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  The Recusant: What Is Uniformitarianism?
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 06:53 PM - Forum: General Commentary - Replies (2)

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 55 [Eastertide 2021]

What Is Uniformitarianism?

Let us turn to the anti-creationist ‘hostile witnesses’ Wikipedia and National Geographic for our evidence, in the hope that it will be less easily dismissed (emphases ours throughout).


Quote:“ ‘Theory of the Earth’ was a publication by James Hutton which laid the foundations for geology. In it he showed [!?] that the Earth is the product of natural forces. What could be seen happening today, over long periods of time, could produce what we see in the rocks. It also hypothesized that the age of the Earth was much older than what biblical literalists claim. This idea, uniformitarianism, was used by Charles Lyell in his work, and Lyell’s textbook was an important influence on Charles Darwin.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Earth)


Quote:“ ‘Principles of Geology: being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation’ is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell that was first published in 3 volumes from 1830 - 1833 … The book established Lyell’s credentials as an important geological theorist and popularized the doctrine of uniformitarianism (first suggested by James Hutton in ‘Theory of the Earth’ published in 1795).

The book is notable for being one of the first to use the term ‘evolution’ in the context of biological speciation. In Lyell’s work, he described the three rules he believes to cause the steady change of the Earth. The first rule is that geologic change comes from slow and continual procedures that have been happening over a long period of time. This rule is the basic ideal of Uniformitarianism […] Lyell’s interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time, a central theme in the Principles, influenced the 22-year-old Charles Darwin, who was given the first volume of the first edition by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, just before they set out (December 1831) on the ship’s second voyage. […] 

Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology was met with a lot of criticism when it was first published. The main argument against Lyell is that he took an a priori approach in his work. This means that Lyell was pulling from a theoretical idea instead of pulling from empirical evidence to explain what was occurring in the geological world. One opponent of Principles of Geology [on] this point was Adam Sedgwick [who argued] that the evidence of geologic events points to a catastrophic event.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Geology)


Quote:“The principle of uniformitarianism is essential to understanding Earth’s history. However, prior to 1830, uniformitarianism was not the prevailing theory. […] Among the scientists who agreed with Hutton was Charles Lyell. […] The combined efforts of Lyell and Hutton became the foundation of modern geology. Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, looked at uniformitarianism as support for his theory of how new species emerge. The evolution of life, he realized, required vast amounts of time, and the science of geology now showed Earth was extremely old.”(https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyc...itarianism)

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  Helpful Info For Those Being Bullied By Employer!
Posted by: Scarlet - 04-17-2021, 04:20 PM - Forum: COVID Vaccines - Replies (1)

VERY CRUCIAL: Help If Your Employer Is Trying To Force You To Take A mRNA or JnJ Jab Against Your Will:
 
source: https://www.exposelockdowns.com/
Hi! A lot of people are coming to me about an employer threatening to fire them if they don’t take the Emergency Authorized inoculation. I’m not a doctor, medical advisor or legal advisor, but I have compiled these resources to help you defend yourself — at least verbally & logically — in explaining to your boss why you don’t want to be forced:

1.) These companies are not liable! The government isn’t liable. The employer trying to force you to take it will most likely not be liable. So who will be liable? No one. You! If you want it, do your thing! But if they’re trying to force you against your will, present them this article & it does a fantastic way of explaining it. 
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html


2.) So far, they are NOT FDA Approved.  It has emergency authorization, but they specifically say it “has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA-approved or cleared product.”  Research & feel free to present this to your employer:

Moderna Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download

Pfizer-BioNTech Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download

The Janssen (J&J) Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/146305/download


3.) These companies have a history your employer should know about. If your employer is trying to force you, guilt you or financially control you into injecting one against your will — while taking NO LIABILITY for an injection that isn’t FDA Approved, ask them if they’ve heard of this:

REUTERS: “J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder” https://www.reuters.com/investigates/spe...on-cancer/

REUTERS: “Johnson & Johnson sets aside almost $4 billion for talc verdict, filing shows”: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johns...SKBN2AN07W

CNN (2011): Johnson & Johnson settles U.S. Bribery Charges: https://money.cnn.com/2011/04/08/news/co.../index.htm
Department of Justice (2013): “Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/johnson-j...stigations

REUTERS (2012) Pfizer settles foreign bribery case with US government: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfize...WM20120807

Does your employer want to be liable if they force you to take the jab?  These companies aren’t going to be liable. 

