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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: "The Sacred Heart Blesses Homeschooling!" April 28, 2025
Posted by: Deus Vult - 24 minutes ago - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

"The Sacred Heart Blesses Homeschooling!"
April 28, 2025  (CA)

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  Feast Day of St. Louis de Montfort
Posted by: Our Lady of Fatima Chapel - 8 hours ago - Forum: The Saints - No Replies

[Image: poster-st.louismarie22__60170.1648058865.jpg?c=2]

Today is the feast of St. Louis de Montfort, Co-Patron of our Chapel and Patron of the French Resistance.

Father Louis-Marie Grignion, a priest for just 16 years, died young at the age of 43 from the effects of being poisoned by some wretched Jansenists at his La Rochelle mission.

On today's feast, a Plenary Indulgence (under the usual conditions) is available for any of the faithful who have made the Total Consecration: To Jesus through Mary by simply renewing that act of consecration.

A Plenary Indulgence is also available to those souls on their consecration's anniversary date by the renewal of that same act of consecration. 

St. Louis de Montfort, pray for us

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  Fr. Ruiz: LA IGLESIA MILITANTE ES POR NATURALEZA COMBATIVA DE LOS ERRORES Domingo In Albis
Posted by: Deus Vult - 8 hours ago - Forum: Fr. Ruiz's Sermons April 2025 - No Replies

LA IGLESIA MILITANTE ES POR NATURALEZA COMBATIVA DE LOS ERRORES
 Domingo In Albis  April 27, 2025


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  Conclave to elect new pope will start on May 7
Posted by: Stone - Today, 07:35 AM - Forum: General Commentary - No Replies

Conclave to elect new pope will start on May 7
The conclave will see cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope as the 267th Roman Pontiff.

[Image: 0DBB187C-3686-405B-851B-8161270D060B_1_1...0x500.jpeg]


Apr 28, 2025
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican has confirmed that the new conclave will start on May 7, as cardinals look to elect the new pope following Francis’ death.

After the close of the General Congregation this morning, the Holy See Press Office confirmed to journalists that the conclave will commence on May 7, next Wednesday. This falls in the time scale set by the Church’s law, which mandates the conclave start between 15 and 20 days following the death of a pope.

Pope Francis died on April 21, a week ago today.

His funeral was held on Saturday, as cardinals have continued to grow in number at the Vatican as they return to the City State from across the world.

May 7 will see the cardinals gather for a Mass in the morning, as they pray for guidance for the forthcoming conclave. They will then process into the Sistine Chapel for the first round of voting to be held in the afternoon.

This story is developing…

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Easter Saturday, April 24, 2025 - "The Earthquake & the Angel"
Posted by: Deus Vult - Yesterday, 08:08 AM - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

 "The Earthquake & the Angel"
Easter Saturday April 24, 2025  (CA)

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Low Sunday [Quasimodo Sun.] 4/27/25 “My Lord & My God!”
Posted by: Deus Vult - 04-26-2025, 05:44 PM - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

“My Lord & My God!”
Low Sunday [Quasimodo Sun.] 
April 27, 2025  (CA) 





Audio

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  Disgraced former LA Cardinal Roger Mahony chosen to help seal Francis’ casket
Posted by: Stone - 04-26-2025, 05:42 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

Disgraced former LA Cardinal Roger Mahony chosen to help seal Francis’ casket
Mahony, 89, is widely considered to be one of the worst clerics of the past forty years,
 having been implicated in a massive sex abuse cover-up in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

[Image: GettyImages-107780367-e1745598574413-810x500.jpg]

LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 25: Cardinal Roger Mahony leads Christmas mass at The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels December 25, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.
Eric Thayer / Getty Images

Apr 25, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — Disgraced U.S. Cardinal Roger Mahony has been chosen to help seal Pope Francis’ casket for his funeral this weekend.

Mahony, 89, is widely considered to be one of the worst clerics in the U.S. over the past forty years. He served as the Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011. As a result of his covering up of abuse, the archdiocese paid out more than $660 million to more than 500 victims over the course of his tenure.

Following his retirement, Mahony was scandalously allowed by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez to participate in the archdiocese’s religious education conference in 2019.

Mahony took part in the 2019 installation Mass of former archbishop of Washington, D.C. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who was an acolyte of Theodore McCarrick, the former, now deceased, archbishop of Washington D.C. He also participated in the installation Mass of Archbishop Joe Vásquez in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston this March.

