuous to defy the devil,
but it is a sign of weakness to be afraid of him. As St. Augustine says, he is a chained dog,
who can bark and worry, but he cannot bite if we keep out of his reach. It is not the devil who is the principal
instrument in temptations of the just, for every man, says St. James, is
tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured. Such souls are thus only usually exposed to
these temptations in so far as God permits them in order to purify their
conscience, exercise their patience, deepen their humility, increase their
merit, and add brightness to their crown…. And why should we fear
temptations? Do we not know that they
are necessary for us, since without them we can make no progress in the way of
perfection? Of course they are necessary
to strengthen us in the very virtues which they assail. We will never reach a high degree of purity,
faith, hope, or love for God or our neighbour, unless we are strongly exercised
in these virtues.
John N. Grou, S. J., Spiritual
Maxims
The precious light of
faith will go out in souls because of the almost total moral corruption… The
licentiousness will be such that there will be no more virgin souls in the
world… By having gained control of all the social classes, the sects will tend
to penetrate with great skill into the heart of families and destroy even the
children… Priests will abandon their sacred duties and will depart from the
path marked out for them by God. The
then Church will go through a dark night for lack of a Prelate and Father to
watch over it with love, gentleness, strength and prudence.
Our Lady of LaSalette
to Melanie
Mary: Our
model in our First Duty
The field which Justice
controls is an extensive one; in fact, Justice
means the discharge of all our obligations.
It is respect for the rights of others: and, first of all, of God, by
the acts of [the virtue of] Religion….
Because God is the Supreme Being, the Lord and Master of all, and we are His
subjects, our first duty is to
acknowledge His superiority and our dependence, and to give expression to this
religious sentiment by appropriate acts. The chief acts of divine worship and adoration
are faith, hope and charity, prayer and sacrifice. Prayer implies praise, thanksgiving,
atonement and petition. Must we not
suppose that Mary poured out her soul to God every day of her life by adoring
His Divine Majesty, thanking Him for His inestimable gifts to herself and to
every creature, pleading for pardon and mercy in behalf of a sinful world and
petitioning for help and grace to supply her own needs and those of her
spiritual children?
Very Rev. Lawrence C. Diether,
P. Carm., Ave Maria, A short commentary
on the Hail Mary
“The fort is betrayed even
of them that should have defended it.”
St. John Fisher, Bishop and
Martyr
It behooves us unanimously and
inviolably to observe the ecclesiastical traditions, whether codified or
simply retained by the customary practice of the Church.
St.
Peter Canisius
Then, why is our “candid
speech” to the bishops of Harrisburg and to Rome regarded as without “respect”?
Question: Did Job’s candid speech to God
depart from the respect due to the Lord?
Answer: Truth does not change because of the
high dignity of him to whom it is addressed; he who speaks the truth cannot be
overcome, no matter with whom he disputes.
St. Thomas, Commentary on the Book of Job
PRAYER TO
JESUS IN DIFFICULTIES
O Jesus! Consolation of the afflicted! Thy name is indeed poured out
like oil; for Thou dost illumine those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death; Thou dost disperse the blindness of the soul and dost cure its ills;
Thou givest food and drink to those who hunger and thirst after justice. Be
also, O Jesus! my Savior, the physician of my soul, the healer of its wounds.
O Jesus! Succor of those who are in need, be my protector in temptations! O
Jesus! Father of the poor, do Thou nourish me! O Jesus! joy of the angels, do
Thou comfort me! O Jesus! my only hope and refuge, be my helper in the hour of
death, for there is given us no other name beneath the sun by which we may be
saved, but Thy most blessed name Jesus!
When the Arian poison had contaminated not only a limited area, but the
whole world, almost all the bishops of the Latin Church fell into heresy. Forced by violence or deceived by guile. It was like a fog fallen upon the spirits and
hiding which road to take. In order to
be safe from this contagious plague, the true disciples of Christ had to prefer
the ancient beliefs rather than all the false novelties.
St. Vincent of Lerins
"The
human race may be now and then afflicted with lunacy, but it is never an
idiot. An idiot is one who has just premises, but cannot
draw from them just conclusions, that is, one who cannot reason; a
lunatic is one who has false premises, but who is, nevertheless, able to draw
logical conclusions from them. His insanity is precisely in his
inability to seize and hold true premises."
Orestes
Brownson, Catholic Apologist, Brownson’s Quarterly Review, Oct., 1851. p. 453
No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly
established as such.
Canon 749 § 3
All that is contained in the written word of God or in tradition, that
is in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church and also proposed as divinely
revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and
universal magisterium, must be believed with divine and catholic faith...
Canon 750
“Living Tradition,” synonym
for Immanentism of the Modernist
The term, “living
tradition,” a novelty of modernist construction given official standing at
Vatican II, conflates the subjective understanding with the objective truth, is
part of the theological justification to replace our received traditions with
novelties grounded in fantasy.
“The
root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory
notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into
account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican
Council clearly taught, “comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church
with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the
realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways.
It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these
things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities
which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have
received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure
charism of truth”.
John Paul II, explaining the problems with
Archbishop Lefebvre’s consecration of four bishops from his failure to
understand the novel Vatican II definition of tradition
With regard to the tradition of the Church, two precautions had to be
rigorously and thoroughly observed, adhered to by everyone who does not wish to
become a heretic: first, it must be ascertained whether there exists from
ancient times a decree established by all the bishops of the Catholic Church
with the authority of a universal council, and second, should a new question
arise for which no decree can be found, one must revert to the opinions of the
holy fathers; to be more precise, of those fathers who remained in their own
times and places in the unity of communion and of faith and who were therefore
held as teaching ‘probable’ doctrine.
St. Vincent of Lerins
“It is clear that he does not pray, who, far
from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him,
and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but
only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.”
St. Thomas Aquinas
“Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the
traditions.”
Pope St. Stephen I, letter to St. Cyprian, 3rd
cent.
A tyrannical law, through not being according
to reason, is not a law, absolutely speaking but rather a perversion of
law.
St. Thomas Aquinas
“Pearls
of Great Price” – Every single one of our Immemorial Ecclesiastical Traditions
which the “dogs” despise!
What are these mysteries? What
are these good pearls? They are not only every doctrine of Jesus Christ and
every dogma of His Church, but every holy sacrament, every pious practice,
every rule and ordinance of the Church; every means of practicing and advancing
virtue and good works; every means of conferring and increasing the sanctifying
grace of God, consequently sanctity and holiness of life, which is a pearl of
infinite value, and adorns the soul with such transcendent beauty that the mind
of man can never conceive its inestimable grandeur and loveliness. Moreover,
each of these heavenly gifts was purchased at the infinite price of the
precious blood of Jesus, from which it derives all its beauty and virtue. The
least of them is worth buying, even the risk of losing all that a man holds
dear in this life. Even a drop of holy water or a blessed medal is to time
pious believer a “holy thing,” a valuable pearl. “The sensual man, who perceiveth
not the things that are of the Spirit of God,” despise them; they are
“foolishness to him.” But the true Christian believes that “every creature is
sanctified by prayer and the word of God,” and when sanctified it is a “holy
thing” and not to be given to dogs — that is to say, to such as would have no
more respect for them than a dog, if it were given to him.
Rev. Joseph Prachensky, S.J., The Church of the Parables and True Spouse
of the Suffering Savior
Heretics
and Schismatics - formally cut off from the Church & may materially be cut
off as well!
The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has
done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding
the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the
ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different
from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans,
the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned
only a certian portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared
heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were
condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages.
"There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly
the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison,
infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by
Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra
Arianos).
The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the
unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic
communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree
from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium.
Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret, drew up a long list of the heresies of their
times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one
of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from
Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can
for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may
be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of
ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a
Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). [……………]
For this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity required for
the unity of the church, inasmuch as it is the body of the faithful, so
also for this same unity, inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted
society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion,
is necessary jure divino. "The unity of the Church is manifested in
the mutual connection or communication of its members, and likewise in the
relation of all the members of the Church to one head" (St. Thomas,
2a 2ae, 9, xxxix., a. I).
From this it is easy to see that men can fall away from the unity of
the Church by schism, as well as by heresy. "We think that this difference
exists between heresy and schism" (writes St. Jerome): "heresy has no
perfect dogmatic teaching, whereas schism, through some Episcopal dissent, also
separates from the Church" (S. Hieronymus, Comment. in Epist. ad Titum,
cap. iii., v. 10-11). In which judgment St. John Chrysostom concurs: "I
say and protest (he writes) that it is as wrong to divide the Church as to fall
into heresy" (Hom. xi., in Epist. ad Ephes., n. 5). Wherefore as no
heresy can ever be justifiable, so in like manner there can be no justification
for schism. "There is nothing more grievous than the sacrilege of
schism....there can be no just necessity for destroying the unity of the
Church" (S. Augustinus, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, lib. ii., cap.
ii., n. 25).
Pope Leo XII, Satis Cognitum, On
the Unity of the Church
"The
stones of the pavement ... of that shrine (Canterbury Cathedral, where St.
Thomas Becket was martyred) were worn with the kneeling of the idolatrous
people, which came on pilgrimage to offer there to that pope-holy saint".
St. Thomas
Becket, Protestant commentator, 1642
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity: The Novus Ordo patron ‘saint’ of Vatican II, John
XXIII, and Jesus Christ traveled the same road, only in different directions.
“The whole world is my family.
This sense of universal belonging must give tone and vivacity to my mind, to my
heart, to my actions” …… “I am the pope
of all.”
John XXIII,
(Journal of a Soul)
“I have given
them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the
world; as I also am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them
out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil. They are not of
the world, as I also am not of the world.”
Jesus Christ,
Prayer to His Father and Our Father
(John 17:14-16)
"ALL Heretics are Schismatics."
St. Thomas Aquinas quoting St. Augustine
The meaning of Sacred Dogmas, which must
always be preserved is that which our Holy Mother the Church has
determined. Never is it permissible to
depart from this in the name of a deeper understanding.
Vatican
Council I
KEEP DOGMA AS
YOUR PROXIMATE RULE OF FAITY AND YOU WILL KEEP YOUR BALANCE
This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a
foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe.
There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was
sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium
of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway
that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of
arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any
warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along
one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so as
exactly to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of
Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly.
The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have
made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or
accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would
have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would
have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the
bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a
heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is
to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a
snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration
which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of
Christendom that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall;
there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one
stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian
Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all
has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies
thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the
wild truth reeling but erect.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me
love death.
Proverbs 8:36
Remember in your charity:
Remember the welfare of our expectant mother: Vanessa LoStrocco, Elizabeth Allen, and
Maria Castillo Gonzalez,
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 Lenny 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, and the
conversion of Dawn Keithley,
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
The health and spiritual welfare of Nate Schaeffer is the petition
of Gene Peters,
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,
For the health and
spiritual welfare of Peggy Cummings, the neice of Camila Meiser,
who is gravely ill,
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,
Joe Sentmanet request prayers for Scott Nettles (who is in need of
conversion), who is gravely ill,
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 paryer 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,
Mary Mufide,
requests our prayers for her family,
Abbe Damien
Dutertre,
traditional Catholic priest arrested by Montreal police while offering Mass,
Francis
(Frank) X. McLaughlin, for the recovery of his
health,
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,
Luis Rafael
Zelaya,
the brother of Claudia Drew, 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,
Mufide Rende, a traditional Catholic from
India has asked 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, and still cares for her
ailing parents,
Jason Green, a father of ten children,
recovery of 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,
Welfare of Bishop
Richard Williamson, for strength and courage in the greater battles to
come,
John Rhoad, for his health and
spiritual welfare,
Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for
her welfare,
Joyce
Laughman and Robert Twist, for their conversions,
Michael J.
Brigg & his family, who have helped with the needs of the Mission,
Nancy Deegan, her welfare and conversion
to the Catholic Church,
Francis Paul
Diaz,
who was baptized at Ss. Peter & Paul, asks our prayers for his spiritual
welfare,
The conversion of Rene McFarland, Lori Kerr, Cary Shipman
and family, David Bash, Crystal and family, Larry Reinhart, Costanzo Family,
Kathy Scullen, Marilyn Bryant, Vicki Trahern and Time Roe are
the petitions of Gene Peters,
For the conversion of Ben & Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf, Eckhard Ebert,
and Fahnauer family,
Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX who has been ill,
and for Fr. Thomas Blute,
For the health and conversion of Kathryn Lederhos, the aunt of David Drew,
For the welfare of Fr. Paul DaDamio and Fr. William T. Welsh,
The Drew’s ask our prayers for the welfare of Joe & 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 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:
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.
Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity
– Even JPII did not deny this dogma!
Pope Francis Teaches:
We hold the Jewish people in special regard
because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for “the gifts and the
call of God are irrevocable” (Rom.11:29). The Church, which shares with Jews an
important part of the Sacred Scriptures, looks upon the people of the covenant
and their faith as one of the sacred roots of her own Christian identity (cf.
Rom. 11:16-18). As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign
religion; nor do we include the Jews among those called to turn from idols and
to serve the true God (cf. 1 Thes. 1:9). With them, we believe in the one God
who acts in history, and with them we accept his revealed word. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium
The Church officially recognizes that the
People of Israel continue to be the Chosen People. Nowhere does it say: “You
lost the game, now it is our turn.” It is a recognition of the People of
Israel.
Pope Francis, On Heaven and Earth
The Catholic Church Teaches:
Hebrews
7:18: “On the one hand, a former commandment is annulled because of its
weakness and uselessness…”;
Hebrews
10:9: “Then he says, ‘Behold, I come to do your will.’ He takes away the
first [covenant] to establish the second [covenant]…”;
2
Corinthians 3:14: “For to this day when they [the Jews] read the Old
Covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it
taken away”;
Hebrews
8:7: “For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no
place would have been sought for another”;
Colossians
2:14: “Having canceled the written code, with its decrees, that was against
us and stood opposed to us; He took it away nailing it to the cross”;
Pope
Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, para. 29: “…the New Testament took the
place of the Old Law which had been abolished…but on the gibbet of His death
Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old
Testament to the Cross”;
The
Catechism of the Council of Trent: “…the people, aware of the
abrogation of the Mosaic Law…”;
Council
of Florence: [This council] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that
the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosiac law, which
are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because
they were established to signify something in the future, although they were
suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord’s coming had been
signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and
that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law
and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ
could not save without them, sinned mortally. Yet it does not deny that after
the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been
observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but
after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed
without the loss of eternal salvation. All, therefore, who after that time
observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it
declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate
in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors. Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Cantate Domino
Council
of Trent: “but not even the Jews by the very letter of the law of Moses
were able to be liberated or to rise therefrom”;
Cardinal
Ratzinger: “Thus the Sinai [Mosaic] Covenant is indeed superseded” (Many
Religions – One Covenant, p. 70).
St.
John Chrysostom: “Yet surely Paul’s object everywhere is to annul this
Law….And with much reason; for it was through a fear and a horror of this that
the Jews obstinately opposed grace” (Homily on Romans, 6:12); “And so while no
one annuls a man’s covenant, the covenant of God after four hundred and thirty
years is annulled; for if not that covenant but another instead of it bestows
what is promised, then is it set aside, which is most unreasonable” (Homily on
Galatians, Ch 3);
St.
Augustine: “Instead of the grace of the law which has passed away, we have
received the grace of the gospel which is abiding; and instead of the shadows
and types of the old dispensation, the truth has come by Jesus Christ. Jeremiah
also prophesied thus in God’s name: ‘Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of
Judah…’ Observe what the prophet says, not to Gentiles, who had not been
partakers in any former covenant, but to the Jewish nation. He who has given
them the law by Moses, promises in place of it the New Covenant of the gospel,
that they might no longer live in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness
of the spirit” (Letters, 74, 4);
Justin
Martyr: “Now, law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it,
and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous
one; and an eternal and final law – namely, Christ – has been given to us, and
the covenant is trustworthy…Have you not read…by Jeremiah, concerning this same
new covenant, He thus speaks: ‘Behold, the days come,’ says the Lord, ‘that I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of
Judah…’” (Dialogue with Trypho, Ch 11).
John Paul II: “Christ fulfills the
divine promise and supersedes the old law.” (Redemptoris Mater)
Taken from Robert Sungenis, The
Old Covenent: Revoked or Not Revoked?
Pope Leo: Don’t let tension between tradition, novelty become ‘harmful
polarizations’
EWTN | Victoria Cardiel | October 27, 2025
Pope Leo XIV said at a Mass on Sunday that
no one in the Church “should impose his or her own ideas” and asked that
tensions between tradition and novelty not become “ideological contrapositions and
harmful polarizations.”
“The supreme rule in the Church is love. No
one is called to dominate; all are called to serve,” Leo said in St. Peter’s
Basilica on Oct. 26.
“No one should impose his or her own
ideas; we must all listen to one another,” he continued. “No one is excluded;
we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must all
humbly seek it and seek it together.” [.....]
COMMENT: The problem
is this: the love of novelty is an ideology, Tradition along with sacred
Scripture is divine revelation. The Church always and everywhere has condemned
novelty until Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Church of Novelty embraced it. The
conflict between novelty and tradition is the conflict between God's revelation
and demonic lies; the conflict between the Church and the World. Those who are
faithful to tradition do not "impose their own ideas" but defend
God's revealed truth against the novelty of the world. The Novus Ordo Novelty
Church is "seeking truth"; the Church of Jesus Christ possesses it.
Pope Leo like his predecessor likes to characterize tradition as rigid and dead
and the novelty of modernism as mature and hopeful. This was once an intensely
debated matter but, at this time, after all the wreckage of the last 50 years
all tradition has to do is to point at the fruit of Vatican II novelty. Both
Leo and his predecessor Francis worked in South America. The total population
of South and Central America is about 600 million. Since Vatican II about 300
million have apostatized from the Catholic Church. These last two popes have
personally presided over the greatest apostasy over the shortest period of time
in the history of the Catholic Church. Anything Leo has to say, as long as he
is not sitting in the Chair of Peter, must be examined in light of this record.
Fruit of
Vatican II - Apostasy
In Honduras,
the country of the once most powerful man in the Roman Curia under
Francis/Bergoglio, Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, a personally corrupt and immoral
man who had been a bishop in the capital
since 1978, first as auxiliary then as Archbishop for 30 years, the
hierarchy led by him managed the
amazing feat of transforming that country in the first Catholic-minority nation
in Central America, a vertiginous fall from 94% to 46% in the same period -
and the same happened in Uruguay, across the Rio de la Plata from (Bergoglio's
home) Buenos Aires.
Rorate Caeli
Data Collapse of Catholic Faith in Latin America from 2014 presided
over by Pope Leo/Provost and his predecessor Francis/Begoglio
The “received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, accustomed
to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments”:
…..Because, as we will see, Catholics must
celebrate only the “received and
approved rites” of the Church as a matter of Divine Law.
God revealed this truth in Scripture
through St. Paul. Before St. Paul teaches the Corinthians liturgical and
theological details concerning the Holy Mass (consecration formula, Real
Presence), he prefaces his teaching by affirming: “For I have received of the Lord that
which I also delivered unto you…”
(I Cor 11:23). St. Paul says again: “For I delivered unto you first of all,
which I also received” (1Cor 15:3). In these and other verses, St. Paul
emphasizes that we must believe and practice only what we have “received” from
Christ and the apostles which has been “delivered” unto us, and which includes
the liturgical rites of the Church. This is a divinely revealed truth and a
matter of Faith.
The Church has taught this divine truth
throughout her history. For example, in the Papal Oath of Coronation, which
originates at least as far back as Pope St. Agatho in 678 A.D. (and which was
set aside by Paul VI), every Pope swore to change nothing of the “received
tradition.” Pope Pius IV’s Tridentine Profession of Faith,
which is binding on the souls of all Catholics, likewise expresses this
principle by requiring adherence to the
“received and approved rites of the Catholic Church used in the solemn
administration of the sacraments.” The “received
and approved rites of the Church” originate from the Spirit of Christ and
the traditions of the apostles which have been handed down to us through the
ages.
Because the “received and approved rites” are part of the Church’s infallible
expression of the unchanging Deposit of Faith, as inspired and nurtured by the
Holy Ghost, they cannot be set aside or changed into new rites. This is why the
Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545-1563) infallibly declared:
“If anyone says
that the received and approved
rites of the Catholic Church, accustomed to be used in the administration
of the sacraments, may be despised or omitted by the ministers without sin and
at their pleasure, or may be
changed by any pastor of the churches to other new ones, let him be anathema.”
Because the Council declares anathema (that
is, condemned, or severed from the Body of Christ) anyone who would set aside
or change into new rites the already “received
and approved rites” of the Church, proves that adherence to the “received and approved rites” is a
matter of Divine Law. The absolute necessity to preserve the substance of the
Church’s ancient liturgical rites is a requirement of the Faith because the
rites preserve and express that Faith. To hold that the Church’s rites can
change implies a belief that the Church’s doctrines can change, because the
rites preserve and express the doctrines. Hence, those who do not preserve the
Church’s rites (by omitting or changing them) are objectively anathema because they sin
against the Faith itself.
In light of the foregoing
condemnation, the Holy Council of Trent directed that the Roman Missal be
restored so that the faithful would know once and for all what is the “received and approved rite” of Mass.
To that end, Pope St. Pius V issued his papal bull Quo Primum Tempore to legally codify “the decrees of the Holy Council of Trent”
and render a definitive application of the Divine Law dogmatized by the
Council. This judgment mandated a single usage of the Roman rite for the Latin
Church, with some minor exceptions for usages greater than 200 years old, “in order that what has been handed down by
the most holy Roman Church, the Mother and Teacher of the rest of the churches
may be accepted and observed by all everywhere.” Hence, the sainted Pope
declared the oft-called “Tridentine
Mass” to be the “received and
approved rite” of the Church, and which precluded the creation of any “new
rite” of Mass in the future. Further, because Quo Primum is an infallible application of
Divine Law (that is, we must use only the “received
and approved rites”), St. Pius V rightly declared the decree to be
irreformable and valid forever.
This brings us to the inevitable and
troubling question: Is the
Novus Ordo a “new rite” of Mass that comes under the anathema of the Council of
Trent, as definitively interpreted by St. Pius V in Quo Primum? The name of the
rite itself (Novus Ordo
which means “new order” or “new ordinary” of the Mass) certainly suggests the
same. More importantly, so do the words of Pope Paul VI. In his November 19,
1969 General Audience address, Paul VI refers to the Novus Ordo as a “new rite” of
Mass several times, for example: “We wish to draw your attention to an event
about to occur in the Latin Catholic Church: the introduction of the liturgy of
the new rite of the Mass.”
He also says, “In the new rite you will find the relationship between the
Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist...”
We also consider the statements of
the members of Paul VI’s liturgical commission that created the New Mass, such
as the secretary and head of the commission, Fr. Annibale Bugnini, who said:
“It is not simply a question of restoring a valuable masterpiece, in some cases
it will be necessary to provide new
structures for entire rites…it will truly be a new creation.” Bugnini’s
assistant, Fr. Carlos Braga, also stated that the New Mass has “an entirely new foundation of
Eucharistic theology” and whose “ecumenical requirements” are “in harmony with
the Church’s new positions.”
