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| 12-year-olds to be vaccinated without parental consent in San Francisco |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-06-2021, 06:44 AM - Forum: Against the Children
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12-year-olds to be vaccinated without parental consent in San Francisco
The coronavirus vaccines are not fully approved by the FDA, but merely granted emergency use authorization.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — In a health order released April 28, 2021, the City of San Francisco officially allowed children as young as 12 to take the coronavirus vaccine without parental notification or consent.
The health order was issued even though the vaccines have not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but are merely given an emergency use authorization.
Indeed, the order argues that “In the coming months, not only is it likely that the authorization for such vaccines will be expanded (both in terms of the numbers of vaccines but also in terms of non-emergency approval), but it is also likely that the age range of those who are authorized to receive the vaccine in the United States will be expanded to allow for more minors to receive the vaccine.”
The document urged that “although many people have received the COVID-19 vaccines, it is critical from a public health perspective that as many people as possible, including minors, receive the vaccine.”
The San Francisco Department of Health justified this decision by referring to prior cases that allowed for children to give their own consent: “This ability to consent is similar to the concept used elsewhere in state law that minors 12 years old or older may consent to the diagnosis or treatment of infectious diseases, including specifically COVID-19, without parental consent. Allowing prevention of the disease via vaccination is just as important as allowing a minor to be tested for that disease or to be treated for it.”
LifeSiteNews reached out to Executive Director, Michael Ramey of ParentalRights.org, a non-profit political action group working to pass legislation that protects families, to comment on the issue of consent.
“The U.S. Supreme Court recognized decades ago that most children, even in adolescence, are not yet ready to make the kind of long term, potentially life-altering decisions often involved in their medical care,” he said. “The Court rightly declared that it is the proper role of parents to make those judgments. Yet today, we are seeing a flood of orders like this one that ignore this vital parental role. Claiming to give a child ‘freedom’ to make their own decision, all they really do is rob the child of the protection that fit, loving, older and wiser parents can give them from a wrong decision. Such orders put children’s lives at risk, and should be discarded for the unconstitutional rubbish that they are.”
“It isn’t ‘freedom’ if the only time the law empowers a minor to defy her parents is when she’s making the decision the government wants her to make in the first place,” Ramey continued. “That's not freedom: it’s coercion of a minor who has been stripped of her defenses.”
Children and vaccines
The coronavirus is no grave threat for children and teenagers.
America’s Frontline Doctors issued a white paper indicating that the survival rate of children under 19 years that have contracted the coronavirus is 99.997%. There are known complications with the vaccines, the white paper declares, including the immune enhancement whereby “antiCOVID antibodies, stimulated by a vaccine, amplify the infection rather than prevent its damage.” Other possible side effects, as listed by the FDA, include death, heart attacks, stroke, and blood disorders.
Dr. Paul Alexander, a physician writing for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) explains that there are almost no instances of asymptomatic spread of the virus. Further, he is arguing that children do not need to be vaccinated, and that herd immunity can happen through day-to-day contact in schools. Alexander told Laura Ingraham on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that “[t]he risk to children is so small, there is no reason to put our children in harm’s way at this point. Not with these untested vaccines. This is reckless.”
Alexander said, “Ludvigsson published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine on COVID-19 among children 1 to 16 years of age and their teachers in Sweden. From the nearly 2 million children that were followed in school in Sweden, it was reported that with no mask mandates, there were zero deaths from COVID and a few instances of transmission and minimal hospitalization.”
There is hesitancy to vaccinate children due to “lack of confidence in the vaccine” according to the WHO.
Emergency Use Authorization for vaccines
The FDA has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for three coronavirus vaccines. An EUA can only granted to a medication or vaccine if there are no alternative treatments available, but it doesn’t amount to an actual approval of that medication of vaccine, with proper testing before.
On May 10, 2021, the FDA officially extended the EUA to include children aged 12 to 15 for the Pfizer vaccine. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have still not been given an EUA for adolescents.
The Order, the San Francisco Department of Health claims, is both reasonable and necessary because it is “issued based on evidence of continued community transmission of COVID-19 within the City, throughout the Bay Area, across California, and across the United States; evidence that most COVID-19 infections are caused by people who have no symptoms at all of illness.”
The health risks, the department argues, are serious enough to warrant such an order.
“[T]he age, condition, and health of a significant portion of the population of the City places it at risk for serious health complications, including death, from COVID-19; further evidence that others, including younger and otherwise healthy people, are also at risk for serious outcomes including death; evidence that breakthrough infections can occur in fully vaccinated people; and the reality that SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 diagnoses remain prevalent throughout the world.”
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| Stem Cell Research now allowed on human embryos older than 14 days |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-06-2021, 06:39 AM - Forum: Abortion
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International Society for Stem Cell Research updates rules to allow experimentation on human embryos older than 14 days
Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins slammed the decision as 'abhorrent.'
SKOKIE, Illinois, June 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A group of scientists have called for an end to rules preventing research on unborn babies older than 14 days gestation.
Last month the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) published new guidelines expanding research on living human embryos. British geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge celebrated the recommendations in a May 26 article published in the online Nature magazine. The article is misleadingly entitled, “Stem-cell guidelines: why it was time for an update.”
“The updated guidelines, published this week, are the product of a task force, which I chaired,” Lovell-Badge wrote.
“It comprised 45 international experts, including scientists, clinicians, ethicists, lawyers and policy specialists,” he continued.
“We deliberated over 18 months and more than 100 Zoom calls. We consulted relevant polls and public-engagement projects. The guidelines were then peer reviewed by a similar set of experts.”
Lovell-Bridge said the most “striking” change the Society recommended was “relaxing the ‘14 day rule’, the limit to culturing intact human embryos in the laboratory, which has been written into law by some dozen countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia.”
According to current rules, after two weeks of being experimented on, human embryos must be killed. According to Lovell-Bridge, this is because the “first signs” of their central nervous systems would appear shortly afterwards. He argued, however, that although the limit has previously “served science well,” it prevents “study of a critical period, between 14 and 28 days, when the beginnings of tissues are established.” This is to say, he believes scientists should be allowed to experiment on unborn babies whose brain, heart, and spinal cord have begun to form.
Apparently, scientists can already use stem cells to grow “structures” very much like human embryos, and Lovell-Bridge believes that it would be helpful to compare them to real human embryos to “assess their relevance” and “use them for experiments that would otherwise require embryos.” Here the scientists seem to be arguing that some human embryos should be subject to experimentation so as to spare … other human embryos.
Lovell-Bridge believes that the “14-day rule” helped research that was “essential” for “many assisted-conception techniques” — that is, artificial conception — to flourish despite “strong opposition, notably from religious groups.” And there were “even” some scientists who were “reluctant to discard” this “workable compromise.” But, he says, the rule was composed 40 years ago, when it was impossible to keep an embryo alive for experimentation for more than five days. Times have changed.
Many religions, notably Catholicism, believe that innocent human life is sacred from conception until natural death. All human beings have the right to live and possess an inherent dignity by virtue of their participation in the human family, made in the image and likeness of God.
In Donum Vitae, promulgated in 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith completely vetoed harming living embryos or violating their integrity, saying:
Quote:Medical research must refrain from operations on live embryos, unless there is a moral certainty of not causing harm to the life or integrity of the unborn child and the mother, and on condition that the parents have givers their free and informed consent to the procedure. It follows that all research, even when limited to the simple observation of the embryo, would become illicit were it to involve risk to the embryo’s physical integrity or life by reason of the methods used or the effects induced. As regards experimentation, and presupposing the general distinction between experimentation for purposes which are not directly therapeutic and experimentation which is clearly therapeutic for the subject himself, in the case in point one must also distinguish between experimentation carried out on embryos which are still alive and experimentation carried out on embryos which are dead. If the embryos are living, whether viable or not, they must be respected just like any other human person; experimentation on embryos which is not directly therapeutic is illicit. (29) No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother’s womb.
Early in his article, Lovell-Bridge acknowledged that people find such embryonic exploitation as creating human-animal hybrids “scary and uncomfortable.” He wrote that the International Society for Stem Cell Research has offered a “solution” to opposition to research on older embryos by requiring “review and approval of proposals” to study them.
“Importantly, each proposal should be judged individually, on whether the research is justifiable in terms of the value of the information obtained, whether there are alternative ways to obtain the information and so on. The more embryos that would be used, or the longer they would be kept in culture, the higher the bar,” he wrote.
This is unlikely to placate people who hold the lives of every unborn human sacred, however. The same day Lovell-Bridge's article was published, Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins called the ISCCR recommendations to allow experimentation on older embryos “abhorrent.”
“Just because something can be done isn’t an argument for allowing it to be done,” she added.
“This kind of policy undermines the respect we owe to human beings not yet born and further empowers abortion vendors who profit by degrading preborn life,” Hawkins continued.
“Allowing research on human life opens hideous doors that historically we have fought to close. Congress and those leading our scientific communities should end this type of research before it begins.”
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| June 6th - St. Norbert |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-06-2021, 06:15 AM - Forum: June
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June 6 – St Norbert, Bishop and Confessor
![[Image: St_-Norbert-with-altar-boys.jpg?resize=642%2C1024&ssl=1]](https://i1.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/St_-Norbert-with-altar-boys.jpg?resize=642%2C1024&ssl=1)
The helpful influence of the Holy Ghost is more and more multiplied along the Church’s path. It seems as though he would show us today how the divine power of his action is not crippled by the lapse of years: for here we have, twelve centuries after his first coming among us, miracles of grace and conversion quite as brilliant as those that marked his glorious descent upon earth.
Norbert, in whose veins flowed the best blood of emperors and kings, was from the very breast of his mother, Hedwige, supernaturally invited to a nobility loftier still: yet did he devote, to the unreserved enjoyment of pleasure, three and thirty years of a life that was to number but fifty in all. The Holy Ghost at length hastened to the conquest. There bursts a sudden storm, a thunderbolt falls right in front of the prodigal, throwing him to the ground and making a frightful chasm between him and point whither, a moment ago, he was hastening in pursuit of new vanities that needs must fail, as all others had done, to fill the hopeless void in his heart. Then, in the very depths of his soul resounds a voice such as Saul once heard on his way to Damascus: “Norbert, whither goest thou?” Like another Paul he replies: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” He is answered: “Depart from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it.” Twenty years later—and Norbert is in heaven, seated amidst pontiffs, upon a glorious throne, and all radiant with that special brilliancy that distinguishes the Founders of the great Religious Orders when they have reached the eternal Home.
Deep are the traces left by him on earth, of his few years of penitential life. Germany and France receive his preaching; Antwerp is delivered from a shameful heresy; Magdeburg is rescued by this her Archbishop, from the irregularities that were sullying the House of God: such are his works; and though these alone would have sufficed to a long life of holiness, yet they are not the only titles, nor the most brilliant which Norbert has to the Church’s gratitude. Before being called, against his will, to the honors of the episcopate, this once gay courtier, made choice of an uninhabitable solitude amidst the forests of the diocese of Laon, wherein to devote himself to prayer and to the maceration of his flesh. The renown of this holy penitent gained rapidly, and Prémontré soon beheld her swampy marshes invaded by a vast multitude, formed of the fairest names of picked nobility, pressing thither to learn the science of salvation, from the lips of the saintly anchorite. There too did Our Lady show to him, in vision, the white habit wherewith his disciples were to be clothed; and Saint Augustine, in like manner, delivered to him his own Rule. Thus was founded the most illustrious branch of the Order of Canons Regular. They add to the obligation of solemnizing the Divine Office, the austerities of an uninterrupted penance; and devote themselves, moreover, to the service of souls, by preaching and the administration of parishes.
In the foregoing century, the episcopacy and papacy had been raised by the monks, from out the reach of feudal servitude; and Norbert was now raised up to give the needed completion to their work. Although, on principle, the monastic life excludes no sort of labor useful to the Church, the monks could not (numerous they might be) quit their cloisters in order to undertake charge of souls. Yet great were the wants of the lambs of the flock at that time, for many unworthy pastors of secondary order, slaves to simony and immorality, still continued to lead astray the simple laity. The religious life was alone capable of raising the priesthood from such degradation, whether on the pinnacles of the hierarchy or amongst the lowest degrees of sacred Orders. Norbert was the man chosen by God to effect, in part at least, this immense work: and the importance of his mission explains the sublime prodigality wherewith the Holy Ghost multiplied vocations to his standard. The number and rapidity of foundations permitted succor to be promptly and everywhere afforded. Even into the far East did the light of Prémontré reach, almost at its first dawn. In the eighteenth century, notwithstanding the devastations of the Turks and the ravages of the pretended Reform, the Order, divided into twenty-eight provinces, still contained, in nearly each one of its houses, as many as from fifty to one hundred and twenty Canons; and the parishes that continued under their care might be counted by thousands.Nuns, whose holy life and prayers are the ornament and aid of the Church militant, occupied from the very beginning the place deservedly their due in this numerous family. In the time of the founder, or soon after his death, there were more than a thousand of them, at Prémontré alone. Such an incredible sum gives us an idea of the prodigious propagation of the Order from its very origin. Norbert moreover extended his charity to persons who, like Thibault Count of Champagne, would gladly have followed him into the desert, but who were retained by God’s will in the world; he thus made a prelude to those pious associations, which we shall see Saint Francis and Saint Dominic organizing, in the thirteenth century under the name of “Third Orders.”
The Liturgy thus condenses the life of this great servant of God:
Quote:Norbert, born of parents of the highest rank, thoroughly educated in his youth, in worldly knowledge, and then a member of the imperial court, turned his back upon the glory of the world, and chose rather to enlist himself as a soldier of the Church. Being ordained priest, he laid aside all soft and showy raiment, clad himself in a coat of skins, and made the preaching of the word of God the one object of his life. Having renounced the ecclesiastical revenues which he possessed and which were very considerable, he distributed likewise his patrimony among the poor. He ate only once a day and that in the evening, and then his meal was of Lenten fare. His life was of singular austerity, and he was used even in the depth of winter, to go out with bare feet and ragged garments. Hence came that mighty power of his words and deeds, whereby he was enabled to turn countless heretics to the faith, sinners to repentance, and enemies to peace and concord.
Being at Laon, the bishop besought him not to leave his diocese, and he therefore made choice of a wilderness, at a place called Prémontré, whither he withdrew himself with thirteen disciples, and thus he founded the Order of Premonstratensians, whereof he received the Rule in a holy vision, from Saint Augustine. When, however, the fame of his holy life became every day more and more noised abroad, and great numbers sought to become his disciples, and the Order had been approved by Honorius II and other Popes, many more monasteries were built by him, and the Institute wonderfully extended.
Being called to Antwerp, he there gave the deathblow to the shameful heresy of Tanchelin. He was remarkable for the spirit of prophecy and for the gift of miracles. He was created (albeit against his will) archbishop of Magdeburg, and as such, was a strong upholder of the discipline of the Church, especially as regards celibacy. At a council held at Rheims, he was a great help to Innocent II, and went with other bishops to Rome, where he repressed the schism of Peter de Leon. At last, this man of God full of good works and of the Holy Ghost, fell asleep in the Lord, at Magdeburg, in the year of Salvation eleven hundred and thirty-four, on the sixth day of June.
Thou didst indeed know how to redeem the time, as was fitting in those evil days, wherein thou thyself, O Norbert, led away by the example of the senseless crowd, hadst for so long frustrated the designs of God’s love. Those years, at first refused by thee to the true Master of the world, thou didst at length return unto Him, multiplied a hundredfold, through those countless sons and daughters thou didst train up in sanctity. Even thy personal works, in but twenty years’ space, filled the whole earth. Schism crushed; heresy confounded to the glory of the Most Holy Sacrament which it had already dared to attack; the rights of the Church, intrepidly defended against worldly princes and unjust retentions; the priesthood restored to its primitive purity; the Christian life strengthened on its true basis, namely prayer and penance; such and so many victories achieved in so few years, are due to the generosity which prevented thee from looking back for one moment from the day wherein the Holy Ghost touched thy heart. Do thou make all understand that it is never too late to begin to serve God. Were it even, as in thy case, the evening-fall of life, what yet remains of time would quite suffice to make us saints, if we would but generously give that little, fully to Heaven.
Faith and Patience were thy cherished virtues; make them flourish once more, in this sad world of ours, which vaunts itself on doubting of everything, and with gibe and jeer hurries onward to the abyss of hell. Forget not, dear Apostle, now that thou art in heaven, the countries thou didst formerly evangelize: we implore this of thee, despite their forgetfulness, despite their criminal return to the deceits of the devil.
Holy Pontiff, Magdeburg has lost her ancient faith, and therewith, the precious relics of thy body, which she no longer deserved to possess: Prague is now the favored spot of thy repose. But while blessing this hospitable city, pray still for the ungrateful one that has cast aside her double treasure. O thou Founder of Prémontré, smile once more on France, who derives from thee one of her fairest glories. Obtain of God that for the salvation of these calamitous times, thine Order may recover something of its former splendor. Bless, few as they are, those sons and daughters of thine who, despite the ridiculous hostility of the powers that be, seek to shed once more their beneficent influence on France. May our own England benefit also of their return to her midst, and may their fruits be multiplied in every direction. Maintain thine own spirit among them; may they find in interior peace, the secret of triumph over Satan and his crew; may the full magnificence of the divine worship solemnly carried out, be ever unto their souls, as the dearly loved mount, whence Moses like, they may declare the Will of the Lord, unto the new Israel, the Christian people.