News of Mahony’s involvement in the ceremony was not well received by Catholics.

“Shame on him for participating in the public rite for Pope Francis, and shame on the College of Cardinals for allowing him to do so,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability.org, told the New York Post.

Author Peachy Keenan echoed those sentiments on X. “I will be boycotting the Pope’s funeral because the Vatican has chosen to include Cardinal Roger Mahony closely in the funeral ceremony. He is personally responsible for the mass rape of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of small boys in California and should be doing hard time in San Quentin, not frolicking in Rome. Shame on everyone involved in this travesty,” she remarked.


In 2013 a court demanded that some 12,000 pages related to Mahony’s time in office be released. The documents showed Mahony purposely concealed from the public knowledge of priests who had committed sex crimes with minors, and that he transferred the perpetrators after they received counseling only to have them sexually abuse again and again. The abuses were so severe that Gomez commented at the time, “the behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil.”

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said that Mahony was chosen based on his seniority as a cardinal. But Mahony told ABC 7 News that he and Francis often communicated.

“He encouraged us to write to him,” Mahony said. “I don’t know if anybody else did, but I started writing to him, and he answers the letters. I have, I don’t know the final number, over 30 letters back from the pope, Pope Francis. He responds to them.”

Francis’ funeral will take place Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square. LifeSite’s Michael Haynes reports that a “small group of transsexuals” will attend. The coffin ceremony will take place Friday at 8pm in St. Peter’s as well. It will be overseen by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, and will include Cardinals Pietro Parolin and Giovanni Battista Re, as well Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, among others.

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  ‘Transgender’ individuals to welcome Pope Francis’ coffin at burial site
Posted by: Stone - 04-26-2025, 05:38 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

‘Transgender’ individuals to welcome Pope Francis’ coffin at burial site
As announced by Vatican News, some self-described transgender individuals be included in a welcoming party for Pope Francis’ remains at the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

[Image: MicrosoftTeams-image.png]

Pope Francis meets with transgender activist group at weekly audience
LifeSiteNews

Apr 25, 2025
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — A party of self-described transgender individuals will form part of a small group welcoming Pope Francis’ body to the Roman basilica where he will be buried on Saturday.

As announced by Vatican News – the in-house news outlet for the Vatican – some gender-confused individuals will be included in a welcoming party for Pope Francis’ remains at the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

A group of of some 40 people were already due to be present outside the basilica on Saturday afternoon in order to form an official welcoming party to the mortal remains of the late pope. This was explained by the Holy See Press Office as being reflective of the pope’s attention to the poor during his life.

But a little later, Vatican News quoted the words of one of Rome’s auxiliary bishop – Bishop Benoni Ambarus – who gave further details about who would constitute the party.

Ambarus said there will be “a small representation of transsexuals whom I know, whom we follow through a small community of nuns.”

Also present will be some of Rome’s poor, homeless, prisoners, and migrants.

Explaining this, Ambarus said, “There will also be prisoners met at the opening of the Holy Door in Rebibbia [prison]. It is a moving choice, because the Holy Father will be welcomed by the Mother he loved so much and by his beloved children who will surround him.”

“Ideally, it is as if all his beloved people were accompanying him on his last steps,” he added.

The precise details of who will be in the party are not yet public.

Francis is well known for his frequent hosting of transgender groups at the Vatican, along with key transgender activists such as Sister Jeannine Gramick.

Asked about this during a television interview earlier this year, Francis said “Proximity! That’s the word. Proximity to everybody. Everyone.”

Francis’ practicing of “proximity” has included a number of audiences and meetings with individuals actively living as though a member of the opposite sex, or key LGBT activists. He has also welcomed a group of purportedly transgender individuals as VIP guests at his weekly audiences, after Sister Genevieve Jeanningros facilitated the encounter between them and the pontiff.

Participants of these encounters have also recounted how meeting the Pope re-enforced them, rather than awakening them to their biological reality.

One woman, who lives as a man, commented that her meeting confirmed her in her “transgender identity.”

The Catholic Church calls all souls to the practice of chastity, but particular care is given to those suffering with same-sex attraction to offer the assistance needed but also to ensure that the fullness of Catholic morality is not compromised in this endeavor.

Teaching found re-iterated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” The catechism is very clear that homosexual activity can never be approved, and repeats that “[h]omosexual persons are called to chastity.”