Fr. Joseph Gelineau, one of the most influential members of the commission,
also said: “To tell you the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This
needs to be said without ambiguity: the
Roman rite as we knew it no
longer exists.” Therefore, both Paul VI and his appointed
authors of the Novus Ordo admitted that the New Mass is not the rite “received”
from tradition, but rather a rite created by innovation – an entirely
unprecedented act in the history of the Church.
But we should not rely on these
statements alone. While they may reveal the intent of the innovators, it is
still necessary to look at the substance of the Novus Ordo rite itself. As we have seen, the
Council of Trent and St. Pius V intended to preserve the substantial identity
of the Roman rite forever. If the New Mass does not preserve this identity,
then it cannot be considered the “received
and approved rite” of the Catholic Church no matter what anyone says. Even
the Second Vatican Council, which did not (and could not) mandate the creation
of a new rite of Mass, recognized this truth by directing that the rites “be revised carefully in the light of sound
tradition” with “due care being
taken to preserve their
substance.”
The Council of Trent’s condemnation
of omitting or changing the “received
and approved rites” into “new rites”
is best understood by referring to one of the oldest maxims of the Church’s
sacred theology: “legem credendi statuit lex orandi.”
This is a Latin phrase which means “the rule of prayer determines the rule of
faith” (often referred to as “lex
orandi, lex credendi”). In other words, the way we pray determines
what we believe. If a liturgical tradition which expresses a doctrine of the
Faith is altered or removed altogether, the underlying doctrine will
necessarily be compromised. This is why the “received and approved rites” must be faithfully preserved and
never transformed into “other new ones”
as declared by Trent.
…… However, the Novus Ordo Missae deviates from the Roman Missal
of St. Pius V to such an extent that it no longer retains the substantial
identity of the Roman rite. Even before the introduction of such abuses as
audible canons, vernacular and versus
populum (toward the people) celebrations, lay ministers, Communion
under both species, Communion in the hand to standing communicants and the
like, Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci advised Paul VI that “the Novus Ordo
represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the
Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the
Council of Trent.” Consequently, Cardinal Ottaviani (who, as head of the
Holy Office, was responsible for safeguarding the doctrine of the Faith), in
his famous intervention, concluded that the Novus Ordo was indeed a different
rite of Mass.
For example, Ottaviani says: “To abandon a liturgical tradition which
for four centuries stood as a sign and pledge of unity in worship, and to replace
it with another liturgy which, due to the countless liberties it
implicitly authorizes, cannot but be a sign of division – a liturgy which
teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the
Catholic Faith – is, we feel bound in conscience to proclaim, an
incalculable error.” He also says,
“It is obvious that the New
Order of Mass has no intention of presenting the Faith taught by the
Council of Trent. But it is to this Faith that the Catholic
conscience is bound forever.” Accordingly, Ottaviani appealed to Paul VI “not to deprive us of the possibility of
continuing to have recourse to the integral
and fruitful Missal of St. Pius V, so highly praised by Your
Holiness, and so deeply venerated by the whole Catholic world.” Therefore,
both the critics and the
creators of the New Mass, including Paul VI himself, agree that the
Novus Ordo differs
in substance from
the Tridentine Missal and, hence, constitutes a “new rite” of Mass.
John Salza, J.D., The Novus Ordo Mass and Divine Law, excerpt from Catholic Family
News
He failed on
two occasions, 1942 & 1952, to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary as our Lady requested! He
contributed his share in liturgical destruction by establishing the liturgical
commission under Bugnini in 1948 and having Bea, his personal confessor,
undertake a new Latin translation of the Psalms.
“I am concerned
about the messages of the Virgin to the little Lucia of Fatima. This
persistence of the Good Lady in face of the danger that threatens the Church is
a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its
liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent. I hear around me
innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame
of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her
historical past.”
Pope Pius XII,
1933
And now, addressing the “false prophets that exploit fear
and hopelessness to sell magical formulas of hate and cruelty,” Pope Francis
again insults the Catholic Faith as known and practiced by all our forefathers!
COMMENT: Pope Francis often
referenced St. Vincent of Lérins as if his understanding of Tradition is in
accord with that of the great Church Father.
It most certainly was not which is evident to anyone familiar with his
writings. This corruption can only be attributed to malice. Francis the Lutheran and St. Vincent the
Catholic did not profess the same Faith and only one of them is the Faith
without which it is impossible to please God.
Francis characterized faithfulness to the revelation of God as “rigidity”
which was itself attributed to deeper psychological and moral failings of
traditional Catholics. “Love is not rigid,” claimed Francis while he counseled
the overthrow of God’s commandments, but St. John the Apostle of Love and
devotee of the Sacred Heart reports a very different Gospel of Jesus
Christ:
· If you love me, keep my commandments. John 14:15
· If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; as I also have
kept my Father’ s commandments, and do abide in his love. John 15:10
· He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them; he it is that loveth
me. And he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him,
and will manifest myself to him. John 14:21
· Jesus answered, and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my
word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our
abode with him. John 14:23
· In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and
keep his commandments. 1 John 5:2
· And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his
commandments. 1 John 2:3
Love is never lax or slothful in its pious
attention to duty. The laxism and sloth
of Pope Francis was because without Faith, he had no true love of God.
“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
Leo the Homosexual following in the way of Francis the
Homosexual.
Pictured below is Leo and Francis both greeting
homosexual "married" couples for public photo-ops. The other pictures
are Francis and Leo both slumming around with the pervert James Martin.
The Vatican is in the hands of the Homosexual Lobby. We
must pray to God to purge His Church of this gross perversion.
Preaching to the DEAF!
You gather here today, present-day
apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world stand perched on the edge of
a cliff. And yet you who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to
speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds. Today we stand on the cusp of all
that has been prophesied about the Church and the abominations which would come
forth in these times, a time when all of hell attacks the Church of Jesus
Christ, and a time when the fallen angels of hell no longer seek entry into her
sacred halls but instead stand inside, peeking out of her windows and unlocking
doors to welcome in more diabolical destruction.
Do you not know that Our Lord will
send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those
who were called to be His apostles and who have not guarded what He has given
unto them?
And yet almost all of you, my
brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on Synodality took
place, an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith, but to
dismantle it, and yet few were the cries heard from you – men who should be
willing to die for Christ and His Church.
The Synod’s final document has
been released, yet with the sleight of hand which is so characteristic
of the Francis-controlled Vatican. By drawing attention to the issues which
worried many, they have slipped in what was always their real goal without
anyone even noticing. What they were after in the first place was the
dismantling of Christ’s Church by replacing the structure of the Church as
Our Lord instituted it with a diabolically-inspired new structure of
“synodality” which in actuality is a new church that is in no way Catholic.
Bishop Joseph Strickland, former bishop of
Tyler, TX who was removed from his office by Pope Francis the Diabolical for
preaching Catholic truth, addressing the U.S. bishops gathered at their annual
meeting
Latae sententiae crimes in the
external forum require a determination of guilt!
“A
sentence declaratory of the offence is always necessary in the forum externum,
since in this tribunal no one is presumed to be excommunicated unless convicted
of a crime that entail such a penalty.”
Pope
Benedict XIV, De syndod, X, I, 5
COMMENT: Recently
a group of young men and women missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) were doing their required missionary work in
central city York. A friendly theological discussion took place on the steps of
our Mission chapel. The friendly exchanged ended and the climate cooled when
the question about the exact number of Joseph Smith's and Brigham Young's wives
was brought up. Mormons believe that Jesus Christ founded one Church. They
believe that that Church became corrupted and God abandoned it. God then,
centuries later, reconstituted His Church when the angel Moroni lead the
illiterate Joseph Smith to a hidden book and provided him with mystical
spectacles permitting him to read it. When you ask a Mormon how is it that
Jesus Christ promised to be with His Church until the end of time and taught
that marriage is between one man and one woman until death, why is it that they
believe Joseph Smith or Brigham Young and not believe Jesus Christ? They answer
by walking away. Jesus Christ uses the metaphor of marriage to describe His
relationship with His Church and with each of the faithful individually. Every
man-made heretical and schismatic sect eventually repudiates marriage because
they cannot abide the metaphor. Luther permitted bigamy. The Orthodox permit
divorce and remarriage three times. Joseph Smith had "up to forty
wives" and Brigham Young had "fifty-six wives, twenty-one had
never been married before; seventeen were widows; six were divorced; six had
living husbands; and the marital status of six others is unknown. Nine of his
wives had previously been plural wives of Joseph Smith, and Young was sealed to
them as a proxy for Smith" (WIKI). The first clue to the Mormons that they were being lead into a spiritual desert was
polygamy but some like the desert. Mormons claim that Brigham Young saw the
light and abandoned the practice for the Latter Day Saints but this occurred
only after the U.S. government told they to give it up or get out. Although
Mormons are no longer polygamists, they permit divorce and "temple"
remarriage which is just serial polygamy. These "missionaries" now
know that Jesus Christ did not abandon His Church and will not do so no matter
how corrupt churchmen become. The Catholic Church alone offers the possibility
of salvation.
It’s Official: Mormon Founder Had Up
to 40 Wives...
Mormon leaders have acknowledged for the first time that the church’s
founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, portrayed in church materials as a loyal
partner to his loving spouse Emma, took as many as 40 wives, some already
married and one only 14 years old.... The biggest bombshell for some in the essays is that Smith married women
who were already married, some to men who were Smith’s friends and followers.
Religious Liberty from Vatican II has its root in the
Americanist Heresy
On
every side the dread phantom of war holds sway: there is scarce room for
another thought in the minds of men. The combatants are the greatest and wealthiest
nations of the earth; what wonder, then, if, well provided with the most awful
weapons modern military science has devised, they strive to destroy one another
with refinements of horror. There is no limit to the measure of ruin and of
slaughter; day by day the earth is drenched with newly-shed blood, and is
covered with the bodies of the wounded and of the slain. Who would imagine as
we see them thus filled with hatred of one another, that they are all of one
common stock, all of the same nature, all members of the same human society?
....We implore those in whose hands are placed the fortunes of nations to
hearken to Our voice. Surely there are other ways and means whereby violated
rights can be rectified. Let them be tried honestly and with good will, and let
arms meanwhile be laid aside.
Benedict
XV, Ad beatissimi apostolorum,
November 1, 1914
“We
consider the establishment of our country’s independence, the shaping of its
liberties and laws, as a work of special Providence, its framers ‘building
better than they knew,’ the Almighty’s hand guiding them. We believe that our
country’s heroes were the instruments of the God of nations in establishing
this home of freedom; to both the Almighty and to His instruments in the work
we look with grateful reverence. And to maintain the inheritance of freedom
which they have left us, should it ever–which God forbid—be imperiled, our
Catholic citizens will be found to stand forward as one man, ready to pledge
anew ‘their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.’”
Archbishop
(soon to be Cardinal) James Gibbons, addressing the American bishops at the
Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884 attended by 14 archbishops and 61
bishops.
Moved
to the very depths of our hearts by the stirring appeal of the President of the
United States, and by the action of our national Congress, we accept
whole-heartedly and unreservedly the decree of that legislative authority
proclaiming this country to be in a state of war. Inspired neither by hate nor
fear, but by the holy sentiments of truest patriotic fervor and zeal, we stand
ready, we and all the flock committed to our keeping, to cooperate in every way
possible with our President and our national government, to the end that the
great and holy cause of liberty may triumph and that our beloved country may
emerge from this hour of test stronger and nobler than ever. Our people, as
ever, will rise as one man to serve the nation.
Pledge
of U.S. Catholic Archbishops, April 18, 1917; sent to President Woodrow Wilson
by Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, the leading Catholic
prelate in the United States.
“The
primary duty of a citizen is loyalty to country. It is exhibited by an absolute
and unreserved obedience to his country’s call.”
Cardinal
James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921), April 1917 in support of
the U.S. declaration of war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Balfour
Declaration agreement committed the British to deliver Palestine into Jewish
hands in return for the Jews bringing the United States into WWI in support of
the British. Cardinal James Gibbons was the chief propagator of the heresy of
Americanism which became settled Novus Ordo doctrine after Vatican II
(religious liberty) primarily by the work of Fr. John Courtney Murray who
greatly admired Cardinal Gibbons. Gibbons did his best to align American
Catholics with Jewish interests to bring the United States into the Great War.
In doing so Gibbons worked directly to undermine the peace plans of Pope
Benedict XV. Pope Benedict devised a generous peace plan and contacted Cardinal
Gibbons to do what he could to influence the United States government to back
his offer of a negotiated peace. Gibbons did nothing of the sort. While giving
lip service to the Pope's peace plan six months too late, he in fact never
contacted President Wilson or any official of the government to even mention
Pope Benedict's peace plan. Gibbons was too busy building the National Catholic
War Council (NCWC) and supporting the call of universal military service. The
purpose of the NCWC as Gibbons said in a letter to all American bishops was to
form “the mental and moral preparation of our people for the war.”
To Congar's
credit, he at least told the truth about what he helped destroy!
“It cannot be denied that the Declaration on
Religious Liberty does say materially something else than the Syllabus of 1864;
it even says just about the opposite of
Propositions 15 and 77 to 79 of this document..... I collaborated on the
final paragraphs which left me less satisfied.
It involved demonstrating that the theme of religious liberty was
already contained in Scripture. Now, it isn't there.”
Cardinal
Yves Marie Joseph Congar, O.P., forbidden to teach by the Church and
whose books were suppressed in the early 1950s, made a peritus at Vatican II by
Novus Ordo St. John XXIII, and is considered by many to have been the most
influential of all the periti. He was raised to the cardinalate by Novus Ordo
St. John Paul II. He rejected the dogmatic teaching of Trent which his teacher
and mentor, Fr. Marie-Dominique
Chenu, O.P., derisively called “Baroque
theology”.
Excerpts from the Diary of Msgr. Joseph Fenton:
·
“He
[Cardinal Ottaviani] remarked that we were on the eve of the Council, and that
no one knew who the Council’s theologians were to be.” (Sept. 28, 1962)
·
“It is a
crime that we did not take the Anti-Modernist Oath. Poor O[ttaviani] must have
failed to have our own profession passed by the central commission. It contained
his condemnation of [Fr. John Courtney] Murray [the Americanist heretic who
structured the Council teaching on Religious Liberty].” (Oct. 9, 1962)
·
“I had
always thought that this council was dangerous. It was started for no
sufficient reason. There was too much talk about what it was supposed to
accomplish. Now I am afraid that real trouble is on the way.” (Oct. 13,
1962)
·
“I
started to read the material on the Liturgy, and I was shocked at the bad
theology. They actually have been stupid enough [to say] that the Church
is ‘simul humanam et divininam, visibilem et invisibilem’ [at the same
time human and divine, visible and invisible]. And they speak of the Church
working ‘quousque unum ovile fiat et unus pastor’ [until there be one fold
and one shepherd], as if that condition were not already achieved.” (Oct. 19,
1962)
·
“I do not
think that any little work on our part is going to bring good to the Church. We
should, I believe, face the facts. Since the death of [Pope] St. Pius X the
Church has been directed by weak and liberal popes, who have flooded the
hierarchy with unworthy and stupid men. This present conciliar set-up makes
this all the more apparent. [Fr.] Ed Hanahoe, the only intelligent and
faithful member of [Cardinal] Bea’s secretariat has been left off the list of
the periti. Such idiots as [Mgr. John
S.] Quinn and the sneak [Fr. Frederick] McManus have been put on. [Fr. George]
Tavard is there as an American, God help us. From surface appearance it
would seem that the Lord Christ is abandoning His Church. The thoughts of many
are being revealed. As one priest used to say, to excuse his own
liberalism, which, in the bottom of his heart he knew was wrong, ‘for the
last few decades the tendency in Rome has been to favor the liberals.’ That
is the policy now. We can only do what we can to overt an ever more
complete disloyalty to Christ.” (Oct. 19, 1962)
·
“[Fr.] Ed
Hanahoe gave me two books on Modernism. In one of them I found evidence that
the teaching in the first chapter of the new schema on the Church [that became
the Vatican II dogmatic constitution Lumen
Gentium] and the language are those of [the excommunicated Modernist Fr.
George Tyrrell [who died outside the Catholic Church and was denied
ecclesiastical burial]. May God preserve His Church from that chapter. If it
passes, it will be a great evil. I must pray and act.” (Sept. 24, 1963)
Paul VI
declared Novus Ordo Saint. So just what is a “Novus Ordo Saint”?
A Novus Ordo
Saint is a man-made saint. Contrasted with Catholic saints who are God-made
saints. In virtue of their union with God they are sanctified, and therefore,
Catholic Saints exhibit heroic virtue in their lives. God confirms their
sanctity by working miracles through their intercession and thus, a cult of
veneration (dulia) develops and spreads throughout the Church. The Church
recognizes God's evidence that they are saints and declares this fact to the
universal Church. Contrary to this, Novus Ordo Saints are man-made saints and
their elevation to the title of sainthood is for the purpose of promoting the
human ideology exemplified in their lives. There is no real cult of veneration
(dulia) among the faithful to Novus Ordo Saints. Since God does not work true
miracles through the intercession of man-made saints, only man-made miracles
are required for the beatification of man-made Novus Ordo Saints. Finally, the
Novus Ordo beatification process does have a promotor fidei, the
so-called “devil’s advocate,” although his role has been change as the promotor ideologiae. The greatest difference
between Catholic Saints and Novus Ordo Saints is that the former are in heaven
and the latter, very well may not be.
COMMENT ON THE
MODERN MIND DEVOID OF GOD’S GRACE
“But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common
man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with
editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids
and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each
man's rubber stamp is the twin of millions of others, so that when these
millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. [...]
The amazing readiness with which large masses accept this process is probably
accounted for by the fact that no attempt is made to convince them that black
is white. Instead, their preconceived hazy ideas that a certain gray is almost
black or almost white are brought into sharper focus. Their prejudices,
notions, and convictions are used as a starting point, with the result that they
are drawn by a thread into passionate adherence to a given mental picture.”
Edward Bernays, from his book, The Minority Rules, 1927. Bernays was a Jewish double nephew of
Sigmund Freud and a pioneer in public relations and propaganda. He was called
"the father of public relations" in his obituary. Bernays was named
one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life Magazine.
He was the subject of a full-length biography called The Father of Spin
(1999) and later an award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC called The Century of the Self. (Wiki)
"Pray for the
conversion of Russia." Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima
Your must
understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They
hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured
and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The
October Revolution was not what you call in America the "Russian
Revolution." It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More
of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any
people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be
understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact
that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global
media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators. We cannot state that all Jews
are Bolsheviks. But: without Jews there would have been no Bolshevism. For a
Jew nothing is more insulting than the truth. The blood maddened Jewish
terrorists murdered sixty-six million in Russia from 1918 to 1957.
Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Noble Prize winning novelist, historian and victim of
Jewish Bolshevism
American Catholic Apostasy: PEW POLE 2025
29% of U.S. Catholics say they attend
Mass weekly.
59% of Catholics say abortion should be
legal.
76% U.S. Catholics say society should be
accepting of homosexuality.
61% U.S. Catholics support legal
homosexual "marriage."
80% of Catholics view Pope Francis favorably.
84% of U.S. Catholics say they have a favorable view of Leo although
67% say they know little about Leo, and 25% know nothing at all.
Pope Leo XIV commemorates Nostra Aetate anniversary with interfaith
celebrations
Catholic NewsAgency | Vatican City |Kridina
Millare | Oct 29, 2025
Pope Leo XIV joined faith leaders on
Tuesday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Church’s
declaration on building relationships with non-Christian religions.
Approximately 300 representatives of world
religions and cultures joined the Holy Father for an evening ecumenical prayer
service for peace organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio and held at the
Colosseum in Rome.
“Peace is a constant journey of
reconciliation,” the Holy Father said at the Oct. 28 event.
Thanking religious leaders for coming
together in Rome, he said their interfaith meeting expressed their shared
“conviction that prayer is a powerful force for reconciliation.”
“This is our witness: offering the immense treasures of ancient
spiritualities to contemporary humanity,” he said.
“We need a true and sound era of
reconciliation that puts an end to the abuse of power, displays of force, and
indifference to the rule of law,” he added. “Enough of war, with all the pain
it causes through death, destruction, and exile!”
In his remarks, the pope urged people not to be indifferent to the “cry
of the poor and the cry of the earth” in their pursuits for peace in countries
scarred by ongoing conflict and injustice.
“In the power of prayer, with hands raised
to heaven and open to others, we must ensure that this period of history,
marked by war and the arrogance of power, soon comes to an end, giving rise to
a new era,” he said.
“We
cannot allow this period to continue. It shapes the minds of people who grow
accustomed to war as a normal part of human history,” he continued.
Pope Leo and other religious leaders lit
candles to symbolize their shared prayer and renewed commitment to engage in
interfaith dialogue.
Several people waved small blue banners
with the word “peace” in different languages while Pope Leo and the other
religious leaders lit candles to symbolize their shared prayer and renewed
commitment to engage in interfaith dialogue.
After the prayer gathering at Rome’s iconic landmark, the Holy Father
returned to the Vatican to join colorful celebrations jointly organized by the
Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Dicastery for Promoting Christian
Unity.
To mark the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, several multicultural music
and dance performances were held inside the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall as
well as a presentation highlighting papal initiatives to promote the Church’s
dialogue with other religions since the pontificate of Pope Paul VI.
Pope Leo’s appearance and special address
toward the end of the two-hour gathering highlighted the Church’s reverence for
all people and its desire to collaborate with others for the common good.
“We belong to one human family, one in origin, and one also in our
final goal,” he said. “Religions everywhere try to respond to the restlessness
of the human heart.”
“Each in its own way offers teachings, ways of life, and sacred rites
that help guide their followers to peace and meaning,” he said.
Emphasizing the common mission shared among people of different
religions to “reawaken” the sense of the sacred in the world today, the Holy
Father encouraged people to “keep love alive.”
“We have come together in this place
bearing the great responsibility as religious leaders to bring hope to a
humanity that is often tempted by despair,” Leo said.
“Let us remember that prayer has the power
to transform our hearts, our words, our actions, and our world,” he said.
COMMENT: Now for the third
time in his short pontificate Leo/Provost quotes Leonard Boff's Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Boff
is a former Franciscan priest who was censored by the liberal Cardinal
Ratzinger when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under
the liberal JPII for his extreme Marxist liberation theology. Boff is famous
for his development of an integrated theology of Marxism, Gaia cult earth
worship and "social justice." He was admired by Francis/Bergoglio and
he is admired thrice as much by Leo/Provost. The picture with its Satanic
imagery was reportedly published by the Vatican. Leo/Provost, like
Francis/Bergoglio, wants to restore native American culture and religious
traditions. It should be remembered that Christopher Columbus encountered
cannibalism on his second voyage of exploration and ritual murder was
widespread not only among the Aztecs and Incas but in smaller tribes across
both North and South America as reported by Jesuit missionaries. In the
interfaith celebrations at the Vatican a young native American boy half dressed
paraded an image of a snake into the assembly before Leo/Provost. Is this the
native American tradition that the Vatican wants to recover?
Doctrinal Note on Marian titles: Mother of the faithful, not
Co-redemptrix
The document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved
by Pope Leo XIV, offers clarifications on titles applied to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, and calls for special attention to the use of the expression, “Mediatrix
of all graces.”