![[Image: Leon_Leal_Triumph_Norbert.jpg?resize=723%2C1024&ssl=1]](https://i0.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Leon_Leal_Triumph_Norbert.jpg?resize=723%2C1024&ssl=1) |
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| Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-06-2021, 05:53 AM - Forum: Pentecost
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INSTRUCTION ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
From Fr. Leonard Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year 36th edition, 1880
INTROIT. The Lord became my protector, and He brought me forth into a large place: He saved me, because he was well pleased with me. (Ps. xvii.) I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength: the Lord is my firmament, and my refuge, and my deliverer. Glory, &c.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. Make us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name; for Thou never failest to help and govern those whom Thou dost establish in Thy steadfast love. Thro'.
EPISTLE. (i John iii. 13 — 18.) Dearly beloved, Wonder not if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not, abideth in death; whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in himself. In this we have known the charity of God, because he hath laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shut up his bowels from him, how doth the charity of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
EXPLANATION. People who are really pious, have always something to suffer from the wicked world, as Jesus foretold, but they do not cease to love their persecutors as their best friends, and are ready, if necessary, to give their life for their enemies, as Christ did. Thus should all Christians act; for the love of our neighbor and even of our enemies is a universal command, a law that binds all; it is the life of the soul. Hatred deprives the soul of this life and makes man a murderer, because hatred is the beginning of murder, and often ends in homicide. By love we know the true Christians. (John. xiii. 35.) St. John even considers love the certain sign of being chosen for eternal life, when he says: We know, we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. Alas! how few will be chosen from among the Christians of to-day, because there is so little love among them! Empty compliments, assurances of friendship, &c. love appears only in words, only on the tongue, and such idle, ephemeral, worthless love is found everywhere in this world; but that which is love in truth and reality, which shows charity to the suffering, how rare it is! and yet only to this love is promised eternal life, because it alone rests on the love of God.
GOSPEL. (Luke . 16 — 24.) At that time, Jesus spoke to the Pharisees this parable: A certain man made a great supper, and invited many. And he sent his servant, at the hour of supper, to say to them that were invited, that they should come, for now all things are ready. And they began all at once to make excuse. The first said to him: I have bought a farm, and I must needs go out, and see it; I pray thee hold me excused. And another said: I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to try them; I pray thee hold me excused. And another said: I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant returning, told these things to his lord. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant: Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the feeble, and the blind, and the lame. And the servant said: Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. But I say unto you, that none of these men that were invited shall taste of my supper.
✠ ✠ ✠
What is to be understood by this great supper?
The Church of Christ on earth, in which His doctrine and His most precious Flesh and Blood are given as food to those who belong to her; also the Church triumphant in heaven, in which God Himself, in the beatific vision, is the nourishment. This supper is called great, because God Himself has founded the Church ; because the Church embraces heaven and earth, hence many belong and will belong to her; and because having ended the contest on earth, she will last forever in heaven. There the saints of God will enjoy the Highest Good for all eternity, and will have nothing to wish for, since all their desires will there be realized. O, what happiness it is that we are invited to His supper, and as guests are nourished by the teachings of Christ, and by His most sacred Flesh and Blood.
Who is it that prepares the supper?
It is Christ, the God-Man; who for our benefit has not only instituted His Church to which He has entrusted His doctrine and the Sacrament of His Flesh and Blood, but has gained eternal salvation for us by His passion and death, and who has invited us first by the prophets, who foretold Him and His divine kingdom, and afterwards by His apostles, and their successors to His great supper.
Who are they who excuse themselves?
They are principally the Jews who bound by pride and avarice to earthly possessions, and blinded by the pleasures of the world, did not recognize Jesus, and remained outside of His church. By him who said he had bought a farm are understood those who by constant anxieties about the possession of earthly goods, and the riches of this world, become indifferent to eternal salvation. By him who had bought five yoke of oxen, is to be understood that sort of busy men, who are so burdened with worldly affairs that they find no time to work for heaven, for they even appropriate Sundays and festivals to their worldly affairs. By him who had taken a wife, and could not come, are represented the carnal, impure men who have rendered themselves by their lusts incapable of spiritual and heavenly joys. Since these different classes of people do not wish to have part in the heavenly banquet, God has excluded them and called others.
Who are meant by the poor, the feeble, the blind, and the lame?
The humble and submissive Jews, the publicans, also the Samaritans and the Gentiles, who did not reject Jesus
and His doctrine as did the proud, high-minded, carnal Scribes and Pharisees to whom Jesus spoke this parable. The former faithfully received Him, entered His Church, and became participators in eternal happiness. This is daily repeated, because God excludes from the kingdom of heaven those proud, avaricious, and carnal Christians who are ever invited by His servants, the priests, to the enjoyment of holy Communion, but who reject the invitation. On the contrary God welcomes the poor, despised people, the penitent sinners, by separating them from the love of the world by the inspiration of His grace, and by the adversities which He sends them measure, He forces them take part. Thus, in in the spiritual joys of a sincerely pious life in His Church on earth, and in the heavenly bliss of His Church in heaven.
SUPPLICATION. I thank Thee, O most merciful Jesus that Thou hast called me into Thy Church, permitting me so often to share in the banquet of Thy love, and that by Thy sufferings and death Thou hast obtained the joys of heaven for me. Urge me as seems pleasing to Thee, compel me by temporal trials that by the use of these graces I may obtain the place which Thou hast prepared for me in heaven.
MORAL LESSONS CONCERNING THE VICE OF IMPURITY
I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. (Luke xiv.- 29.)
FROM this foolish excuse it would seem as if married life were an obstacle to arriving at the heavenly banquet, whereas lawful, chaste, Christian marriage is, on the contrary, a means of eternal salvation for those to whom the gift of continency is not given. The excuse of this married man was not grounded on his station in life, but on his inordinate inclination for carnal pleasures which render the one who gives way to it, unfit for spiritual or heavenly things, for the sensual man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God. (i Cor. ii. 14.)
Unfortunate indeed are they who suffer themselves to be carried away by their sensual lusts, who give away the priceless jewel of chastity and purity of heart which makes man equal to the angels, (Matt. xxii. 30.) who for a momentary enjoyment of sinful pleasure lose that white and precious garment in which chaste souls will shine for ever in heaven before the face of God! What benefit does the impure man derive from the gratification of vile lust? He gains the anger and contempt of God; intolerable disgust when the sin is consummated; the torment of a remorseful conscience, and unless he repent, the eternal torments of hell, for the apostle says: Do not err: neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate shall possess the kingdom of God. (i Cor. vi. 9, 10.)
It is seen from the examples of the Old Law, how much God hates and abominates the sins of impurity. Why did God regret having created man? (Gen. vi. 6.) Why did He destroy all except a very few, by a universal deluge? (Gen. vi. 17.) Why did He lay the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha in ashes by pouring upon them fire and brimstone? (Gen. xix.) Why did He punish the two brothers Her and Onan, by a sudden death? (Gen. xxxviii. 7. 10.) Why did He permit the whole tribe of Benjamin to be extirpated? (Judges xx.) Because of their detestable sins of impurity.
And is not this vice an object of the just wrath of God? By these sins an impure man disgraces his body which should be a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Ghost; he disgraces his soul the image of God, purified and purchased by the precious blood of Christ, and lowers himself beneath the animal, which, void of intellect, follows its instinct; he weakens the power of his body and soul, and ruins his health; he loses the respectof the good, scandalizes his fellowmen, voluntarily separates himself from the communion of saints, deprives himself of the sanctifying grace of God and participation in the merits of Jesus and His saints, and, if he continues like an animal to wallow in this vice, he finally falls into such blindness and hard-heartedness that eternal truths, death, judgment, hell, and eternity no longer make any impression upon him; the most abominable crimes of impurity he considers as trifles, as human weaknesses, no sin at all. He is therefore but seldom, if ever converted, because the evil habit has become his second nature, which he can no longer overcome without an extraordinary grace from God. This God seldom gives, because the impure man generally despises ordinary means and graces, and therefore despairs and casts himself into the pool of eternal fire, where the worm
dies not, and where with Satan and his angels the impure shall be for ever tormented.
Do not suffer yourself to be deceived, Christian soul, by the words "love and friendship", which is sought to cover this vice and make it appear a weakness clinging to man. This impure love is a fire which has its origin in hell, and there it will eternally torment the bodies in which it has prevailed. That which God so much detests and so severely punishes, certainly cannot be a trifle, a human weakness! Impress deeply on your heart that all impure thoughts desires, and looks, to which you consent, all impure words, songs, exposures, touches, jokes, and such things, are great sins which exclude you from the kingdom of heaven, into which nothing defiled can enter. Remember that he who looks at a woman with a lustful desire, has already, as Christ says, committed adultery in his heart. [Matt. v. 28.) We must, then, carefully guard against "such trifles", as the wicked world calls them, if we do not wish to expose ourselves to the greatest danger of losing our souls. Although it is difficult for an impure person to be converted, yet he should not despair. God does not cast away even the greatest sinner; Jesus forgave the adulteress in the temple, and forgave and received Mary Magdalen. But he who wishes to repent must make use of the proper means to regain the grace of God, and prevent a relapse.
Those who have not defiled themselves by the sin of impurity can make use of the following means:
Quote:1. Constant prayer. Hence the admonition of the wise King; As I knew that I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave it, I went to the Lord and besought him. (Wisd. viii. 21.)
2. Mortification of the flesh by fasting and abstinence. Jesus says these impure spirits can in no other way be cast out but by prayer and fasting. (Matt. xvii. 20.)
3. The frequent meditation on the four last things, and on the bitter sufferings of our Lord; for there is, says St. Augustine, no means more powerful and effective against the heat of lust than reflection on the ignominious death of the Redeemer.
4. The quiet consideration of the temporal and eternal evils which follow from this vice, as already described.
5. The love and veneration of the Blessed Virgin who is the mother of beautiful love, the refuge of all sinners, of whom St. Bernard says: "No one has ever invoked her in his necessity without being heard."
6. The careful mortification of the eyes. The pious Job made a covenant with his eyes, that he would not so much as look upon a virgin. (Job xxxi. 1.)
7. The avoidance of evil occasions, especially intercourse with persons of the other sex. "Remember," says St. Jerome, "that a woman drove out the inhabitants of paradise, and that you are not holier than David, stronger than Samson, wiser than Solomon, who all fell by evil intercourse."
8. The avoidance of idleness: for idleness, says the proverb, is the beginning of all evil.
9. The immediate banishing of all bad thoughts by often pronouncing the names of Jesus and Mary, which, as St. Alphonsus Ligouri says, have the special power of driving away impure thoughts.
10. The frequent use of the holy Sacraments of Penance and of the Altar. This last remedy in particular is a certain cure if we make known to our confessor our weaknesses, and use the remedies he prescribes. The Scripture says that frequent Communion is the seed from which virgins spring, and the table which God has prepared against all temptations that annoy us.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. Inflame, O Lord, our reins and hearts with the fire of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may serve Thee with pure bodies, and please Thee with clean hearts. Amen.
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| Increased cases of cardio problems in adolescents & young adults, but CDC continues to recommend vax |
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Posted by: Juan Diego - 06-05-2021, 09:44 PM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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This is criminal!
This "health advisory" was issued from the CDC May 28 and here it is a week later and only now getting reported.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Health - Link, - as I understand all state health departments are circulating the same info.
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 2021–PAHAN –574–06-01-ADV
Myocarditis and Pericarditis after Receipt of mRNA
COVID-19 Vaccines Among Adolescents and Young
Adults
Summary
Since April 2021, increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported in the United States after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna), particularly in adolescents and young adults. There has not been a similar reporting pattern observed after receipt of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine (Johnson & Johnson).
In most cases, patients who presented for medical care have responded well to medications and rest and had prompt improvement of symptoms. Reported cases have occurred predominantly in male adolescents and young adults 16 years of age and older. Onset was typically within several days after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, and cases have occurred more often after the second dose than the first dose. CDC and its partners are investigating these reports of myocarditis and pericarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.
CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older given the risk of COVID-19 illness and related, possibly severe complications, such as long-term health problems, hospitalization, and even death.
Background
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis is inflammation of the lining outside the heart. In both cases, the body’s immune system is causing inflammation in response to an infection or some other trigger. Symptoms can include chest pain, shortness of breath, or palpitations.
The severity of cases of myocarditis and pericarditis can vary. For the cases reported after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, most who presented to medical care have responded well to medications and rest. -Page 1of 3–Advisory# 574
The Department of Health (DOH) is releasing the following information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about myocarditis and pericarditis that has been reported following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.
Recommendations for Clinicians
•CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older given the greater risk of other serious complications related to COVID-19, such as hospitalization, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), or death.
•Report all cases of myocarditis and pericarditis post COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS.
•Consider myocarditis and pericarditis in adolescents or young adults with acute chest pain, shortness of breath, or palpitations. In this younger population, coronary events are less likely to be a source of these symptoms.
•Ask about prior COVID-19 vaccination if you identify these symptoms, as well as relevant other medical, travel, and social history.
•For initial evaluation, consider an ECG, troponin level, and inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. In the setting of normal ECG, troponin, and inflammatory markers, myocarditis or pericarditis are unlikely.
•For suspected cases, consider consultation with cardiology for assistance with cardiac evaluation and management. Evaluation and management may vary depending on the patient age, clinical presentation, potential causes, or practice preference of the provider.
•For follow-up of patients with myocarditis, consult the recommendations from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.
•It is important to rule out other potential causes of myocarditis and pericarditis. Consider consultation with infectious disease and/or rheumatology to assist in this evaluation. oWhere available, evaluate for potential etiologies of myocarditis and pericarditis, particularly acute COVID-19 infection (e.g., PCR testing), prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (e.g., detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibodies), and other viral etiologies (e.g., enterovirus PCR and comprehensive respiratory viral pathogen testing).
For more information
•NIH materials on myocarditis and pericarditis
•Frequently asked questions about VAERS reporting for COVID-19 vaccinesVAERS –FAQs (hhs.gov)
•How to report toVAERSPlease call DOH at 1-877-PA-HEALTH or your local health department if you have any questions about this condition or if you have any cases you would like to report.
Page 2of 3–Advisory# 574
Categories of Health Alert messages: Health Alert: conveys the highest level of importance; warrants immediate action or attention. Health Advisory: provides important information for a specific incident or situation; may not require immediate action. Health Update: provides updated information regarding an incident or situation; unlikely to require immediate action. This information is current as of June 1, 2021butmay be modified in the future. We will continue to post updated information regarding the most common questions about this subject.
Page 3of 3–Advisory# 574
The advisory to the states came from: CDC link |
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| German Cdl. Marx offers resignation: Church has reached ‘dead end’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-05-2021, 08:22 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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German Cdl. Marx offers resignation: Church has reached ‘dead end’
‘I continue to enjoy being a priest and a bishop of this Church and I will keep committing myself in pastoral matter, wherever you deem it reasonable and useful,’ Marx told the Pope.
![[Image: Cardinal-Marx1000_810_500_75_s_c1.jpg]](https://assets.lifesitenews.com/images/made/images/remote/https_www.lifesitenews.com/images/local/Cardinal-Marx1000_810_500_75_s_c1.jpg)
MUNICH, June 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — In a move that appears to have been totally unexpected, Cardinal Reinhard Marx has revealed that he has tendered his resignation to Pope Francis as Archbishop of Munich and Freising. The German cardinal, who also holds top positions in the Vatican, obtained permission from the Pope to make public the letter of resignation he had sent him on May 21; it was posted on the Archdiocese’s website this Friday morning, together with a statement from Marx, who also answered questions at a press conference in the early afternoon.
The reason Marx gave for his offer to resign, long before the “legal” age of 75 (he is only 67 and has stressed that he is not “tired of office or demotivated”) was the personal responsibility he feels for the failure of people in the Church, but also of the Church itself as an institution, in handling the sex abuse crisis over the last decades.
The Church has reached a “dead end,” the cardinal stated.
Beyond the acceptance of personal accountability — not only does the resignation place the cardinal in a favorable light, it also automatically puts pressure on others to take similar steps — the rationale behind the move is quite clear: It makes out that the Church’s profound state of crisis requires new solutions, including the “Synodal Path” which has been undertaken by the Catholic Church in Germany, opening the way to revolutionary consensus with its most progressive sections.
Indeed, in some ways the resignation appears as a way or even a maneuver to promote Pope Francis’ own project of a “synodal” Church — although the more cynical are saying that Marx wants to step down to preempt problems related to his own management of the sex abuse crisis that are sure to come to the light in the near future. Die Welt called the resignation a “humility maneuver” prompted by the fact that Marx would soon be facing further accusations of mishandling the sex abuse crisis.