I believe in freedom & personal choice when it comes to this inoculation. If you want to get it, do your thing! Good luck & God Bless. But this is a resource for those being bullied, pressured or financially forced by their workplace against their will. Please let people know to follow me on Telegram or point a friend/family member to this if they need articles, resources, facts, proof & a sound three step explanation to stand their ground.

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  Biden-Harris Administration to Ramp Up Experiments Using Aborted Baby Body Parts
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:43 AM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Biden-Harris Administration to Ramp Up Experiments Using Aborted Baby Body Parts

[Image: Human-Fetal-Tissue-640x480.jpg]

In this photo taken Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, Cate Dyer, chief executive officer and founder of StemExpress, poses at the company's office in Placerville, Calif. 
StemExpress is a broker in human tissue, which includes the fetal tissue that is at the heart of the Planned Parenthood video controversy.


Breitbart | 16 Apr 20210

The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it is reversing the Trump administration’s decision to end taxpayer funding for experimental research that uses fetal tissue derived from aborted babies.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency under the authority of HHS, announced Friday an “Update on Changes to NIH Requirements Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research”:
Quote:On June 5, 2019, HHS announced that NIH intramural research that requires new acquisition of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will not be conducted. Simultaneously, HHS announced new requirements for documentation and review by an Ethics Advisory Board of extramural research applications for NIH grants, cooperative agreements, and R&D contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions.

This notice informs the extramural research community that HHS is reversing its 2019 decision that all research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board. Accordingly, HHS/NIH will not convene another NIH Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board.

The announcement refers to the fact that, in addition to ending internal research with fetal tissue from elective abortions, the Trump administration applied a rigorous ethics review protocol in considering funding for research outside of its department – both of which the Biden-Harris HHS is overturning.

According to the Hill, on Thursday Planned Parenthood ally Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, indicated during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing the announcement of the reversal of the Trump administration policy would be forthcoming.

“We believe that we have to do the research that it takes to make sure that we’re incorporating innovation and getting all of those types of treatments and therapies out there to the American people,” Becerra said.

The announcement comes on the heels of a letter this week from abortion industry allies and Democrat lawmakers Reps. Suzan DelBene (WA), Jan Schakowsky (IL), and Mark Pocan (WI), who urged Becerra to “immediately revoke the Trump Administration’s policies restricting fetal tissue use in biomedical research.”

“Fetal tissue is an irreplaceable resource for research that has led to numerous scientific and medical advances and contributed to the development of new therapies for many devastating diseases, including COVID-19,” the pro-abortion members of Congress wrote, adding the Trump administration’s bans on taxpayer-funded research using the body parts of aborted babies “continue to threaten scientific and medical advances.”

“The Trump Administration’s policy was politically motivated and unnecessary,” the lawmakers said, claiming as well that tissue from aborted babies is required to create treatments for “Zika, HIV, and COVID-19,” as well as “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), spinal cord injury, and Parkinson’s disease.”

As AFP reported, in March 2020, Becerra, the former attorney general of California, organized a coalition of attorneys general from 14 other states to lift the Trump administration’s ban on taxpayer-funded fetal tissue research under the guise tissue from aborted babies would be required to develop vaccines for the coronavirus.

National pro-life researchers and leaders have long warned of the co-dependent relationship between abortion industry leaders such as Planned Parenthood and Democrat politicians.