The late pope’s LGBT record infamously began with his 2013 in-flight comments, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about the existence of a gay lobby within the Vatican and the practice of homosexuality. Such support took a marked increase in the wake of the Vatican’s March 2021 responsum condemning same-sex “blessings,” as Francis made numerous public statements praising and supporting advocates of LGBT ideology and same-sex civil unions.

Then in December 2023, he authorized the Declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which contained approval for “blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex.” Written by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández – prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – and approved by Francis, the document caused instant and widespread consternation throughout the global Church.

Fiducia Supplicans was swiftly welcomed by LGBT advocates and heterodox clerics, while vocal opposition was found predominantly in Africa along with a steadily growing number of dioceses in the U.S., Europe, the U.K., and among religious orders.

Notable prelates – Cardinals Gerhard Müller and Joseph Zen and Robert Sarah, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Bishop Athanasius Schneider – all penned their rejection of the document’s proposal for same-sex blessings, many doing so repeatedly. Sarah went as far as to state that Fiducia Supplicans proposes a “heresy that gravely undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and tradition.”

Fiducia Supplicans’ publication arguably caused one of the greatest tumults in the Francis pontificate up until that time, with the global backlash against the text on a scale previously unseen in the prior 11 years of Francis’ reign.

LifeSiteNews readers are invited to continue praying for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis.

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  UK To Greenlight Experiments To "Dim The Sun" In Bid To Stop Global Warming
Posted by: Stone - 04-26-2025, 05:32 AM - Forum: Global News - No Replies

UK To Greenlight Experiments To "Dim The Sun" In Bid To Stop Global Warming


ZH [adapted and reformatted] | Apr 24, 2025

It's a project reminiscent of the movie Snowpiercer, in which governments institute a global experiment to spray chemicals into the atmosphere to stop global warming and end up creating a new ice age instead.  Once again reality is downstream from fiction as the UK is set to bankroll an experiment to "dim the sun".  This goal will be pursued in field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine.

The project is being considered by scientists as a way to prevent "runaway climate change", despite the fact that there is zero evidence to support the claim of runaway climate change.

Aria, the Government’s advanced research and invention funding agency, has set aside £50 million for projects, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

[Image: Snowpiercer1.jpg?itok=7lmlANq3]

Prof Mark Symes, the program director for Aria (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), said there would be “small controlled outdoor experiments on particular approaches”.

“We will be announcing who we have given funding to in a few weeks and when we do so we will be making clear when any outdoor experiments might be taking place,” he said.

“One of the missing pieces in this debate was physical data from the real world. Models can only tell us so much.  Everything we do is going to be safe by design. We’re absolutely committed to responsible research, including responsible outdoor research.  We have strong requirements around the length of time experiments can run for and their reversibility and we won’t be funding the release of any toxic substances to the environment.”

One major area of research is Sunlight Reflection Methods (SRM), which includes Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) whereby tiny particles are released into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight.  Another potential project is Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) in which ships would spray sea-salt particles into the sky to enhance the reflectivity of low-lying clouds.

Climate scientists say efforts to reduce carbon emissions are not working fast enough and that levels are "too high", leading to irregular weather patterns and eventually the temperature "tipping point" in which an exponential crisis is created by heat creating carbon and then carbon creating more heat. 

The problem is that nothing in this theory is backed by causational evidence or the climate history of the Earth.  In other words, climate scientists are siphoning up government grant money to create solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.  The vast majority of climate change theories are based on data collected since the 1880s - 140 years of data is a insignificant window of time in the long lifespan of the Earth's climate.

[Image: Global%20Temp%20History1_8.png?itok=y54ZTSWd]

When we look at the temperature data over millions of years, we find that today's temps are near the lowest in our planet's history (we just exited an Ice Age not long ago and climate scientists want us to believe it's too hot)

[Image: ClimateFraud1_0.png?itok=IyUDCO0H]

When comparing millions of years of carbon data to parallel temperature data, it becomes clear that there is no correlation between carbon levels and global warming.  This graph also proves that carbon and temperature levels can rise and fall independently of human industry and human industry's effects on these patterns is negligible or non-existent.

[Image: 2023-11-26_14-09-58_4.jpg?itok=1YR4dgT7]

There is also no data to prove correlation or causation between carbon emissions and extreme weather patterns.  The entirety of the climate change theory is based on lab models with no corresponding examples in nature.  It is pure hysteria. 