Whether this is true or not is not the main issue. The resignation appears to be more of a gesture than anything else, as Reinhard Marx has not voiced any intention whatsoever of backing down from his eminent roles in the Vatican, both as a member of Pope Francis’ “privy council” of cardinal advisers for the reform of the Curia, now known as the C6, and as the president of Francis’ Council for the Economy.
It will now be up to the Pope to accept or refuse his resignation; meanwhile, Cardinal Marx will remain at the head of his archdiocese for business as usual. One senior Vatican source is even of the opinion that Pope Francis wants to call Cardinal Marx to Rome.
What is plain to the eyes is that even in his resignation letter Marx is using language and ideas that are in agreement with Pope Francis’ objectives. From there to wondering whether this is a deeply “political” move is but a step.
In his May 21 letter, whose English translation was made available online together with the original German text, cardinal Marx said the present crisis affecting the Church in Germany and in the whole world “has also been caused by our own failure, our own guilt.” “My impression is that we are at a ‘dead end’ which, and this is my paschal hope, also has the potential of becoming a ‘turning point,’” he added in the opening lines of his letter.
Which clearly puts his initiative in a dynamic setting: the objective is change.
Marx’s decision to offer his resignation was a personal one, he stated in his letter.
Quote: “In essence, it is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades. The investigations and reports of the last ten years have consistently shown that there have been many personal failures and administrative mistakes but also institutional or ‘systemic’ failure. The recent debates have shown that some members of the Church refuse to believe that there is a shared responsibility in this respect and that the Church as an institution is hence also to be blamed for what has happened and therefore disapprove of discussing reforms and renewal in the context of the sexual abuse crisis.”
Marx is on a different path, his letter made clear. He wrote:
Quote:“I firmly have a different opinion. Both aspects have to be considered: mistakes for which you are personally responsible and the institutional failure which requires changes and a reform of the Church. A turning point out of this crisis is, in my opinion, only possible if we take a ‘synodal path,’ a path which actually enables a ‘discernment of spirits’ as you have repeatedly emphasized and reiterated in your letter to the Church in Germany.”
Both expressions: “Synodal Path” and “discernment of spirits” are dear to the Pope and have been used repeatedly to justify developments beyond the traditional doctrine and discipline of the Church. They point to a democratic approach to power and the definition of what is to be believed and to be done, with a possibility of change as a result of the will of the people, both the ordained and the laity. They also point to a subjective understanding of morality, where circumstances trump principles.
In Germany, under Cardinal Marx’s leadership — he was at the head of the country’s bishops’ conference until 2020 — the Synodal Path is open to the progressive German laity and is set to promote all manner of modern reforms, from the place of women in the Church to the revamping of sexual morality, as the German grumbling at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s responsum regarding the impossibility of blessing same-sex unions has shown.
By focusing not on the faults and errors of individual pastors of the Church in the sex abuse crisis, but by taking the responsibility for it as a bishop who represents “the institution of the Church as a whole,” Marx has actually designated the Church as responsible. In his letter to Pope Francis, he wrote:
Quote: “I feel that through remaining silent, neglecting to act and over-focusing on the reputation of the Church I have made myself personally guilty and responsible.”
But the words make clear that in the cardinal’s mind, it is the Church as such that is guilty and responsible.
Quote:“In the aftermath of the MHG survey commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference I stated in the Cathedral of Munich that we have failed. But who is this ‘We’? In fact, I also belong to this circle. And this means I must also draw personal consequences from this. This is becoming increasingly clear to me,” he wrote.
But by the resignation through which he wants to assume responsibility, Marx wants to obtain results. He says it very plainly at the end of his letter:
Quote:“In doing so, I may be able to send a personal signal for a new beginning, for a new awakening of the Church, not only in Germany. I would like to show that not the ministry is in the foreground but the mission of the Gospel.”
Is Marx talking about a great reset of the Church? Where priesthood (“ministry”) is downplayed — as well as the Tradition of the Church — to go back to “the Gospel”?
Interestingly, the new papal Nuncio in Paris, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, had not unsimilar thoughts to offer to the clergy of the diocese of Rennes in Brittany, France, earlier this year. In his January 28 conference, Migliore explained that he wanted to present Pope Francis’ vision for the Church in a secularized world that is experiencing not a “time of change” but a “change of times.”
Quote:“Pope Francis has understood that the Church, similar to the human society inside of which it is placed, has reached a breaking point. Not a break with its biblical foundations, its doctrine and its tradition, but truly a break with its way of incarnating the Word of God, the doctrine and the tradition of the Church. A break in the domain of governance and the relations between the different members of the Church … In our world, the faith shall only be saved if it returns to the power of its original Word: the Word of Jesus Christ and, therefore, the Word transmitted by the four evangelists.”
He also stressed “another focus dear to Pope Francis, synodality,” which he equated with an “outward-going Church” that meets the world in “dialogue” in a “mystique of fraternity” while abandoning “ecclesio-centrism.”
He went on to complain about the excessive focus (in his view) on the Eucharist — “so much so that when the urgency of the pandemic in practice made its public celebration impossible, the whole edifice collapsed and it seemed that nothing was left standing.”
This is a far cry from Bossuet’s definition of the Church: “Jesus Christ spread and communicated.”
“There is a serious risk of regression — after fifty years of conciliar reform — to a conception of the sacrament as a rite that always functions, because it is endowed with a supernatural automatism,” said Migliore. He went on to speak about synodality which calls for going beyond “certain paradigms … such as the concentration of responsibility in the ministry of Pastors.”
This exposé of the Pope’s politics for the Church by one of his senior ambassadors strongly resonates with Marx’s latest move — Marx who is so close to Francis, and whose publication of his private resignation letter was approved, if not willed by the Pope.
In Germany, cardinal Marx’s resignation elicited both praise and dismay from the most progressive faction of the Church. Bishop Georg Bätzing, the current head of the bishops’ conference, expressed “great respect” for the cardinal’s decision, acknowledging his role in showing the way for the “Church in Germany” at the head of that institution. Recalling the sex abuse crisis, Bätzing added:
Quote:Cardinal Marx sees his offer of resignation from office as a personal response to this situation. Irrespective of this, however, the German Bishops’ Conference and the dioceses must continue to fulfill their responsibility to continue on the path of coming to terms with the cases of sexual abuse that they embarked upon in 2010. The Synodal Path was launched to search for systemic answers to the crisis. The fundamental theological discussions that inform the Synodal Path are therefore an essential and important part in this process.
Confirming the importance of Marx’s offer of resignation from the point of view of Church politics, Bätzing’s statement concluded:
Quote:“I can understand Cardinal Marx’s decision. His offer of resignation makes it clear that the Church in Germany must continue the Synodal Path it has embarked upon. Pope Francis himself emphasizes that he wants synodality and the Synodal Path as a discernment for the whole Church.”
The president of the progressive Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK, one of the official interlocutors of the Synodal Path), Thomas Sternberg, said he was “deeply shocked” by Marx’s offer to step down. “There goes the wrong one,” he told the Rheinische Post. “What Marx achieved in ecumenism, in the Synodal Path, and also in dealing with abuse, was very important.”
Sternberg added that Marx intended to spend part of his private fortune to fund the “Spes and Salus” Foundation created by the cardinal of Munich and Freising to help those affected by sexual abuse: the €500,000 gift (more than $600,000) was announced last December.
Others, such as the German child protection expert from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome,” the Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, said the offer of resignation was an “extremely important sign that deserves great respect.” The word “respect” frequently appears in the reactions of German leaders, while Maria Flachsbarth, president of the Catholic German Women’s Association, added her thanks for Marx’s “clear words for the renewal of the Church and for the continuation of the Synodal Path.”
Marx himself wrote:
Quote:An American journalist asked me during a conversation about the sexual abuse crisis in the Church and the events of the year 2010: „Eminence, did this change your faith?“ And I replied: „Yes, it did!“ Afterwards it became clearer to me what I had said. The crisis not only concerns a required improvement of the administration — although it does concern it — but it is even more about the question of a renewed form of the Church and a new way to live and proclaim faith today.
Finally, in his letter to Pope Francis, Cardinal Marx said:Quote: “I continue to enjoy being a priest and a bishop of this Church and I will keep committing myself in pastoral matter, wherever you deem it reasonable and useful. In the next years of my service, I would like to increasingly dedicate myself to pastoral care and support an ecclesiastical renewal of the Church which you also call for incessantly.”
[Emphasis mine.]
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| SiSiNoNo (2002): What Should We Make of Assisi 1986? |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-05-2021, 07:36 AM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
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SiSiNoNo [emphasis mine]- February 2002 No. 45
WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE OF ASSISI 1986?
Archbishop Lefebvre's Letter to Eight Cardinals About Assisi 1986
Quote:Your Eminence,
Confronted with events taking place in the Church that have John Paul II as their author and faced with those he intends carrying out at Taizé and Assisi in October, I cannot refrain from addressing you and begging you in the name of numerous priests and faithful to save the honor of the Church never before humiliated to such an extent in the course of her history.
The speeches and actions of John Paul II in Togo, Morocco, and the Indies cause a righteous indignation to rise up in our heart. What do the Saints, the holy men and women of the Old and New Testaments make of this? What would the Holy Inquisition do if it were still in existence?
He who now sits upon the Throne of Peter mocks publicly the first article of the Creed and the first Commandment of the Decalogue.
The scandal given to Catholic souls cannot be measured. The Church is shaken to its very foundations. If faith in the Church, the only ark of salvation, disappears, then the Church herself disappears.
Is John Paul II to continue ruining the Church, in particular at Assisi, with the planned procession of religions in the streets of the town of St. Francis and the sharing out of religions in the chapels of the basilica with a view to practicing their worship in favor of peace as conceived by the United Nations?
It is what Cardinal Etchegaray, in charge of this abominable congress, has announced.
Is it conceivable that no authoritative voice has been raised in the Church to condemn these public sins? Where are the Machabees?
Eminence, for the honor of the one true God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, make a public protest, come to the help of the still faithful bishops, priests and Catholics.
Eminence, if I took the step of contacting you it is because I do not doubt your sentiments in this matter.
I am also addressing this appeal to those Cardinals named below so that eventually you may be able to work together.
May the Holy Ghost come to your aid, and please accept, Eminence, my devoted and fraternal greetings in Christ and Mary.
Archbishop Lefebvre, Emeritus Bishop-Archbishop of Tulle
Econe, August 27, 1986
It is a truism that men come to accept anything if they see it often enough; hence it is good to recall the theological criteria by which to judge this kind of undertaking. The review SISINONO published an excellent study in 1986 which is reprinted here because of its timeliness.
What Should We Make of Assisi?
It has been said, with undoubtedly unintended exactness, that the "prayer meeting" at Assisi is a "personal initiative" of Pope John Paul II. In so far as it is only a "personal" initiative, it does not engage his mandate as "pastor and teacher of all Christians" (Vatican I). By conforming itself to the political theme set by the United Nations, which proclaimed the year 1986 an "international year of peace," neither does it concern doctrine.
At Assisi, next October 27, not only will the Catholics gather at Assisi, but also "the representatives of the world's other religions" will join them in an assembly for peace.[1] Those whom Pope John Paul II has called "the representatives of the other religions" the Church has always more appropriately called infidels. "Broadly speaking, infidels are those who do not possess the true faith; in the strict sense infidels are the unbaptized. They are divided into monotheists (Jews and Moslems), polytheists (Hindus, Buddhists, etc.), and atheists."[2]
What Pope John Paul II has called the "other" religions, the Church has more properly called the false religions. A false religion is any non-Christian religion "in so far as it is not the religion that God revealed and wants to see practiced. Moreover, every non-Catholic Christian sect is false in so far as it neither accepts nor faithfully practices the entire content of Revelation."[3]
This having been said, in light of the Catholic Faith, the prayer meeting of religions at Assisi can be considered tantamount to:
1) an insult to God;
2) a denial of the universal necessity of Redemption;
3) a lack of justice and charity towards the infidels;
4) a danger and a scandal to Catholics; and
5) a betrayal of the Church's and Peter's mission.
I) An Insult to God
All prayer, including petition, is an act of worship.[4] As such, it must be addressed to Whom it is due, and in the right way. To whom it is due: The one true God, Creator and Lord of all men, the one to whom the Lord Jesus Christ has brought them back (I Jn. 5:20) by confirming the first commandment of the Law. "I am the Lord thy God ...Thou shalt not have strange gods before me ....Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them..." (Ex. 20:2-5).[5] In the right way: Thus, it must be prayer that corresponds to the fullness of Revelation without admixture of error: "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" Jn. 4:23).
Prayer which is addressed to false gods or inspired by religious opinions differing in whole or in part from divine Revelation, is not an act of worship, but of superstition. It does not honor God; it offends Him. At least, objectively, it is a sin against the first commandment.[6] To whom are the persons to gather at Assisi going to pray, and in what way? Invited in their capacity as "representatives of the other religions," "everyone will pray in his own way and customary style." This was explained by Cardinal Willebrands, President of the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions.[7] This was confirmed last June 27 by Cardinal Etchegaray at a press conference published by Documentation Catholique of September 7-21, 1986, under the rubric "Acts of the Holy See": "It involves respecting each one's prayer, and allowing everyone to express himself in the fullness of his faith, of his belief."
On October 27 at Assisi, superstition will be widely practiced in its most serious forms, from the "false worship" of Jews who, during the era of grace, pretend to honor God by denying His Christ,[8] to the idolatry of Hindus and Buddhists who offer a cult to creatures instead of to God.[9]
The Catholic hierarchy's apparent approbation of this is especially insulting to God, for it supposes and allows it to be supposed that He looks with equal complacency upon acts of true worship and acts of superstition, upon manifestations of faith and manifestations of incredulity, upon the true religion and upon the false religions; in short, upon truth and upon error.
2) Denial of the Universal Necessity of Redemption
There is but one Mediator between God and men: the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and true man (I Tim. 2:5). By nature, men are "children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3); by Him, they have been reconciled with the Father (Col. 1:20), and it is only by faith in Him that they can have the boldness to approach God with entire confidence (Eph. 3:12). To Him was given all power in heaven and on earth (Mt. 28:18), and at His name every knee must bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Phil. 2:10,11).
No one goes to the Father save by Him (Jn. 14:6), and there is no other name under heaven given to man by which he must be saved (Acts 4:12). He is the Light that enlightens every man who comes into the world (Jn.1:9), and whoever does not follow Him wanders in darkness (Jn. 8:12). Who is not with Him is against Him (Mt. 13:30), and who does not honor Him also dishonors His Father who sent Him (as the Jews do) (Jn. 5:23). To Him has the Father given the judgment of men, but he who refuses belief has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the Only Son of God (Jn. 3:18), nor in the Father who sent Him (Jn. 17:3). He is, moreover, the Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6),[11] for divisions, conflicts, and wars are the bitter fruit of sin from which man cannot free himself by his own virtue, but only in virtue of the Redeemer's blood.
What place will the Lord Jesus Christ have at Assisi in the prayer of the "representatives of the other religions"? None, for to them He remains either unknown, or a stumbling block, or a sign of contradiction. The invitation that was addressed to them to pray for peace in the world supposes, and inevitably allows it to be supposed, that there are people - the Christians - who must approach God by the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ and in His name, and others - the rest of the human race - who can approach God directly and in their own name, without regard to the Mediator; that there are some men who must bend the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ, and some who are exempt; some men who must seek peace in the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, and others who can obtain peace outside His reign and even in opposing it.
This is the idea that comes from the declarations of the two cardinals quoted above: "While for us Christians Christ is our peace, for all believers peace is a gift of God" [12]; "for Christians, prayer goes through Christ."[13]
The "prayer meeting" of Assisi, then, is the public negation of the universal necessity of Redemption.
3) A Lack of Justice and Charity Towards the Infidels
"Jesus Christ is not optional," said Cardinal Pie. There are not some men who are justified by faith in Him, and others who are justified without regard to Him: Every man is either saved by Christ or is lost without Him. Nor are there any purely natural ends for which a man can opt instead of his unique supernatural end. If, gone astray in sin, he finds himself out of Christ, the unique Way (Jn. 4:6) by which to attain the end for which he was created, all that is left him is everlasting ruin.
Real faith, and not mere "good faith," is the subjective condition for salvation for everyone, even for the pagans. Since it is a necessity of means, "if it is lacking (even involuntarily) it is absolutely impossible to effect eternal salvation."[14] Voluntary infidelity, St. Thomas explains, is a fault and involuntary infidelity is a punishment. In fact, the infidels who are not lost because of the sin of incredulity, that is, by the sin of not having believed in Christ about whom they never knew anything, are lost by their other sins, the remission of which cannot be given to anyone without the true faith."[15]
Nothing, then, is more important for man than to accept the Redeemer and union with the Mediator: it is a matter of eternal death or life. This is what the infidels have a right to hear announced by the Catholic Church, in conformity to the divine command.[16] And this is what the Catholic Church has always announced to the infidels by praying, not with them, but for them.