Dr. Tara Sander Lee, senior fellow and director of life sciences at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement the Biden-Harris administration’s “decision to resume experiments using the body parts of aborted children defies both the best ethics and most promising science.”

Lee asserted the claims of Democrats that tissue from the bodies of aborted babies is essential to develop essential drugs are false:
Quote:Exploiting the bodies of these young human beings is unnecessary and grotesque. Fetal tissue was not, and has never been, used for polio or any other vaccine, nor to produce or manufacture any pharmaceutical. There are superior and ethical alternatives available such as adult stem cell models being used by countless scientists worldwide to develop and produce advanced medicines treating patients now, without exploitation of any innocent life. All scientists should reject the administration’s attempts to prey on fears related to the pandemic to advance the practice of harvesting fetal tissue.





Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser also said in the statement that Biden and Harris are “working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra” and are “moving rapidly to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration.” Dannenfelser added:
Quote:From day one they have sought to expand abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, against the will of the strong majority of Americans. Now they would force Americans to be complicit in barbaric experiments using body parts harvested from innocent children killed in abortions, with no limits of any kind.

Last week, legal watchdog organization Judicial Watch provided a nearly 600-page report that included uncovered emails of conversations between Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees and the California-based biomedical company Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). The emails revealed the U.S. government had been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts.

According to the report, the FDA purchased the body parts, which were derived from babies aborted at up to 24-weeks’ gestation, in order to engineer humanized mice and perform experimental drug research.

The Federalist reported on the Judicial Watch revelation:
Quote:Emails between FDA officials and ABR employees reveal disturbing conversations as they collaborate to buy and sell aborted fetuses. Records indicate ABR was paid $12,000 upfront per baby, some survivable out of the womb, between the gestational age of 16-24 weeks. Most purchases are for intact thymuses and livers shipped “Fresh; on wet ice.”

With the callousness of picking a cut of meat from a butcher shop, an FDA doctor requests tissue samples be procured from a baby boy, as they claim “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.”



In August 2018, a report at CNSNews.com noted FDA signed a contract with ABR a month earlier and paid the company $15,900 for the fetal tissue from abortions, according to a General Services Administration contract.

The report followed several years of congressional investigation into the abortion industry’s alleged complicit relationship with biomedical companies, such as ABR, that purchase the body parts of aborted babies.

The U.S. Department of Justice was supposed to have launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s practices with regard to the sale of fetal body parts last December 2017, but further information about the investigation never materialized.

In December 2016, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter to Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI director James Comey, informing them he was referring “the paid fetal tissue practices of the following organizations…to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and potential prosecution.”

ABR was among the organizations named:
  • StemExpress, LLC;
  • Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.
  • Novogenix Laboratories, LLC
  • Planned Parenthood Mar Monte
  • Planned Parenthood Los Angeles
  • Planned Parenthood Northern California
  • Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest

Grassley said in a statement at the time:
Quote:I don’t take lightly making a criminal referral. But, the seeming disregard for the law by these entities has been fueled by decades of utter failure by the Justice Department to enforce it. And, unless there is a renewed commitment by everyone involved against commercializing the trade in aborted fetal body parts for profit, then the problem is likely to continue.


The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), with project lead David Daleiden, conducted an undercover investigation exposing the alleged illegal practices of Planned Parenthood and its partners in the fetal tissue procurement industry.


“This type of experimental research is a gross violation of human dignity and is not where the majority of Americans want their tax dollars being spent,” said Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action. “The government has no business creating a marketplace for aborted baby body parts.”



Family Research Council President Tony Perkins also said:
Quote:As expected, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fanatical advocate for abortion, announced the Biden administration will now force American taxpayers to pay for barbaric experiments using the body parts of aborted babies. Instead of using ethical and effective alternatives, Biden is choosing to reinstate a policy that traffics in the grizzly remains of what would have been our next generation.

“The fact is that the remains of aborted babies have not been used to create the cure of a single disease,” Perkins added. “It’s clear that the NIH under President Biden means to do the opposite of ‘follow the science.’”