Vatican News
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
on Tuesday, 4 November 2025, published Mater populi fidelis (“The Mother of the
Faithful People”), a Doctrinal Note “On Some Marian Titles Regarding Mary’s
Cooperation in the Work of Salvation.” Signed by the Prefect, Cardinal Víctor
Manuel Fernández, and the Secretary for the Dicastery’s Doctrinal Section,
Monsignor Armando Matteo, the Note was approved by the Pope on 7 October.
Mater populi fidelis (MPF) is the fruit of
a long and complex collegial effort. It is a doctrinal document on Marian
devotion, centred on the figure of Mary, who is associated with the work of
Christ as Mother of believers. The Note provides a significant biblical
foundation for devotion to Mary, as well as marshalling various contributions
from the Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, elements of Eastern tradition, and
the thought of recent Popes.
In this positive framework, the doctrinal
text analyses a number of Marian titles, encouraging the adoption of some of
those appellations and warning against the use of others. Titles such as
“Mother of Believers,” “Spiritual Mother,” “Mother of the Faithful” are noticed
with approval in the Note. Conversely,
the title of “Co-redemptrix” is deemed inappropriate and problematic. The title
of “Mediatrix” is considered unacceptable when it takes on a meaning that
excludes Jesus Christ; however, it can used appropriately so long as it
expresses an inclusive and participatory mediation that glorifies the power of
Christ. The titles “Mother of Grace” and “Mediatrix of All Graces” are
considered acceptable when used in a very precise sense, but the document also
warns of particularly broad explanations of the meaning of the terms.
Essentially, the Note reaffirms Catholic
doctrine, which has always emphasised that everything in Mary is directed
towards the centrality of Christ and His salvific work. For this reason, even
if some Marian titles admit of an orthodox interpretation through correct
exegesis, Mater populi fidelis says it is preferable to avoid them.
In his presentation of the Doctrinal Note,
Cardinal Fernández expresses appreciation for popular devotion but warns
against groups and publications that propose a certain dogmatic development and
raise doubts among the faithful, including through social media. The main
problem in interpreting these titles applied to Our Lady, he says concerns the
way of understanding Mary's association with Christ's work of redemption
(paragraph 3).
Co-redemptrix
Regarding the title “Co-redemptrix,” the
Note recalls that “some Popes have used the title “without elaborating much on
its meaning.” Generally, it continues, “they have presented the title in two
specific ways: in reference to Mary’s divine motherhood (insofar as she, as
Mother, made possible the Redemption that Christ accomplished) or in reference
to her union with Christ at the redemptive Cross. The Second Vatican Council
refrained from using the title for dogmatic, pastoral, and ecumenical reasons.
Saint John Paul II referred to Mary as ‘Co-redemptrix’ on at least seven
occasions, particularly relating this title to the salvific value of our
sufferings when they are offered together with the sufferings of Christ, to
whom Mary is united especially at the Cross” (18).
The document cites an internal discussion
within the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in February
1996 had discussed the request to proclaim a new dogma on Mary as
“Co-redemptrix or Mediatrix of all graces.” Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was
opposed to such a definition, arguing, “the precise meaning of these titles is
not clear, and the doctrine contained in them is not mature. […] It is not
clear how the doctrine expressed in these titles is present in Scripture and
the apostolic tradition.”
Later, in 2002, the future Benedict XVI
expressed himself publicly in the same way: “The formula ‘Co-redemptrix’
departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the
Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings… Everything comes from
Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians,
in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything that she is through Him. The
word ‘Co-redemptrix’ would obscure this origin.”
The note clarifies that Cardinal Ratzinger
did not deny the good intentions behind the proposal, nor the valuable aspects
reflected in it, but nonetheless maintained that they were “being expressed in
the wrong way” (19).
Pope Francis also expressed his clear
opposition to the use of the title Co-Redemptrix on at least three occasions.
Tuesday’s Doctrinal Note concludes: “It is
always inappropriate to use the title ‘Co-redemptrix’ to define Mary’s
cooperation. This title risks obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation and
can therefore create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of
the Christian faith. […] When an expression requires many, repeated
explanations to prevent it from straying from a correct meaning, it does not
serve the faith of the People of God and becomes unhelpful” (22).
Mediatrix
The Note emphasises that “the biblical
statement about Christ’s exclusive mediation is conclusive. Christ is the only
Mediator” (24).
At the same time, MPF recognises “the fact
that the word ‘mediation’ is commonly used in many areas of everyday life,
where it is understood simply as cooperation, assistance, or intercession. As a
result, it is inevitable that the term would be applied to Mary in a
subordinate sense. Used in this way, it does not intend to add any efficacy or
power to the unique mediation of Jesus Christ, true God and true man” (25).
Further, “it is clear that Mary has a real
mediatory role in enabling the Incarnation of the Son of God in our humanity”
(26).
Mother of believers and Mediatrix of all graces
Mary’s maternal role “in no way obscures or
diminishes” the unique mediation of Christ, “but rather shows its power […]
Understood in this way, Mary’s motherhood does not seek to weaken the unique
adoration due to Christ alone but, rather, seeks to enkindle it.”
Therefore, the Note states, “one must avoid titles and expressions that
present Mary as a kind of ‘lightning rod’ before the Lord’s justice, as if she
were a necessary alternative before the insufficiency of God’s mercy” (37b).
Thus, the title “Mother of Believers”
“enables us to speak of Mary’s role in our relation to our life of grace”.
However, MPF goes on to urge caution concerning the use of expressions that may
convey “less acceptable notions” (45).
“Cardinal Ratzinger already affirmed” for example, “that the title
‘Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces’ was not clearly grounded in Revelation.” So,
the Note continues, “in line with this conviction, we can recognize the
difficulties this title poses, both in terms of theological reflection and
spirituality” (45). In fact, “no human person — not even the Apostles or the
Blessed Virgin — can act as a universal dispenser of grace. Only God can bestow
grace, and he does so through the humanity of Christ” (53).
“Some titles, such as ‘Mediatrix of All Graces,’ have limits that do
not favour a correct understanding of Mary’s unique place,” MPF explains,
adding, “In fact, she, the first redeemed, could not have been the mediatrix of
the grace that she herself received” (67).
Nonetheless, the Doctrinal Note
acknowledges that “the term ‘graces,’ when seen in reference to Mary’s maternal
help at various moments in our lives, can have an acceptable meaning. The
plural form expresses all the aids — even material — that the Lord may grant us
when He heeds His Mother’s intercession” (68).
COMMENT: Amazing to hear these apostates chirping
about the lack of "precise meaning" of theological terms while
obscurity in definition is, and has been since Vatican II, the calling card of
the Novus Ordo theologian and prelates. They like to muddle what is clear.
Let's start with the title, "Mother of Believers" and "Mother of
the Faithful." These are, in fact, worthy titles of the Mother of God and
frequently occur in St. Mary of Agreda's City of God, yet the Novus Ordo
clerics would never be found offering a precise definition and meaning for the
term "faithful" and then identify exactly who the
"faithful" are.
The term "faithful" has a precise
Catholic definition. It refers to those who have been baptized into the
Catholic Church and profess the one, holy, catholic and apostolic faith. By
virtue of this incorporation by baptism they have become "children of
God." They faithfully believe all the truths that God has revealed on the
authority of God the Revealer. Only those who have become thus members of the
Mystical Body of Christ share by participation in His divine nature and become
brothers and sister of Jesus Christ and therefore, sons of His Mother. This
definition excludes all heretics, schismatics, Jews, pagans, and any other form
of idolaters. Novus Ordo clerics heretically teach that everyone is a child of
God by virtue of the Incarnation. Everyone by nature is a creature of God
created in His image and likeness with the spiritual soul with the powers of
reason and free will, but every creature is born in original sin and cut off
from the friendship of God. He is only a "child of God" in potentia. Without the sacrament of
Baptism and the Catholic faith they can never become "children of
God." This obscurity of definition as to who is a child of God and thus a
child of the Blessed Virgin Mary ultimately obscures what is necessary as a
necessity of means to obtain salvation.
The title Mediatrix of all grace is long
established and of sound and precise theological understanding. Those that
pretend otherwise are ignorant, proud, and deceitful. They have no excuse. 'The
law of prayer determines the law of belief' is, as affirmed by St. Pius X in Pascendi, a canon of faith from the time
of Celestine I, that is, a dogma of the Catholic Church. The immemorial Roman
rite has a Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of all grace
celebrated on May 31 established by Pope Benedict XV. Regarding this feast, Dom
Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B. of the Abby of St. Andrew teaches:
"The will of God is that we should
have everything through Mary," says St. Bernard. The Father has sent us
His Son, but His will was to make His coming depend upon the Fiat of the
Virgin, which He commanded to the angel Gabriel to solicit on the day of the
Annunciation.
The Father and the Son send us the Holy
Ghost, but it is through Mary that He comes down to men. On the day of
Pentecost, according to an ancient Tradition, the heavenly fire which descended
on the Cenacle first rested on Mary, and then on the apostles. This is a figure
of what happens every day in the Church where the Holy Ghost is sent invisibly
into our souls. "All the gifts of the Holy Ghost are distributed by Mary
to those whom she chooses, whenever she wishes and as much as she wishes,"
says St. Bernardine of Siena.
The graces which the Holy Ghost pours down
on us are due to the merits of Christ on Calvary; but in order that God may
bestow them on the world, it is necessary that Mary should intervene. Having
cooperated by her divine maternity and by her sufferings at the foot of the
Cross in the Incarnation and Redemption, she has deserved to co-operate when
they are continually applied to creatures by the most High. "By the
communion of sorrows and of will between Christ and Mary," says St. Pius
X, "she has deserved to become the dispenser of all the blessings which
Jesus acquired for us by His blood" (Encyclical 2-2-1904). Such is His
will, but it is essential that she should constantly intercede for each one of
us. This she does, relying on the blood of Christ by whom she was herself
saved, and who alone saves us. This actual intervention of Mary plays a
preponderating part in the salvation of the world. It is important that we
should realize this, and it is the object of the feast of Mary Mediatrix of all
Graces. A clear idea of the fact may be obtained by simple reading the texts of
the Mass and Vespers.
"Through the Virgin," says St.
Bernardine of Siena, "life-giving graces flow from Christ, who is the
head, into His mystical body." "Through her," adds St.
Antoninus, "come from heaven all the graces granted to the world."
"What all the saints united to thee may obtain for us by their
intercession," writes St. Anselm, "thy pleading alone may obtain without
the help of their prayers." The maternal solicitude of Mary for the whole
human race is therefore continual, and it is because of this that unceasingly,
through the Mass, the sacraments, the hierarchy and other channels of grace,
the merits of Calvary are applied to our souls. "We may affirm,"
declared Pope Leo XIII, "that by the will of God, nothing is given to us
without Mary's mediation, in such a way that
just as no one can approach the almighty Father but through His Son, so
no one, so to speak, can approach Christ but through His Mother"
(Encyclical, 9-22-1891).
Let us therefore not consider as of small
importance the efforts made to establish this point of doctrine of Mary's
mediation, since this doctrine enables us to understand the divine plan, and
clearly manifests the mediation of the Son of God of which it is a corollary.
St.
Mary of Agreda at the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven,
writes that Jesus Christ addressed the entire heavenly assembly of angels and
saints saying:
"My
Father and eternal God, this is the Woman, that gave Me my human form in her
virginal womb, that nourished Me at her breast and sustained labors for Me,
that shared in my hardships and co-operated with Me in the works of Redemption.
This is She, who was always most faithful and fulfilled our will according to
our entire pleasure; She, pure and immaculate as my Mother, through her own
works, has reached the summit of sanctity according to the measure of the gifts
We have communicated to Her; and when She had merited her reward and could have
enjoyed it forever, She deprived Herself of it for Our glory and returned to
attend to the establishment, the government, and instruction of the Church
militant; and We, in order that She might live in it for the succor of the
faithful, deferred her eternal rest, which She has merited over and over again.
In the highest bounty and equity of our Providence it is just, that my Mother
should be remunerated for her works of love beyond all other creatures; and
toward Her the common law of the other mortals should not apply. If I have
merited for all infinite merits and boundless graces, it is proper that my
Mother should partake of them above all the others who are so inferior; for She in her conduct
corresponds to our liberality and puts no hindrance or obstacle to our infinite
power of communicating our treasures and participating them as the Queen and
Mistress of all that is created."
Sanctifying
grace is the created participation in the divine nature. The Blessed Virgin is
the "Queen and Mistress of all that is created." In this Mass the
Church prays:
"
O Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator with the Father, who hast appointed the most
blessed Virgin, Thy mother, to be our mother also and our mediatrix before
Thee: Grant that whosoever draweth nigh to Thee to beseech any benefit, may
receive all things through her and rejoice.
Rev.
Gregory Alastruey's theological work titled, The Blessed Virgin Mary, says that, "There are five principle titles and offices due
Mary, the Mother of God, by reason of her cooperation in redemption: Mediatrix,
Co-redemptrix, Mother of Christians, Patroness or Advocate, and Queen and
Mistress of the universe. I would recommend those who deny this proper
honor to the Mother of God obtain a copy of the book and have their stupidity
erased. I do not say, ignorance erased because willful ignorance is stupidity. Fr. Alastruey affirms that
"Mary is truly mediatrix of the human race and this doctrine pertains to
the deposit of faith." He then draws from Scripture, the Fathers,
and theologians in support of this truth. He proves from the Church Fathers
that the word "mediatrix" was explicitly used by St. Ephrem, St.
Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil of Seleucia, St. Andrew of Crete, St
Germanus of Constantinople, St. John Damascene, St Theodore, St. Antoninus and
Denis the Carthusian. He draws richly from the divine liturgy from both Eastern
and Roman traditions. The errors of the Protestant heretics are addressed and
exposed which are curiously the same as expressed by the Novus Ordo popes.
Lastly,
it is worth asking Why do the Novus Ordo popes hate these proper titles of the Mother
of God? The answer is simple. The Blessed Virgin asked the three children at
Fatima on June 13, 1917, "Are
you willing to offer yourselves to God to bear all the sufferings He wills to
send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of
supplication for the conversion of sinners?" To which question all
answered, "Yes, we are willing." The Mother of God said on July 13
after the children had seen a vision of Hell, "Sacrifice yourselves for
sinners, and say many times, especially whenever you make some sacrifice: O
Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation
for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary." On August 19
(the apparition did not occur on the August 13 because the children were in
prison) the Mother of God continued saying, "Pray, pray very much, and
make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none
to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them." The Blessed Virgin is
asking the children to be co-redemptors and co-mediators of grace with her in
union with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the conversion and salvation of
sinners. If the title of Co-Redemtrix and Mediatrix of all Grace can be taken
away from the Mother of God then no one is responsible to do penance for their
own sins or the sins of others. This falls back to the Protestant heresy on the
dogma of justification and the very nature of our incorporation into the divine
nature in the Mystical Body of Christ. Leo/Provost, like his predecessor
Francis/Bergoglio, believes that proselytism is "solemn nonsense."
They attack the titles to excuse their own faithless sloth. They are working to
obscure the very means of salvation. As Jesus Christ said: "But woe to you
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven
against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in,
you suffer not to enter" (Matt 23:13).
Pope
Leo is just another heretic who denies the Blessed Virgin Mary her just titles
of Mediatrix of all Grace and Co-Redemtrix. Only a few days ago, he celebrated
with heretics, schismatics, Jews, Moslems, and a variety of idolaters a shared
communion praying to their common god a united petition for peace in the world.
He continues to ignore the peace plan offered by the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Mediatrix of all Grace, at Fatima. Pope Leo will soon learn that those who
insult the Mother have made an enemy of the Son.
This
demonstrats the fruit of the “New Evangelization” - which is shameless
apostasy!
Brazil: Catholic Church on
the decline
Catholic Church loses
followers to Evangelicals
Between 2000 and 2010, the number of Brazilians
describing themselves as Catholics has dropped by 12.2%. This record fall
brings the proportion of Catholics down to 65% – the lowest share since
religious affiliations was first surveyed in 1872. In 2000, 74% of the
population had classified themselves as Catholics.
Brazilian census: Catholic population falls to 57%
Catholic News Agency | Nathália
Queiroz | Sao Paulo,
Brazil, Jun 9, 2025
The percentage of Brazilians who identify
as Catholic fell to 56.75% in 2022, a reduction of 8.4% compared with 2010,
according to data from the 2022 demographic census released by the Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics. [....]
“The Rosary is the most powerful weapon for
defending ourselves on the field of battle.”
… The decadence
which exists in the world is without any doubt the consequence of the lack of
the spirit of prayer. Foreseeing this disorientation, the Blessed Virgin
recommended recitation of the Rosary with such insistence. And since the Rosary
is, after the holy Eucharistic liturgy, the prayer most apt for preserving
faith in souls, the devil has unchained his struggles against it.
Unfortunately, we see the disasters he has caused.
… We must
defend souls against the errors which can make them stray from the good road. …
We cannot and we must not stop ourselves, nor allow, as Our Lord says, the
children of Darkness to be wiser than the children of Light … The Rosary is the
most powerful weapon for defending ourselves on the field of battle.
Sr. Lucy of
Fatima, Letter to Dom Umberto Pasquale
“Necessity
Knows No Law”
In 1976, the
head of the UGCC, Cardinal Josef Slipyj, living in exile in Rome after 18 years
in the Soviet gulag, feared for the future of the UGCC. Would it have bishops
to lead it, given that Slipyj himself was now over 80? So he ordained three
bishops clandestinely, without the permission of the Holy Father, Blessed (sic)
Paul VI. At the time, the Holy See followed a policy of non-assertiveness
regarding the communist bloc; Paul VI would not give permission for the new
bishops for fear of upsetting the Soviets. The consecration of bishops without
a papal mandate is a very grave canonical crime, for which the penalty is
excommunication. Blessed (sic) Paul VI—who likely knew, unofficially, what
Slipyj had done—did not administer any penalties.
Fr. Raymond J.
DeSouza
John
Henry Newman: A Novus Ordo Saint and, fittingly, a Doctor of the Novus Ordo
Church
"I see much danger of an English
Catholicism of which Newman (Cardinal John Henry Newman) is the highest type.
It is the old Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone transplanted into the
Church. It takes the line of deprecating exaggerations, foreign devotions,
Ultramontanism, anti-national sympathies. In one word, it is worldly
Catholicism."
Cardinal Manning, Primate of England, Letter
to Monsignor Talbot, written in 1866, the second year of his reign as
archbishop
Salvation by
“Implicit” Faith?
But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to
God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him. Heb. 1,
6
Of course charity itself is
impossible without faith and hope. Could
anyone love a man if he did not believe it was possible to be or become his friend? Or if he despaired of ever gaining his
friendship? So it is with man in
relation to God as He is in Himself. Man
must believe it is possible to attain a perfect friendship with God in Heaven
and he must hope to attain this friendship through God’s power before he can
love God as his supernatural destiny.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. and
Fr. Marin Healy, My Way of Life – The
Summa Simplified for Everyone
Looming ahead is the
Great Apostasy predicted by St. Paul to the Thessalonians when the Antichrist,
“the man of sin” (2 Thess. 2: 3), will engage mankind in wholesale flight from
God and reality. From him can be
expected perfect acquiescence to the three temptations by which the devil
failed to seduce Christ in the desert.
Turning stones into bread by substituting false teaching for true
doctrine, he will confirm the satanic religion by false miracles, (that is
“lying wonders”), as it were casting himself down from the pinnacle of the
temple to be borne up by spiritual hands.
Given “all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory” (Matt. 4: 8-9)
in return for falling down and adoring Satan, Antichrist the King will
establish a universal empire in the fallen angel’s name. Aping as closely as possible Christ’s
consummation of the law and the prophets, he will capitulate in his person the
whole of the world’s apostatic tradition.
Solange Strong Hertz, Apostasy
in America
The Reason the
Message of LaSalette is Rejected or Unknown? They Are NOT 'Her People'!
It was 1846
and France was suffering social and political upheaval. Catholic churches had
been abandoned and the Sacraments neglected… On the eve of the Feast of Our
Lady of Sorrows, eleven-year-old Maxim Giraud and fourteen-year-old Melanie
Mathieu beheld a luminous sphere, radiating like the sun, curiously unfolding
before their eyes. Gradually they made out a woman seated with her face in her
hands, weeping. She slowly arose and crossed her arms on her breast, her head
some what inclined.
The children
were drawn immediately to the lady's tears that adorned her face like perfectly
cut diamonds glimmering the in the sun's rays. Her dynamic features were framed
delicately in a white-satin headdress, on which rested a crown of roses, a
bouquet in all shades of reds and pinks. A crucifix with pincers on one end and
a hammer on the opposite end hung over her satin shawl, which was lined with
more roses. The Madonna wore a long ivory dress embroidered in precious pearls
and a yellow apron tied neatly to her waist. Wearing pearl slippers that peeked
out from underneath her satin robe, she sheltered herself atop a bouquet of
roses.
"Come to
me, my children," she tenderly addressed the two who stood afar,
motionless. "Be not afraid. I am here to tell you something of the
greatest importance."
As soon as
they were in touching distance of her, she began to speak with the urgency of
an ending world:
"If my
people will not obey, I shall be compelled to loose my Son's arm. It is so
heavy, so pressing that I can no longer restrain it."
She told the children that her Son was especially
concerned that people were not keeping holy Sunday, and that religion had lost
its place in their country…. "You will make this known to all my people;
you will make this known to all my people," she repeated to them. Solange Hertz, Our
Lady of LaSalette
"It is a sin to believe there is salvation outside the
Catholic Church!"
Blessed Pope Pius IX
The Church is One, Holy, Catholic Apostolic,
and Roman : unique, the Chair founded on Peter. Outside her fold is to be
found nether the true faith nor eternal salvation, for it is impossible to have
God for a Father if one does not have the Church for a Mother.
Blessed Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quidem
The Great Error of Vatican
II –
The “pastoral” blunder that there
exists a disjunction between Divine Revelation and Dogma
The greatest concern of the
Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine
should be guarded and taught more efficaciously….. the authentic doctrine…
should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the
literary forms of modern thought. The
substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the
way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must
be taken into great consideration with patience if necessary, everything being
measured in the forms and proportions of a Magisterium which is predominantly
pastoral in character. Pope John XXIII,
Opening Speech for Vatican II
Peace Plan of Our Lady of Fatima
1.
WHAT DOES THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA REQUEST?
At Fatima Our Lady said that God wished to
establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady said
that many souls would be saved from Hell and the annihilation of nations
averted if, in time, devotion to Her Immaculate Heart were established
principally by these two means:
A. the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary by the Pope together with the world's bishops in a solemn public
ceremony, and
B. the practice or receiving Holy Communion (and
other specific devotions of about 1/2 hour in duration) in reparation for the
sins committed against the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the first Saturdays of five
consecutive months--a practice known to Catholics as "the First Saturday"
devotion.
2.
HAVE THESE REQUESTS OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA BEEN HONORED?
No, not entirely. A
number of the Faithful practice the "First Saturday" devotion, but
Russia has yet to be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in a solemn
public ceremony conducted by the Pope together with the world's Catholic
bishops.