What will happen at Assisi? They certainly won't pray for the infidels, thus presuming implicitly and publicly that they no longer need the true faith. Instead of that, they will pray in union with them, or rather, according to the rabbinical subtlety of Radio Vatican, they will pray near them, presuming thus implicitly and publicly that prayer dictated by error is received by God as much as prayer made "in spirit and in truth." "It involves respecting each one's prayer," Cardinal Etchegaray explained in his brief declaration. That means that the infidels who will gather at Assisi, who, let us be clear, are not "savages brought up in the forest" who have "never known anything about the faith," as the theologians hypothesize when discussing the problem of the salvation of infidels,[17] will be "respectfully" left "in the darkness and in the shadow of death" (Lk. 1:79).
Authorized to pray in their distinctive costumes as "representatives of the other religions" and in conformity with their erroneous religious beliefs, they are even encouraged to persevere in sins, at least material, against the faith: infidelity, heresy, etc… Invited to pray for peace in the world, defined as a "fundamental" and "supreme" good,[18] they are turned away from the eternal goods towards a temporal good, towards a secondary natural end, as if they didn't need to procure their supernatural last end, which really is fundamental and supreme: "Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Mt. 6:33). For all these reasons, the "prayer meeting" of Assisi is, at least viewed from the outside, a lack of justice and charity towards the infidels.
4) A Danger and a Scandal to Catholics
True faith is indispensable for salvation. Catholics are thus obliged to avoid every proximate danger to their faith. Among the exterior dangers is contact with infidels when it is not the result of genuine necessity. This contact is illicit in virtue of divine and natural law even without considering ecclesiastical law, and even in the case where ecclesiastical law does not prohibit it, for example in social relations: Haereticum hominem devita (Avoid the heretic) (Tit. 3:10).
Moreover, out of maternal concern, the Church has always forbidden not only what might be a danger to the faith but also an occasion of scandal.[19] As for the false religions, the Church has always refused them the right to public worship. She has tolerated it when it was necessary, but tolerance always means "in relation to an evil to be allowed for a proportionate reason."[20] In any case, she has always avoided and forbidden any apparent approval of non-Catholic rites.
What is going to happen at Assisi? Catholics and infidels "will gather to pray" (even though it will not be "to pray together"...). That simply means that they will pray together at Assisi, first simultaneously in their own residences, and then, by turns when united at the closing ceremony before the basilica of St. Francis. And this is not being done in order to protect the faith of Catholics or to at least avoid scandalizing them. Rather, it is to allow all to pray "according to their own manner and style," and to "respect each one's prayer" and to "allow everyone to express himself in the fullness of his faith, of his belief."[21] All this constitutes at least an exterior approbation of: 1) false religions, to which the Church as always denied any right; 2) religious subjectivism, which she has always condemned under the names of indifferentism or latitudinarianism, and which "seeks to justify itself under the pretended claims of liberty, failing to recognize the rights of objective truth which are made manifest either by the lights of reason or by Revelation.[22]
Religious indifferentism, which is "one of the most deleterious heresies" and which "places all religions on an equal footing," inevitably leads one to consider the truth of religious belief as merely a matter of utility for a well-regulated life .... "One ends by considering religion as an entirely individual thing which can be adapted to the dispositions of each one, letting everyone form his own personal religion, and by concluding that all the religions are good even though they contradict each other."[23] But with this point of view we are outside the Catholic act of faith, and have reached something ...like an act of incredulity towards divine Revelation.
Revelation is a reality, a fact, a truth accredited by God by sure signs, because error in this domain would have had disastrous consequences for men.[24] But in the presence of an undeniable fact or of an evident truth, one cannot be tolerant to the point of approving the attitude of those who consider them to be non-existent or false. That would suppose that we do not really believe or are not fully convinced of the truth of our position, or that we are (or deem ourselves to be) dealing with a matter that is absolutely banal or indifferent, or that we would consider truth and error to be purely relative positions.[25]
And since the "prayer meeting" is characterized by all of that, it is an occasion of scandal for Catholics and of grave danger to their faith. Because of ecumenism, they find themselves united to the infidels, but in their "common ruin."[26]
5) Betrayal of the Mission Confided to Peter and to the Church
The Church's mission is to announce to all nations that
1) there is one true God, who revealed Himself for the benefit of all men in our Lord Jesus Christ;
2) that there is only one true religion, the only one by which God wishes to be honored, because He is Truth, and everything in the false religions which goes against the truth is repugnant to Him: doctrinal errors, immoral laws, unseemly rites;
3) that there is only one Mediator between God and men, by whom men can hope to be saved, because all are sinners and remain in their sin if they are deprived of the Blood of Christ;
4) that there is one true Church, the perpetual guardian of this Blood, and that "it is necessary to believe that no one can be saved outside the apostolic Roman Church, which is the unique ark of salvation, and those who do not enter it will perish in the deluge[27]; moreover, among their moral dispositions must be the desire, explicit or implicit, to fully accomplish the will of God, if their ignorance is truly invincible.[28]
The Church's proper mission is to announce all this: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Mt. 28:19-20). "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mk. 16:16).
So that the Church could accomplish with assurance this mission throughout the centuries, our Lord Jesus Christ conferred on St. Peter and his successors the mission of visibly representing Him (Mt. 16, 17-19; Jn. 21:15-17)
The Vicar of Jesus Christ is not charged with establishing a new doctrine with the help of new revelations, nor of creating a new order of things, nor of instituting new sacraments: such is not his function. He represents Jesus Christ at the head of His Church, whose constitution has been finalized. This essential constitution, that is to say, the creation of the Church, was Jesus Christ's proper task which He, Himself, had to conclude, and of which He said to the Father: "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (Jn. 17:4). Nothing more needs to be added; it only remains to maintain this creation, to assure the Church's work and preside over the functioning of its organs. Two things are necessary for this: govern it, and perpetuate the teaching of the truth. Vatican Council I reduced to these two points the supreme function of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Peter represents Jesus Christ under these two aspects.[29]
There is no power in the Church like Peter's, but it is power as vicar, and as such, is no wise absolute, but limited by the divine right of Him whom he represents. "The Lord confided to Peter, not Peter's sheep, but His own in order to pasture them, not in his own interest, but God's."[30] It is not within Peter's power, therefore, to promote initiatives in disaccord with the mission of the Church and of the Roman Pontiff, as clearly is the "prayer meeting" of Assisi. The Vicar of Him who said: "Begone, Satan, for it is written, ‘The Lord thy God thou shalt adore, and him only shalt thou serve’" (Mt. 4:10; Deut. 6:13), cannot invite "the representatives" of the false religions to pray to their false gods in places consecrated to the faith in the true God. The Successor of him who obtained the primacy by his act of faith when he said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt. 16:16; cf. Jn. 6:69-70), cannot authorize anyone to treat Jesus Christ as irrelevant. The Successor of him who received the commission to confirm his brethren in the faith (Lk. 22:32), has no right to be a stumbling block for their faith.Ω
1. Cf. L'Osservatore Romano, Jan. 26-27, 1986.
2. Roberti-Palazzini, Dizionario di teologia morale, p.813.
3. Ibid.
4. Summa Theologica, II-II, Q.83.
5. . Mt. 4:3-10; Jn. 17:3; Tim. 2:.5. See also on this topic Pietro Cardinal Palazzini, Vita a virtu cristiane, p.52, and Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione (Rome-Paris: 1918), vol. 1, p.136.
6. Cf. Summa Theologica, II-II, QQ 92-96.
7. See L'Osservatore Romano, January 27-28, 1986, p.4.
8. Summa Theologica, Il-II, Q92, Art.2, ad 3, and I II, Q10, Art. 11
9. Cf. Acts 17:16.
10. Cf. Summa Theologica, II-II, Q94, Art. 1.
11. Cf. Eph. 2:14 and Mich. 5:.5.
12. Cardinal Willebrands in L'Osservatore Romano cited above.
13. Cardinal Etchegaray, cited above in Documentation Catholique.
14. Dizionario di teologia morale, p.66.
15. See Mk. 16:15-16; Jn. 20:31; Heb. 11:6; Council of Trent in Denzinger 799 and 801; Vatican II, Dz. 1793. Cf. Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 11, Art. 1.
16. Mk. 6:16; Mt. 28:19-20.
17. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, 14, 11.
18. John Paul II and Cardinal Willebrands in L'Osservatore Romano, April 7-8, and Jan. 27-28, 1986, respectively.
19. See the 1917 Code of Canon Law, canons 1258 and 2316; and Summma Theologica,II-Il, Q. 10, Art. 9-11.
20. Dizionario de teologia morale, p.1702.
21. See the declarations of Cardinals Willebrands and Etchegaray cited above.
22. Dizionario de teologia morale, p.805.
23. Ibid.
24. Pope Leo XIII, encyclical letter Libertas, 1888.
25. Dizionario di teologia morale, p.1703.
26. Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, 1950.
27. Pope Pius IX, Dz.1647.
28. Ibid.
29. Dom Adrien Gréa, De l’Eglise et de sa divine constitution; cf. Vatican I, constitution Pastor Aeternus, Ch. 4
30. St. Augustine, Sermon 285, No.3.
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| June 5th – St. Boniface |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-05-2021, 07:11 AM - Forum: June
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June 5 – St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany, Bishop and Martyr
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The Son of Man, proclaimed King in the highest heavens on his triumphant Ascension Day, leaves to his Bride on earth the task of making his sovereign dominion recognized here below: this is her glory. Pentecost gives the signal for the Church’s work of conquest; now does she awake, aroused by the breath of the Holy Ghost; replenished with this Spirit of Love, she is all eagerness, as he is, to be possessed at once of the whole earth. We have already seen the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, pledging in her hands their oath of fealty to Christ, to whom is given all power on earth and in heaven. Today, we see how Winfrid realizes the fair name of Boniface, of well-doer, given him by Pope Gregory II. Lo! he presents himself before us, surrounded by the multitudes he has snatched, at one blow, from paganism and barbarism alike. Thanks to the Apostle of Germany, the hour is nigh when the Church may constitute in this world, apart the spiritual dominion of souls, an empire more powerful than any that has ever been or is to be.
The Eternal Father draws to his Son not men only, but nations; thee are on earth no less his inheritance than heaven is for all eternity. Now, the good pleasure that God takes in the Word made Flesh could never be content with merely seeing nations to come, one here, another there, offering an isolated homage of recognition to his Christ as their Lord and Master. No; it was the whole world that was promised as his possession, without distinction of nations, without limits, save the confines of the round orb itself; recognized or not, his power is universal. In the case of many, no doubt, the contempt or the ignorance of this regal claim of the Man-God is to last on throughout ages; for revolt, alas! is always possible and to all. Yet did it behove the Church to profit, as soon as might be, of her influence over baptized nations, so as to gather them together in one public acknowledgement of the Royalty of Christ, the source of every kingly power. At the Pontiff’s side, there seemed to be a fitting place for a mailed chieftain of Christendom—such a one, that is, as should be but lieutenant of Christ, who alone is Lord of lords and King of kings. Thus would be realized, in all its plenitude, the magnificent principality announced by the Prophets for the Son of David.
Such an institution was indeed worthy of the name it was to receive of the Holy Empire: in it we have the final result of our glorious Pentecost, as being the consummation of the testimony rendered by the Holy Ghost to Jesus, both as Pontiff and as King. In a few days, Leo III, the illustrious Pope called by the Holy Spirit to crown this, His divine work, will proclaim, to the joy of the whole world, the establishment of this new empire beneath the scepter-sway of the Man-God, in the person of Charlemagne, the representative of the King of kings. This marvellous work was not prepared on a sudden. Vast regions, destined to form the very nucleus of this future empire, for long centuries knew not so much as the very name of the Lord Jesus; or at best, preserved but confused notions of truth, derived from some earlier evangelization that had been stifled in its birth by the turmoil of invasions—a mere mixture of Christian practices and idolatrous superstitions. At length we behold Boniface arise, endued with power from on high, the worthy pecursor to Leo III. Born of those “Angel-faced” Angles, by whom ancient Britain was transformed into the “Island of Saints,” he burns to carry into the heart of Germany, whence his ancestors had sprung, the light which first shone upon them, in the land of their conquest.
Thirty years of monastic life, begun in childhood despite the tears and caresses of a tender father, had braced his soul. Matured by this long period of retreat and silence, filled with divine science and accompanied by the prayers of his cloistered brethren, he could now in all security set forth to follow the attraction of a divine call. But first and foremost, Rome beholds him at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, submitting his plans and prospects to him who is the only source of all “mission” in the Church. Gregory II, in every way worthy of the great Popes that have borne that name, was at that time watching with apostolic vigilance over the Christian world. Amidst the rocks and shoals of Lombard astuteness and of the heretical infatuation of Leo the Isaurian, his firm and prudent hand was safely guiding the bark of Peter, towards the glorious sovereignty that awaited the Church, in the coming eighth Century. In the humble monk prostrate at his feet, the immortal Pontiff could not but recognize a potent auxiliary sent to him by heaven; and so, armed with the Apostolic benediction, Winfrid, now become Boniface feels the powerful attraction of the Holy Spirit, drawing him irresistibly to conquests, of which ancient Rome had never dreamed.
Beyond the Rhine, farther than Roman legions ever penetrated, the Bride of the Man-God now advances into this barbarous land, along pathways tracked for her by Boniface; overturning in her victorious march, the last idols of the false gods, civilizing and sanctifying those savage hordes, the scourge of the old world. This Anglo-Saxon, a true son of Saint Benedict, gives to his work a stability that will defy the lapse of ages. Everywhere, monasteries arise, rooting themselves to the very soil, for God’s sake; and by force of example and beneficence, fixing around them its various nomad tribes. From the river banks, from the forest depths, instead of cries of war and of vengeance, is wafted the accent of prayer and of praise to the Most High. Sturm, the beloved disciple of Saint Boniface, presides over these pacific colonizations, far superior to those of pagan Rome, planted though they were by her noblest veterans and manned by the best forces of her Empire.
Lo! another sight: here, where violence has hitherto reigned supreme, in these savage wilds, a novel kind of army is organized, formed of the gentle Brides of Christ. The Spirit of Pentecost, like a mighty wind, has blown over the land of the Angles; and even as in the Cenacle, holy women had a share in its influence, consecrated Virgins, obedient to the heavenly impulse, have quitted the land of their birth, yea even the monastery that has sheltered them from childhood. Having for a while administered only, at a distance, to Winfrid’s needs and copied out for him the sacred books in letters of gold: they have at length come to join the apostle. Fearlessly have they crossed the sea and, guided by their divine Spouse, have come to share the labors undertaken here for his glory. Lioba is at their head; Lioba whose gentle majesty, whose heavenly aspect uplifts the thought from things terrene; Lioba, who by her knowledge of the scriptures, of the Fathers, and of the sacred Canons, is equal to any of the most celebrated Doctors. But the Holy Ghost has still more richly gifted the soul of Lioba with humility and Christian heroism. Behold the chosen Mother of the German nation! Germany’s scornful daughters, athirst for blood, who on their wedding day disdained all other gift save a steed, a buckler, and a lance, are to learn from her the true qualities of the valiant woman. No more shall they be seen intoxicated with slaughter, leading back to the field of battle the vanquished husbands; but the virtues of the wife and of the mother shall replace in them the fury of the camp; family life is to be founded on the Germanic soil and therewith, the “Fatherland.”
This was the thought of Boniface, when he called to his aid Lioba, Walburga, and their companions. Worn out with toil but still more with the incessant wear and fret of petty jealousies (never spared to men of God, on the part of such as would cover their paltry complaints under the cloak of false zeal), our athlete of Christ was not ashamed to come to Lioba, his well-beloved daughter, humbly seeking from her that enlightened counsel and comfort, never denied. Estimating at its true worth the share she had borne in his work, he was desirous that she should be laid to rest in the same tomb prepared for him in his Abbey of Fulda.
But not yet was his labor ended, nor the evening of life at hand. The spiritual weal of his numberless converts must be secured, and at their head must be placed such as the Holy Ghost designated for the government of God’s Church. By his means, the hierarchy was constituted and developed; the land was covered with churches; and beneath the crosier-sway of holy bishops chosen by God, these once wandering tribes now began to life a life of glory to the Most Blessed Trinity in a country, but yesterday, pagan, and wherein Satan had hoped to perpetuate his own domination.
Nor was this our saint’s only work in Germany: in certain isolated parts on the confines, the seeds of Arianism and Manicheeism had been silently taking root by means of an intruded clergy, half pagan and half Christian in their rites; and these would inevitably prove a serious scandal to his recent converts that came within reach of their influence. Even as Christ, armed with a whip of cords, drove the buyers and sellers from the temple, so did Boniface, by vigorous measures, rid the land of these sectarian priests, who, with hands polluted by heathenish sacrifices to the vanquished deities of Valhalla, dared to offer also the spotless victim to the Most High.