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  Argentinian pro-abortion leader dies during abortion procedure
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:31 AM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Argentinian pro-abortion leader dies during abortion procedure
After Argentina legalized abortion, the abortion activist's death is the first recorded since the pro-abortion law was passed at the end of 2020.

rmx.news | April 15, 2021

Spanish language media reported last Sunday that radical pro-abortion supporter Maria de Valle Gonzalez Lopez died during what she labeled her “dream” abortion operation. She was 23 years old and was the leader of the Radical Youth in the La Paz municipality in the province of Mendoza. Her death has sparked a fierce debate about abortion in Argentina and led for calls for women to know that the procedure can sometimes carry serious risks.

On April 11, the woman underwent a legal abortion procedure in a local hospital. The operation turned out to be fatal for her. This fact came as a shock to the public as this was the first recorded death following the approval of the country's controversial pro-abortion bill passed on December 30, 2020, which legalized abortion in some cases. Previously, abortion was illegal in the predominately Catholic country.

Dr. Luis Durand, an Argentinian surgeon, told ACI Prensa journalists that “while some believe that the death of the young woman could’ve occurred due to some misconduct, in reality abortion is not a medical practice. Just a few months ago, it was a crime under Argentinian law. In the case of abortion, the death of the child is always brutal. It is burned through injecting substances into the uterus, or it is removed through dismemberment, or it is subjected to extreme uterus spasms which asphyxiate it.”

Durand added that an infection or sepsis may appear in women who take the drug Misoprostol when doctors fail to complete extract the child and his or her remains linger in the woman's uterus.

“This is why it is false premise to believe that such a procedure is truly safe,” he said.

Walter Sanchez Silva, the author of the ACI Prensa article, wrote that the silence of feminists surrounding Maria del Valle Gonzalez Lopez’s death is striking.

Some are pointing to what they believe is a double-standard in the case. Pro-life leader Guadalupe Batallan posted the following entry on her Twitter account on Monday, writing, “If Maria had died as a result of an abortion carried out in the abortion underground, the feminists would’ve razed the town. But since Maria died as a result of a legal abortion, her death has been erased.”

There is no such thing as a safe abortion for women.

Despite what women may believe, the pro-life leader says there is no such thing as a safe abortion.

Argentina's pro-abortion movement has offered inspiration to Poland's pro-abortion movement, with activists drawing parallels to the fact that both countries are very Catholic yet Argentina's movement was able to end the country's restrictions on abortion.

The slogan of a left-wing Polish group known as Manifa was: “Argentinian women are giving us an example of how we can prevail”.

Meanwhile, the manifesto of the Polish Abortion Dream-Team was, “We should be victorious like Argentinians!”

Those in the Polish pro-life movement indicate that any such "victory" always amounts to the death of a child, sometimes deep trauma for the woman, and in rare cases, can even lead to the death of both individuals.

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  New study puts COVID infection fatality rate at only 0.15 percent
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:29 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

New study puts COVID infection fatality rate at only 0.15 percent
The evaluations in the report find their basis in seroprevalence studies, that is detecting the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the blood serum of a population.

STANFORD, California, April 16, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A new study released by Professor John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford University, California, has found that the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 is significantly lower than previous studies indicated. According to Ioannidis, a medicine and epidemiology professor, the virus is less deadly than once thought, registering at a mere 0.15% fatality rate.

Ioannidis’ research, published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, considered data collected from six “systematic evaluations” of global infection with the novel coronavirus, each one taking account of between 10 and 338 individual studies from 9 to 50 countries around the world. The evaluations in Ioannidis’ report find their basis in seroprevalence studies, that is detecting the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) in the blood serum of a population.

Seroprevalence studies differ from typical national statistics of PCR-based “confirmed cases” of the virus inasmuch as they do not simply detect active traces of SARS-CoV-2, but rather the presence of COVID antibodies, thus counting those individuals infected with the pathogen at some point but who may or may not have active viral material in their body at the time of testing.