This makes the use of atmospheric manipulation by governments all the more disturbing.  If they truly are trying to "dim the sun" for the sake of preventing global warming, then they are doing so based on a delusion.  There is also the possibility that they know man-made climate change is nonsense and these experiments serve another purpose.  In either case, they should be stopped.  No one voted for politicians to blot out the sun (or to find a way to blot out the sun).  No one gave them permission to pump particulates or chemicals into the sky.  Their actions constitute a radical violation of the public trust.

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: "The Angels Sat on the Rock" Easter Friday April 25, 2025
Posted by: Deus Vult - 04-25-2025, 08:24 PM - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

 "The Angels Sat on the Rock"
Easter Friday April 25, 2025  (AZ)


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  Holy Mass in New Hampshire - May 11, 2025 [May Crowning]
Posted by: Stone - 04-25-2025, 07:02 PM - Forum: May 2025 - No Replies

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Third Sunday after Easter
[May Crowning]

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.catholicconvert.com...7b268becf0]


Date: Sunday, May 11, 2025


Time: Confessions - 10:00 AM
              Holy Mass - 10:30 AM


Location: The Oratory of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary
                      66 Gove's Lane
                      Wentworth, NH 03282


Contact: 315-391-7575                   
                  sorrowfulheartofmaryoratory@gmail.com

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Easter Thursday - "Lord, That I Might Love Truth!" April 24, 2025
Posted by: Deus Vult - 04-25-2025, 03:19 PM - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

Easter Thursday - "Lord, That I Might Love Truth!" 
April 24, 2025  (AZ)

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Easter Wednesday - "Seven Mile Road to Emmaus" April 23, 2025
Posted by: Deus Vult - 04-25-2025, 09:55 AM - Forum: April 2025 - No Replies

Easter Wednesday "Seven Mile Road to Emmaus"
April 23, 2025 (AZ)

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  Let us pray for a good pope, unworthy though we may be...
Posted by: Stone - 04-24-2025, 05:34 AM - Forum: Appeals for Prayer - No Replies

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-8t...a90077fabe]

A Holy Hour for the intention of a truly Catholic outcome of the upcoming Conclave is being organized.

This idea was begun in the UK but the invitation is extended to all, so that the prayers of the faithful may, by covering different hours of the day, offer continual petition to the Blessed Trinity for a truly good pope, who will, among other things, perform Our Lady of Fatima's request for the Consecration of Russia.

The intentions of this Holy Hour would also include prayers for the Restoration of the Church in general and for the Resistance and Fr. Hewko's seminary, in particular, which as we know, are one and the same prayer!

Those wishing to formally participate can email at least a first name and selected hour of the day they wish to offer to: contact@thecatacombs.org

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  Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]
Posted by: Stone - 04-24-2025, 05:05 AM - Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith - Replies (2)

The Liberal Illusion

By

Louis Veuillot (1866)



Translated by
Rt. Rev. Msgr. George Barry O’Toole, Ph. D., S. T. D.
Professor of Philosophy in The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.

With Biographical Foreword by
Rev. Ignatius Kelly, S. T. D., Professor of Romance Languages in De Sales College, Toledo, Ohio


Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, 
thou hast burst my bands, and thou
saidst: I will not serve.
— Jer. 2:20.



BIOGRAPHICAL FOREWORD



A PALADIN, and not a mere fighter,” says Paul Claudel of Louis Veuillot. “He fought, not for the pleasure of fighting, but in defense of a holy cause, that of the Holy City and the Temple of God.”

It is just one hundred years ago, 1838, that Louis Veuillot first dedicated himself to this holy cause. “I was at Rome,” he wrote as an old man recalling that dedication. “At the parting of a road, I met God. He beckoned to me, and as I hesitated to follow, He took me by the hand and I was saved. There was nothing else; no sermons, no miracles, no learned debates. A few recollections of my unlettered father, of my untutored mother, of my brother and little sisters.” This was Louis Veuillot’s conversion, the beginning of his apostolate of the pen which was to merit him the title of “Lay Father of the Church” from Leo XIII; “Model of them who fight for sacred causes” from Pius X; and from Jules Le Maitre the epithet “le grand catholique.”