The powerful action of Boniface, as the precursor of the Holy Empire, was not confined to preparing the German race alone, for its share in so high a destiny. His beneficent influence was now to be exercised, and at a most critical moment upon the France, the eldest daughter of the Church; for she was chosen, in the person of her Princes, to be the first to bear the emblem of Christ’s universal kingship. The descendants of Clovis had preserved naught of his royal inheritance, save the vain title of a power that had now just passed into the hands of a new family, a more vigorous branch of his stock. Charles Martel, the head of this race, measuring his strength with the Moors had crushed their entire army near Poitiers: but in the flush of victory, the hero of the day had well nigh brought the Church of France to the brink of ruin by distributing to his comrades in arms the episcopal sees and abbeys of the land! Unless a situation no less disastrous than would have been the triumph of Abderahman was to be accepted, these usurped crosiers must at once be wrested from the hands of such strange titularies. To effect this, as much gentleness as firmness were needed, together with an ascendency belonging only to virtue, if the hero of Poitiers and his noble race were to be gained over, to respect the rights of holy Church. This victory, more glorious than had been the defeat of the Moors, was won by Boniface, a veritable triumph of disarmed holiness, as profitable to the vanquished as to the Church herself! Of this fierce warrior, he was to make the worthy father of a second dynasty, the glory whereof should far surpass the brilliant hopes of the first race of Frankish kings.
Boniface, now Legate of Pope St. Zachary, as he had formerly been of Gregory III, fixed his episcopal see at Mainz, the better at one and the same time to hold fast to Christ, both Germany, the conquest of his earlier apostolate, and France more recently rescued by his labors. Like another Samuel, he himself, with his own hands, consecrated this new regal dynasty, by conferring the sacred unction on Pepin le Bref, son of Charles Martel. This was in the year 752. Another Charles, as yet a child, who was one day to inherit that throne thus firmly fixed, attracted the notice of the aged Saint, and received his benediction; it was the future Charlemagne. But to the hand of a Sovereign Pontiff would be reserved the anointing of that royal brow; and a diadem more glorious still than that of a king of the Franks, was one day to rest thereon, exhibiting in his person the head of the new Roman Empire, the lieutenant of Christ, the King of kings.
The personal work of Boniface was now accomplished; like the old man Simeon, his eyes had seen the object of all his ambition, of all his life-long toil, the salvation prepared by God for this new Israel. He too had now no desire left save that of departing in peace to his Lord; but could the entering into peace, for such an Apostle, be by other gate than that of martyrdom? He understands this well: his hour has sounded: the old warrior has chosen his last battlefield. Friesland is still pagan: half a century ago, at the opening of his apostolic career, he had avoided this country, in order to escape the bishopric which Saint Willibrord, at that early date, was anxious to force upon him: but now that she has naught, save death, to offer him, he will enter this land. In a letter of sublime humility, prostrate at the feet of Pope Stephen III, he remits to the correction of the Apostolic See, the “awkward mistakes,” as he terms them, and the many faults of his long life; to Lullus his dearest son, he leaves the Church of Mainz; he recommends to the care of the Frankish king the several priests scattered all through Germany, the monks and virgins who from distant homes have followed him hither. Then ordering to be placed amongst the few books which he is taking with him, the winding sheet that is to enwrap his body, he designates the companions chosen by him for the journey, and sets out to win the martyr’s palm.
Let us now read the liturgical record of this grand life.
Quote:Boniface, formerly called Winfrid, was a native of Anglia, born towards the end of the seventh century. From his very childhood, he turned away from the world and set his heart upon becoming a monk. His father tried in vain to divert him from his wishes by the beguilements of the world, and he entered a monastery, where under blessed Wulphard he was instructed in all virtuous discipline and every kind of knowledge. At the age of twenty-nine years he was ordained Priest, and became an unwearied preacher of the word of God, wherein he had a special gift, which he used with great gain of souls. Nevertheless, his great desire was to spread the kingdom of Christ, and he continually bewailed the vast number of barbarians, who were plunged in the darkness of ignorance and were slaves of the devil. This zealous love of souls increased in him in intensity day by day, till having implored the divine aid by prayers and tears, he at last obtained the permission of the Prior of the monastery to set out for Germany.
He sailed from Anglia with two companions and reached the town of Dorestadt in Friesland. A great war then raging between Radbod, king of the Frieslanders, and Charles Martel, he preached the Gospel without fruit: for which reason returning to Anglia, he betook himself again to his former monastery, the government of which, against his will, he was forced to accept. After two years, he obtained the consent of the Bishop of Winchester to resign his office, and he then went to Rome, that by the Apostolic authority he might be delegated to the mission for the converting of the heathens. When he arrived at the City, he was courteously welcomed by Gregory II, who changed his name from Winfrid to Boniface. He departed thence to Germany and preached Christ to the tribes in Thuringia and Saxony. Radbod King of Friesland who bitterly hated the Christian name, being dead, Boniface went a second time among the Frieslanders, and there, with his companion St. Willibrord, preached the Gospel for three years with so much fruit, that the idols were hewn down, and countless churches arose to the true God.
Advancing into Germany, he reclaimed thousands of the Hessians from devilish superstition. Pope Gregory sent for him, to Rome, and after receiving from him a noble profession of his faith, consecrated him a bishop. He again returned to Germany, and thoroughly purged Hesse and Thuringia from all remains of idolatry. On account of such great works, Gregory III advanced Boniface to the dignity of an archbishop, and on the occasion of a third journey to Rome, he was invested by the Sovereign Pontiff with the powers of Legate of the Apostolic See. As such, he founded four bishoprics and held diverse synods, among which is especially to be remembered that of Lessines held in Belgium, in the diocese of Cambrai, at which time he made his strongest efforts to spread the Faith among the Belgians. By Pope Zachary, he was named Archbishop of Mainz, and by command of the same Pope, he anointed Pepin to be king of the Franks. After the death of Saint Willibrord, he undertook the government of the Church of Utrecht, at first by the ministry of Eoban, but afterwards by himself, when being released from the care of the Church of Mainz, he established his see at Utrecht. The Frieslanders having again fallen back into idolatry, he once more betook himself to preach the Gospel among them, and while he was busied in this duty, he won the palm of martyrdom being slain by some impious barbarians, who attacked him together with his fellow bishop Eoban, and many others, on the river Born. In accordance with the wish expressed by himself during life, the body of Saint Boniface was carried to Mainz and buried in the Monastery of Fulda, of which he had been the founder, and which he has rendered illustrious by numerous miracles. Pope Pius IX ordered his Office and Mass to be extended to the universal Church.
Thou wast, O great Apostle, the faithful servant of Him who chose thee as the minister of his word and propagator of his kingdom. When the Son of Man quitted earth to receive the delighted homage of the heavenly hosts, in recognition of his kingship over them, he nonetheless remained King of his lower world, which he has left but for a little while. He counted on his Church to guard his principality here below. Small indeed was the number of those who recognized him on the day of his glorious Ascension as their Master and their Lord. But that faith deposited in these first chosen souls was a treasure which they, like skillful bankers, knew how to work, and how to multiply by apostolic commerce. Transmitted from generation to generation, up to the day of the Lord’s return, this precious capital was to go on yielding, to the absent Lord, more and more accumulated interest. Thus was it with thee, O Winfrid, in that age wherein thou didst bring in to the Church that tribute of labors which she requires, though in very different proportion, at the hands of each one of her sons. Beyond these of others, thy works appeared well-done and profitable to the common Mother; in her gratitude forestalling the Spouse himself, she would, even in this world, call thee by that new name whereby thou art known in heaven.
Indeed, when did riches such as thou didst bring, come pouring at once into the hands of the Bride? When did the spouse appear to be so fully and truly Head of the whole world, as in the eighth century, in which the Frankish princes, formed by thee to their noble destinies, constituted the temporal sovereignty of the Church, and gloried in being, at the side of the Vicar of the Man-God, the Lieutenants of Christ the King? To thee, O Boniface, is the Holy Empire indebted, for the very possibility of its existence. But for thee, France would have perished, debased by a simoniacal clergy, even before a Charlemagne had appeared; but for thee, Germany would have remained a prey of pagan barbarians, enemies of all civilization and progress. O thou that didst rescue both Germans and Franks, receive our grateful homage.
At the sight of thy works, and remembering the great popes and princes of colossal build, whose glory is indeed derived from thee—our admiration equals our gratitude. But pardon us dear Saint, if the thought of those grand centuries of yore, so far removed, alas, from anything of these our days, should make us mingle sadness over ourselves, with joy over thee. Viewed in the light of thy holy policy and its results, O glorious precursor of the confederation of Christian nations, how do we not bewail the fatal errors of those princes and statesmen, so renowned in the seventeenth century, and so foolishly admired by a world whose ruin they were hastening. For by isolating Catholic nations from one another, the ties that bound them to the Vicar of Christ became loosened: princes, forgetful of their true position as representatives of the divine King, made friends with heresy in order to assert their independence of Rome, or mutually to lower one another’s power. Therefore Christendom is no more. Upon its ruins, like a woeful mimicry of the Holy Empire, Protestantism has raised its false Evangelical Empire, formed of naught but encroachments, and tracing its recognized origin, to the apostasy of that felon knight, Albert of Brandenburg.
The complicities that rendered such a thing possible have received their chastisement. Be then God’s Justice at last satisfied! O Boniface, cry out with us unto the God of armies, for Mercy. Raise up in the Church servants of Christ, powerful in word and work, as thou wast. Save France from anarchy; and restore to Germany a right appreciation of true greatness, together with the Faith of her ancient days.
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| June 4th - St Francis Caracciolo |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-04-2021, 09:33 AM - Forum: June
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June 4 – St Francis Caracciolo, Confessor
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The good things brought unto this world by the Divine Spirit continue to be revealed in the holy Liturgy. Francis Caracciolo is given to us this day as another type of the sublime fecundity produced on earth by Christianity. Now, Faith is the principle of this supernatural fecundity in the Saints, just as it was in Abraham, the Father of all believers; it brings forth unto the Church isolated members or entire nations alike: from it too proceed the multitudinous families of Religious Orders who, in their fidelity in following the diverse tracks traced out for them by their founders, are the chief portion of that royal and varied adornment wherewith the Bride is resplendently bedecked, at the right hand of her Divine Spouse. This is the very thought expressed by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius VII, on the day of the canonization of our Saint, wishing, as he said, “to right the judgment of such as may, perhaps, have appreciated the religious life at a low rate, according to the vain conceits of a worldly point of view, and not according to the just measure of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”
That century of universal ruin, in which the voice of Christ’s Vicar was raised addressing the whole world on this solemn occasion, resembled, but in still darker hue, the calamitous age of the pretended Reform, in which Francis, like so many others, had proved by his works and by his life the indefectibility of the Church’s Holiness. Let us listen once more to the words of the same Pontiff: “The Bride of Christ, the Church, is now become accustomed to pursue her pilgrim career amidst persecutions from men and consolations from God. Through the saints raised up in all ages by his almighty hand, God fulfils his promise; making her ever to be a city seated on a mountain, a beacon, the clear light of which must needs reach the eyes of all who do not, through prejudice, voluntarily shut their eyes, not to see. The while her enemies band together, vainly plotting her destruction, saying: when will she die? when will her name perish? crowned with ever increasing splendor by the new warriors she sends as victors to heaven, the Church remaineth ever glorious, ever declaring unto all coming generations, the might of the Lord’s strong Arm.”
The sixteenth century heard at its birth the most terrific blasphemy ever uttered against the Bride of the Son of God; that, whereby she was named the harlot of Babylon. Yet did she, all spotless Queen, in the very teeth of heresy impotent to produce one real virtue upon earth, prove herself to be the legitimate Bride, by reason of her admirable efflorescence in new Orders, sprung up from her bosom in but a few years’ space, and ready to meet the exigencies of the novel situation created by Luther’s revolt. The return of ancient Orders to their primitive fervor, the establishment of the Society of Jesus, of the Theatines, of the Brothers of Saint John of God, of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, of the Clerks Regular of St. Jerome Emilian, and those of St. Camillus de Lellis—sufficed not to the Divine Spirit. As though on purpose to mark the superabundant fruitfulness of the Bride, He raised up, at the close of the same century, another religious family, the special characteristic of which was to be the organization of mortification and continual prayer amongst its members, by the incessant use of Christian penance and by the perpetual adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament. Sixtus V received with joy these new recruits for the great campaign. To distinguish them from all other Orders of Clerks Regular, and as a proof of his specially paternal affection, the illustrious Pontiff, himself a Friar Minor, embodied a title so dear to his own heart, in that which he assigned to these newcomers, calling them The Minor Clerks Regular. With a like view of approximation to the Seraphic Order, our Saint of today, the first General of this Institute, changed his name Ascanius for that of Francis.
It seemed as though Heaven too would weld together the patriarch of Assisi and Francis Caracciolo, by giving to each the same span of life, namely, forty-four years. The founder of the Minor Clerks Regular (like his glorious predecessor and patron) was one of those men of whom Holy Scripture says that having lived a short space they fulfilled a long time. Numerous prodigies revealed, during his lifetime, the virtues which his humility would fain have concealed. Scarce had his soul left this earth, and his body been interred, than crowds flocked to the tomb, where the constant voice of miracles bore witness to the high favor with God, enjoyed by him whose mortal remains therein reposed.
But solely to the sovereign authority constituted by Jesus Christ in the Church, is it reserved to pronounce authentically upon the sanctity of any, even the most illustrious, of her dead. As long as the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff has formulated nothing, private devotion is quite free to testify gratitude or confidence, in regard to the Departed worthy thereof. But all such demonstrations as, more or less, resemble public cultus, are prohibited by a rigorous and wise law of the Church. Unfortunately, certain imprudence, contrary to this law formulated in the celebrated Decrees of Urban VIII, drew down, twenty years after the death of our Saint, all the severity of the Inquisition, upon some of his spiritual children, and retarded by a whole century, the introduction of his cause to the tribunal of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. It was necessary that the witnesses of the abuses which had incurred the law should first disappear from the scene; but consequently, the witness of the holy life of Francis had likewise disappeared. Being, therefore, obliged to recur to mere auricular testimony in her pronouncing of judgment on the heroic virtues practiced by him, Rome now exacted from ocular witnesses, the proof of four instead of the usual two, miracles required in a process of Beatification.
It would be out of place here for us to show how these precautions and delays, which demonstrate the prudence of Holy Church in these matters, at last ended in making the sanctity of Francis shine forth all the more strikingly. Let us now turn to the narrative of his life.
Quote:Francis, formerly called Ascanius, was of the noble family of Caracciolo. He was born in the town of Santa Maria della Villa in the Abruzzi. From his earliest years, he showed great marks of piety. When he was a young man, he had a severe illness, and on his recovery determined to serve God and to give himself up to the service of his neighbor. He betook himself to Naples, where he was ordained priest, enrolled himself in a devout confraternity, and gave himself up to the contemplation and the gaining of souls to God, in which work he showed himself an unwearied comforter to such persons as were condemned to death. It came to pass that those two great servants of God, John Augustine Adorno and Fabricius Caracciolo, wrote a letter to a certain person, wherein they exhorted him to share in the foundation of a new religious Institute. This letter came, by mistake, to be delivered to Francis Caracciolo. The newness of the idea, and the strange ways of God’s Providence took possession of his mind, and he joyfully added himself to their company. They withdrew themselves to the solitude of the Camaldolese, and there concerted the rules of the new Order. Thence they went to Rome, and obtained the confirmation of their work from Sixtus V, who wished that they should be called Minor Clerks Regular, since they added to their three accustomed vows, a fourth binding themselves not to seek preferment in the Church.
Having made his solemn profession, Ascanius Caracciolo, moved by the special love and devotion he had to the holy Francis of Assisi, took the name of Francis. After two years, John Adorno departed this life, and Francis, against his own will, was made head of the Order: in which office he gave a brilliant example of all virtues. Devoted to the prosperity of the Institute, he earnestly sought the blessing of God upon it, by assiduous prayer, tears, and constant maceration of his body. In this work he thrice travelled to Spain in the guise of a pilgrim, begging his bread from door to door. In these journeys he suffered very great hardships, and was wonderfully helped by the Almighty, especially in this instance: the ship in which he was, being in great danger, he saved it by his prayers. He had to toil hard in these countries to attain his wishes; but through the noble generosity of the most Catholic Kings Philip II and Philip III, he overcame with his fortitude of soul, the opposition of all that withstood him, and founded several houses of his Order, which he eventually did in Italy, likewise.
He so excelled in humility that, when he came to Rome, he betook himself to an almshouse, and there chose to be associated to a leper: moreover he firmly refused all the ecclesiastical dignities offered to him by Paul V. He preserved his virginity unspotted, and when certain shameless women set themselves to attack his chastity, he took the occasion to gain over their souls to Christ. Towards the most divine mystery of the Eucharist he was drawn with burning tenderness of love, and would pass almost whole nights without sleep, in adoration. This holy custom he established in his Order, to be kept up for ever, as its peculiar mark. He was a zealous propagator of the cultus of the Virgin Mother of God. He was all aflame with the love of his neighbours. He was gifted with prophecy and the discerning of spirits. In the forty-fourth year of his age, whilst he was continuing long at prayer in the holy house of Loreto, it was made known to him that the end of his earthly life was at hand. He straightway took his road to the Abruzzi and was there seized with a mortal fever, at the house of the disciples of St Philip Keri, in the town of Agnone. He received with great devotion the Sacraments of the Church, and upon the day preceding the Nones of June, in the year sixteen hundred and eight, it being the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi, he most calmly fell asleep in the Lord His sacred body was carried to Naples, and there honourably buried in the church of St Mary Major, where he had laid the first foundations of his Order. As he became distinguished for miracles, Pope Clement XIV enrolled his name, with solemn pomp, amongst those of the blessed, and Pope Pius VII, in the year eighteen hundred and seven, finding his mighty prodigies continue, added it to the list of saints.