As such, individuals who would not have been counted by PCR testing as a positive case — the discredited method used in the daily COVID infection count by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as many international government health agencies — ­will be picked up by seroprevalence analysis, which identifies the spread of the virus in such cases, painting a clearer picture of viral spread within a population.

In producing his own estimate of the infection rates and related IFR of COVID-19, Ioannidis highlighted the importance of an overview of the relevant estimates globally, given that such estimates “feed into projections that influence decision-making,” including public policy. In order to avoid the “uncertainty and unclear generalizability” arising from single studies, Ioannidis took six large-scale evaluations, spanning numerous countries and including many hundreds of studies.

Aggregating the six systematic evaluations, Ioannidis found that all “seroprevalence data converge that SARS-CoV-2 infection has been very widely spread globally,” resulting in a global IFR of “approximately 0.15% with 1.5-2.0 billion infections as of February 2021.” The IFR calculated in Ioannidis’ latest research is a revision of his previous findings, which concluded that COVID-19 had a 0.23% IFR, making COVID-19 around 1.5 times less deadly than previously thought. In concrete terms, the revised IFR puts COVID-19 a bit higher in fatality rate than Influenza, which generally sits at 0.1% IFR.

Ioannidis did admit, however, that despite garnering data from over 50 countries, the studies lacked an even global reach overall, with 72% to 91% of seroprevalence data originating in Europe and North America. A disproportionately small pool of data was collected from Africa and Asia.

According to Ioannidis, the majority of the evaluations used in his report reached “congruent estimates of global pandemic spread.” These estimates show around 600 million people were already infected with the virus before the end of November 2020, not taking account of infections in the bulk of Africa and Asia. Adjusted to include national statistics of viral infection from these regions, Ioannidis concluded that around 1 billion people worldwide had come into contact with SARS-CoV-2 before the end of November.

“By extrapolation, one may cautiously estimate [approximately] 1.5 – 2.0 billion infections as of 21 February 2021 (compared with 112 million documented cases),” Ioannidis said. “This corresponds to global IFR [of approximately] 0.15%,” a figure, he noted, that is “open to adjustment for any over- and under-counting of COVID-19 deaths.”

Although Ioannidis provided a generalized estimate, he noted that large discrepancies exist in the actual IFR in localized areas, such as specific countries, and even inside regions within a nation’s borders. As an example, he pointed to the disparity in fatality rates related to COVID-19 between disadvantaged New Orleans districts and the affluent Silicon Valley.

“Differences are driven by population age structure, nursing home populations, effective sheltering of vulnerable people, medical care, use of effective or detrimental treatments,” he explained. “IFR will depend on settings and populations involved. For example, even ‘common cold’ coronaviruses have IFR [of approximately] 10% in nursing home outbreaks,” almost 67 times greater than the average global IFR of COVID-19, per Ioannidis’ study.

Among his findings, Ioannidis flagged a “problematic” reliance on “[c]orrection of COVID‐19 death counts through excess deaths” to show COVID as causing widespread mortality. Ioannidis noted that excess deaths reflect “both COVID‐19 deaths and deaths from measures taken,” to wit, the deadly impact caused by lockdown measures.

Ioannidis went on to explain that “[y]ear‐to‐year variability [in excess deaths] is substantial,” especially when adjusted for age categorizations. On account of the widely varying death toll, such comparisons with the multiple average year-to-year fatality rates “is naïve, worse in countries with substantial demographic changes,” Ioannidis claimed.

As an example, the eminent professor pointed to Germany, which recorded an excess of 8,071 deaths in the first wave of COVID-19, from week 10 to week 23 last year. This excess, when adjusted for demographic changes, “became a deficit of 4926 deaths.” In other words, the death rate dropped far below what might otherwise have been expected.