In 1982 the last
Fatima seer, Lucia, when a cloistered nun living in Coimbra, Portugal, was
asked if an attempted consecration by Pope John Paul II had sufficed. She
replied that it did not suffice, because Russia was not mentioned and the
world's bishops had not participated. Another attempted consecration in 1984
likewise did not mention Russia or involve the participation of many of the
world's bishops, and Sister Lucia stated immediately afterwards that this
consecration, too, had failed to meet Our Lady's requirements.
3. WHAT DOES THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA WARN?
It warns that if the
requests of Our Lady of Fatima for the Consecration of Russia and the First
Saturday devotion are not honored, the Church will be persecuted, there will be
other major wars, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations
will be annihilated. Many nations will be enslaved by Russian militant
atheists. Most important, many souls will be lost.
4.
WHAT DOES THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA PROMISE?
The Message of
Fatima promises that if the requests of Our Lady of Fatima are carried out
"My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will Consecrate Russia
to Me, which will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to
mankind."
The
United States is, as much as Israel, guilty for the Genocide of the Palestinian
People.
“I love Israel. I’m with you all the way...... Thanks to
the bravery and incredible skill of the Israeli Defense Forces and Operation Rising
Lion, the forces of chaos, terror, and ruin now stand weakened, isolated, and
totally defeated.”
“The story of fierce Israeli
resolve and triumph since October 7 should be proof to the entire world that
those who seek to destroy this nation are doomed to bitter failure.”
President Donald Trump, addressing the Israeli Knesset with Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the State of Israel
has ever had in the White House. No American president has ever done more for
Israel, and, as I said in Washington, it ain’t even close. It’s really not a
match.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Israeli
Knesset with President Trump
"It is sentiments like these (from President Trump) – backed by a long list of pro-Israel actions
over two terms, including moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing
Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, recognizing Jewish claims in Judea
and Samaria for a 'Greater Israel', brokering the Abraham Accords, striking Iran
alongside Israel, decapitation strikes against Iranian and Hamas peace
negotiators, and directly supporting the Israeli genocide of Gaza with over $30
billion direct aid, billions more in indirect air with military, intelligence,
logistical and political support both in the United States and at the United
Nations including censorship in mainstream media and suppression of free speech
at college campuses."
Catholic political commentary
“For the Jews, ‘Anti-Semitism’ is anything that is in
opposition to the naturalistic Messianic domination of their nation over all
the others.”
Rev. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., B.A., D.Ph., D.D.
On the Charge of
Anti-Semitism in Our Time
“…Two reasons can be assigned to the fact
that Our Lord’s faithful members will often be betrayed by those who should be
on the side of Christ the King. Firstly, many Catholic writers speak of Papal
condemnations of Anti-Semitism without explaining the meaning of the term, and
never even allude to the documents which insist on the Rights of Our Divine
Lord, Head of the Mystical Body, Priest and King. Thus, very many are
completely ignorant of the duty incumbent on all Catholics of standing
positively for Our Lord’s Reign in society in opposition to Jewish Naturalism.
The result is that numbers of Catholics are so ignorant of Catholic doctrine
that they hurl the accusation of Anti-Semitism against those who are battling
for the Rights of Christ the King, thus effectively aiding the enemies of Our
Divine Lord. Secondly, many Catholic writers copy unquestioningly what they
read in the naturalistic or anti-Supernatural Press and do not distinguish
between Anti-Semitism in the correct Catholic sense, as explained above, and
‘Anti-Semitism’ as the Jews understand it. …”
Fr. Fahey’s Preface in Grand Orient
Freemasonry Unmasked: As the Secret Power Behind Communism by Monsignor George
F. Dillon, D.D.
Jews have
hated & persecuted the Catholic Church from the time of Jesus Christ to
this very day!
[The Jews are] a people who, having
imbrued their hands in a most heinous outrage [Jesus’ crucifixion], have thus
polluted their souls and are deservedly blind. . . . Therefore we have nothing
in common with that most hostile of people the Jews. We have received from the
Savior another way . . . our holy
religion. . . . On what subject will
that detestable association be competent to from a correct judgment, who after
that murder of their Lord . . . are
led… by. . . their innate fury?
Council of Nicaea, 325 AD
Jewish
Power is inversely proportional to the spiritual health of the Catholic Church
“Jews should not be placed in
public offices, since it is most absurd that a blasphemer of Christ should
exercise power over Christians.”
Fourth Lateran Council
Good Night, Sweet Princeton! By Fr. Leonard Feeney, 1952
Maritainism is a system of thought which
allows Catholics to be both Catholic and acceptable in the drawing rooms of
Protestant and Jewish philosophers. Maritainism is not a seeking and a finding
of the Word made flesh. It is a perpetual seeking for un-fleshed truth in an
abstract scheme called Christianity. Maritainism is the scrapping of the
Incarnation in favor of a God Whose overtures to us never get more personal or
loving than the five rational proofs for His existence. This plot to encourage
only pre-Bethlehem interest in God takes its name from its perpetrator, that
highly respected religious opportunist, Jacques Maritain.
The slightest acquaintance with Maritain’s
history is sufficient to indicate how awry he must be in his Catholicism. He is
a former Huguenot who married a Jewish girl named Raïssa. During their student
days in Paris, both Jacques and Raïssa felt a double pull in the general
direction of belief. Intellectually they were attracted to the religious self-sufficiency
of a Jewish intuitionist named Henri Bergson. Sociologically they were
attracted to the spurious Catholicism of Leon Bloy, a French exhibitionist who
made a liturgy of his own crudeness and uncleaness and tried to attach it to
the liturgy of the Church. At some point in their association with an
unbaptized Bergson and an unwashed Bloy, the Maritains figured out that there
was a promising future ahead of them in Catholicism.
Jacques Maritain is noted for his
solemn-high, holier-than-thou appearance. For this reason, more than one priest
reports that by the time a Maritain lecture is over, any priest who is present
has been made to feel that the Roman collar is around the wrong neck and that
perhaps he, the priest, ought to put on a necktie and kneel for Maritain’s
blessing.
One explanation of Maritain’s distant
expression is that he fancies himself to be the Drew Pearson of the Christian
social order. Judging by Maritain’s passion for the abstract, the fulfillment
of all his prophecies will come in an era when mothers can sing such songs as
“Rock-a-bye Baby, on the Dendrological Zenith,” and children recite such
bedtime prayers as “The Hail Mariology.”
Jacques Maritain prefers Thomism to Saint
Thomas Aquinas and, similarly, he much prefers the notion of the papacy to the
person of the Pope. He could not, however, turn down the prestige of an
appointment as French ambassador to the Vatican. Maritain went to Rome, but he
protected himself against over exposure to Italian faith by visits to Dr. George
Santayana. In Maritain, Santayana recognized a brother, the kind of European
intellectual cast-off that is annually being grabbed-up by American
Universities.
That Jacques Maritain should now be found
preaching at Princeton University is not so strange. It did not require too
much insight on Princeton’s part to see that a Catholic who hates Franco,
speaks at Jewish seminaries, and favors “theocentricity” in place of Jesus,
would be a bizarre, but harmless, addition to anybody’s faculty club.
Perhaps Princeton realized also that a
Catholic’s admirers are a good measure of his militancy. Among Maritain’s more
prominent sympathizers are John Wild, Charles Malik and Mortimer Adler (N.B.
Adler was converted and received into the Catholic Church in 1999 only 18
months before he died at 98 years of age), who are, respectively, an Anglican,
a Greek schismatic, and a Jew. Naturally Maritain could not insult
intellectuals like these by telling them that although they are outside the
Church they can get into Heaven because of their “invincible ignorance.” It was
necessary that Maritain concoct a new way of getting around the dogma, “No
Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.”
After a lot of abstract deliberation,
Maritain decided that a man could be “invisibly, and by a motion of his heart,
a member of the Church, and partake of her life, which is eternal life.”
According to Maritain’s new covenant, the important salvation-actions in our
world are no longer a head bowed to the waters of Baptism, a hand raised in
Absolution, a tongue outstretched to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. “A
motion of his heart,” says Maritain, is all that is required before a man may
partake of eternal life.
The Sacred Heart might have saved Himself a
lot of inconvenience had He only known this, one Friday afternoon on Calvary.
COMMENT: Jacques Maritain was Paul VI’s favorite philosopher. Maritain's reputation as a great philosopher is based on his supposed integration of the Scholastic principles of St. Thomas with the modern world. He had a world-wide reputation and following that extending beyond his
native France to hold visiting professorships
at Princeton and the University of Chicago, as well as a visiting lecturer at Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Toronto. Pope Paul VI publicly confessed his
profound respect and influence by
Maritain’s thought on his Credo of the People of God (1968). At
the close of the Second Vatican Council on December 8, 1965, the pope’s “Address
to Men of Thought and Science” was dedicated to his “dear friend and mentor, Jacques Maritain.” Pope Paul offered Maritain a cardinal’s hat, but the philosopher declined
it. Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom—Dignitatis Humanae—which teaches that the dignity of man is so exalted
that he possesses the inalienable right to neither conform his mind to God’s
revealed truth nor obey God’s commandments, drew as its inspiration Maritain’s book Man and the State (1951) which is an
articulation of the language
of “rights” that Dignitatis
Humanae employs.
“By
their fruit you shall know them!”; & by their fruit you had better well
know them!
For such false
apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of
Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of
light. Therefore it is no
great thing if his (Satan's) ministers be transformed as the ministers of
justice, whose end shall be according to their works.
II Corinthians
11:13-15
The order of divine justice exacts that
whosoever consents to another's evil suggestion, shall be subjected to him in his punishment; according to II Peter
2:19: "By whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the
slave."
St. Thomas Aquinas
The proper literal understanding of this dogma from the
Council of Trent:
Canon 4 on the sacraments in
general: If anyone says that the
sacraments of the New Law are not necessary for salvation but are superfluous,
and that without them or without the desire of them men obtain from God
through faith alone the grace of justification, though all are not necessary
for each one, let him be anathema.
The Dogma defines two revealed doctrinal truths:
1.
If anyone says: that the sacraments of the
New Law are not necessary for salvation but are superfluous, let him be
anathema.
2.
If anyone says: that without the
sacraments or (if anyone says) without the desire of the sacraments
men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification, let him be
anathema.
Both the Sacrament of Baptism and the will to
receive the Sacrament are necessary for salvation!
“But
God desired that his confession should avail for his salvation, since he preserved him in this life until the
time of his holy regeneration.” St. Fulgentius
“If anyone is not baptized, not only in ignorance,
but even knowingly, he can in no way be saved. For his path to salvation was through the confession, and salvation itself was in baptism. At
his age, not only was confession
without baptism of no avail: Baptism
itself would be of no avail for salvation if he neither believed nor
confessed.” St. Fulgentius
Notice,
both the CONFESSION AND THE BAPTISM are necessary for salvation, harkening back
to Trent’s teaching that both the laver AND the “votum” are required for
justification, and harkening back to Our Lord’s teaching that we must be born
again of water AND the Holy Spirit.
In fact, you see the language of St. Fulgentius reflected in the Council of
Trent. Trent describes the votum (so-called “desire”) as the PATH
TO SALVATION, the disposition to Baptism, and then says that “JUSTIFICATION
ITSELF” (St. Fulgentius says “SALVATION ITSELF”) follows the dispositions in
the Sacrament of Baptism.
Yet another solid argument for why Trent is teaching that BOTH the votum
AND the Sacrament are required for justification.
“Hold
most firmly and never doubt in the least that not only all pagans but also all
Jews and all heretics and schismatics who end this present life outside the
Catholic Church are about to go into the eternal fire that was prepared for the
Devil and his angels.” St. Fulgentius
“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes,
professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church,
not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share
in life eternal; but that they will go into the ‘eternal fire which was
prepared for the devil and his angels.’”
Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino
Ladislaus, CathInfo
We will see
the same from Pope Leo!
The
end of dialogue is to produce opinion. The purpose of logical argument is to
appeal to the intellect to arrive at truth.
Rhetoric appeals to the will and poetry to the imagination. The emphasis
of the Novus Ordo Church since Vatican II on dialogue is therefore a repudiation
of any claim to truth offering in its place only the opinions of churchmen. It
is the debasement of Jesus Christ’s gospel from Truth to just another opinion,
from historical fact to mythology. It is only incidental that Novus Ordo
Church, having turned its back against the truth, has also turned away from
rhetoric and poetry which explains why it is both effeminate and ugly.
“The Church will have to opt for dialogue as her style and method,
fostering an awareness of the existence of bonds and connections in a complex
reality. . . . No vocation, especially within the Church, can be placed outside
this outgoing dynamism of dialogue . . . . [emphasis added].”
Pope Francis’ Instrumentum
Laboris, XV ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF SYNOD OF BISHOPS: YOUNG
PEOPLE, THE FAITH AND VOCATIONAL DISCERNMENT
And
thus, the 'spirit of Vatican II' - dialogue so that everyone can reach an
accomodation of error and the repudiation of logical argument appealing to
truth!
“Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs. We can inspire others
through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst
thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: ‘I am talking with you
in order to persuade you,’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her
own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing.”
Pope Francis
Explicit
Supernatural Faith in God’s Revealed Truth is Necessary as a Necessity of Means
for Salvation.
If you do not
believe this, you do not possess Supernatural Faith!
Responses of the Holy Office under Pope Clement XI, 1703:
Q. Whether a minister
is bound, before baptism is conferred on an adult, to explain to him all the
mysteries of our faith, especially if he is at the point of death, because this
might disturb his mind. Or, whether it is sufficient, if the one at the point
of death will promise that when he recovers from the illness, he will take care
to be instructed, so that he may put into practice what has been commanded him.
Resp. A promise is not
sufficient, but a missionary is bound to explain to an adult, even a dying one
who is not entirely incapacitated, the mysteries of faith which are necessary by a necessity of means, as
are especially the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Q. Whether it is
possible for a crude and uneducated adult, as it might be with a barbarian, to
be baptized, if there were given to him only an understanding of God and some
of His attributes, especially His justice in rewarding and in
punishing, according to this passage of the Apostle "He that
cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder' [Heb . 11:23],
from which it is inferred that a barbarian adult, in a certain case of urgent
necessity, can be baptized although he does not believe explicitly in Jesus Christ.
Resp. A missionary should not baptize
one who does not believe explicitly in the Lord Jesus Christ, but is bound to
instruct him about all those matters which are necessary, by a necessity of
means, according to the capacity of the one to be baptized.”
COMMENT: The infamous 1949 Holy Office Letter, sent privately to
Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston for the purpose of censoring Fr. Lenard
Feeney for his belief in the Dogma that there is no salvation outside the
Catholic Church, affirmed the novel doctrine of 'salvation by implicit desire'.
The "implicit desire" was to be a "member of the Church"
and the evidence of this "implicit desire" was an explicit belief in
a 'god who rewards and punishes'. The Letter teaches that the only requirement
for salvation is found in St. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews 11:13. No longer
were the belief in any revealed truth, the reception of any sacrament, or being
a subject of the Roman Pontiff necessary as necessities of means for salvation.
This Letter teaches that any "good-willed" Jew as a Jew, Hindu as a
Hindu, Mohammedan as a Mohammedan, Protestant as a Protestant, etc., etc. can
be members of the Church and can obtain salvation because they believe in a
'god who rewards and punishes'. The Holy Office response of 1703 makes it clear
that the belief in a God who rewards and punishes is only the natural
philosophical prerequisite for receiving the gospel good-news of salvation and
of itself is insufficient grounds for receiving the sacrament of Baptism.
After
40 Years of Dialogue, Rabbi identifies papal “conundrum.”
The real conundrum that faces Benedict XVI on his visit to Israel… is
should he be loyal to the Gospels which claim that only acceptance of Christ
can bring the messianic age, or should he endorse Vatican II which acknowledges
that Jews… can find the kingdom of God via a different route? Should he look inwards, backwards or
forwards?
Rabbi Jonathan Romain, The Pope’s Jewish Dilemma, The Guardian
There is yet a time of stillness and indifference. Liberalism is a
twilight state in which all errors are softened, in which no persecution for
religion will be countenanced. It is the stillness before the storm. There is a
time coming when nothing will be persecuted but truth, and if you possess the
truth, you will share the trial.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster
Pope Leo calls for unity in climate action on 10-year anniversary of
Laudato si’
Pope Leo XIV appealed to all of humanity to unite, overcome
differences, and work together to respond to climate change and ecological
destruction
The Tablet | Aili Winstanley Channer | 02
October 2025
He was speaking to climate activists and
religious leaders commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the encyclical Laudato si’ at Castel Gandolfo
yesterday.
It was the opening of the three-day
“Raising Hope for Climate Justice” conference organised by the Laudato si’
Movement in collaboration with ecclesial and institutional partners. Pope Leo reiterated Pope
Francis’ concern about “those who deride climate change” in the 2023
Apostolic Exhortation Laudate
Deum, and asserted, “there
is no room for indifference”.
He asked, “What must be done now to ensure that caring for our common home
and listening to the cry of the earth and the poor do not appear as mere
passing trends or, worse still, that they be seen and felt as divisive
issues?”
Attendees at the conference include
Christine Allen of Cafod. Bishop John Arnold, the lead bishop for the
environment for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said, “Pope Leo reminded us that Pope
Francis had emphasised that ‘the most effective solutions will not come from
individual efforts alone, but above all from major political decisions on the
national and international levels’. More than ever, we need to work together,
to think of future generations, and take urgent action if we are to truly
respond to the scale of this climate crisis: a crisis which affects those who
are poorest and most vulnerable and have done least to cause it.”
This view reflects Pope Leo’s call for ecological conversion at all
levels of society, including by strengthening democracy: “Citizens need to take
an active role in political decision-making at national, regional and local
levels. Only then will it be possible to mitigate the damage done to the
environment.”
Pope Leo was joined by Marina Silva,
Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change and the head of the
United Nations Global Ethical Stocktake, an initiative to foster societal
reflection on ethical responsibility for climate change ahead of the 2025 UN
Conference of Parties (COP30), which will be held in Belem, Brazil, in
November. Pope Leo expressed his hope that COP30 and other upcoming
international summits “will
listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, families, indigenous
peoples, involuntary migrants and believers throughout the world”.
But Pope Leo also emphasised that although these challenges are “of a
social and political nature”, they are “first and foremost of a spiritual
nature: they call for conversion”. He reaffirmed the spiritual
importance of caring for the Earth as God’s creation and its inseparability
from our responsibility towards the poor and vulnerable: “We cannot love God, whom we
cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples
of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care
for all that is fragile and wounded.”
The film star Arnold Schwarzenegger, known for his roles in
high-profile action films as well as his climate activism as Governor of
California and head of the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative, spoke alongside
Pope Leo and called him an “action hero” for his message on the environment.
Pope Leo smiled as he began his address. He affirmed the crucial and diverse
contributions made to mitigating the crisis by every individual at the
conference: “There is
indeed an action hero with us this afternoon: it is all of you, who are working
together to make a difference.”
As he closed, he said: “God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared
for the world that he created, for the benefit of all and for future
generations, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters. What will
be our answer?”
Pope Leo XIV Blesses Huge 20,000-Year-Old Chunk Of Greenland Ice
Forbes | Leslie Katz | Oct 06, 2025
Pope Leo XIV stood on stage at a climate
conference in Rome last week and laid his right hand on a massive chunk of ice,
blessing it.
This wasn’t just any ice. It had broken off
the vast Greenland Ice Sheet, a key regulator of global climate that’s
shrinking quickly as it melts due to climate change. The resulting rise in
global sea levels could flood many tens of millions of homes, scientists warn.
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson
transported the ice to the Raising Hope Conference with the help of Danish
geologist Minik Rosing to serve as a stark symbol of how quickly the world’s
glaciers are disappearing.
“Lord of life, bless this water,” the pope
said after touching the dripping ice. “May it awaken our hearts, cleanse our
indifference, soothe our grief and renew our hope through Christ our lord.”
Eliasson is known for his installation
art using light, water, and air. Eliasson called it “striking” to
witness the pope bless the 20,000-year-old piece of Greenlandic glacial ice.
“We felt the presence of the fragile ice underscored the importance of
recognizing that nature is not separate from humanity,” the artist wrote on
Instagram.
COMMENT: Pope Leo,
celebrating the 10th anniversary of Laudato si', the earth worshiping
encyclical of Pope Francis, blessed a block of Ice to counteract the diabolical
forces of global warming striking a grave and focused posture that was in
marked contrast to the stupidity of the gesture. The act says a lot more about
Leo than it does about climatology. Leo, like Francis, is believer in the pagan
Gaia cult of Mother Earth worship. Leo refers twice in his sermon to the
"Cry of the Earth, the Cry of the Poor." Leo took this phrase from
Francis' Laudato si' and Francis took
the quote without attribution from Leonard Boff's Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Boff is a former Franciscan
priest who was censored by the liberal Cardinal Ratzinger when he headed the
CDF under the liberal JPII for his extreem Marxist liberation theology. Boff is
famous for his development of an integrated theology of Marxism, Gaia cult
earth worship and "social justice." He was admired by Francis and he
is admired twice as much by Leo.
If
the ice block is 20,000 years old then the Genesis creation account and the
global flood of Noe is reduced to mythology and not divine revelation. The fact
is, ancient mythology ended with the Christian revelation of Jesus Christ but
the modern scientific world is doing its best to resurrect the cult of
mythology. The world likes to talk about the scientific fables of Big Bang,
primordial soups with lightening bubbling forth proteins that congeal into
cellular life with the teleological purpose of producing the DNA of Darwinian
man. These fables are believed and shamelessly pandered by our neo-modernists
popes. The absurdity is that the neo-modernists popes have embraced the myths
of scientology when science itself has discredited their claims. Scientists
have been predicting global flooding of coastal areas for the last fifty years
with no evidence of rising sea levels. Global warming is not science. It is liberal
ideology applied to climatology that always calls for a one-world governance to
enforce its dictatorial and anti-Catholic mandates. The alleged global warming
is always without exception a man made assault on Mother Earth that requires
the ritual murder of 6.5 billion people for a world "sustainable"
population of 500 million for expiation. Never is it considered in their
calculus that the increase of global
temperature would make available millions of more acres of arable land and
lengthen the growing season in millions of additional acres creating a massive
increase in the food supply and areas of habitable land. Scientists have no
idea whatsoever if global warming, if it is in fact happening at all, would
have overall beneficial or harmful effects. While Pope Leo is a resident in
Rome he might ask what became of Rome's ancient Port City of Ostia which was at
the time of Jesus Christ located directly on the sea at the mouth of the Tiber
River. It is today three kilometers from the coast. Citizens of Ostia may have
lost their beach front property but they are not under water.
Exsurge Domine - USA; Archbishop Carlo Maria
Viganò
The Association Exsurge
Domine is committed to provide
assistance, support and material aid for clerics, religious and consecrated
persons who are victims of the Bergoglian Regime. It is of highest importance
to act, to defend the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Faith, to preserve
and promote the Apostolic Mass, and to save Christendom. In this decisive
moment, we must choose to counter evil, or be swallowed up by its most
pestilent breath. Only those who fight as the Maccabee’s did shall merit
victory.
DEFENDE ECCLESIAM TUAM
In
many nations that are no longer Catholic-such as England, Germany or the
Netherlands, for example-you can still see small chapels carved out of attics
and cellars, or home altars hidden in invisible closets or niches: they were
used for the clandestine celebration of Mass in times of persecution, when it
was a crime to be faithful to the Church of Rome and priests had to hide to
avoid imprisonment or the death sentence. Without going back to Diocletian,
even in the 16th and 17th centuries “papists” were considered a threat, and
were barely tolerated as long as they had no churches, convents, seminaries, or
schools.