Well was thy love for the divine Sacrament of the Altar rewarded, O Francis; thou hadst the glory of being called to the banquet of our eternal home, at the very hour when the Church on earth was chanting the praises of the sacred Victim, at the first Vespers of the great festival, that year by year hails this Mystery of mysteries. Thine own feast day occurring, as it ever does, close to this solemnity of Corpus Christi, continues still to invite us men, as thou wast wont to do in life, to come and peer in adoration into the depths of this Mystery of Love. The mysterious harmony of the cycle is all disposed by divine Wisdom, seeing that his sweet Providence fixes the season at which each saint is summoned to receive the crown of bliss; thus the post of honor earned by thee is in the sanctuary itself close to the divine Host upon our altars.
The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up: this was thy heart’s cry upon earth. These words, less those of David than of the Man-God himself, did indeed fill thine heart to overflowing so that, after thy death, they were found engraven on the lifeless flesh of thy heart, proving, as it were, what had been the one impetus of its every pulsation and of thy desires. Hence resulted the need thou hadst of continual prayer, as well as that ever correlative ardor of thine for penance, the twofold characteristic of thy religious family, and which thou wouldst fain have seen in the hearts of all. Prayer and penance; yes, these two alone fix man in his right position before God. Vouchsafe to preserve this precious deposit amidst thy spiritual sons, O Francis; so that by their zeal in propagating the spirit of their Father, they may make it become the treasure also of the entire world.
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| Pope Plans to Restrict Traditional Latin Mass? |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-03-2021, 11:09 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope's Plan to Restrict Traditional Latin Mass Backed by Two Curial Cardinals
Remnant Newspaper | June 1, 2021
The Remnant has independently confirmed that a Vatican document restricting Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum is backed by at least two Vatican cardinals, is in its third draft, and threatens to thwart the growth of the Traditional Latin Mass and other sacraments particularly among diocesan clergy.
Two senior members of the hierarchy confirmed May 31 that the document, first reported by Messainlatino.it on May 25, is currently under review at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
Multiple sources have also told The Remnant that Pope Francis wishes to soon publish the document, and that it is alleged to be receiving backing in varying degrees from two cardinal consultors to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
The sources also said that these restrictive measures will most probably be carried out by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and its newly appointed under-secretary Msgr. Aurelio García Marcías, whom Pope Francis is said to have raised to the episcopate for the very purpose of executing these plans.
Several senior Vatican sources have also confirmed that the first draft document was preceded by an introductory letter from Pope Francis that is said to have been very harsh and acrimonious toward the Tridentine Mass.
The document is now in the third draft, the first two having been thought to be too severe. If it is eventually published, it is likely to roll back the liberalization of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass introduced by Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter, Summorum Pontificum.
That document authorized any stable group of faithful attached to the “previous liturgical tradition” to ask their local priest for the Mass who “should willingly accede to their requests.” The decree stated that the older form of the Mass was “never abrogated” and that both the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms were “two expressions” of “one Roman Rite.”
Quote:N.B. With respect to the crumbs handed to Traditionalists via the Summorum Pontificum - Fr. Hewko has (as well as many other good traditional priests) written and spoken about this many, many times over the years. As a brief reminder of the true machinations in Summorum Pontificum granted by Pope Benedict XVI, one of the chief architects of Vatican II, here are Fr. Hewko's words from an article he wrote called Ambiguous Language, The Devil's Quicksand:
"How is it possible that those trained to refute Modernism and denounce the tactics of the modernists could possibly resort to using those very same means to attain their new goal; to be "recognized as we are" and have "justice done" to unjust penalties? What happened to the primacy of THE FAITH? Whatever happened to "no agreement until Rome converts to Tradition"? What happened to Abp. Lefebvre's proof for the moment of Rome's conversion, namely, the professing of all the papal teachings and condemnations from the Council of Trent down to Pius XII's "Humani Generis"? A few "crumbs of acknowledgement" to some aspects of Tradition are far from proofs of Rome's conversion! "Summorum Pontificum" and the so called "lifting" of excommunications that never existed, are mere tactics and maneuvers, as Abp. Lefebvre himself named other supposed moves on the part of the Holy See, and are none other than attempts to swing the SSPX into the Conciliar Church. Again and again, the proof is in the consequences of all the Traditional Catholic communities that made agreements with Rome. The proof lies in the Roman authorities unwavering adherence to Vatican II!"
The Remnant has learned that the first draft put strict limitations on the age of the celebrants and is described as somewhat similar to the indult of Paul VI, which allowed elderly priests to continue offering the Tridentine Mass after the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae by Paul VI. It also discussed whether to allow or prohibit the administration of the other sacraments in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
In its present form, communities and diocesan priests who already offer the Mass in the Extraordinary Form may continue to do so, but diocesan clergy who wish to begin offering the Traditional Mass would have to obtain authorization. Whether local bishops or the Holy See will be responsible for granting such permissions is still under discussion.
The administration of the other sacraments in the Extraordinary Form, i.e. marriage, baptism, confirmation, etc., would be maintained for those who already have permission to celebrate the Traditional Mass.
The third draft moves the office of recourse for matters pertaining to the Traditional Latin Mass and oversight of priestly societies and religious communities that use the pre-1970 Missal, from the fourth section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei) to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
The first draft initially discussed placing these priestly societies (e.g. Fraternity of St. Peter, Institute of Christ the King, and Institute of the Good Shepherd) and other traditional communities under the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, two senior Vatican sources confirmed.
Such a move would be considered potentially more problematic for these communities, in light of the way the congregation has handled contemplative orders in the recent past, namely, through the 2018 Instruction Cor Orans, which requires autonomous female monasteries to belong to a wider federation, and asks novices and professed cloistered contemplative nuns to leave their enclosure for initial and ongoing formation, something alien to cloistered contemplative life.
Under the current plan, Msgr. García, who has served as head of office in the Congregation for Divine Worship since 2016, has been elevated to the episcopate in order to assume the responsibilities formerly carried out under Ecclesia Dei by its former president, Archbishop Guido Pozzo. A professor at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute at the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo, Msgr. García is not known to share Benedict XVI’s views on the sacred liturgy, one source describing him as “the most anti-Tridentine Mass person ever known.”
It is not clear yet whether the fourth section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will continue to handle doctrinal matters and relations with the Society of St. Pius X.
Several senior Vatican sources have also confirmed that the first draft document was preceded by an introductory letter from Pope Francis that is said to have been very harsh and acrimonious toward the Tridentine Mass. Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, Prefect of the CDF, strongly opposed both the first draft and the letter, senior Vatican sources confirmed. The letter has since been revised.
Concerns over possible curtailments of the Extraordinary Form arose after the CDF sent a letter to the presidents of bishops’ conferences worldwide asking them to distribute a nine-point questionnaire about Summorum Pontificum. Cardinal Ladaria said the questionnaire was issued because the Pope wanted to be “informed about the current application” of the apostolic letter.
Approximately thirty percent of the world’s bishops responded to the questionnaire, and more than half of those who responded had a favorable or neutral response, multiple sources confirmed.
One source familiar with the consultation document said that, although the questions were notably biased against Summorum Pontificum, or formulated in a manner that did not always elicit a clear and specific response, what emerged from the questionnaire is how the Traditional Latin Mass has taken root. It has revealed that even in unexpected places, the old Mass is embraced and loved by young people and families, is bearing fruit in flourishing parishes, priestly and religious vocations, and in greater prayer and devotion among the faithful.
On May 31, the French traditional website Paix Liturgique, which was among the first to report on the forthcoming document, published an article titled, “The Summorum Pontificum Galaxy Prepares to Resist!”
Describing Summorum Pontificum as “provisions for peace” that “sought to bring peace to a Church that was sinking deeper and deeper into crisis,” the authors note how “from the very beginning, the traditional movement has been grounded in the action of laymen.”
Their efforts, it continues, were “a surprising and providential manifestation of the sensus fidelium, of the instinct of the faith among the faithful, which defends tooth and nail the lex orandi’s expression of the doctrines of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Real Presence, the hierarchical priesthood, and more generally of the transcendence of the mystery: ‘Do this in memory of Me!’”
Should Pope Francis decide to restrict Summorum Pontificum by issuing such a document, Paix Liturgique asserts that “this capacity to resist ‘on the ground’… may well come to include powerful demonstrations and actions.
“Already now,” they add, “in various spots of the globe, they are being given serious consideration.”
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| June 3rd - St. Clotilde, Queen |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-03-2021, 07:10 AM - Forum: June
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June 3 – St Clotilde, Queen of the Franks
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At this Season, in which the Office of the Time is leading us to consider the early developments of Holy Church, Eternal Wisdom so arranges, now as ever, that the Feasts of the Saints should complete the teachings of the movable Cycle. The Paraclete, who has but just down upon us, is to fill the whole earth; the Man-God has sent Him expressly to win over the whole earth and to secure all time, to His Church. Now, it is by subjecting kingdoms to the faith, that He is to form Christ’s Empire; it is by working so that the Church may assimilate all nations to herself, that He gives growth and continuance to the Bride. See there, how at this season wherein He has but just taken possession of the world anew, His cooperators in this His work of conquest, shine out on every side, in the heavens of the holy Liturgy. But the West, more than all the rest, concurs in forming the magnificent constellation that is mingling its radiant splendor with the Pentecostal fires. Indeed, what could better show the Omnipotence of the Spirit of Christ, than the establishment of this Latin christendom, in these distant lands of the West?What Star is this rising today in such silvery beauty on the land of the Franks? The city of Lyons, prepared by the blood of martyrs for this her second glory, saw this new light make growth in her midst; across a distance of three centuries, these rays are blended with those of Blandina. Like Blandina too, Clotilde is a mother; and the maternity of a slave, giving birth in her spotless virginity to Gaulish Martyrs, has already prepared the birth of the Franks to Christ. Clotilde had not, like Blandina, to shed her blood; but other pangs cruelly wrung her breast while she was yet so young, and served to mature her soul for the grand destinies reserved by God, for the privileged children of sorrow. The violent death of her father, Chilperic, dethroned by a fratricide usurper, the sight of her brothers massacred, and of her mother drowned in the Rhone, her long captivity in the Arian court of the murderer who brought heresy with him, to the throne of the Burgundians, developed in her the same heroism that had upheld Blandina in the amphitheater, amidst the anguish of her spiritual childbirth—a heroism that would make this niece of Gondebaud become likewise the mother of a whole nation, to Christ. Let us then unite these two names in one common homage and, prostrate at the Feet of the Eternal Father from Whom descendeth all paternity on earth and in heaven, let us adore these Ways of His, all filled with tenderness and love, in our regard.
God drew the visible universe out of nothingness, solely to manifest his goodness. So, in like manner, has He willed that man, coming out of His hands, without power as yet to recognize his Creator, should recognize, at least, a Mother’s tender love, the first sensible ray, as it were, of Infinite Love. Irresistible in this ray, sublime in its gentleness, exquisite in its purity, giving to the Mother a facility, belonging only to her, to complete in the soul of her child, the entire reproduction of the Divine Ideal that is to be impressed upon him. Now this she does by education. Today’s feast reveals how yet more sublime, more potent, more extensive, is maternity in the order of grace, than it is in that of nature. For when God, coming down amongst us, was pleased to take Flesh of a Daughter of Adam, maternity was raised in Her to the extreme limit that separates the endowments of a simple creature from the divine attributes. Thus rising above the heavens, maternity at the same time embraced the world, bringing all mankind together into close union, without distinction of nation or family, in the one filiation of that Virgin-Mother. The new Adam, the perfect model of our race, and our first-born, willed to have us for His brethren in all fulness, brethren in Mary as in God. The Mother of God was then proclaimed Mother of men, on Calvary; from the summit of the Cross, the Man-God replaced upon the brow of Mary that diadem of Eve, broken by the fall, beside the fatal tree. Constituted sole Mother of the living, by this noble investiture, our Lady entered once again into communication with the privileges of the Father, our Father who is in Heaven. Not only was she by nature like Him, Mother of His Son; but just as all paternity flows down here below from the Eternal Father, and borrows thence supereminent dignity; so too, all maternity was naught, from that moment, but an outflow of Mary’s, and that in the truest sense;—yea, a delegation of her love, and a communication of her august privilege whereby she brings forth men unto God, whose sons they are to be.
Good reason, therefore, have Christian Mothers to glory in their maternity, for in that does their greatness consist; their dignity has increased to a degree, through Mary, that nature could never have dreamed of. But at the same time, under the ægis of Mary, not less real is the Maternity of holy Virgins, not only God’s eyes, but often manifested to their own: the wife too, prepared by a special call from God, and by suffering, is sometimes like Clotilde, endowed with a fecundity of a spiritual order, a thousand times more prolific than that of earth. Happy the fruits of this supernatural Maternity, which under the favor of Mary is fraught with so much greatness! happy the nations on whom by divine munificence a Mother has been bestowed!
History tells how the founders of Empires have ever had the terrible prerogative of impressing upon nations the distinctive character, disastrous or beneficial, which, through length of ages, continues to be theirs. How often does not that want of counterpoise to the preponderance of power, make itself only too evident, in the impetus given rather to destroy than to build up! And wherefore? Because ancient Empires never had a Mother; for this noble title cannot be applied to those women who, under the name of heroines, have transmitted their names to posterity, merely inasmuch as they rivaled the ambition and pomp of conquerors. To Christian times was it reserved, to behold introduced into a people’s life, this element of Maternity, more salutary, more efficacious in its humble gentleness, than that which springs from the talents or vices, from the power or genius of their first princes.
Time was needed to subdue the savage instincts of the warriors of Clovis, and to fit his sword to the noble destiny that awaited it, in the hand of a Charlemagne, or of a St. Louis. With good reason has it been said that the honor of this labor is due to the Bishop and the monks. But to be more accurate and to prove a deeper insight of the ways used by Divine Providence, it were well, perhaps, to pass less lightly over, the woman’s part, for such indeed there was, in the work of conversion and of education, which made the Frankish nation become the eldest son of the Church. Clotilde it was, who led the Franks to the Baptistery of Rheims, and presented to Remigius, the proud Sicambrian transformed, far less by the exhortations of the holy bishopk, than by the force of prayer, the prayer of that strong woman elected by God to bear away this rich spoil, from the camp of hell. What manly energy, what devotedness to God, are displayed in every measure taken by this noble daughter of the Burgundians’ dethroned king. While held beneath the suspicious eye of the usurper, the murderer of her family, she awaits in the silence of prayer and in the exercise of charity, Heaven’s appointed hour. When, at last, the moment comes, taking counsel of none save the Holy Ghost and her own heart, how nobly does she dart forward to conquer unto Christ her betrothed, though yet a stranger to her, outdoing in valor, in this instance, all the warriors of her escort! Strength and beauty, were indeed her covering, her adornment on her bridal day; and the heart of Clovis soon learned that the conquests reserved to his bride, far outstripped in importance, the booty he had hitherto seized by force of arms. Clotilde, on the other hand, found her work already prepared on the banks of the Seine. During fifty years Genevieve had been busy, defending Paris against the pagan hordes, and only awaiting the baptism of the king of the Franks, in order to open to him the city gates.
Still, when on that Christmas night, Clotilde gave birth to the eldest son of Holy Church in Mary’s name, the great work was far from being completed; this newborn people had yet, by the slow process of a laborious education to be fashioned into the most Christian nation. This chosen one of God and of Our Lady does not fall short of the maternal task. But still what anguish of heart to be endured, what tears yet to be shed over these sons of hers, whose violence, peculiar to the race, seems simply indomitable, and the very exuberance of whose rich nature yields them up to the fury of passions, urging them blindly on, to crimes the most atrocious! Her grandchildren inveigled from her side and caught in the perfidious trap laid for them by their faithless uncles, are massacred. Fratricidal wars carry devastation over the whole of that territory of ancient Gaul, purged by her from paganism and heresy. Finally, another pang, but one of a more glorious kind, seems given as a compensation for the bitterness of intestine strife. Her cherished daughter Clotilde the younger, dies worn out by ill usage endured for her faith, at the hand of her Arian husband. Surely all this must have shown clearly enough to the queen of the Franks, that if she was chosen by Heaven to be their mother, she was to have all the pangs, as well as the honor that title involves. Thus does Christ ever deal with his own, when they have earned his confidence. Clotilde well understood this: already a widow and deprived by death of the aid of Genevieve likewise, she had long ago retired to Tours, near to the sepulcher of the Thaumaturgus of the Gauls. There, in the secret of prayer and in the heroism of her childhood’s faith, did she continue, aided by St. Martin, the preparation of this new people for its mighty destinies.