In the days of the Revolution, the maternal grandmother of Veuillot, Marianne Adam, a hatchet in her hand, had defended the cross of the church of Boynes in old Gatinais. “I do nothing more,” said Veuillot, fifty years later. He was born in this same village of Boynes, October 13, 1813, of poor, uneducated parents. A meager elementary education, little religious training, a schoolmaster who distributed dirty novels to his young charges, nothing of these early years would seem to point towards his apostolate of the future. He had reached the age of thirteen, when Providence intervened. Thirteen years old! Time to earn his bread! But by what work? The ambitious mother wanted him to be a lawyer. From his almost meaningless elementary education, he had two helpful assets, sufficient spelling skill and a better than average script. With these recommendations, and with a word from a family friend, Veuillot was accepted as a clerk in the office of a lawyer of Paris, Fortune Delavigne, brother of the poet Casimir, then at the height of his literary glory.

His first work was simple, the pay only thirty francs a month, but there was opportunity to educate himself by his reading and his human contacts. Later on, in the memoirs of his youth, he gave thanks to Heaven for three blessings of his life: poverty, love of work, and an incapacity for debauch. His free time was devoted to reading and reading was learning; books took the place of sleep and no other pleasure took the place of books. He thought of the priesthood and wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. de Quelin, asking admission to the Petit Seminaire. Perhaps this wasn’t the proper procedure; perhaps the letter never reached its address; at any rate, there was no reply. The Church lost a probable priest, but gained a sure lay apostle.

The year 1831 is a turning point in his life. Eighteen years of age, assistant chief clerk in the same office, one hundred francs a month salary, Veuillot began to write. Some of his efforts appeared in Le Figaro. Casimir Delavigne praised certain of his poetic attempts and he was thus led to decide on a career in journalism. His first work was with an humble-enough paper, but not without circulation, L’Echo de la Seine-Inf erieure. “Without any preparation,” he says, “I became a journalist.” He went on to other papers in the provinces, “feuilles de chou,” as the Parisians call them, at Rouen, at Perigueux; he formed his hand in this provincial journalism, shaped his mind, and fostered his bent for appraising men and their ideas.

His university was the wide school of clash and contact. But, if he was writing “almost before he had begun to study,” as Sainte-Beuve puts it, his study soon caught up with his trade, and at the age of twenty-five Veuillot gave sign of possessing that depth of view and breadth of culture which are almost without exception the fruit of the university mind. Veuillot was the exception and there was not, as too often there is in the university mind, not even the suspicion of the snob in him.

In 1838, the year of his trip to Rome, Veuillot had scarcely anything soundly Christian about him. His conversion was no different than he had described it, but looking back upon it now, after one hundred years, may we not see it as a great divine grace for Catholic France? The apologists of the “eldest daughter of the Church” were choosing to fence with the enemies of the Cross of Christ, whereas the Church needed, as it always does, not a gilt-edge weapon, but a broad-sword. The champions of ecclesiastical France were of the school of “liberal apologists.”

Veuillot returned to France, a soldier, a missionary, a zealot if you will, but of a zeal which resembles that of a Jerome, an Augustine, a Bernard, a Bossuet, a de Maistre. His contemporaries reproached him for his violence, but his reply swept the ground away: “You need make no effort to persuade me that others are more refined than I. I tremble that others do not possess enough of what I have too vigorously ... I am too ignorant not to be violent; but they lack red blood, hate for a society in which they live, a society where velvet and lace cover up its sins and its corruption. They do not know what is happening in the street; they have never set their feet therein; but I come from it, I was born in it, and more than that, I still live in it.” And he added, “We are willing enough to have the blasphemers save their souls, but in the meantime, we don’t intend to have them imperil the souls of others.”

The 16th of June, 1839, Louis Veuillot made his first contribution to the Univers. It was just a short article, “La Chapelle des Oiseaux,” yet it was the beginning of an association which was to continue through forty-five years, to influence thought and action long after his time. On February 2, 1840, he became a regular contributor and, in 1842, Editor- in-Chief. His first editorial declaration is an exposition of his Catholic program: “In the midst of factions of every sort, we belong only to the Church and to our country. With justice towards all, submissive to the laws of the Church, we reserve our homage and our love to an authority of genuine worth, an authority which will issue from the present anarchy and will make evident that it is of God, marching towards the new destinies of France, with Cross in hand.”