These persecutions are recurring today,
in perhaps a less bloody form, and the perpetrators are not Lutherans or the
thugs of Olivier Cromwell, but Cardinals, Bishops and Prelates of the Conciliar
sect, infiltrated into the Vatican and well determined to wipe out all traces
of the “old religion” and the “old Mass” that they have replaced with the
religion of ecology, of welcome, of inclusiveness, of the New World Order.
The apostasy we are experiencing is not
very different from that of the bishops who swore allegiance to Henry VIII in
order not to lose rents and benefits: the difference is that today the act of
obedience is required toward Bergoglio, the Second Vatican Council, the Novus
Ordo, the “synodal church,” Pachamama.
Those who do not yield, those who remain
faithful to the Priesthood or Religious Vows are ostracized, mocked, vilified,
persecuted and above all deprived of ministry, a dwelling place and means of
livelihood. Without mercy, without charity, without humanity.
Exsurge
Domine is
the response of those who do not surrender to this betrayal of the modernist
Hierarchy: it joins us to our brothers of past ages, to the faithful who gave
hospitality to the monk wanted by the soldiers of Elizabeth I, a hot meal to
the nun with no convent left in revolutionary France, a hiding place to the
Mexican priest pursued by the soldiers of the Masonic government. We can help
those persecuted priests, religious men and women who in anonymity, silence,
and humble acceptance of trials show us the suffering face of Christ ascending
Golgotha.
Let us therefore prove that we know how
to accompany the Faith we profess with good works, with prayer, with charity
and almsgiving. For these priests, these friars, these nuns can stop the arm of
divine Justice and give hope for the future in our children.
“Exsurge Domine – USA”
Address: PO Box 121, Rice Lake, WI 54868
Email:
info@exsurgedomineusa.org
501(c)3 approved Tax Code: 93-3884604
EXCERPT: The Vatican has been
covering-up the crimes of homosexual pederasts since 1922 but the practice
became actively enforced policy since 1962!!!
The total payouts by the Catholic Church for sex abuse claims in the
United States have exceeded $5 billion over the past two decades with almost
all of this for homosexual crimes.
FROM FORGIVENESS, TO SILENCE... TO BETRAYAL, By
Michael Kenny
THE FEAR OF SCANDAL: A DEEPENING MOTIF
As the Church gained public visibility and
institutional structure, the fear of scandal – that is, anything that could
bring shame or doubt upon the Church – grew proportionally. This concern is not
without biblical foundation. Apparently Christ Himself warned that:
“Scandals must come, but woe to the one
through whom they come.”
In a world where the Church was often
maligned, the temptation to protect its reputation – even at the cost of truth
– grew strong.
This approach reached its most formal
expression in the 20th century.
CRIMEN SOLICITATIONIS: CODIFYING SECRECY
In 1962, the Vatican issued a secret
instruction titled CRIMEN SOLICITATIONIS. Which laid out procedures
for dealing with priests accused of using the confessional to solicit sexual
acts (an update of canon 904 in 1741). While its original focus was on
confessional abuse – a particularly grievous offense – it extended its
protocols to cover ALL sexual misconduct by clergy, including child abuse.
This document mandated strict secrecy:
“Cases of this nature are subject to the strictest pontifical secret –
under pain of excommunication.”
This meant the victims, witnesses, and
Church authorities were all bound by silence, ostensibly to protect the
sacrament and the dignity of the Church. But in practice, this secrecy
protected the perpetrators and silenced the victims.
The same theological instinct that once
prompted Origen to counsel forgiveness now found its legal expression in institutional
concealment.
The Church fathers were not wrong to value
forgiveness. But forgiveness without justice is not sanctity – it is surrender.
And the Church must never surrender the innocent to the sins of the powerful.
THE COST OF MISAPPLIED MERCY
What unites the early Christian response to
personal violation with the institutional culture of silence centuries later is
a tragic misapplication mercy – a prioritizing of the Church's image, or of the
offender's soul, over the immediate demands of justice and the protection of
the innocent.
In the name of forgiveness, the Church
failed to act.
In the name of avoiding scandal, it created
a greater one.
In the name of unity, it tolerates wolves
among the sheep.
The very teachings of Christ – meant to
uphold truth, protect the weak, and heal the broken – were twisted into
realizations for secrecy and inaction.
TOWARD A NEW ETHOS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
The path forward must involve more
than policy reform. It requires a re-examination of the Church's spiritual instincts
– a return to the full Gospel, where mercy and justice walk hand in hand.
Forgiveness does not mean the abandonment
of truth.
Compassion does not mean the protection of
the predator.
The Church must rediscover the moral
courage to expose evil, even when it dwells in its own house.
EPILOGUE: A WAR ON INNOCENCE
There is a deeper layer to this crisis.
Darker than secrecy. Worse than betrayal. It is diabolical.
Satan hates God. This hatred is total,
consuming and unrelenting. But Satan can't hurt God directly – God is beyond
his reach. So he strikes where it hurts most: at what God loves – CHILDREN.
Jesus told us to let the children come to
Him. Jesus warned about the millstone. So, what then is a perfect way for
Satan's followers to do his bidding and please him, and hate God at the same
time...
VIOLATE A CHILD, and do it wearing the robes of Christ
In this perverse inversion of the
priesthood, the altar becomes a hunting ground, and the confessional, a trap.
[....]
COMMENT: The problem was
magnified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law protecting homosexual predators. Their
hypocrisy is evident when compared to the treatment given to Fr. Samuel Waters.
Homosexual predators are given the full canonical rights of due process while
Fr. Waters was denied canonical due process for the "crime" of
offering the "received and approved" immemorial Roman rite of Mass.
COMMENT: From the 1917 Code
of Canon Law, clerical homosexual predators and other sex offenders who were found guilty were laicized and
turned over to the state for suffer criminal penalties. Such a response was
necessary to restore justice, protect the faithful, and begin the hard work of
rebuilding. Everything changed in 1922 with a new canon law which required all
bishops of the world to violate mandatory reporting laws of the state by
concealing child abuse and homosexuality by clerics from criminal state law
enforcement. This document, Crimens Sollicitationis, was included in
the 1983 Code of Canon Law and remained in force until 2001.
Abp. Vigano the former apostolic nuncio to
the United States was required first by Crimens Sollicitationis and then by Sacramentum Sanctitatis
Tutela of 2001 and then by Graviora Delicta of 2010 to conceal
any knowledge of sexual crimes by clergy from public disclosure. The
“Spotlight” investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in 2002
revealed that many clerics found guilty of child sexual abuse were repeatedly
returned to Catholic ministry where they repeated their crimes on new children.
Following this investigation, the United States was the only country that
received an exemption from the Vatican policy to conceal sexual abuse from
state criminal law enforcement.
Canon 1341 of the current 1983 Code of
Canon Law, requires bishops whenever possible to ask priests to stop committing
crimes, instead of punishing them for their actions. What is perhaps worse,
Canon 1324 in the 1983 Code is used to decrease punishment for pedophiles on
the grounds that pedophiles have less freedom than non-pedophiles to control
their perverse passions. Thus, a diagnosis of pedophilia lessens culpability
and imputability of the crime of pedophilia. As a result, bishops have
concluded pedophiles should receive a lesser punishment for pedophilia than
other sex offenders.
The SSPX follows the 1983 Code and has used
it cover up sexual offenders within the SSPX. This includes the former district
superios in the United States for the SSPX, Fr. Arnaud Rostand who was
sentenced to a French prison after conviction of homosexual pederasty in
France, Spain and Switzerland against seven boys on scouting trips between 2002
and 2018. The purpose of this is not detraction of the SSPX but to point out an
ugly fact that every faithful Catholic should be aware of when receiving their
sacraments, attending their schools or participating in their supervised camps
and other summer activities. They as an organization follow the Vatican policy
to cover up any crimes of sexual abuse of children.
"Only the Prudent man can be brave."
Josef Pieper
Pro-abortion Sen. Durbin says he’s ‘overwhelmed’ by Pope Leo’s apparent
defense of his award
‘It is amazing to me. It’s quite a moment,’ Durbin said about Pope Leo
appearing to support the pro-abortion and pro-LGBT senator’s ‘lifetime
achievement award’ from Cdl. Blase Cupich.
LifeSiteNews | Emily Mangiaracina | Oct
2, 2025 — Pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin said he is “overwhelmed” by
Pope Leo XIV’s apparent support for his “lifetime achievement award” from
Cardinal Blase Cupich.
Leo on Tuesday appeared to imply that he
was not opposed to Cupich’s decision to give the award to the radically
pro-abortion and pro-LGBT Durbin, when asked about the matter by a journalist.
“I think that it is very important to look
at the overall work that a senator has done during … 40 years of service in the
United States Senate,” he stated. “I understand the difficulty and the tensions
but I think, as I myself have spoken to in the past, it is important to look at
many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the Church.”
“Someone who says I’m against abortion but
says I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says
I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of
immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” Leo then
said. He went on to conclude, “So, they are very complex issues, I don’t know
if anyone has all the truth on them.”
On the same day Leo appeared to defend Sen.
Durbin receiving the lifetime award from Cupich, the pro-abortion politician
announced that he will decline the award from the Archdiocese of Chicago after
facing a strong backlash, including criticism from several U.S. bishops.
Durbin told NBC News he was surprised by
“the level of controversy” over the award, and that he declined it “because the
reaction has been so controversial against the cardinal who proposed it, and I
see no point in going forward with that.”
Commenting on the pope’s defense of his
award, Durbin said, “It is amazing to me. It’s quite a moment. I didn’t expect
it. I didn’t know it was gonna happen.”
As the Lepanto Institute has pointed out on
X, Durbin’s award violates the very laws of Cupich’s archdiocese. Bishop Thomas
Paprocki of Springfield has affirmed, “The U.S. bishops have clearly taught
that support for abortion disqualifies individuals from receiving honors from
Catholic institutions.”
Durbin’s award, and Leo’s failure to
denounce his award, is even more shocking considering that since his election
to the U.S. Senate in 1997, Durbin has supported every possible brutal method
of abortion, as well as even post-abortion infanticide: He voted against the
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,
and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
He also supported legislation aimed at
codifying and expanding Roe v. Wade – the “Women’s Health Protection Act” –
despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional.
COMMENT: Pope Leo is defending the
pro-abortion Sen. Durbin while at the same time slandering faithful Catholics.
His appeal to the 'seamless garment,' subsequently called the "consistent
ethic of life," is grounded on the Vatican II novelty that the dignity of
the human person is so great that he is not obligated to believe the truths
that God has revealed or obey the commandments God. The novelty was developed
by his Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago in 1984 who was a notorious and
clever homosexual who did as much damage to the Church as the notorious
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. To say as Leo has that Catholics who oppose
abortion are not really pro-life if they do not oppose the death penalty for
convicted murderers is to claim that a murderer has a greater right to life
than his victim. As for opposing unjust wars the homosexual crowd and their
liberal Catholic supporters have done precious little over the last 35
years.
Vatican Council I listing the beneficial Fruits of the
Council of Trent which are in every detail exactly the opposite which we have
seen from Vatican Council II
Now this redemptive providence appears very clearly in unnumbered
benefits, but most especially is it manifested in the advantages which have
been secured for the Christian world by ecumenical councils, among which the council of Trent requires special
mention, celebrated though it was in evil days.
Thence came:
1. a closer definition and more fruitful
exposition of the holy dogmas of religion and
2. the condemnation and repression of errors;
thence too,
3. the restoration and vigorous strengthening
of ecclesiastical discipline,
4. the advancement of the clergy in zeal for
·
learning and
·
piety,
5. the founding of colleges for the training
of the young for the service of religion; and finally
6. the renewal of the moral life of the
Christian people by
· a more accurate instruction of the faithful, and
· a more frequent reception of the sacraments. What is more, thence also
came
7. a closer union of the members with the
visible head, and an increased vigour in the whole Mystical Body of Christ.
Thence came:
1. the multiplication of religious orders and
other organisations of Christian piety; thence too
2. that determined and constant ardour for the
spreading of Christ’s kingdom abroad in the world, even at the cost of shedding
one’s blood.
While we recall with grateful hearts, as is
only fitting, these and other outstanding gains, which the divine mercy has
bestowed on the church especially by means of the last ecumenical synod, we
cannot subdue the bitter grief that we feel at most serious evils, which have
largely arisen either because
o the authority of the sacred synod was held in contempt by all too many,
or because
o its wise decrees were neglected.
First Vatican Council, Dogmatic
Constitution on the Faith, listing some of the manifold beneficial fruits from
the Council of Trent!
Regarding the Sin of Schism
and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
There
are no manifest acts of schism with one and only one important exception which
will be identified below. This means there are no acts that are necessarily
always and everywhere evidence of a schismatic motive in the internal forum
excepting one. Contrasted, for example, with abortion and blasphemy which are
acts that are manifest sins because they can never be done with a morally right
intention; the act itself reveals the intent of the internal forum as being
vicious. These are always and everywhere necessarily mortal sins. As St. Paul
says, "Some men's sins are manifest, going before to
judgment: and some men they follow after" (1Tim 5:24). St. Paul gives
specific examples of "manifest sins": "Nor the
effeminate, nor liers with mankind (sodomites), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of
God" (1 Cor 6:10). What exactly is the schismatic motive that a
contentious canonical process must discover for conviction and attribution of
imputability of the crime?
The
canonical definition for both heresy and schism are taken directly almost
verbatim from St. Thomas Aquinas: "Schismatics are those who refuse to
submit to the Sovereign Pontiff, and to hold communion with those members of
the Church who acknowledge his supremacy." Schism is the repudiation of
the universal jurisdiction of Sovereign Pontiff and communion with those who
accept it. It is the burden of the canonical trial to prove the schismatic
intention for all schismatics are disobedient to the Sovereign Pontiff but not
all who are disobedient to the Sovereign Pontiff are schismatics. St. Thomas'
in his examination identifies schism as a specific species of sin. St. Thomas says, "Hence the sin of schism is, properly
speaking, a special sin, for the reason that the schismatic intends to sever himself from that unity which
is the effect of charity: because charity unites not only one person to
another with the bond of spiritual love, but also the whole Church in unity of
spirit." The genus to which
schism belongs is acts opposed to peace which is the fruit of "that unity which is the
effect of charity." Regarding peace, St. Thomas continues:
"Peace implies a twofold union... The first is the result of one's own appetites
being directed to one object; while the other results from one's own appetite
being united with the appetite of another: and each of these unions is effected
by charity." All acts that disturb the fruit of peace are directed against
the cause of peace which is charity."
Acts
of disobedience against properly constituted authority are only acts of schism
when the intention is to overturn the peace of unity caused by charity. This
intention constitutes the species
difference of schism from other acts opposed to peace, as St. Thomas says, the
schismatic "intends
to separate himself from the unity that charity makes" (Q.39, a.1.) among the faithful. St.
Thomas is offering an essential
definition of schism which is the best of all definitions because it is the
most intelligible because it identifies the essence.
Schism, just as other acts opposed to peace enumerated by St. Thomas, which
include discord, contention,
war, strife and sedition, requires contextualization. Specifically for the case
of Archbishop Viganò, St. Thomas says that morality of contention, which is the opposition to
another in speech, is determined by the intention: "As to the intention,
we must consider whether he contends against the truth, and then he is to be
blamed, or against falsehood, and then he should be praised." Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò's "contention" against Pope Francis is the
contention of truth against falsehood and is therefore praiseworthy and not
schismatic. This is why a canonical trial is called "contentious" for
it is intended to reveal who is contending for truth.
The
poles of contention are truth-falsehood which is the same for dogmas of faith.
As St. Jude admonishes: "I was under a necessity to write unto you: to
beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the
saints" (Jude 1:3). Schism is the rejection of the divinely revealed truth
of papal universal jurisdiction, a dogma of faith since Vatican I. Schism is
manifested by disobedience but all disobedience is not schism. Obedience to God
is unqualified. All other acts of obedience are morally good only to the degree
that they are properly regulated by the virtue of Religion which is the primary
subsidiary virtue under Justice. Any act of obedience that violates the virtue
of Religion is a sin. The virtue of Religion above all requires that we
"give unto God the things that are God's." This first and necessary
act of obedience is to believe all that God has revealed and to keep his
commandments. Without this first necessary condition, it is impossible to keep
the greatest commandment to love God above all things and it is impossible to
have "the unity that charity makes."
Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò was administratively "excommunicated" for
"schism" because the administrative process avoided the canonical
requirement to prove that his intent was to "separate himself from the
unity that charity makes" among the faithful. They denied the right of
Archbishop Viganò to defend himself in a contentions forum against the charge which would
obviously have included discussing the heretical acts of Pope Francis which are
manifest. The ultimate purpose of the canonical process is to determine truth
and bring those who have deviated from truth back from error. But for many the
contention itself irrespective of truth or falsehood is the manifest evidence
of schism. The reason for this will become clearer after discussing the
relationship in the context of faith and charity, and heresy and schism.
Schismatics
"refuse to submit to the Sovereign Pontiff" because they deny that
the pope possesses universal jurisdiction conferred by God for the legitimate exercise of the
papal office which produces unity and peace. Universal jurisdiction of the pope
is a divinely revealed truth that was dogmatized at Vatican I Council. St.
Thomas says:
"Heresy and schism are distinguished in
respect of those things to which each is opposed essentially and directly. For
heresy is essentially opposed to faith, while schism is essentially opposed to
the unity of ecclesiastical charity. Wherefore just as faith and charity are different virtues, although
whoever lacks faith lacks charity, so too schism and heresy are different
vices, although whoever is a heretic is also a schismatic, but not
conversely."
Since
the universal jurisdiction of the pope has become a dogma at Vatican Council I,
a schismatic is now also conversely always a heretic. Importantly, faith
precedes charity. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God"
(Heb 11-6) because "whoever
lacks faith lacks charity." The keys of universal jurisdiction were
promised to St. Peter after his profession of faith which is its proximate
material cause. Many Church Fathers, such as St. Augustine and St. John
Chrysostom, describe an analogical identity of the rock (petra) with divine
faith, with St. Peter, with Jesus Christ the "cornerstone," and the
Church itself. The faith
proceeds and is the proximate cause of the universal jurisdiction conferred by
Jesus Christ because faith is indispensible to the bond of unity which is charity. Cardinal Henry Edward Manning wrote:
“The
interpretation by the Fathers of the words ‘On this rock; etc. is fourfold, but
all four interpretations are not more than four aspects of one and the same
truth, and all are necessary to complete its full meaning. They all implicitly
or explicitly contain the perpetual stability of Peter’s faith...:’
“In
these two promises [i.e. Lk 22:32, Mt 16:18] a divine assistance is pledged to
Peter and to his successors, and that divine assistance is promised to secure
the stability and indefectibiity of the Faith in the supreme Doctor and Head of
the Church, for the general good of the Church itself.”
Cardinal
Henry Edward Manning, “The Vatican Council and Its Definitions: A Pastoral
Letter to the Clergy”, p. 83-84, 1870
All this is nicely summed up by St. Paul who
admonishes "that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called;
With all humility and mildness, with patience, supporting one another in
charity. Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace. One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your
calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. 4:1-5). The primary and essential cause and sign of
the unity in the Church is the faith. The pope is only secondarily and accidentally
the sign and cause of unity in the Church. If the pope falls from the faith he
is to be confronted as St. Paul did to St. Peter when he "walked not
uprightly unto the truth of the gospel" and accommodated the Judaizers
leading others into "dissimulation" (Gal. 2:11). If the pope is a
heretic he "lacks faith (and) lacks charity". Without charity he
breaks the bond of unity in the Church and necessarily becomes schismatic.
Manifest Heresy is the one and only sin that identifies a schismatic because it
manifests a schismatic intent.
Tikkun olam (Hebrew תיקון עולם,
literally, 'repair of the world') is
a concept in Judaism, often interpreted as aspiration to behave and act
constructively and beneficially. Documented use of the term dates back to the Mishnaic
period (ca. 10-220 AD), (that is, the time when the oral traditions of the Jews
were committed to the written form in the Mishna, also called the Oral Torah).
Since medieval times, kabbalistic literature has broadened use of the term. In
the modern era, among the post-Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment, 1770-1880)
movements, tikkun olam is the idea that Jews bear responsibility not only for
their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, but also for the welfare of
society at large. For many contemporary pluralistic rabbis, the term refers to
"Jewish social justice" or "the establishment of Godly qualities
throughout the world". Wikipedia
COMMENT: Jews repeatedly since the
time of Jesus Christ are the passionate creators and principle instigators of ideological
movements conceived as necessary for the moral and material improvement of
political and social order. When one after the other proves to be a political
and social failure, it is simply dropped and they move on to another. They
recognize a ‘fall from grace’ because they recognize the ‘world needs to be
repaired.’ Since they have rejected Jesus Christ, the incarnate Logos, the
eternal Wisdom of the Father, they have rejected His divine plan for the
‘repair of the world’ and in its place offer what Fr. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp.
described as “Organized Naturalism” in opposition to the Supernatural Order of
Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that whoever is not
working for God is working for the Devil. There is no middle ground. As Jesus
said, “He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with
me, scattereth” (Matthew 12:30).
Where Tikkun Olam
can lead
OPINION: Stalin’s Jews
We mustn't forget that some
of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish
Israel News | ynetnews | Sever Plocker
Here's
a particularly forlorn historical date: More than 100 years ago, between the
19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and
civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and
Sabotage, also known as Cheka.
Within a short period of time, Cheka became
the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational
structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU,
later to NKVD, and later to KGB.
We cannot know with certainty the number of
deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number
is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced
collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments,
executions, and mass death at Gulags.
Whole population strata were eliminated:
Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior
officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition
members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of
the Communist party itself.
In his new, highly praised book "The
War of the World," Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in
the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained
appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel
Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in
that it was directed internally.
Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could
not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined
"terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners,
guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the
progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and
even provided it with a kosher certificate.
All these things are well-known to some
extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet
been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia
itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the
NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores
the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to
Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their
Stalinist past.
And us, the Jews? An Israeli student
finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda,"
the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander
and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented
Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least
10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag
system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and
executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the
"bloodthirsty dwarf."
Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with
an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star",
Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of
terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was
surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.
Stalin's close associates and loyalists
included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich.
Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that
those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of
human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move
Kaganovich.
Many Jews sold
their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their
hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the
NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a
particularly cruel sadist.
In 1934, according to published statistics,
38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security
apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually
eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv
University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet
terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges",
and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become
captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the
greatest known by modern history.
The Jews active in official communist
terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them,
did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and
"Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin
and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not
forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person
will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but
not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable
things.
Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the
Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty
and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us
of their origin.
“Don’t Jews still believe in a Messias to come?” asks the credulous
Christian. “And don’t they believe in the same Biblical Heaven and Hell that we
do?”
The answer to both these questions is — no.
And it is an emphatic “No!” as the subsequent Jewish testimony will verify.