An immense work was this, and one to which no single lifetime could suffice! But though Clotilde was not to witness the desired transformation accomplished, her life was not to close until she had pressed to her heart, at Tours, her illustrious daughter-in-law, Radegonde, and having by this last embrace invested her with her own sublime maternity, she sends her to Poitiers, there to continue, at the tomb of St. Hilary, this great work of intercession. Then when at length, Radegonde herself, having ended her task of suffering and love, must likewise quit this earth, Bathilde will presently come forward, consummating the work, in that remarkable seventh century, the period when “the Frank, at last ready for his mission, is betrothed to Holy Church, and dubbed a Knight of God.”
Clotilde, Radegonde, Bathilde, all three of them, Mothers of France, bear a striking resemblance to one another. All three are prepared, from the early dawn of life, to the devotedness their grand mission would require, by the like trials, captivity, slavery, and massacre or loss of their own relatives: all three, bring to the throne naught but a dauntless love of Christ, the King, and a desire of seeing Him rule the people; all three, set aside the queenly diadem as soon as may be, in order to be able, prostrate before God in retirement and penitence, to attain more surely the one object of their maternal and royal ambition. Heiresses of Abraham in very deed, they found in his faith the fecundity which made them to be mothers of those countless multitudes which the soil, watered by their tears, produced for Heaven. Even in these weakened times of ours, there is still a goodly throng ever passing from the land of the Franks to their true home yonder, there to join the happy band of the combatants of better days. At the sight of this ever increasing group of sons joyously pressing round their thrones, the hearts of Clitlde, Radegonde, and Bathilde, overflowing with love, give utterance in one united cry, to this word of the Prophet: Who hath begotten thee? I was barren and brought not forth, led away, and captive: and who hath brought up these? I was destitute and alone: and these where were they? Then the Lord answering, saith: As I live, thou shalt be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and as a bride thou shalt put them about thee. For thy deserts, and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction shall now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants. The children of thy barrenness shall still say in thine ear: the place is too strait for me, make me more room to dwell in. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nurses. And thou shalt know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be confounded that wait for him.
But it is time to listen to the Liturgical account of Saint Clotilde’s life.
Quote:Clotilde, daughter of king Chilperic, after the murder of her parents was brought up by her uncle Gondebaud, king of Burgundy, who gave her in marriage to Clovis still a pagan. Having brought forth her first-born son, she had him baptized, a thing rather tolerated by Clovis than consented to. The child to whom was given the name of Ingomer, chancing to die while still wearing the white robe of baptism, Clovis bitterly complained to Clotilde, attributing the death of his son to the vengeance of the gods of his fathers, irritated at this contempt offered to their divinity. But Clotilde said: “I give thanks to the Almighty Creator of all things, that he hath not judged me unworthy to give birth to a son whom he hath deigned to admit to share his kingdom.”
Having brought forth a second son, she wished that he likewise should be baptized, and the name of Clodomir was given to him. The child having fallen ill, the king declared that the fate of the brother was to befall this son also; but he was contrariwise, cured by his mother’s prayers. The queen continued to exhort her husband to reject idolatry and to adore the One God in three Persons; Clovis, however, persisted in the superstitions of the Franks, until at length, being on an expedition against the Alamani, and one day seeing his army waver, he remembered the counsels of Clotilde, and implored the help of Christ, who thereupon granted him victory. Clotilde filled with joy came to meet him, as far as Rheims, having learned how all had happened. Saint Remigius, at her request, instructed Clovis in the faith, and baptized him, anointing him likewise with the sacred chrism.
After the death of Clovis, Clotilde settled herself at Tours, where she passed the rest of her life at the tomb of Saint Martin, giving herself up to watching, alms, and other works of piety, exercising her munificence upon churches and monasteries. Clodomir having been killed in the war of Burgundy, she brought up her grandchildren herself, namely Theobald, Gontaire, and Clodoald. At last, full of days, she gave up her soul to God, at Tours, and her body was transferred to Paris, escorted by choirs chanting Psalms. Her sons, the kings Childebert and Clotaire, buried her beside Clovis, in the sanctuary of the Basilica of St. Peter, since called by the name of St. Genevieve.
The glory of miracles illustrating the tomb of this holy queen, at an early date her body was taken up to be honored, and was placed in a shrine. Whenever the city of Paris suffered any calamity, was the custom in ancient times, to carry the body in procession, with every demonstration of piety. At the end of the eighteenth Century, the impious having seized upon the government, the relics of saints being likewise profaned all over France, by sacrilegious fury, the bones, nevertheless, of this blessed queen, thanks to the admirable providence of God, were secreted by some pious persons. Peace being, later on, restored to the Church, the holy relics were placed in a new shrine, and deposited in the Church of Saints Leu-et-Gilles at Paris, where they are honored with fervent worship.
Great is thy glory on earth and in heaven, O Clotilde, Mother of nations! Not only hast thou given to Holy Church that people of France, surnamed the most Christian; but our own England and Spain also, claim their descent from thee (in the pedigree of Faith, that is) by Bertha and Ingonda, thy noble granddaughters. Ingonda, more fortunate than thy daughter Clotilde, succeeded, by the help of Saint Leander of Seville, in bringing back to the true faith, her husband Hermenegilde, and even leading him to the crown of martyrdom. Bertha, queen of our own fair Kent, welcomed Augustine to our Saxon shores and, through her influence, was our royal Ethelbert brought from the darkness of paganism, even unto baptism and the aureola of sanctity: realizing thus that word of the Apostle, that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife. Since those early days, in how many other parts of Europe, and on how many other more distant shores, have not the sons of thine own nation, that nation of which thou wast mother, propagated that light of faith which they received of thee: whether brandishing the sword in defense of the right which belongs to holy Church, the bride of the Man-God, to teach freely and everywhere, the Word of Truth; or whether, becoming themselves missioners and Apostles, carrying the same to infidel nations, far beyond reach of any possible protection, and at the expense of their sweat and of their blood? Happy thou, to be first in bringing forth unto Christ, the King, a nation pure from every stain of heresy and vowed to holy Church from the first moment of her new birth! Rightly indeed the church of Sainte-Marie at Rheims, was the one selected on that Christmas Day of the year 496, for this birth unto God of the Frankish nation; wherein Our Lady in a proportionate manner, gave thee to share her own Motherhood of our race.
There especially lies our motive of confidence in recurring to thee, O Clotilde, in our intercessory prayer this day. Alas! how many of thy sons are far from being what they should be, having such a Mother as thou! But when Our Lady gave thee a share in her own maternal rights, she necessarily, at the same moment, communicated to thee also her own tender compassion, for beguided children deaf to their Mother’s voice. Take pity on these unfortunate sons, led so very far astray, by strange doctrines. The Christian Monarchy founded by thee is no more. Thou didst build it upon the recognized rights of God in his Christ and in the Vicar of his Christ. Princes with short-sighted views of self-interest, traitors to the mission they had received to maintain thy work, imagined they were performing marvels, when they allowed maxims to be spread in thy France, proclaiming the independence of civil power in respect of that of Holy Church; and now by a just retribution, society has proclaimed its independence in respect of Princes! But at the same time, the infatuated populace has really no other idea but that of being its own sovereign, and intoxicated by this false liberty which it dreams to have acquired, it goes so far as to contemn even the supreme dominion of the Creator himself. The rights of man have usurped the rights of God, as the basis of social compact, a new-fangled gospel, that France, now in misled proselytism, is fain to carry over the whole world in place of the true Gospel so loved of yore!
In that unhappy country poisoned by a lying philosophy, such is the excess of delirium, that many who deplore the apostasy of the mass of the population, and wish to remain themselves christians, imagine they can do so, while at the same time, maintaining the destructive principle of Liberalism, the very essence of revolution. Let Christ have Heaven and Souls, say they, but let man have earth, together with full right of governing it as he thinks best or as suits him best. While they fall on their adoring knees before the Divinity of our Lord Jesus, in the sanctuary of their own conscience, they search the Scriptures and are too blind to see there expressed, how the Man-God is and must be King of the whole earth. In learned theses, they inform us that they have probed the very depths of history, and find therein nothing that can contradict their arguments. If indeed they must admit that the government of a Clovis or a Charlemagne, or a Saint Louis, do not correspond in everything to their political axioms, we must, they say, make allowances for those primitive ages: a nation cannot be expected to come in a day, to the perfect age attained at last by the law of progress! Alas! have pity, O dear Mother of France, on the ravings of these poor sons of thine! Arouse once more, in that noble land, the faith of the Franks! Oh! may the god of Clotilde, the Lord of hosts, the King of nations, show himself once more, leading on thy sons to victory, in the name that won for Clovis the field of Tolbiac: Jesus Christ!
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| Prayers in Honor of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-03-2021, 06:35 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lord
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Indulgenced Prayers to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament
O Sacrament most holy! O Sacrament divine! All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine.
(Indulgence 100 days, once a day)
I adore Thee at every moment, O Living Bread of heaven, great Sacrament! Jesus, heart of Mary, I pray you, bless my soul. Holiest Jesus, my Saviour, I give Thee my heart.
(Indulgence 100 days, three times a day)
An Act for Spiritual Communion
by St. Alphonsus de Liguori
My Jesus, I believe that thou art in the Most Holy Sacrament. I love thee above all things, and in my soul I desire thee. Since I cannot receive thee now sacramentally, come at least spiritually to my heart. I embrace thee as already there and unite myself wholly to thee; do not permit that I may ever be separated from thee. Jesus, all my good and all my love, Wound, inflame this heart of mine, that it may all and always burn for Thee.
(An Indulgence of 60, once a day)
Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament
O Virgin Mary, our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, thou glory of the Christian people, joy of the universal Church, salvation of the whole world, pray for us, and awaken in all believers a lively devotion toward the Most Holy Eucharist, that so they may be made worthy to partake of the same daily.
(Indulgence of 500 days. Pius X 1906)
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| Litany of the Blessed Sacrament |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-03-2021, 06:29 AM - Forum: Litanies
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Litany of the Blessed Sacrament
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God, the Father of heaven, Have mercy on us. *
God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, *
God, the Holy Ghost, *
Holy Trinity, one God, *
Living Bread, that camest down from heaven, *
Hidden God and Saviour, *
Wheat of the elect, *
Wine of which virgins are the fruit, *
Bread of fatness and royal dainties, *
Perpetual Sacrifice, *
Clean Oblation, *
Lamb without spot, *
Most pure Feast, *
Food of Angels, *
Hidden manna, *
Memorial of the wonders of God, *
Supersubstantial Bread, *
Word-made-Flesh, dwelling among us, *
Sacred Host, *
Chalice of benediction, *
Mystery of faith, *
Most high and most adorable Sacrament, *
Most holy of all sacrifices, *
True propitiation for the living and the dead, *
Heavenly antidote against the poison of sin, *
Most stupendous of all miracles, *
Holy commemoration of the Passion of Christ, *
Singular pledge of Divine Love, *
Gift of God, exceeding all fulness, *
Affluence of Divine bounty, *
Overflow of Divine liberality, *
Most august and holy Mystery, *
Medicine of immortality, *
Awful and life-giving Sacrament, *
Bread-made-Flesh by the omnipotence of the Word, *
Unbloody Sacrifice, *
Our Food and our Guest, *
Sweetest banquet, at which angels minister, *
Sacrament of piety, *
Bond of unity and charity, *
Priest and Victim, *
Offerer and Oblation, *
Spiritual sweetness, tasted in its very source, *
Refreshment of holy souls, *
Viaticum of those who die in the Lord, *
Pledge of future glory, *
Be merciful: Spare us, O Lord,
Be merciful: Graciously hear us, O Lord
From an unworthy reception of Thy Body and Blood, Deliver us, O Lord. **
From the lust of the flesh, **
From the lust of the eyes, **
From the pride of life, **
From every occasion of sin, **
Through the desire wherewith Thou didst long to eat this pasch with Thy disciples, **
Through that profound humility wherewith Thou didst wash their feet, **
Through that ardent charity whereby Thou didst institute this Divine Sacrament, **
Through Thy Precious Blood, which Thou hast left us on our altars, **
Through the five Wounds which Thou didst receive for us in this Thy most holy Body, **
We sinners: Beseech Thee to hear us.
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to preserve and increase our faith, reverence and devotion toward this admirable Sacrament, We beseech Thee, hear us. ***
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to conduct us, through a true confession of our sins, to frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist, ***
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to deliver us from all heresy, perfidy, and blindness of heart, ***
That Thou wouldst vouchsafe to impart to us the precious and heavenly fruits of this most Holy Sacrament, ***
That Thou wouldst confirm us in Thy grace, ***
That Thou wouldst preserve us from all snares of the enemy, ***
That at the hour of death Thou wouidst strengthen and defend us by this heavenly Viaticum, ***
That Thou wouldst preserve us unto eternal life, ***
Son of God, ***
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world: Spare us, O Jesus!
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world: Hear us, O Jesus!
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world: Have mercy on us, O Jesus!
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
V. Thou hast given them Bread from Heaven,
R. Containing in Itself all sweetness.
Let us pray:
O God, Who in this wonderful Sacrament has bequeathed to us a perpetual memorial of Thy Passion: grant us the grace, we beseech Thee, so to venerate the Sacred Mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, that we may ever feel within us the fruits of Thy redemption. Who livest and reignest, God, world without end. Amen.
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| Feast of Corpus Christi |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-03-2021, 05:53 AM - Forum: Pentecost
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FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
From Fr. Leonard Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year 36th edition, 1880
Why is this day called Corpus Christi?
BECAUSE on this Thursday the Catholic Church celebrates the institution of the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. The Latin term Corpus Christi signifies in English, Body of Christ.
Who instituted this festival?
Pope Urban IV who, in the decree concerning it, gives the following explanation of the institution and grandeur of this festival:
"Although we daily, in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, renew the memory of this holy Sacrament, we believe that we must, besides, solemnly commemorate it every year, to put the unbelievers to shame; and because we have been informed that God has revealed to some pious persons that this festival should be celebrated in the whole Church, we direct that on the first Thursday after the octave of Pentecost the faithful shall assemble in church, join with the priests in singing the word of God," &c
Hence this festival was instituted on account of the greatness of the divine mystery; the unbelief of those who denied the truth of this mystery; and the revelation made to some pious persons. This revelation was made to a nun at Liege, named Juliana, and to her devout friends Eve and Isabella. Juliana, when praying, had frequently a vision in which she saw the bright moon, with one part of it somewhat dark; at her request she received instructions from God that one of the grandest festivals was yet to be instituted: the festival of the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
In 1246, she related this vision to Robert, Bishop of Liege, who after having investigated the matter with the aid of several men of learning and devotion, among whom was Jacob Pantaleon, Archdeacon of Liege, afterwards Pope Urban IV, made arrangements to introduce this festival in his diocese, but death prevented his intention being put into effect. After the bishop's death the Cardinal Legate Hugh undertook to carry out his directions, and celebrated the festival for the first time in the year 1247, in the Church of St. Martin at Liege. Several bishops followed this example, and the festival was observed in many dioceses, before Pope Urban IV in 1264 finally ordered its celebration by the whole Church. This order was confirmed by Clement V at the Council of Vienna in 1311, and the Thursday after the octave of Pentecost appointed for its celebration. In 1317, Pope John XXII instituted the solemn procession.
Why are there such grand processions on this day ?
For a public profession of our holy faith that Christ is really, truly, and substantially present in this Blessed Sacrament; for a public reparation of all the injuries, irreverence, and offences, which have been and are committed by impious men against Christ in this Blessed Sacrament; for the solemn veneration and adoration due to the Son of God in this Sacrament; in thanksgiving for its institution, and for all the graces and advantages received therefrom; and finally, to draw down the divine blessing upon the people and the country.
Had this procession a prototype in the Old Law?
The procession in which was carried the Ark of the Covenant containing the manna, was a figure of this procession.
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The Church sings at the Introit the words of David: He fed them with the fat of wheat, alleluia: and filled them with honey out of the rock. Allel. allel. allel. Rejoice to God our helper; sing aloud to the God of Jacob. (Ps. lxxx.) Glory, &c.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. O God, who under a wonderful sacrament hast left us a memorial of Thy Passion; grant us, we beseech Thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy body and blood, that we may ever feel within us the fruit of thy redemption. Who livest, &c.
EPISTLE. (i Cor. xi. 23—29.) Brethren, I have received of the Lord, that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat; this is my body which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. In like manner also the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This Chalice is the New Testament in my blood: this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until he come. Therefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink of the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthy, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord.
GOSPEL. (John vi. 56—59.) At that time, Jesus said to the multitude of the Jews: My flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth this bread shall live forever.
Quote:The Jews liberated, by the powerful hand of God, from Egyptian captivity, went on dry ground through the midst of the Red Sea, whose waters became the grave of their pursuer, King Pharao, and his whole army. Having arrived in the desert called Sin they began to murmur against Moses and Aaron, their leaders, on account of the want of bread, and demanded to be led back to Egypt where there was plenty. The Lord God took pity on His people. Jn the evening He sent into their camp great flocks of quails, which the Jews caught and ate, and on the morning of the next day the ground was covered with white dew, and in the desert something fine, as if pounded in a mortar, looking like frost on the earth, which as soon as the Jews beheld, they exclaimed in surprise: "Man hu?'' "What is that?'' But Moses said to them: "This is bread which the Lord has given you." And they at once began to collect the food which was white, small as Coriander seed, and tasted like wheat-bread and honey, and was hence- forth called man or manna. God gave them this manna every morning, for forty years, Sabbaths excepted, and the Jews lived upon it in the desert, until they came to the Promised Land. This manna is a figure of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar which contains all sweetness, and nourishes the soul of him who receives it with proper preparation, so that whoever eats it worthily, dies not, though his body sleeps in the grave, for Christ will raise him to eternal life.