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  Federal Government Caught Buying ‘Fresh’ Flesh Of Aborted Babies Who Could Have Survived As Preemies
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 05:07 PM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Federal Government Caught Buying ‘Fresh’ Flesh Of Aborted Babies Who Could Have Survived As Preemies
Americans should be outraged their government participates in the wide-scale human trafficking operation that created a market for harvesting the organs of murdered infants.


The Federalist | April 15, 2021


This article contains disturbing information about human dismemberment.

Last week, legal accountability group Judicial Watch dropped a bombshell: a nearly 600-page report proving the U.S. government has been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts. These body parts, purchased by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “humanize” mice and test biologic drugs in scientific experiments, came from babies up to 24-weeks-old gestation, just weeks from being born.

While Americans may be used to hearing pro-lifers beat the warning drum on abortion groups harvesting baby bodies and selling them for research, (who hasn’t heard of the lawsuit against David Daleiden, who exposed Planned Parenthood haggling over baby lungs and livers at dinner parties?) this time, the U.S. government was the one trafficking baby parts.

Recent emails uncovered by Judicial Watch between FDA employees and the California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) prove the agency spent tens of thousands of dollars buying aborted babies for unethical scientific experiments between 2012 and 2018. In 2018, the Trump administration terminated the contract, halting government fetal tissue research due to concerns the contracts were unlawful. Judicial Watch’s new FOIA Request adds 575 pages of records to its existing 2019 lawsuit against the agency.


Caught Red-Handed

This is not the first time ABR has been in the spotlight, as the company was under congressional investigation for its long-standing involvement in fetal tissue trafficking. One of the oldest fetal tissue procurement firms, the company makes millions every year by harvesting organs like lungs, livers, eyeballs, and brains from aborted babies and re-selling them at a profit.

Emails between FDA officials and ABR employees reveal disturbing conversations as they collaborate to buy and sell aborted fetuses. Records indicate ABR was paid $12,000 upfront per baby, some survivable out of the womb, between the gestational age of 16-24 weeks. Most purchases are for intact thymuses and livers shipped “Fresh; on wet ice.”

With the callousness of picking a cut of meat from a butcher shop, an FDA doctor requests tissue samples be procured from a baby boy, as they claim “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.”

Even more appalling is an ABR employee complaining about the difficulty of identifying the sex of aborted babies. “We only check external genitalia and if it’s not there … we have no way of telling.” The fact techs are unable to identify the sex of aborted babies is no surprise to those familiar with the barbaric nature of abortion procedures, which require clinic staff to piece together mangled remains of babies after their limbs and organs are torn apart.

As if these casual orders weren’t horrific enough, more emails confirm that the FDA bought organs of babies who were aborted well after 20 weeks gestation, after the time a baby usually can survive outside the womb. If nothing else, this confirms the reality of late-term abortions in the United States, which pro-abortion cheerleaders have denied for decades.

When an ABR employee reassured the FDA they were working with doctors who performed late-term abortions, he admitted some tissue was unusable from a procedure that injects a poison called digoxin into the baby, destroying its cells and tissues. Once the chemical has done its work, an intact, dead baby is delivered. This method makes fetal tissue specimens unusable in experiments; with digoxin off the table, the likelihood partial-birth abortions were used is sickeningly high.

These conversations should shock even those who are pro-abortion, most of whom believe in significant term restrictions. Babies at this level of development possess all characteristics necessary for surviving life outside the womb and premature children born as young as 21 weeks go on to lead healthy, thriving lives.


An Atrocity Against Human Dignity

These gruesome excerpts are just a sample of records substantiating the 2019 lawsuit Judicial Watch filed against HHS, which houses the FDA. In March this year, a federal court ordered the agency to release records it withheld about purchasing organs of aborted babies, saying it found “reason to question” the transactions violated federal law.

The court’s decision found that the U.S. government bought second-trimester livers, thymuses, brains, eyes, and lungs for hundreds of dollars apiece from ABR, stating ABR could collect “over $2,000 on a single fetus it purchased … for $60” and “the federal government participated in this potentially illicit trade for years.”