Concerning
the Messias: The Jews of today reject the notion of a personal
redeemer who will be born of them and lead them to the fulfillment of the Old
Testament prophecies. The Jews believe that the whole Jewish race is to be
elevated to a position of prosperity and overlordship and that, when this happy
day arrives (the Messianic Age), they will have achieved all that is coming to
them by way of savior and salvation. In his recent book, The Messianic Idea in Israel, Jewish theologian Dr. Joseph Klausner
explains: “Thus the whole people Israel in the form of the elect of the nations
gradually became the
Messiah of the world, the redeemer of mankind.”
Concerning
Heaven and Hell: A succinct summary of Jewish teaching on
“life after death” was given in the May, 1958 issue of B’nai B’rith’s National
Jewish Monthly. Under the caption, “What Can A Modern Jew Believe?” there appeared: “Judaism
insists that ‘heaven’ must be established on this earth. The reward of the
pious is life and happiness in this world, while the punishment of the wicked
is misery on earth and premature death … By hitching its star to the Messianic
future on this earth, Israel became the eternal people.” The article goes on:
“The best Jewish minds have always held that a physical hereafter is a
detraction from mature belief.” And the conclusion: “There is neither hell nor
paradise, God merely sends out the sun in its full strength; the wicked are
consumed by its heat, while the pious find delight and healing in its rays.”
Fr. Leonard Feeney, MICM, The Point, October
1958
Mons. Carlo Maria Viganò: Replies to the claim that obedience is
unqualified even when the faith itself is in question!!
NON SEQUITUR
Further Clarifications in Response to the Reply of
Prof. Daniele Trabucco
I can only agree with almost everything that Professor Trabucco has stated in
response to my comment [1]. As he writes at the Duc in Altum blog [2]:
A saint who obeys a disciplinary measure that is unjust but not
contrary to faith (as in the case of Padre Pio) performs an act of heroic
self-denial, because he recognizes that even in harshness and iniquity, a
command does not break the bond with the revealed deposit of faith. The
situation, however, is different when an ecclesiastical authority commands
something that contradicts faith: in that case, the order is no longer
authentically disciplinary but is transformed into a deviation that strikes at
the very rationale of the authority. Here, refusal is not rebellion, but
fidelity.
Given that this principle is valid – and
which I agree with sine glossa – I find it difficult to accept as valid the
exception that Trabucco adds immediately afterwards:
However […] such refusal can never translate into schismatic acts, nor
into attitudes that cause public scandal. For if it is true that discipline and
faith complement each other, it is equally true that discipline, as a visible
order, also serves to preserve the unity of the Church. And unity is part of
the supernatural common good of the Mystical Body. Therefore, the truth of
faith cannot be defended at the cost of tearing apart ecclesial communion.
It is true that “discipline, as a visible
order, also serves to safeguard the unity of the Church. And unity is part of
the supernatural common good of the Mystical Body.” But the unity achieved
through obedience is the effect, not the cause, of the profession of the same
Faith: the faithful are united in the Church under the authority of the Roman
Pontiff because they believe the same doctrine, not the other way around. And
this is the error that undermines Professor Trabucco’s argument on obedience.
The refusal to obey an ecclesiastical authority, when that authority commands
something that contradicts the Faith, cannot constitute an attack on unity,
because it is the illegitimate order of the Superior that is schismatic and
scandalous in nature, not the disobedience of the subject who remains faithful
to God.
If the refusal to obey an illegitimate authority or order “is not rebellion,
but fidelity”; if the Regula Fidei is the supreme principle that finds its
rationale in the Truth coessential and consubstantial with God [3]; if
obedience itself, as a moral virtue, is ordered toward the good and therefore
toward the Truth – because Faith and discipline, as Professor Trabucco states,
“though different in object, are united in purpose: the glory of God and the
salvation of souls” – how can the Professor affirm: “Therefore, one cannot
defend the truth of faith at the cost of tearing apart ecclesial communion”?
Given an absolute principle, how is it possible to derogate from it with an
exception that makes unity in obedience absolute while the Truth becomes
relative and secondary to obedience?
In fact, just the opposite is true: ecclesial communion cannot be defended at
the cost of tearing apart the Truth of the Faith, because it is obedience that
is ordered to the Faith, and not vice versa [4].
I would add that anyone who contradicts, adulterates, or silences the Faith is
the first to cause scandal, especially if he finds himself in the position of
exercising coercive force as an ecclesiastical Superior over a priest or
religious. It is the duty of every baptized person to defend and proclaim sound
doctrine and to denounce anyone in authority who abuses it, causing grave
scandal to the common people. They are rightly accustomed to
obeying—instinctively, I would almost say—the authority of the Hierarchy and
consider its deviation unthinkable under normal circuмstances. This is
especially true for the priest subject to the jurisdiction of his Superiors and
the sanctions they can impose: dutiful disobedience to an abusive and illicit
order entails canonical sanctions for anyone who dutifully resists, as Trabucco
hopes. This punishment of the disobedient is the scandal – not the act of
denouncing the corruption of ecclesiastical authority. Just as it is a scandal
that heretics, schismatics, corrupt individuals, and notorious fornicators are
not prosecuted but rather encouraged, while anyone who denounces the crisis,
identifies its causes, and identifies those responsible, who have fraudulently
held power for sixty years and can abuse it at will, is declared schismatic and
excommunicated.
The Communion of Saints—which is the archetype and model of ecclesial
communion—is founded in God, who is Truth, not obedience. God is not obedient, because
that would presuppose an authority superior to Him. The obedience of the
Son—factus obœdiens usque ad mortem (Phil 2:8)—is a unity of will (idem velle)
between the Three Divine Persons, without an internal hierarchical relationship
between Them [5]. At the same time, God is the primary recipient of all
obedience, because by obeying the Superiors to whom He has granted authority,
we also obey God. But obedience cannot exist if the Superior who asks to be
obeyed does not in turn recognize God’s authority over himself. Such obedience
would accept the premise, even if only theoretical, of being able to disobey
God in order to obey men, contravening the precept of Saint Peter (Acts 5:29)
and making earthly authority self-referential and therefore potentially
tyrannical. In this, the concept of synodality is shown to be absolutely
subversive of the order willed by God, in that it tampers with the monarchical
structure of the Church—on the model of Christ the King and Pontiff who is her
Head—by placing sovereignty in the hands of “the people” (even if in reality,
power, as in civil republics, is in the hands of an elite) and by affirming
“that Christ wanted His Church to be governed in the manner of a republic.” [6]
Only universal submission to a true and good God makes obedience a sure means
of sanctity for those who obey their Superiors. And this is why we have both
reason and the Sensus Fidei: to discern when obedience is a virtuous act and
when instead “it transforms into a deviation that strikes at the very rationale
of authority.”
If Professor Trabucco recognizes the possibility that ecclesiastical superiors
may issue orders contrary to Faith or Morals (a possibility confirmed by daily
abuses of authority against traditional Catholics and the equally daily
tolerance of unprecedented scandals), he must also acknowledge the possibility
that subordinates may reject the illegitimate orders of their superiors. The
Church’s hierarchical ladder allows for appeal to a higher authority when one
finds oneself in conflict with another authority subordinate to it. But if the
highest echelons of the hierarchical ladder—in this case, the Roman Pontiff and
the Roman Dicasteries—are themselves implicated in a general subversion of the
Faith (beginning with Leo’s recent declaration that “we must change attitudes”
before we can change doctrine [7]), it is clear that hierarchical recourse is
impracticable and that no earthly authority can remedy the disobedience of
those who are Superiors.
In a nutshell: amidst the obvious general disobedience of Church Authority to
God’s law at all levels, how can a priest or a simple believer subjected to
this Authority remain obedient to it, if one is still bound to continue to obey
God rather than men?
The true h0Ɩ0cαųst of the will that the mystics speak of is
this: knowing how to be obedient unto death, even death on a cross, in
obedience to God. But never, under any circuмstances, can one even
imagine sycophantically obeying heretical and schismatic Superiors, for fear of
shattering “with acts of a schismatic nature” the apparent unity of their
church. Because the unity they claim is a simulacrum, a fiction, a grotesque
imposture hiding the indifferentism of the synodal pantheon, which includes
both the conservatives of Summorum Pontificuм as well as the LGBTQ+
progressives of James Martin, both Our Lady of Fatima as well as the Pachamama,
the Mass of the ages along with the Novus Ordo. The only inalienable dogma is
that everyone must recognize the Second Vatican Council: its ecclesiology, its
morality, its liturgy, its saints and martyrs, and above all its excommunicated
people and its heretics—that is, the “radical traditionalists” who refuse to be
tamed by the new synodal demands. As for the rest of what we believe, Leo has
explicitly said that one can safely gloss over it in the name of
ecuмenical and synodal unity, including the Filioque of the Creed. But
not Vatican II: it is the founding act of a church born in 1962 which claims
the authority of the True Church, from whose Magisterium, however, it distances
itself and opposes it.
We therefore find ourselves before an Authority—the supreme authority—that is
clearly disobedient to Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, but which,
usurping Christ’s authority, claims to decide in what respects those subject to
it must obey it, disobeying God’s commands.
Can we even imagine recognizing this authority as legitimate and owing it
obedience, lest we tear apart the “unity” that the Hierarchy has already
shattered with its own disobedience to God? How could we possibly ratify its
abuses, making ourselves accomplices of those who are betraying the Truth?
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, 23 September 2025
NOTE
1 – Cfr. https://exsurgedomine.it/250917-trabucco-ita/
2 – Cfr. https://www.aldomariavalli.it/2025/09/21/a-proposito-di-obbedienza-note-sulle-osservazioni-di-monsignor-vigano/
3 – Saint Augustine, De Trinitate, VIII, 2: God is truth itself – ipsa veritas
–, and everything that is true comes from Him, because He is the origin of all
truth.
4 – The decree of the Holy Office of 20 December 1949 condemning the
ecuмenical movement also recalls this: This unity cannot be achieved
except in the recognition of Catholic truth.
5 – Saint Augustine, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus, 51, 8: Christ’s obedience
is not a diminution of His divinity, but an expression of His perfect union
with the Father, for the will of the Son is one with that of the Father.
6 – Pius VI, Brief Super Soliditate of 28 November 1786 condemning Febronianism.
This doctrine fits into the context of the Enlightenment and the tensions
between the temporal power of states and the authority of the Catholic Church,
promoting a vision that limited the primacy of the Pope and strengthened the
autonomy of national Churches and local bishops. Febronius (the pseudonym of
Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, Bishop of Trier) argued that the authority of the
Pope was not absolute, but derived from the universal Church, understood as the
community of the faithful and bishops. Febronianism also influenced the Council
of Pistoia (1786), in which there appeared heretical demands that are
substantially identical to those that would re-appear in Vatican II.
7 – Cfr. https://chiesaepostconcilio.blogspot.com/2025/09/papa-leone-parla-con-elise-ann-allen-di.html
8 – Cfr. https://youtube.com/watch?v=IkPJn2L9BBs&si=oGcPhGwR5nxQ6jva
TO KNOW THE FAITH, YOU MUST
KNOW THE RULE
The Rule of
Faith was given to the Church in the very act of Revelation and its
promulgation by the Apostles. But for this Rule to have an actual and
permanently efficient character, it must be continually promulgated and
enforced by the living Apostolate, which must exact from all members of the
Church a docile Faith in the truths of Revelation authoritatively proposed, and
thus unite the whole body of the Church, teachers and taught, in perfect unity
of Faith. Hence the original promulgation is the remote Rule of Faith, and the
continuous promulgation by the Teaching Body, (i.e.: DOGMA) is the proximate
Rule.
Rev. Scheeben’s
Manual of Catholic Theology
“O Timothy, keep that which is
committed to thy trust, avoiding
the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so
called. Which some
promising, have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.” St.
Paul, letter to his disciple, Bishop St. Timothy (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
... We wish to make our own the
important words employed by the Council; those words which define its spirit,
and, in a dynamical synthesis, form the spirit of all those who refer to it, be
they within or without the Church. The word “NOVELTY”,
simple, very dear to today’s men, is much utilized; it is theirs... That
word... it was given to us as an order, as a program... It comes to us directly
from the pages of the Holy Scripture: “For, behold (says the Lord), I create
new heavens and a new earth”. St. Paul echoes these words of the prophet Isaiah
(II Corinthians 5, 17); then, the Apocalypse: “I am making everything new” (II
Corinthians 21, 5). And Jesus, our Master, was not He, himself, an innovator?
“You have heard that people were told in the past ... but now I
tell you...” (Matthew 5) – Repeated in the “Sermon on the Mount”.
It
is precisely thus that the Council has come to us. Two terms characterize it:
“RENOVATION” and “REVISION”. We are particularly keen that this “spirit of
renovation” – according to the expression of the Council – be understood and
experienced by everyone. It responds to the characteristic of our time, wholly
engaged in an enormous and rapid transformation, and generating novelties in
every sector of modern life. In fact, one cannot shy away from this spontaneous
reflection: if the whole world is changing, will not religion change as well?
Between the reality of life and Christianity, Catholicism especially, is not
there reciprocal disagreement, indifference, misunderstanding, and hostility?
The former is leaping forward; the latter would not move. How could they go
along? How could Christianity claim to have, today, any influence upon life?
And
it is for this reason that the Church has undertaken some reforms, especially
after the Council. The Episcopate is about to promote the “renovation” that
corresponds to our present needs; Religious Orders are reforming their
Statutes; Catholic laity is qualified and found its role within the life of the
Church; Liturgy is proceeding with a reform in which anyone knows the extension
and importance; Christian education reviews the methods of its pedagogy; all
the canonical legislations are about to be revised. And how many other
consoling and promising novelties we shall see appearing in the Church! They
attest to Her new vitality, which shows that the Holy Spirit animates Her
continually, even in these years so crucial to religion. The development of
ecumenism, guided by Faith and Charity, itself says what progress, almost
unforeseeable, has been achieved during the course and life of the Church. The
Church looks at the future with Her heart brimming with hope, brimming with
fresh expectation in love... We can say... of the Council: It marks the onset
of a new era, of which no one can deny the new aspects that We have indicated
to you.
Pope
Paul VI, General Audience of July 2, 1969
And Then, Only Three Years
Later:
Through
some cracks the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: there is doubt,
uncertainty, problematic, anxiety, confrontation. One does not trust the Church
anymore; one trusts the first prophet that comes to talk to us from some
newspapers or some social movement, and then rush after him and ask him if he
held the formula of real life. And we fail to perceive, instead, that we are
the masters of life already. Doubt has entered our conscience, and it has
entered through windows that were supposed to be opened to the light
instead....
Even
in the Church this state of uncertainty rules. One thought that after the
Council there would come a shiny day for the history of the Church. A cloudy
day came instead, a day of tempest, gloom, quest, and uncertainty. We preach
ecumenism and drift farther and farther from the others. We attempt to dig
abysses instead of filling them.
How
has all this come about? We confide to you our thought: there has been the
intervention of a hostile power. His name is the Devil; this mysterious being
who is alluded to even in the letter of St. Peter. So many times, on the other
hand, in the Gospel, on the very lips of Christ, there recurs the mention of
this enemy of man. We believe in something supernatural (post-correction:
“preternatural”!), coming into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate
anything of the Ecumenical Council, and to prevent that the Church would
explode into the hymn of joy for having regained full consciousness of Herself
(!!).
Pope
Paul VI, June 29, 1972
Pope Leo on LGBTQ: ‘We have to change attitudes before we ever change
doctrine’
In this first extended interview he’s just done with Crux Now, Leo XIV
has basically said that the Church’s teaching on sexual morality could change.
LifeSiteNews
| Sep 18, 2025
Friends,
you are not going to believe this.
In
this first extended interview he’s just done with Crux Now, Leo XIV
has basically said that the Church’s teaching on sexual morality could change.
He actually even went there and implied that he could – in his words – “change
the Church’s teaching” on women’s ordination.
Take
a listen to what he said first on sexual morality. This is what he says after
having been talking about LGBT issues for a while:
People want the Church doctrine to
change, want attitudes to change. I think we have to change attitudes before we
ever change doctrine.
That’s
right, he’s strongly implying – well, he’s saying – that
Church teaching could shift, if attitudes change first.
Might
that be why we’ve had so much LGBT stuff in Rome lately, from Fr. James Martin
to the LGBT pilgrimage? Are they trying to get our “attitudes to change”?
And
what do you think the so-called “LGBT Catholics” are hearing when they hear Leo saying such a thing? It’s a
very clear invitation and instruction: work to change attitudes, then we can
change the teaching. Wow.
And
rather than stating such changes were impossible, Leo said he thought it
was unlikely that it would happen soon:
I find it highly unlikely, certainly in
the immediate future, that the Church’s doctrine in terms of what the Church
teaches about sexuality, what the Church teaches about marriage [will change].
Later,
instead of stating that the Church’s teaching could not change, he
merely said that he thought that it would remain the same:
I think that the Church’s teaching will
continue as it is, and that’s what I have to say about that for right now.
You think it’s
going to continue as it is? Aren’t you supposed to be the Pope – the one
responsible for making sure that it continues as it is?
Look
friends, this is just stunning. Catholic teaching on sexual morality –
including the sinfulness of homosexual acts, as well as fornication, adultery
and others – aren’t matters of probabilities or personal conjecture, or
contingent and waiting to be changed.
They’re
definitive, grounded in both the natural law and divine revelation – and so
they’re incapable of being changed.
Reason
alone tells us that sexual activity outside marriage – and thus, obviously, all
sexual activity between two same sex couples – is contrary to the natural law.
This
is also and separately a dogma – divinely revealed in Scripture and
proposed by the universal ordinary magisterium of the Church.
Vatican
I taught that such truths which are to be believed with divine and Catholic
faith.
Female ordination
Leo
also talked about the possibility of the ordination of women to the diaconate
in similar terms:
What the synod had spoken about
specifically was the ordination, perhaps, of women deacons, which has been a
question that’s been studied for many years now. There’ve been different
commissions appointed by different popes to say, what can we do about this? I
think that will continue to be an issue.
Ok,
so in the early Church, there was indeed an office of “deaconess” – but
everyone knows that these women were not ordained to any sacramental holy
order of the diaconate.
But
Leo calls even this into question by equating the female diaconate with that of
the permanent diaconate established after the Second Vatican Council. He gives
a long anecdote about meeting deacons and their wives in Rome before
concluding:
[T]here are parts of the world that
never really promoted the permanent deaconate, and that itself became a
question: Why would we talk about ordaining women to the diaconate if the
diaconate itself is not yet properly understood and properly developed and
promoted within the church?
He
also expressed his willingness for study and debate on the matter to continue,
saying he was “certainly
willing to continue to listen to people,” and pointing to the study
groups in Rome on the subject. “We’ll walk with that and see what comes,” he said.
But
do you know what’s even more shocking? Leo said this:
I at the moment don’t have an intention
of changing the teaching of the Church on the topic.
Friends,
if you say a thing like that, it’s clear what you think. You’re saying
you do have the power to “change the teaching of the Church.”
The immutability of dogma
But
the teaching of the Church says that this isn’t possible. Can that be changed
too?
Vatican
I denied that the Pope could change the Church’s teaching or
introduce new dogmas. It taught:
For the holy Spirit was promised to the
successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some
new doctrine.
It
goes on to say that the purpose of the papacy is to safeguard and preserve the
deposit of faith. Not to consider whether the time is right to change it.
Oh,
some will say, we’re not talking about changes. This is just a development
of dogma.
Come
on. That’s what they always say to justify this stuff. And anyway, Leo was
pretty clear: he’s the one who was talking about changing Church teaching.
And
anyway, that defense is excluded too. There’s a legitimate sense of the
development of doctrine, but changing the meanings of dogmas to something
totally different isn’t it.
Such
an idea has been condemned time and again by the Church.
Pope Pius IX condemned, in the Syllabus of Errors, the idea that divine
revelation is “subject to a continual and indefinite progress.”
Vatican I declared that the “meaning
of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained” and that “there must never be
any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more
profound understanding.”
That same
Council anathematized anyone who says dogma can be assigned “a sense
different from that which the Church has understood and understands.”
Pope St Pius X cited all these
teachings in his encyclical Pascendi
Dominici Gregis against Modernism.
In his Oath
Against Modernism, he also required clergy to profess that dogma is handed
down “in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport.”
This oath also states that the idea “that
dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one
which the Church held previously” is a – get this –
“heretical misrepresentation.”
Grave implications
“Heretical”
is a big word. But the truth is clear: homosexual acts are intrinsically
disordered, marriage is between one man and one woman, and these teachings
cannot change.
As
I said above, both the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and the
immutability of dogma are the sorts of truths we have to believe with divine
and Catholic faith.
The
censure attached to the obstinate denial or doubt of such truths is
indeed heresy. (Can. 751 of 1983 CIC, Can. 1325 of 1917 CIC)
So,
where does that leave us?
The
hugely problematic situation of Leo XIV raising hopes for an impossible change
in the future.
And
claiming the power to change Church teaching, which he certainly does not have.
And…
publicly doubting (or even denying) these two sets of truths in a video
interview – which, as I said, is heresy.
You
know what St. Paul said about those who try to introduce new dogmas, doctrines
or Gospels:
If I, or an angel from heaven, preach to
you a Gospel different to that which we have preached to you, which you have
received: let him be anathema.
COMMENT: The very essence of the Modernist heresy is the denial of immutability
of dogma because they deny that dogma is divine revelation of an immutabile
truth from an immutable God. The Modernist believe that dogma is not a truth
revealed by God but rather a human expression of the subjective religious sentiment
and therefore dogma must change over time as the human sentiment changes. Leo
the Heretic professes that the "attitudes" of Catholics will change
only gradually. therefore, when there is a sufficient number expressing the new
attitude then the dogmas will change to express the new religious attitude. It
is absolutely impossible to hold this belief and be a faithful Catholic at the
same time. Leo is just another Bergoglian who will bring ruin to himself and
others.
Pope Leo is now the CEO of the same HomoLobby his
predecessor chaired! It is impossible to be a defender of homosexuality and a
Catholic at the same time.
Bishop Schneider: Vatican ‘LGBTQ pilgrimage’ an ‘abomination,’ Pope Leo
must make ‘public reparation’
Pope Leo must ‘urgently’ make reparation after the Vatican endorsed an
LGBT Jubilee ‘pilgrimage’ and allowed unrepentant homosexuals to pass the Holy
Doors at St. Peter’s, Bishop Schneider said.
LifeSiteNews | Sept 10, 2025— Bishop
Athanasius Schneider expressed “horror” at the Vatican’s endorsement of the
“LGBTQ Jubilee pilgrimage,” rebuking priests who support homosexuality as
“spiritual criminals” and “murderers of souls.”
“My
reaction was a silent cry of horror, indignation, and sorrow,” the auxiliary of
Astana, Kazakhstan, said regarding the Vatican’s approval of an LGBT-themed
“pilgrimage” on its Jubilee website, in an interview with Diane Montagna, a
journalist in Rome.
Montagna had highlighted the fact that
photos captured an array of rainbow paraphernalia in St. Peter’s Basilica, as
well homosexual male couple “brazenly holding hands there, one with a backpack
saying F*** the Rules,” at the conclusion of their “pilgrimage.”
What took place there could be described as
an “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place,” in the words of
Christ (cf. Mt. 24:15), said Bishop Schneider.