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INSTRUCTION ON THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR
What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
IT is that Sacrament in which under the appearance of bread and wine the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are really, truly, and substantially present.
When and in what manner did Christ promise this Sacrament?
About one year before its institution He promised it in the synagogue at Capharnaum, according to St. John the Evangelist: (vi. 24 — 65) When Jesus, near the Tiberian Sea, had fed five thousand men in a miraculous manner with a few small loaves, these men would not leave Him, because they marvelled at the miracle, were anxious for this bread, and desired to make Him their king. But Jesus fled to a high mountain, and in the night went with His disciples to Capharnaum which was a town on the opposite side of the sea; but a multitude of Jews followed Him, and He made use of the occasion to speak of the mysterious bread which He would one day give them and all men. He first exhorted them not to go so eagerly after the perishable bread of the body, but to seek the bread of the soul which lasts forever, and which the Heavenly Father would give them, through Him, in abundance. This im- perishable bread is the divine word, His holy doctrine, especially the doctrine that He had come from heaven to guide us to eternal life. (vers. 25—38.) The Jews murmured because He said that He had come from heaven, but the Saviour quieted them by showing that no one could believe without a special grace from His Heavenly Father (v. 43, 44) that He was the Messiah, and had come from heaven. After this introduction setting forth that the duty of faith in Him and in His divine doctrine was a spiritual nourishment, Christ very clearly unfolded the mystery of another bread for the soul which was to be given only at some future time, and this the Saviour did not ascribe to the Heavenly Father, as He did the bread of the divine word, but to Himself by plainly telling what this bread was: I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If
any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give, is my flesh for the life of the world, (v. 51, 52.)
But the Jews would not believe these words, so clearly expressed, for they thought their fulfilment impossible, and said: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (v. 53.) But Jesus recalled not His words, answered not the Jews' objections, but confirmed that which He had said, declaring with marked emphasis: Amen, amen, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. (v. 54.) He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live forever, (v. 55 — 59.) Jesus, therefore, said distinctly and plainly, that at a future time He would give His own Body and Blood as the true nourishment of the soul; besides, the Jews and the disciples alike received these words in their true, literal sense, and knew that Jesus did not here mention His Body and Blood in a figurative sense, but meant to give them His own real Flesh and Blood for food; and it was because they believed it impossible for Jesus to do this, and because they supposed He would give them His dead flesh in a coarse, sensual manner, that the Jews murmured, and even several of His disciples said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it? But Jesus persisted in His words: My flesh is meat indeed, &c, and calls the attention of His disciples to another miracle: to His future ascension, which would be still more incredible, but would come to pass; and by the words: It is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life, [v. 64) He showed them that this mystery could be believed only by the light and grace of the Holy Spirit, and the partaking of His Body and
Blood would not be in a coarse , sensual manner but in a mysterious way. Notwithstanding this, many of His disciples still found the saying hard, and left Him, and went no longer with Him. ftn 67.) They found the saying hard, because, as our Saviour expressly said, they were lacking in faith. He let them go, and seid to His apostles: Will you also go away? thereby showing that those who left Him, understood Him clearly enough, and that His words did contain something hard for the mind to believe. The apostles did not leave Him, they were too well assured of His divinity, and that to Him all was possible, as St. Peter clearly expresses: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known that thou art Christ, the Son of God. [v. 69, 70.)
From the account given by St. John, it is plainly seen that Christ really promised to give us for our food His most precious Body and Blood, really and substantially, in a wonderful, mysterious manner, and that He did not speak figuratively of faith in Him, as those assert who contemn this most holy Sacrament. If Jesus had so meant it, He would have explained it thus to the Jews and to His disciples who took His words literally, and therefore could not comprehend, how Jesus could give His Flesh and Blood to them for their food. But Jesus persisted in His words, that His Flesh was truly food, and His Blood really drink, He even made it the strictest duty for man to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood; (v. 54) He shows the benefits arising from this nourishment of the soul, (v. 55) and the reason why this food is so necessary and useful, (v. 56.) When His disciples left Him, because it was a hard saying, He allowed them to go, for they would not believe His words, and could not believe them on account of their carnal manner of thinking. This holy mystery must be believed, and cannot be comprehended. Jesus has then promised, as the Catholic Church has always maintained and taught, that His Body and Blood would be present under the appearance of bread and wine in the Blessed Sacrament, a true nourishment for the soul, and that which He promised, He has really given.
When and in what manner did Christ institute the most holy Sacrament of the Altar?
At the Last Supper, on the day before His passion, after He had eaten with His apostles the paschal lamb, which was a prototype of this mystery. Three Evangelists, Matthew, (xxvi. 26 — 29) Mark, (xiv. 22 — 25.) and Luke (xxii. 19 — 20) relate in few, but plain words, that on this evening Jesus took into His hand bread and the chalice, blessed and gave both to His disciples, saying: This is my body, that will be given for you; this is my blood, which will be shed for you and for many. Here took place in a miraculous manner, by the all-powerful word of Christ, the mysterious transformation ; here Jesus gave Him- self to His apostles for food, and instituted that most holy meal of love which the Church says contains all sweetness. That which three Evangelists plainly relate, St. Paul confirms in his first epistle to the Corinthians, (xi. 23 — 29. See this day's epistle) in which to his account of the institution of the Blessed Sacrament he adds: Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, (that is, in a state of sin) shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, (v. 27 — 29.)
From these words and those of the three holy Evangelists already mentioned, it is clear that Jesus really fulfilled His promise, really instituted the most holy Sacrament, and gave His most sacred Body and Blood to the apostles for their food. None of the Evangelists, nor St.Paul, informs us that Christ said: this will become my body, or, this signifies my body. All agree that our Saviour said this is my body, this is my blood, and they therefore decidedly mean us to understand that Christ's body and blood are really, truly, and substantially present under the appearance of bread and wine, as soon as the mysterious change has taken place. And this is confirmed by the words: that is given for you; which shall be shed for you and for many; because Christ gave neither bread nor wine, nor a figure of His Body and Blood, for our redemption, but His real Body, and His real Blood, and St. Paul could not assert that we could eat the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily, if under the appearance of bread and wine were present not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only a figure of them, or if they were only bread and wine. This is also proved by the universal faith of the Catholic Church, which in accordance with Scripture and the oldest, uninterrupted Apostolic traditions* has always believed and taught, that under the appearance of bread and wine the real Body and Blood of Christ are present, as the Ecumenical Council of Trent expressly declares: (Sess. xiii. c. i. can. i. de sacros. Euchar.) "All our ancestors who were of the Church of Christ, and have spoken of this most Blessed Sacrament, have in the plainest manner professed that our Redeemer instituted this wonderful Sacrament at the Last Supper, when, having blessed the bread and wine, He assured the apostles in the plainest and most exact words, that He was giving them His Body and Blood itself; and if any one denies that the holy Eucharist truly,really, and substantially contains the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore the whole Christ, and asserts that it is only a sign or figure without virtue, let him be anathema."
*Thus St. Ignatius, the Martyr, who was instructed by the apostles themselves, rebukes in these words those who even at that time would not believe in the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord: "They do not believe that the real body of Jesus Christ our Redeemer who suffered for us and has risen from death is contained in the Sacrament of the Altar." (Ep. ad Smyr.) Thus St. Ireneus who was a disciple of St. Polycarp, a pupil of St. John the Evangelist, writes : "Of the bread is made the body of Christ." (Lib. IV. adv. haer.) In the same manner St. Cyril: "Since Christ our Lord said of this bread, This is my body, who dares doubt it? Since He said, This is my blood, who dares to say, it is not His blood?" (Lib. iv. regul. Cat.) and in another place: "Bread and wine which before the invocation of the most Holy Trinity were only bread and wine, become after this invocation the body and blood of Christ." (Cat. myrt. i.)
What can the unbelievers say to this testimony? Do they know the truth better than those apostles who themselves saw and heard Jesus at the Last Supper, and who taught their disciples that which they had seen and heard? All Christian antiquity proves the error of these heretics.
Did Christ institute this Sacrament for all time?
Yes; for when He had promised that the bread which He would give, was His flesh for the life of the world, (John. vi. 52.) and had said expressly that whosoever did not eat His Flesh and drink His Blood would not have life in Him, He, at the Last Supper, by the words: Do this for a commemoration of me, (Luke xxii. 19.) gave to the apostles and their successors, the priests, the power in His name to change bread and wine into His Body and Blood, also to receive It and administer It as a food of the soul, which power the apostles and their successors, the priests, have always exercised, (i Cor. x. 16.) and will exercise to the end of the world.
How long after the change does Christ remain present under the appearance of bread and wine?
As long as the appearances remain; this was always the faith of the Church; therefore in the primitive ages when the persecutions were raging, after the sacrifice the sacred body of our Lord was taken home by the Christians to save the mystery from the pagans; at home they preserved it, and received It from their own hands, as affirmed by the holy Fathers of the Church Justin, Cyprian, Basil, and others. But when persecution had ceased, and the Church was permitted to profess the faith openly, and without hinderance, the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in the churches, enclosed in precious vessels, (ciborium, monstrance, or ostensorium) made for the purpose. In later times it was also exposed, on solemn occasions, for public adoration.
Do we Catholics adore bread when we pay adoration to the Blessed Sacrament?
No; we do not adore bread, for no bread is there, but the most sacred Body and Blood of Christ, and wherever Christ is adoration is due Him by man and angels. St. Augustine says: u No one partakes of this Body until he has first adored, and we not only do not sin when we adore It, but would sin if we did not adore It." The Council of Trent excommunicates those who assert that it is not allow- able to adore Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, in the Blessed Sacrament. How unjust are those unbelievers who sneer at this adoration, when it has never entered into the mind of any Catholic to adore the external appearances of this Sacrament, but the Saviour hidden under the appearances; and how grievously do those indifferent Catholics sin who show Christ so little veneration in this Sacrament, and seldom adore Him if at all!
Which are the external signs of this Sacrament?
The form and appearance, or that which appears to our senses , as the figure, the color, and the taste, but the substance of the bread and wine is by consecration changed into the real Body and Blood of Christ, and only the appearance of bread and wine remains, and is observable to the senses.
Where and by whom is this consecration effected?
This consecration is effected on the altar during the holy Sacrifice of the Mass (therefore the name Sacrament of the Altar), when the priest in the name and by the power of Christ pronounces over the bread and wine the words which Christ Himself pronounced when He instituted this holy Sacrament. St. Ambrose writes: "At the moment that the Sacrament is to be accomplished, the priest no longer uses his own words, but Christ's words, therefore Christ's words complete the Sacrament."
Is Christ present under each form?
Christ is really and truly present under both forms, in Divinity and Humanity, Body and Soul, Flesh and Blood. That Jesus is thus present is clear from the words of St. Paul: Knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more. (Rom. vi. 9.) Because Christ dies no more, it naturally follows that He is wholly and entirely present under each form. Hence the council of Trent says: "Whoever denies that in the venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist the whole Christ is present in each of the forms and in each part of each form, where a separation has taken place, let him be anathema."
Then no matter how many receive this Sacrament, does each receive Christ?
Yes, for each of the apostles received Christ entirely, and if God by His omnipotence can cause each individual to rejoice at the same instant in the sun's light, and enjoy its entireness, and if He can make one and the same voice resound in the ears of all the listeners, is He not able to give the body of Christ, whole and entire, to as many as wish to receive It?
Is it necessary that this Sacrament should be received in both forms?
No, for as it has already been said, Christ is wholly present, Flesh and Blood, Humanity and Divinity, Body and Soul, in each of the forms. Christ promises eternal life to the recipient also of one form when He says: If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever, and the bread that I will give, is my flesh for the life of the world. (John. vi. 52.) The first Christians, in times of persecution, received this Sacrament only in the form of bread in their houses. Though in earlier times, the faithful, like the priests partook of the chalice, it was not strictly required, and the Church for important reasons has since ordered the reception of Communion under but one form, because there was danger that the blood of our Lord might be spilled, and thus dishonored ; because as the Blessed Sacrament must always be ready for the sick, it was feared that the form of wine might be injured by long preservation; because many cannot endure the taste of wine; because in some countries there is scarcity of wine, and it can be obtained only at great cost and with much difficulty, and finally, in order to refute the error of those who denied that Christ is entirely present under each form.
Which are the effects of holy Communion?
The graces of this most holy Sacrament are, as the Roman Catechism says, innumerable; it is the fountain of all grace, for it contains the Author of all the Sacraments, Christ our Lord, all goodness and perfection. According to the doctrine of the Church, there are six special effects of grace produced by this Sacrament in those who worthily receive it. It unites the recipient with Christ, which Christ plainly shows when He says: He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me and I in him; (John vi. 57.) hence the name Communion, of which St. Leo writes: "The participation of the Body and Blood of Christ transforms us into that which we receive," and from this union with Christ, our Head, arises also a closer union with our brethren in Christ, into one body, (i Cor. x. 17.) It preserves and increases sanctifying grace, which is the spiritual life of the soul, for our Saviour says: He that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. (John vi. 58.) It diminishes in us concupiscence and strengthens us against the temptations of the devil. St. Bernard says: "This holy Sacrament produces two effects in us, it diminishes sensation in small sins, it removes the full consent in grievous sins; if any of you feel not so often now the harsh emotion of anger, of envy, or impurity, you owe it to the Body and Blood of the Lord;" and St. Chrysostom: "When we communicate worthily we return from the table like fiery lions, terrible to the devils." It causes us to perform good works with strength and courage; for he who abides in Christ, and Christ in him, bears much fruit. (John xv.) It effaces venial sin, and preserves from mortal sin, as St. Ambrose says: "This daily bread is used as a help against daily weakness; and as by the enjoyment of this holy Sacrament, we are made in a special manner the property, the lambs of Christ, which He Him- self nourishes with His own heart's blood, He does not permit us to be taken out of His hands, so long as we cooperate with His grace, by prayer, vigilance, and contest. It brings us to a glorious resurrection and to eternal happiness; for he who communicates worthily, possesses Him w r ho is the resurrection and the life, (John xi. 25.) who has said: He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. (John vi. 55.) He has therefore in Christ a pledge, that he will rise in glory and live for ever. If the receiving of this Sacrament produces such great results, how frequently and with what sincere desire should we hasten to enjoy this heavenly banquet, this fountain of all grace! The first Christians received it daily, and St. Augustine says: "Daily receive, what daily benefits!" and St. Cyril: "The baptized may know that they remove themselves far from eternal life, when they remain a long time from Communion." Ah, whence comes in our days, the indifference, the weakness, the impiety of so many Christians but from the neglect and unworthy reception of Communion ! Christian soul, close not your ears to the voice of Jesus who invites you so tenderly to His banquet: Come to me all you who are heavily laden and I will refresh you. Go often,, very often to Him; but when you go to Him, do not neglect to prepare for His worthy reception, and you will soon feel its effects in your soul.
In what does the worthy preparation for this holy Sacrament consists?
The worthy preparation of the soul consists in purifying ourselves by a sincere confession from all grievous sins, and in approaching the holy table with profound humility, sincere love, and with fervent desire. He who receives holy Communion in the state of mortal sin draws down upon himself, as the apostle says, judgment and condemnation. The worthy preparation of the body consists in fasting from midnight before receiving Communion, and in coming properly dressed to the Lord's banquet.
The holy Sacrament of the Altar is preserved in the tabernacle, in front of which a light is burning day and night, to show that Christ, the light of the world, is here present, that we may bear in mind that every Christian congregation should contain in itself the light of faith, the flame of hope, the warmth of divine love, and the fire of true devotion, by a pious life manifesting and consuming itself, like a light, in the service of God. As a Christian you must believe, that under the appearance of bread Christ is really present in the tabernacle, and that He is your Redeemer, your Saviour, your Lord and King, the best Friend and Lover of your soul, whose pleasure it is to dwell among the children of men; then it is your duty often to visit Him in this most holy Sacrament, and offer Him your homage and adoration. "It is certain," says St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "that next to the enjoyment of this holy Sacrament in Communion, the adoration of Jesus in this Sacrament is the best and most pleasing *of all devotional exercises, and of the greatest advantage to us." Hesitate not, therefore, to practise this devotion. From this day renounce at least a quarter of an hour intercourse with others , and go to church , to entertain yourself there with Christ. Know that the time which you spend in this way, will be of the greatest consolation to you in the hour of death and through all eternity. Visit Jesus not only in the church, but also accompany and adore Him when carried in processions, or to sick persons. You will thus show your Lord the homage due to Him, gather great merits for your- self, and have the sure hope that Christ will one day repay you a hundredfold.
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