He thought of his journalism as a “metier” to be studied, analyzed, appraised. He knew its deficiencies, but he sensed too its genius. “The talent of the journalist,” he wrote, “is arrow-like swiftness and, above all, clarity. He has only a sheet of white paper and an hour to explain the issue, defeat the adversary, state his opinion; if he says a word which doesn’t move straight to the end, if he pens a phrase which his reader does not understand immediately, he doesn’t appreciate his trade. He must hurry; he must be exact; he must be simple. The pen of the journalist has all the privileges of a racy conversation; he must use them. But no ornaments; above all, no striving after eloquence.”

His journalism was also a mission, a vocation. He thought about it as he knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and he determined early that he must place his tasks above parties, above systems. “A party,” he declared, “is a hatred; a system is a barrier; we want nothing to do with either. We are going to take society as the apostles took it. We are neither of Paul, nor of Cephas; we are of Jesus Christ.” The history of his career bears out the fact that this was his invariable program. Journalist, yes! But a crusader, an apostle as well.

His pen flashed out in defense of the freedom of Christian education. “You will permit us to open our schools, or you will open your prisons for us,” he wrote from the cloisters of Solesmes in a vein that transported Montalembert into enthusiasm. In 1844, he rose to a magnificent defense of the Abbe Combalot, condemned to prison for the crime of lese-Universite. And he in turn, for his hardy defense, was thrown behind the locks of the Conciergerie for three months. In 1850, the Social Question was agitating all of France. “Veuillot shed light upon it from on high,” said Mgr. Roess of Strassbourg, not many years ago. Albert de Mun could write of his social philosophy: “All of Catholic social Action is contained in his words of fire.”

But his social Catholicism was more than a doctrine. It was his very life. “To think that men are my brothers!” he used to ponder. There is beautiful Christian counsel in the letter he addressed to his wife, who was just hiring a new servant: “Make it easy for her to obey, in forcing yourself to possess the virtue of command, which is a virtue of justice, of meekness and of patience. . . . And when you find yourself poorly served, try, before you complain, to realize how you yourself serve God. Then surely your reproaches will be milder and will not wound. It would be a grand thing for us, and for all who are in authority over others, if in our relations with our charges, we should simply be good Christians, if we should simply rid ourselves of the sentiment of our own importance, which makes us proud, imperious, bitter and dissatisfied, as soon as people fail to render us what we think they should.” And he himself practiced this virtue, meekness without weakness, patience without weariness. Those who were close to him, who were associated with him, could not but love him. Son, brother, husband, father, friend, his affections were diversified and enduring. There was in him, says Fortunat Strowski, “le fremissement de la tendresse humaine.”

He was the champion in France of the declaration of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. His ardor and enthusiasm brought him into conflict with certain members of the hierarchy. Mgr. Dupanloup denounced him vigorously, but the wound was assuaged by Pius IX in a special audience, when the venerable Pontiff assured him that “le cher Univers” had been splendid in this affair, as in every other.

After the war of 1870, Veuillot resumed his apostolate for Church and country. It was under an un-Christian, an un-French leadership that France was marching, and Veuillot was indignant: “I, a Christian,” he cried out, “a Catholic Christian of France, as old in France as its oaks and venerable as they; I, the son of perspiration moistening vine and grain, son of a race which has never ceased giving to France tillers of the soil, soldiers and priests, asking nothing in return but work, the Eucharist and rest in the shadow of the Cross; ... I am made, unmade, governed, ruled, slashed at by vagabonds of mind and morals, men who are neither Christian nor Catholics, and by that very fact, who are not French and who can have no love of France.” “Happy are the dead,” his pen trembled as he wrote the words in 1872, but his faith and courage did not falter long, and the last years of his life found him still the ardent champion of sacred causes. For nearly half a century, he had been fighting for the holy city and the temple. He was worn out by the unceasing combat; his pen moved slowly and finally not at all. His hand could hold only the rosary which had been his companion of the years, he told its beads constantly until the end, which came quietly, calmly April 7, 1883. “Since then,” said M. Barthou a few years ago, “his reputation has not ceased to grow. Rather, we may say of him with his biographer, Frangois Veuillot: “He continues to radiate,” for Louis Veuillot is a flame of truth and devotion, unquenchable because kindled by the divine spark of faith and love for God and country.

Ignatius Kelly, S. T. D.

De Sales College
Feast of the Nativity
December 25, 1938.

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