He pointed out that the embrace of
homosexuality by these “pilgrims” contradicted one of the very key meanings of
the Jubilee Year and the Holy Door: “Leading man to conversion and penance,” as
Pope John Paul II explained in the Bull of Indiction of the Holy Year
2000.
“There were no signs of repentance and
renunciation of objectively grave homosexual sins … on the part of the
organizers and participants in this pilgrimage,” noted Schneider. “To pass through
the Holy Door and participate in the Jubilee without repentance, while
promoting an ideology that openly rejects God’s Sixth Commandment, constitutes
a kind of desecration of the Holy Door and a mockery of God and the gift of an
indulgence.”
The bishop had strong words for the Vatican
authorities who “collaborated de facto” in this open rejection of God’s
commandment, expressed aptly in the “f*** the rules” message.
“They stood by and allowed God to be mocked
and His commandments to be scornfully cast aside,” said Schneider.
When asked to compare it to the Pachamama
scandal, he noted that while direct transgression of the First Commandment is
even more grave, the endorsement of sodomy – a sin that cries to Heaven for
vengeance – “amounts to a form of indirect idolatry.”
“Both events must be publicly repaired by
the Pope himself. This is urgently needed, before it is too late, for God will
not be mocked,” said the bishop.
Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of
the Italian Bishops Conference, welcomed “everyone” to receive Holy Communion
at a Mass for the “pilgrims,” Montagna then pointed out. Schneider affirmed
that assent to “all of the Church’s teaching” is a precondition for receiving
Christ in the Eucharist, as was expressed by St. Paul: “Anyone who eats and
drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor.
11:29).
He added that this has been clearly stated
by the Catechism of the
Catholic Church: “Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not
receive Communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of
penance” (n.1415).
Furthermore, it notes, “Sacred Scripture
‘presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [and] tradition has
always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.… Under no
circumstances can they be approved’ (n. 2357).”
Thus, by granting these LGBT groups passage
through the Holy Door and approving their “pilgrimage,” Vatican authorities in
effect rejected “the very doctrine they are bound to uphold.”
Schneider said his message for participants
in the LGBT “pilgrimage” is one of compassion, and he called for all Christians
to show compassion towards not just those living homosexual lifestyles, but
those who support its legitimization and “persist in it unrepentant and even
proudly.”
“For when a person consciously rejects
God’s explicit commandment prohibiting any sexual activity outside a valid
marriage, he places himself in the gravest danger – that of losing eternal life
and being eternally condemned to Hell,” said the prelate.
“True love for such persons consists in
calling them, gently yet persistently, to genuine conversion to God’s revealed
will,” he continued, adding that such people are “ultimately unhappy” even when
they have suppressed their conscience.
“We must be filled with great zeal to save
these souls, to free them from poisonous deceits. Those priests who confirm
them in their homosexual activity or in a homosexual lifestyle are spiritual
criminals, murderers of souls, and God will demand a strict account from them,”
Schneider declared.
To those who defend Pope Leo XIV amid the
Vatican’s approval of the LGBT scandalous “pilgrimage” because he did not
receive a delegation from them or send them a message, Schneider said that “one
cannot reasonably presume naivety on his part,” because it was “entirely
foreseeable” that an LGBT activist group would take advantage of the Holy Door
to promote their sinful lifestyle.
Furthermore, by meeting with Father James
Martin, S.J., a heretical pro-LGBT priest, as well as pro-homosexual “marriage”
Sister Lucia Caram, Pope Leo XIV has expressed that he is not opposed to their
“heterodox and scandalous teaching and behavior – particularly since the Holy
See offered no clarification afterward and did not correct Fr. James Martin’s
triumphant messages circulated on social media,” noted Schneider.
He pointed out that in doing so, Pope Leo
XIV broke with the precedent of all popes before Francis, who “neither received
officially nor posed for photographs with those who, by word or deed, openly
rejected the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church.”
“There is a common saying that goes: ‘Qui
tacet consentire videtur’ – ’He who is silent is taken to agree,’” Schneider
added.
The prelate called upon all Catholics to “make
a collective act of reparation for the outrage committed against the sanctity
of God’s house and the holiness of His commandments,” and implored Pope Leo XIV
to follow in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who Montagna noted had
denounced the first “World Pride” event in Rome during the Great Jubilee of
2000.
“Should Pope Leo XIV make public acts of
regret and even reparation, he will lose nothing; should he fail to do so, he
will forfeit something before the eyes of God – and God alone matters,” said Schneider.
“May Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV take to
heart the following words of Our Lord which He once spoke through St. Bridget
of Sweden to one of his predecessors (Pope Gregory XI)”:
Uproot, pluck out and destroy all the vices of your court! Separate
yourself from the counsel of carnal-minded and worldly friends and follow
humbly the spiritual counsel of My friends. Get up like a man and clothe
yourself confidently in strength! Start to reform the Church that I purchased
with My Own Blood in order that it may be reformed and led back spiritually to
its pristine state of holiness, for nowadays more veneration is shown to a
brothel than to My Holy Church. My son, heed My counsel. If you obey Me in what
I told you, I will welcome you mercifully like a loving father. Bravely
approach the way of justice and you shall prosper. Do not despise the One Who
loves you. If you obey, I will show you mercy and bless and dress you and adorn
you with the precious pontifical regalia of a holy pope. I shall clothe you with
Myself in such a way that you will be in Me and I in you, and you shall be
glorified in eternity (The Book of Revelations, Book IV, chap. 149).
Argumentum ex concessis
Notes in the Margin of an Article
by Abbé Claude Barthe
For if you live according to the flesh,
you will die;
but if by the Spirit
you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.
Rom 8: 13
The
essay by Abbé Claude Barthe’s, recently published in an Italian translation at
Aldo Maria Valli’s blog Duc in altum [1], deserves some attention.
What is most interesting in it is not so much his assessment of the newly
elected Leo XIV, nor the pragmatic realism with which he recognizes Prevost’s
continuity with his predecessor or calls for a loosening of restrictions on the
traditional liturgy.
Abbé Barthe writes:
There is a paradox, even a risk, for
those who invoke freedom for the traditional liturgy and catechism: that of
being granted a sort of “authorization” for liturgical and doctrinal
Catholicism. We have already cited as an example the paradoxical situation that
arose in the 19th-century French political system, when the most staunch
supporters of the monarchical Restoration, enemies in principle of the modern
freedoms introduced by the Revolution, continually fought to be granted a space
for life and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of teaching. All
things being equal, in the ecclesiastical system of the 21st century, at least
in the immediate future, a relaxation of the ideological despotism of the
Reformation could be beneficial. But while it may be advantageous in the short
and medium term, it could ultimately prove radically unsatisfactory.
What I believe should be highlighted is
the not-so-veiled warning that Abbé Barthe addresses to those who resort to the
adversary’s arguments to gain legitimacy in the ecclesial world, applying
the argumentum ex concessis [2]. In this case, “those who invoke freedom
for the traditional liturgy and catechism” – and who condemn Bergoglian
synodality – appeal to that same synodality so that the “Summorum Pontificum communities”
may be recognized as one among the many expressions of the composite ecclesial
polyhedron.
Abbé Barthe’s denunciation reveals
not a paradox, but the paradox, the contradiction that
fundamentally undermines any claim to orthodoxy on the part of self-styled
conservatives: the acceptance of the revolutionary principles of the so-called
“synodal church” as the (incomplete, moreover) counterpart to being tolerated
by it. In reality, this exchange is far from equal. The “synodal church” merely
applies to conservatives the same legitimacy of existence it grants to any
other “movement” or “charisma” present in the multifaceted ecclesial fabric,
but it carefully avoids acknowledging that their demands might go beyond a mere
aesthetic and ceremonial concession. The unwritten contract between
conservatives and the post-Bergoglian Hierarchy stipulates that the “liturgical
preferences” of a group of clerics and faithful can be tolerated if and
only if they refrain from highlighting the heterogeneity, incompatibility,
and alienation between the ecclesiology and the entire doctrinal framework
underlying the Vetus Ordo and those expressed in the reformed
Montinian rite.
Abbé Barthe does not ignore the critical
issues: referring to Leo XIV’s Electors, he calls them “all of the conciliar
menagerie,” demonstrating a certain courage, especially considering his public
role and his dependence on those Prelates. Nor does he ignore the
deception embraced by those who exploit religious liberty to invoke
for themselves a tolerance that is not denied even to the worshippers of
Amazonian idols.
The deception is twofold: not only
because of the paradox that Abbé Barthe has rightly highlighted; but also and
above all because of a much worse trap, consisting of accepting at least
implicitly the forced, unnatural, and impossible separation between the
ceremonial form of the rite and its doctrinal substance.
This is an operation
of de-signification of the Liturgy, which consists in being
recognized with the right to celebrate in the Tridentine Rite on the condition
that the celebrant does not also accept the doctrinal and moral implications of
that rite. But if that “Summorum priest” accepts this principle, he must
also accept its inverse application. Indeed, the moment one admits that the
Liturgy can be celebrated without regard for the traditional doctrine it
expresses – a doctrine the “synodal church” does not recognize and considers to
be other than itself – one ends up accepting that even the reformed
liturgy can ignore the errors and heresies it insinuates, errors which no
Catholic worthy of the name can absolutely ratify. In doing so, however, one
plays into the hands of the adversary, under the illusion of being more cunning
than the devil. It all comes down to a question of dress and choreography, of
aesthetics and sentiment that satisfies or does not satisfy personal taste, as
Cardinal Burke’s recent words confirmed: “You don’t take something so rich
in beauty and begin to strip away the beautiful elements without having a
negative effect.” [3] Nothing could be more alien to the mindset of the
Roman Liturgy, according to which the beauty of ceremonies is such because it
is a necessary expression of the Truth it teaches and the Good it practices.
The “synodal church” includes
conservatives in its coveted pantheon not only because it gives them
what they want – solemn pontifical liturgies celebrated by influential
prelates, without doctrinal implications – but also because none of the Holy
See’s interlocutors has the slightest intention of demanding more; and even if
someone were to dare ask for more, the gatekeeper on duty –
literally, the ostiarius –would promptly intervene, calling for
“prudence” and “moderation,” more concerned with preserving his own prestige
than with the fate of the Catholic resistance. This is accompanied by the “Zip
it” [4] policy advocated by Trad Inc. [5], according to which the possible
concessions the moderates hope to obtain from Leo suggest they should not
criticize him openly so as not to alienate him.
The path of being persecuted, ostracized,
and excommunicated do not seem to be among the options for my brothers: it
seems they are already resigned to a fate of tolerance, in which they can
neither be truly Catholic nor fully synodal; neither friends of those who fight
the enemy infiltrated into the Church, nor of those who seek to replace her
with a human surrogate of Masonic inspiration. The Lord will hold these
lukewarm priests accountable with greater severity than He will many poor
parish priests who have other, more pressing pastoral priorities. Let us hope
that Abbé Barthe’s warning does not fall on deaf ears, for the hour of battle
approaches, and to be found defenseless and unprepared, in these circumstances,
would be irresponsible.
And it is precisely in times of
persecution that we must rediscover the relevance and validity of the words of
Saint Vincent of Lérins:
In ipsa item catholica ecclesia magnopere
curandum est ut id teneamus quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum
est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum. [6]
If anything does not meet these three
criteria – semper, ubique, et ab omnibus – it must be rejected as
heretical. This norm protects us from the errors spread by false pastors, in
the serene certainty of acting in accordance with Tradition and thus being able
to compensate, due to the present state of emergency, for the absence of
ecclesiastical authority.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
3 September MMXXV
S.cti Pii X Papæ, Conf.
FOOTNOTES
1 – Abbé Claude Barthe, Leone, il pompiere nella Chiesa
divorata dal fuoco della divisione. Ma quale unità ricerca?, published
at Duc in Altum on August 9, 2025 – https://www.aldomariavalli.it/2025/08/09/analisi-leone-il-pompiere-nella-chiesa-divorata-dal-fuoco-della-divisione-ma-quale-unita-ricerca/ – English translation: https://www.resnovae.fr/the-pontificate-of-leo-xiv-a-transitional-stage/
2 – Argumentum ex concessis is a rhetorical and logical
technique in which an interlocutor uses the premises, arguments, or claims
accepted by an opponent to construct their own argument, often to refute them
or demonstrate the inconsistency of their position. This strategy is based on
the idea of temporarily accepting the opponent’s claims (the “concessions”) and
using them to draw conclusions that either challenge them or support their own
thesis.
3 – Cfr. https://x.com/mljhaynes/status/1954919906492747838
4 – Cfr. https://www.radiospada.org/2025/09/leone-xiv-lipotesi-zip-e-la-contropartita-per-i-conservatori-una-strategia-gia-tentata-e-che-lascia-perplessi-in-7-punti/
5 – “Trad Inc.” is the American expression which refers to
conservative believers and blogs organized like companies, which operate
according to market logic and are dependent on their shareholders.
6 – Commonitorium, 2. “In this same Catholic Church, we must take
the greatest care to maintain what has always been believed, everywhere and by
all; this is in fact truly and properly Catholic.”
COMMENT: It is encouraging
for us who have refused the compromises of faith that conservative Catholics
have made in return for their privileged Indult to have a man of Archbishop Carlo
Maria Viganò's stature
agree and defend what we have been doing at Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic
Mission for the last 25 years. We hope and pray that he may have a greater
influence on other resistance bishops and priests.
The proper understanding of this dogma from the Council
of Trent:
Canon 4 on the sacraments in general: If anyone
says that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary for salvation but are
superfluous, and that without them or without the desire of them men
obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification, though all are
not necessary for each one, let him be anathema.
The Dogma defines two revealed doctrinal truths:
3.
If anyone says: that the sacraments of the
New Law are not necessary for salvation but are superfluous, let him be
anathema.
4.
If anyone says: that without the
sacraments or (if anyone says) without the desire of the sacraments
men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification, let him be
anathema.
Both the Sacrament of Baptism and the will to
receive the Sacrament are necessary for salvation!
“But
God desired that his confession should avail for his salvation, since he preserved him in this life until the
time of his holy regeneration.” St. Fulgentius
“If anyone is not baptized, not only in
ignorance, but even knowingly, he can in no way be saved. For his path to salvation was through the confession,
and salvation itself was in baptism.
At his age, not only was confession
without baptism of no avail: Baptism
itself would be of no avail for salvation if he neither believed nor
confessed.” St. Fulgentius
Notice,
both the CONFESSION AND THE BAPTISM are necessary for salvation, harkening back
to Trent's teaching that both the laver AND the “votum” are required for justification,
and harkening back to Our Lord's teaching that we must be born again of water
AND the Holy Spirit.
In fact, you see the language of St. Fulgentius reflected in the Council of
Trent. Trent describes the votum (so-called “desire”) as the PATH
TO SALVATION, the disposition to Baptism, and then says that “JUSTIFICATION
ITSELF” (St. Fulgentius says “SALVATION ITSELF”) follows the dispositions in
the Sacrament of Baptism.
Yet another solid argument for why Trent is teaching that BOTH the votum
AND the Sacrament are required for justification.
“Hold
most firmly and never doubt in the least that not only all pagans but also all
Jews and all heretics and schismatics who end this present life outside the
Catholic Church are about to go into the eternal fire that was prepared for the
Devil and his angels.” St. Fulgentius
“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes,
professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church,
not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share
in life eternal; but that they will go into the ‘eternal fire which was
prepared for the devil and his angels.’”
St. Eugene IV, Cantate Domino
Ladislaus, CathInfo
John Cardinal Newman, another Novus Ordo "saint" soon to be
declared a "Doctor" of the Novus Ordo Church, comments following the
dogmatic declaration of papal infallibility.
“But
we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the Pope (Pius IX) will be
driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council (Vatican I), or that there
will be another Pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.”
John
H. Newman, Letter to his companion, Fr. Ambrose St. John, 22 August, 1870
“We
have come to a climax of tyranny. It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years.
It is anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to
contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.”
John
H. Newman, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, v. XXVI by Charles
Stephen Dessain
"This (Divine) law, as apprehended in
the minds of individual men, is called "conscience;" and though it
may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is
not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but
still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience."
John Henry Cardinal Newman
"It seems, then, that there are
extreme cases in which Conscience may come into collision with the word of a
Pope, and is to be followed in spite of that word."
John Henry Cardinal Newman
COMMENT: Pope Gregory XVI
said, "This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and
erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be
maintained for everyone." Conscience is not the Divine Law. St. Thomas
says that, "Conscience is nothing else than the application of knowledge
to some action." He is referring to the knowledge of the Law of God. The
Law of God, whether the eternal law or the positive revealed law of God, is the
objective criteria by which the conscience is obligated to use as the standard
by which any judgment regarding the moral goodness or evil of any particular
act is made. All men are obligated to
obey their conscience because they are obligated to apprehend the objective
Divine Law as the proper criteria. They are not free to invent their personal
subjective criteria in determining what is the right or the wrong thing to
do. Liberalism claims the exact
opposite. It is a fundamental axiom of liberalism that the conscience is free
to establish its own moral criteria. This has been condemned by popes Gregory
XVI, PiusIX and Pius X. John Henry Cardinal Newman can be identified as the
"Spirit of Vatican II."
Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity
The woman saith to him: Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our
fathers adored on this mountain, and you say, that at Jerusalem is the place
where men must adore. Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour
cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the
Father. You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also
seeketh such to adore him. God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore
him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:19-24
Novus Ordo Doctrine: Moslems and Novus Ordo Catholics
Worship the same God!
CCC 841, quoting the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,
Lumen Gentium 16, from Vatican II, declared:
"The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the
Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold
the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God,
mankind’s judge on the last day."
CCC 841 also references Vatican II’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church
to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate,
3, that makes the teaching of the Council perhaps even clearer:
"The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the
one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the
Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit
wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the
faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to
God."
Catholic Church Doctrine: Catholics and Moslems DO
NOT worship the same God.
“Now
the Samaritans had a false idea of God in two ways. First of all, because they
thought He was corporeal, so that they believed that He should be adored in
only one definite corporeal place. Further, because they did not believe that
He transcended all things, but was equal to certain creatures, they adored
along with Him certain idols, as if they were equal to Him. Consequently, they
did not know Him, because they did not attain to a true knowledge of Him. So
the Lord says, you adore that which you do not know [John 4:22], that is, you do not adore God
because you do not know Him, but rather your imagination, by which you
apprehend something as God, just as the Gentiles also walk in the foolishness
of their mind (Eph 4:17).” St.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary On John 4:22
“How
then did the Samaritans know not what they worshipped? Because they thought
that God was local and partial; so at least they served Him, and so they sent
to the Persians, and reported that the God of this place is angry with us [2
Kings 26], in this respect
forming no higher opinion of Him than of their idols. Wherefore they continued
to serve both Him and devils, joining things which ought not to be joined.” St. John Chrysostom, Homily 33 On The Gospel
of John
COMMENT: When
Jesus said to the Samaritan Woman, "You adore that which you know
not," He is not saying that they adore the One True God that they are
ignorant of. He is saying, that in their ignorance they do not know who they
are adoring meaning that they are adoring in ignorance a devil, for "all
the gods of the gentiles are devils" (Psalm 95:5). Jesus then says, that
"true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth..... they that
adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth." To adore in
"spirit" means that to adore God you must be baptized and made sons
of God for as Jesus said: "Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born
again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God That
which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is
spirit" (John 3:5-7). And to adore in "truth" means who must
believe what has been revealed by God. Without the true faith it is
"impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). As such, right knowledge
of God is essential to true worship. This is the great sin of Modernism and
Neo-modernism: They make a right knowledge of God impossible!
Hermeneutics
of Continuity/Discontinuity
Catholic
Faith:
Physical
substances come into being through the union of substantial form and primary matter.
The Soul is the Substantial Form of the Human Body; it is immortal and will be
judged after the death of the person and directed to Heaven or Hell for all
eternity awaiting to be joined again to its Body at the Resurrection of the
Dead for the Last Judgment.
“In order that
all may know the truth of the faith in its purity and all error may be
excluded, we define that anyone who presumes henceforth to assert defend or
hold stubbornly that the rational or intellectual soul is not the form of the human
body of itself and essentially, is to be considered a heretic.”
Council of
Vienne
Neo-Modernists
Ideology: [Ratzinger quotes provided by James Larson, War Against Being]
“The medieval
concept of substance has long since become inaccessible to us.”
Rev. Joseph
Ratzinger, Faith and the Future
“The proper
Christian thing, therefore, is to speak, not of the soul’s immortality, but of
the resurrection of the complete human being [at the Final Judgment] and of
that alone… The idea that to speak of the soul is unbiblical was accepted to
such an extent that even the new Roman Missal (i.e.: the Novus Ordo) suppressed
the term anima in its liturgy for the dead. It also disappeared from the ritual
for burial.”
Rev. Joseph
Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal
Life
“‘The soul’ is our term for that in us which
offers a foothold for this relation [with the eternal]. Soul is nothing other
than man’s capacity for relatedness with truth, with love eternal.”
Rev. Joseph
Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal
Life
“The challenge
to traditional theology today lies in the negation of an autonomous,
‘substantial’ soul with a built-in immortality in favor of that positive view
which regards God’s decision and activity as the real foundation of a
continuing human existence.”
Rev. Joseph
Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal
Life
And those who
have denied the reality of substantial
being are those who are responsible for the “dictatorship of relativism.”
“Every
day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes
true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (Eph 4, 14).
Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labelled today
as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed
and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude
(acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of
relativism which does not recognise anything as for certain and which has as its
highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”
Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, Homily of the Dean of the College of Cardinals, 2005
Sacrament of Baptism: Significance of the Baptismal
Character and why it is absolutely necessary for salvation. Explains why St.
Ambrose said regarding catechumens who die before receiving the sacrament of
Baptism, they are “forgiven but not crowned”.
To be baptized is to become one with the
Church, and one with Christ. Thus
the ritual can say: “enter into the temple of God, that you may have part with
Christ, unto life everlasting.” The two ideas are correlative: to be
baptized into the Church and to be baptized into Christ; they are the visible
and invisible aspects of the same real effect. [….]
The effecting this incorporation into
Christ, Baptism marks the soul as permanently His; it stamps upon the soul a
spiritual “character”, or, as antiquity more commonly called it, a “seal”. For this reason, and putting the cause for the
effect, the rite of Baptism was itself called “the seal”, or “the seal of
faith”, or “the seal of water”, or “the seal of the Trinity” (which last
appellation endures still in the liturgical prayers for the dying, wherein God
is asked to remember His promises to the soul that in its lifetime was “stamped
with the seal of the Most Holy Trinity”).
The word “seal” derives from a group of
texts in St. Paul, which suggest this stamping of the soul at Baptism: “And in
Him (Christ), you too, when you had heard the word of truth, the good news of
your salvation, and believed in it, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the
promise” (Eph. 1:13); “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in Whom you
were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). However, nowadays we are
accustomed to speak rather of the baptismal “character”, a term that suggests
the text wherein Christ is called “the brightness of His (the Father’s) glory
and the image (in Greek, character) of His substance” (Hebr. 1:3).
Basically, two words give the same meaning:
a seal imprints an image, and a “character”, in the original sense of the word,
means image. Baptism, therefore, stamps the soul with the image of Christ, Who
is Himself the image of the Father. And in the Scripture, this stamping is attributed
to the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Christ. The fact that we are stamped
with such a character is clearly defined by the Council of Trent:
“If anyone says that by the three Sacraments, to wit, Baptism,
Confirmation and Orders, there is not imprinted in the soul a Character, that
is a certain spiritual and indelible sign on account of which they cannot be
repeated; let him be anathem.” (Denz. 852).
The Council of Trent teaches that this
seal, once stamped on the soul, is indelible. Just as Baptism irrevocable makes
one a member of the Church, so also it irrevocably makes one a member of
Christ. Not the gravest sin, nor even final impenitence and self-condemnation
to eternal separation from Christ in Hell, can avail to erase this baptismal seal.
And the indelibility of the seal is the immediate reason why Baptism can never
be repeated, once it has been validly received. [….]
The sense in which Baptism stamps us with
the image of Christ is suggested in the rite itself, by the anointing which follows
the ablution. It is done with Sacred Chrism, a mixed unguent of oil and balm,
specially consecrated by the bishop on Holy Thursday. Kings and priests in
antiquity (and even today) were anointed with chrism in token of their royal
and priestly dignity. And the baptism anointing signifies, therefore, that the
new Christian has entered into the “royal priesthood” of the Christian people,
and shares in the royal Priesthood of Christ Himself. He bears the image of
Christ, inasmuch as Christ was the Priest of all humanity, Who offered Himself
in sacrifice on the Cross.
The baptismal seal or character, therefore,
endows the Christian with a priestly function, and a priestly power. It is not
that special power and function given by the Sacrament of Holy Orders to
certain selected members of the Church, who are made her official ministers,
and authorized to offer her sacrifice and dispense her Sacraments. But it is
the priestly function and power which is common to all the members of the Body
of Christ. As He was born as Priest, His whole life orientated toward the
Passion and Death which was His priestly Sacrifice, so too, they are priests
from their birth into the Christian life at Baptism; and their lives are
essentially orientated toward sacrifice, in a double sense.
First of all, they receive a function and a
power with respect to the ritual Sacrifice of the Church, which is the Mass.
[….] They are empowered to assist actively in the offering of the Mass, as
members of the Church, in whose name her specially qualified members, priests
and bishops, offer the Mass, which is the sacrifice of the whole Church through
her official ministers. In union with the Priest, the Christian offers up
Christ as a Victim Who belongs to him and to Whom he belongs. An unbaptized
person cannot do this….
Secondly, the baptismal character
consecrates the Christian to sacrifice in a wider sense: it gives him the
function, the duty, the power to lead a life of sacrifice, since He is in the
image of Christ whose life was one long sacrifice – a life of complete
obedience to the will of His Father: “I seek not My own will, but the will of
Him Who sent Me” (Jn. 3:50).The will of the Father is the supreme law of the
Christian’s life; it is all embracing and all pervasive; and constant and total
obedience to it necessarily gives a sacrificial quality to the whole of life,
since it demands the renunciation of many ideas, and a steady refusal to be led
by one’s own emotions or to seek one’s own pleasure and profit – in a word, it
demands the sacrifice of selfishness in all its forms. St. Peter, therefore,
was thinking of Baptism when he wrote:
“Lay aside therefore all malice and all deceit, and pretense, and envy,
and all slander…. Be you yourselves as living stones, built thereon (i.e., on
Christ) into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual
sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:1,5).
Rev. John J. Fernan, S.J., Theology, Christ
Our High Priest, Baptismal Seal
Pius XII - the man responsible for planting the seed of
liturgical destruction!
Fr. Annibale Bugnini had been making
clandestine visits to the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique (CPL), a progressivist
conference centre for liturgical reform which organized national weeks for
priests.
Inaugurated in Paris in 1943 on the private initiative of two Dominican priests
under the presidency of Fr. Lambert Beauduin, it was a magnet for all who
considered themselves in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement. It would play
host to some of the most famous names who influenced the direction of Vatican
II: Frs. Beauduin, Guardini, Congar, Chenu, Daniélou, Gy, von Balthasar, de
Lubac, Boyer, Gelineau etc.
It could, therefore, be considered as the
confluence of all the forces of Progressivism, which saved and re-established Modernism
condemned by Pope Pius X in Pascendi.
According to its
co-founder and director, Fr. Pie Duployé, OP, Bugnini had requested a
“discreet” invitation to attend a CPL study week held near Chartres in
September 1946.
Much more was involved here than the issue of secrecy. The person whose
heart beat as one with the interests of the reformers would return to Rome to
be placed by an unsuspecting (?) Pope (Pius XII) in charge of his Commission
for the General Reform of the Liturgy.
But someone in the Roman Curia did know about the CPL – Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the acting
Secretary of State and future Paul VI – who sent a telegram to the CPL dated
January 3, 1947. It purported to come from the Pope with an apostolic blessing.
If, in Bugnini’s estimation, the Roman authorities were to be kept in the dark
about the CPL so as not to compromise its activities, a mystery remains. Was
the telegram issued under false pretences, or did Pius XII really know and
approve of the CPL? [.....]
This agenda (for liturgical reform) was set
out as early as 1949 in the Ephemerides
Liturgicae, a leading Roman review on liturgical studies of which Fr.
Annabale Bugnini was Editor from 1944 to 1965.
First, Bugnini denigrated
the traditional liturgy as a dilapidated building (“un vecchio edificio”),
which should be condemned because it was in danger of falling to pieces
(“sgretolarsi”) and, therefore, beyond repair. Then, he criticized it for its
alleged “deficiencies, incongruities and difficulties,” which rendered it
spiritually “sterile” and would prevent it appealing to modern sensibilities.
It is difficult to understand how, in the same year that he published this
anti-Catholic diatribe, he was made a Professor of Liturgy in Rome’s Propaganda
Fide (Propagation of the Faith) University. His solution was to return to the
simplicity of early Christian liturgies and jettison all subsequent
developments, especially traditional devotions.
These ideas expressed in 1949 would form the foundational principles of Vatican
II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. For all practical purposes, the Roman Rite was
dead in the water many years before it was officially buried by Paul VI.
Dr. Carol Byrne, How Bugnini Grew Up under Pius XII
Wisdom is only
possible for those who hold DOGMA as the Rule of Faith!
Besides, every dogma of faith is to the
Catholic cultivated mind not only a new increase of knowledge, but also an
incontrovertible principle from which it is able to draw conclusions and derive
other truths. They present an endless field for investigation so that the
beloved Apostle St. John could write at the end of his Gospel, without fear of
exaggeration: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did: which if
they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to
contain the books that should be written.”
The Catholic Church, by enforcing firm belief
in her dogmas—which are not her inventions, but were given by Jesus
Christ—places them as a bar before the human mind to prevent it from going astray
and to attach it to the truth; but it does not prevent the mind from exercising
its functions when it has secured the treasure of divine truth, and a “scribe
thus instructed in the kingdom of heaven is truly like a man that is a
householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old.” He may
bring forth new illustrations, new arguments and proofs; he may show now
applications of the same truths, according to times and circumstances; he may
show new links which connect the mysteries of religion with each other or with
the natural sciences as there can be no discord between the true faith and true
science; God, being the author of both, cannot contradict Himself and teach
something by revelation as true which He teaches by the true light of reason as
false. In all these cases the householder “brings forth from his treasure new
things and old.” They are new inasmuch as they are the result of new
investigations; and old because they are contained in the old articles of faith
and doctrine as legitimate deductions from their old principles.
Fr. Joseph Prachensky, S.J., The Church of
Parables and True Spouse of the Suffering Saviour, on the Parable of the Scribe
Baptism imprints in your soul a
spiritual character, which no sin can efface. This character is a proof that
from this time you do not belong to yourself, but that you are the property of
Jesus Christ, who has purchased you by the infinite price of his blood and of
his death. You are not of yourself, but you are of Christ; wherefore, St.
Paul concludes, “that the Christian should no longer live for himself, but for
Him who died and rose again for him;” that is to say, that the Christian should
live a life of grace, and that he should consecrate to his Redeemer his spirit,
his heart, and all his actions. […..]
First, is true
penance; for, as the holy Council of Trent teaches, penance is no less
necessary for those who have sinned after Baptism, than Baptism is necessary
for those who have not received it. The Holy Scripture informs us, that there
are two gates by which we are to enter into heaven—baptismal innocence, and
penance. When a Christian has shut against himself the gate of innocence, in
violating the holy promises of Baptism, it is necessary that he should strive
to enter by that of penance; otherwise there is no salvation for him. On this
account, Jesus Christ, speaking of persons who have lost innocence, says to
them: “Unless you do penance, you shall all perish.”
But in order that
penance may prevent us from perishing—it must be true Penance. Confessors may
be deceived by the false appearance of conversion, and it is too often the
case; but God is never deceived. If, therefore, those who receive absolution
are not truly penitent and worthy of pardon, their sins are not forgiven before
God. In order to do true penance, it is not sufficient to confess all our sins
and to fulfill what is enjoined on us by the priest. There are two other things
which are necessary: First; to renounce sin with all your heart, and for all
your life… and second; to fly the occasions of sin, and to use the means to
avoid it.
St. John Eudes,
Man’s Contract with God in Baptism
Again, in the Office for the feasts of our Lady,
the Church applies the words of Sirach to the Blessed Virgin and thus
gives us to understand that in her we find all hope: In me is all
hope of life and of virtue. In Mary is every grace: In me is all
grace of the way and of the truth. In Mary we shall find life and eternal
salvation: Those who serve me shall never fail. Those who explain me
shall have life everlasting (Sir. 24:25, 30, 31--- Vulgate). And in the Book
of Proverbs: Those who find me find life and win favor from the Lord (8:35).
Surely such expressions are enough to prove that we require the intercession of
Mary.
St. Alphonsus de Liguori, The Glories of Mary
THE NOVUS ORDO CHURCH OF SLOTH AND ENVY
The first effect of charity is joy in the goodness
of God. But this joy can only live through the union of man’s will with God in
charity. And charity demands that man keep all the commandments. Charity
demands a fellowship in good between God and man. When the effort to live in
this fellowship in good begins to appear too difficult to man he begins to be
sorrowful about the infinite goodness of God. This sorrow weighs down the
spirit of man and leads him to neglect good. This sorrow is the sin of sloth,
sorrow about the goodness of God. Sloth is a capital sin. It leads men into
other sins. To avoid the sorrow or weariness of spirit which is sloth men will
turn from God to the sinful pleasures of the world.
When a man falls victim to sloth and is sorrowful
because of the goodness of God it is only natural that he will begin to be
grieved also at the manifestation of the goodness of God in other men. He will
resent good men simply because they are good. This resentment is envy, hatred
of someone else’s good. Since the love of our neighbor flows from our love of
God, it is natural that when we cease to love God’s goodness, we will also
begin to hate the goodness of men. Envy, like sloth, is a capital sin. It will
lead men to commit other sins to destroy the goodness of their neighbors.
When a man’s heart is filled with sloth and envy
the interior peace of his soul which was the effect of charity is destroyed.
The loss of the interior peace leads to the destruction of the peace of
society. When a man’s heart is no longer centered in God, then his life loses
all proper direction. When the love of God is gone he has nothing left but the
love of himself. When a man loves himself without loving God then he can brook
no opposition to his own judgment or arbitrary will. He can tolerate goodness
in no one else. He will even, by the sin of scandal, by his own words and
example, lead other men into sin. He must disagree with all men. He must
dispute with them, separate himself from them, quarrel with them, go to war
with them, set the whole of the community at war with itself.
Wherever the goodness of God is most manifest,
there will the heart of the man who no longer loves God be most energetic in
sowing the seeds of discord, contentiousness, strife and war. That is why
religion and the true Church of God are so viciously attacked in the world
today. Those who do not love God are driven by sloth and envy to attack God’s
tabernacle on earth.
Fr. Walter Farrell and Fr. Martin Healy, My Way of Life, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas
Amoris Laetitia was published in
2016. No answer or corrective action to this "appeal" was ever made.
That is because no clarification was ever needed. Why? That is because the
"numerous propositions in Amoris Laetitia (that) can be construed as
heretical upon the natural reading of the text" is exactly what the author
intended! So in 2016 these "academics and pastors" did "not
accusing the pope of heresy", but what about now?
“Amoris Laetitia.... scandalous, erroneous in faith, and
ambiguous...”
Catholic academics and pastors appeal to the College of Cardinals over Amoris Laetitia
A group of Catholic academics and
pastors has submitted an appeal to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College
of Cardinals in Rome, requesting that the Cardinals and Eastern Catholic
Patriarchs petition His Holiness, Pope Francis, to repudiate a list of
erroneous propositions that can be drawn from a natural reading of the
post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris
laetitia. During the coming weeks this submission will be sent in various
languages to every one of the Cardinals and Patriarchs, of whom there are 218
living at present.
Describing the exhortation as
containing “a number of statements that can be understood in a sense that is
contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” the signatories submitted, along with
their appeal, a documented list of applicable theological censures specifying “the
nature and degree of the errors that could be attributed to Amoris laetitia.”
Among the 45 signatories are
Catholic prelates, scholars, professors, authors, and clergy from various
pontifical universities, seminaries, colleges, theological institutes,
religious orders, and dioceses around the world. They have asked the College of
Cardinals, in their capacity as the Pope’s official advisers, to approach the
Holy Father with a request that he repudiate “the errors listed in the document
in a definitive and final manner, and to authoritatively state that Amoris laetitia does not require any of
them to be believed or considered as possibly true.”
“We are not accusing the pope of
heresy,” said a spokesman for the authors, “but we consider that numerous propositions
in Amoris laetitia can be construed
as heretical upon a natural reading of the text. Additional statements would
fall under other established theological censures, such as scandalous,
erroneous in faith, and ambiguous, among others.” [......]
Atheists are really anti-theists. They oppose the God who
is God with an idol of their own making.
No atheist chooses merely to deny God. For the
atheist’s spiritual posture against God is at the same time his posture in
preference for some other Being above God. As he dismisses the true God he is
welcoming his New God. Why must this be so? Because every personal commitment
of man presupposes, deep in the metaphysical core of his being, a hunger for
being as truth and goodness. Man is intrinsically burdened with an incurable
hunger for transcendence. If being abhors a vacuum, the vacuum it most
violently shrinks from is the total absence of Infinite Being. And history
demonstrates that man is inconsolable without the True God.
Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., The Gods of Atheism
‘When men
choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they
believe in anything.’
There are men who will ruin themselves and ruin
their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale (of the
Catholic faith). This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith;
that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the sword that cuts their own
fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. … (The atheist fanatic)
sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He
offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the
altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary
ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some
one who (he affirms) never lived at all.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Cultivate a great desire to be firmly rooted in
the sublime virtue of
confidence. Do not fear, but be courageous in serving and loving our
Most Adorable and Amiable Jesus, with great perfection and holiness. Undertake
courageously great tasks for His glory, in proportion to the power and grace He
will give you for this end. Even though you can do nothing of yourself, you can
do all things in Him and His help will never fail you, if you have confidence in His goodness.
Place your entire physical and spiritual welfare in His hands. Abandon to the
paternal solicitude of His Divine Providence every care for your health,
reputation, property and business, for those near to you, for your past sins,
for your soul’s progress in virtue and love of Him, for your life, death, and
especially for your salvation and eternity, in a word, all your cares. Rest in the assurance that, in
His pure goodness, He will watch with particular tenderness over all
your responsibilities and cares and dispose all things for the greatest good.”
St. John Eudes, The
Life and Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls
Cardinal Burke offers the
correction for two mistranslations in the English publication of the Motu
proprio of Pope Francis, “TRADITIONIS CUSTODES”
Art. 1. The
liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI (sic) and Saint John Paul II
(sic), in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique only expression of
the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.
Art. 4. Priests
ordained after the publication of the present Motu Proprio, who wish to
celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, should must submit a formal
request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before
granting this authorization.
"Not a stone upon a stone" - 9th Sunday after
Pentecost
The 'Western Wall' (Wailing Wall) in
Jerusalem is held by Jews as a remnant of Herod's Temple destroyed by the
Romans in 72 A.D. Yet, Jesus prophesized not only that the Temple would be
destroyed but also that there would not remain a "stone upon a
stone." So how is it that there remains a large wall on the western side
at the south end of the 'Temple Mount'? Some Catholics claim the prophecy of
Jesus was referring only to the edifice itself and not the entire foundation
for the Temple. Jesus words must be taken in literally unless there it is
clearly manifest that the metaphorical sense is intended exclusively.
Therefore, the 'Wailing Wall' where the Jews worship is not a remnant of the
ancient Temple, and the 'Temple Mount', on which is currently situated the
Al-Aqsa mosque and the "Dome of the Rock", is not the location of the
Temple destroyed in 72 A.D. The 36 acre 'Temple Mount' is actually the location
of the Roman fortress Antonia built by Herod.
What is the evidence for this? The current
popular claim is the fortress Antonia was located on a five-acre section on the
north-west side of the 'Temple Mount' while the Temple occupied the remaining
30 acres. Five acres is far too small to accommodate a Roman legion (6,000
soldiers plus auxiliary staff) which we know from the writings of Flavius
Josephus that the fortress Antonia did in fact hold. Many Roman fortresses have
been examined by archeologists and they typically are between 45 and 55 acres
but some are as small as 36 acres. As far as the area needed for the Temple of Herod
itself, consider this, the ancient pagan temple complex at Baalek in Lebanon
built by the Romans is less than six acres in total area and encloses the
largest temple to Jupiter in the Roman Empire as well as a smaller temple
dedicated to Bacchus and another to Venus. The Temple built by Herod was a
single temple and much smaller in overall dimensions.
Furthermore, when Solomon was designated by
King David to succeed him (3 Kings 1), King David directed the prophet Nathan
and the high priest Sadoc to take Solomon on the king's mule to be anointed
king at the "Gihon spring" with oil taken from the tabernacle. The
Gihon spring is located in the City of David directly south and adjacent to the
present-day 'Temple Mount'. There Solomon was anointed with oil taken from the
Tabernacle, proclaimed king and celebrated by the populace with great
jubilation and the sounding of trumpets that could be heard outside the city.
The Temple built by Solomon was in the same location as the Tabernacle
established by King David on the threshing floor of the land he purchased
Areuna the Jebusite as God had commanded by the mouth of Gad (2 Kings 24 and 2
Paralipomenon 3:1).
The water from the Gihon spring was
essential for the sacrificial offerings of the Temple. There is no living water
source on the 'Temple Mount' which was required in the washing of the priests
and the sacrifices offered. The water source for the Antonia fortress was
provided by large cisterns located just north of the Antonia fortress and under
the 'Temple Mount' that are still present today.
There is a Catholic tradition the there was
a church called the Church of the Judgment that was built over and enclosed the
Rock that is now enclosed under the Dome of the Rock built by the Moslems in
692 A.D. The Dome of the Rock is located directly north of the Al-Aqsa mosque
on the 'Temple Mount'. The Church of the Judgment was destroyed either by the
Persians who conquered Jerusalem in 614 A.D. with the help of 26,000 Jewish
allies during the Byzantine-Sasanian War 602-628 A.D. (during which many
churches were destroyed including the Church of the Ascension on Mount Olivet),
or the church was destroyed by the Moslems who conquered Jerusalem in 637 A.D.
No living Jew at the time would have knowledge of the exact location of Herod's
Temple because the Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem by the Romans since
the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 A.D. on the pain of death. Two hundred years
later, the Catholic emperor Constantine permitted the Jews to enter Jerusalem
once a year on the feast of Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av) which is regarded as
the saddest day in the Jewish calendar because it is the anniversary of the
destruction of both the Temple of Solomon and the Temple of Herod! Be that as
it may, many of the pillars used in the construction of the interior of the
Dome of the Rock have Christian markings indicating that they were salvaged
from a destroyed Catholic church.
The Rock itself is regarded (WIKI) as
The Foundation Stone (Hebrew אֶבֶן
הַשְּׁתִיָּה, romanized: ʾEḇen
haŠeṯīyyā, lit. 'Foundation Stone'), or the Noble
Rock (Arabic:الصخرة
المشرفة, romanized: al-Saḵrah al-Mušarrafah, lit. 'The
Noble Stone') is the rock enclosed by the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is
also known as the Pierced Stone, because it has a small hole on the
southeastern corner that enters a cavern beneath the rock, known as the Well of
Souls. Traditional Jewish sources mention the stone as the place from
which the creation of the world began. Jewish sources also identify its
location with that of the Holy of Holies. Yet, it is not possible for a
threshing floor to be around a large rock or stone.
Before the Muslim conquest, the Rock was
enclosed in the Catholic church known as the Church of the Judgment (destroyed
by the Persians) because it is believed to have been the place where the
condemned stood to hear the judgment against them by the Roman authorities. The
Rock is held to be where Jesus stood when His official condemnation was decreed
by Pontius Pilate and thus, if it is the stone where the "creation of the
world began," it is the stone from which the creation of the world began
anew. John 19:13 says: "Now when Pilate had heard these words, he brought
Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat, in the place that is called
Lithostrotos, and in Hebrew Gabbatha." Lithostrotos in Greek refers to a
stone and Gabbatha in Hebrew an elevated place. According to St. Mary Agreda
after Jesus was condemned by Pilate the decree of condemnation, which she
quotes in its entirety, was then formally read to the Jewish mob assembled
outside the north entrance to Fortress Antonia where Jesus was taken to bear
His cross.
Of the Temple of Herod destroyed in 72 A.D.
there does not remain a "stone upon a stone".
Leo XIV Reinstates Convicted Child-Porn Priest who was protected by
Francis
Carlo Alberto Capella was
Vatican diplomat who was convicted by a Vatican tribunal of possessing and
sharing child pornography. Capella admitted guilt to the charges. He is the
only one who has served a prison sentence in the Vatican jail for this crime or
for any sexually related crime against minors.
Monsignor Capella was ordained a priest in
1993 for the Archdiocese of Milan. After studies of canon law he entered
the Vatican diplomatic corps. He was assigned to the papal nunciature in India
in 2003 and to the nunciature in Hong Kong in 2007. In 2008 he was created Chaplain of His Holiness,
which entitled him to the title of Monsignor. In 2011 he was
transferred to the Vatican to serve in the Secretariat of State. In 2016 he was
assigned to the papal nunciature to the United States.
In 2017, Capella was recalled to the
Vatican by Pope Francis after United States officials informed the Vatican
that he was under investigation for possession and sharing of child
pornography. The government of Canada has issued a warrant for his arrest,
alleging that during his time in Canada in December, 2016 he had possessed and
shared child pornography. He was returned to the Vatican which claimed
diplomatic immunity for Capella protecting him from prosecution in the United
State or Canada.
In 2018, he was convicted and sentenced to
five years in prison, which he served in the Vatican jail. As of 2021, he was
allowed out during the day to work in an office that sells papal blessings. In
2023, following the end of his prison sentence, Capella was permitted to return
to work in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Now Pope Leo XIV has reinstated Msgr. Capella to a senior diplomatic
position in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
COMMENT: Pope Leo is protégé
of Francis to whom he owns his promotions to bishop and cardinal. It was
Francis who protected this pervert from criminal charges in the United States
and in Canada and now it is Francis' protégé who has restored him the a high
level position in the Vatican. This does not portend well for any serious
reform of the Novus Ordo Church which has become a sinecure for homosexuals and
others perverts.
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, August 22, 2021
Bottom: First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, July 6, 2025
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