Americans should be outraged their government participates in the wide-scale human trafficking operation that created a market for harvesting the organs of murdered infants. In no humane society could such a violation of the human body and dignity occur, in which babies’ eyes are “harvested immediately upon death,” organs marketed based on sex, and personhood attributed to mice but not children.

Until demanded otherwise, our society is complicit in the unchecked abuse and commodification of preborn children. Moral urgency is incumbent on us to condemn these atrocities sanctioned by the federal government’s lead medical researchers and fight to stop them. We may lose more battles before we win, but we cannot say we never knew.

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  Garcia Moreno
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 12:54 PM - Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith - Replies (1)

Gabriel García Moreno

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnobility.org%2Fwp-conte...f=1&nofb=1]

Ecuadorean patriot and statesman; b. at Guayaquil, 24 December, 1821; assassinated at Quito, 6 August, 1875.


His father, Gabriel García Gomez, a native of Villaverde, in Old Castile, had been engaged in commerce at Callao before removing to Guayaquil, where he married Dona Mercedes Moreno, the mother of the future Ecuadorean martyr president. Gabriel García Gomez died while his son was still young, and the boy's education was left to the care of his mother, who appears to have been a woman of unusual ability for her task; she was, moreover, fortunate in securing as her son's tutor Fray José Betancourt, the famous Mercedarian, under whose tuition young García Moreno made rapid progress. A great part of his father's fortune having been lost, it was not without some considerable sacrifices that the youth was able to attend the university course at Quito. These material obstacles once overcome, he passed brilliantly through the schools, distancing all his contemporaries, and on 26 October, 1844, received his degree in the faculty of law (Doctor en Jurisprudencia) from the University of Quito.

In less than a year after his graduation young García Moreno had begun to take an active part in Ecuadorean politics, joining in the revolutionary movement which eventually replaced the Flores administration by that of Roca (1846). He soon distinguished himself as a political satirist by contributions to "El Zurriago", but what more truly presaged the achievements of his riper life was his good and useful work as a member of the municipal council of Quito. At the same time he was studying legal practice, and on 30 March, 1848, was admitted advocate. Immediately after this the deposed Flores, supported by the Spanish government, made an attempt to regain the presidency of Ecuador; García Moreno unhesitatingly came forward in support of the Roca administration, and when that administration fell, in 1849, he entered upon his first period of exile.

After some months spent in Europe he returned to his native republic in the employ of a mercantile concern, and it was then that he took the first decisive step which marked him conspicuously for the enmity of the anti-Catholics, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the Liberals. At Panama he had fallen in with a party of Jesuits who had been expelled from the Republic of New Granada and wished to find asylum in Ecuador. García Moreno constituted himself the protector of these religious, and they sailed with him for Guayaquil; but on the same vessel that carried the Jesuits and their champion, an envoy from New Granada also took passage for the express purpose of bringing diplomatic influence to bear with the dictator, Diego Noboa, to secure their exclusion from Ecuadorean territory.

No sooner had the vessel entered the harbour of Guayaquil than García Moreno, slipping into a shore boat, succeeded in landing some time before the New Granadan envoy; the necessary permission was acquired from the Ecuadorean government, and the Jesuits obtained a foothold in that country. How soon the report of this exploit spread among the anti-Catholics of South America was evidenced by the fact that within a year Jacobo Sánchez, a New Granadan, had attacked García Moreno in the pamphlet "Don Felix Frias en Paris y los Jesuitas en el Ecuador", to which García Moreno's reply was an able "Defensa de los Jesuitas".

In 1853 he began to publish "La Nación", a periodical which, according to its prospectus, was intended to combat the then existing tendency of the government to exploit the masses for the material benefit of those who happened to be in power. At the same time García Moreno's programme aimed distinctly and professedly to defend the religion of the people. He was already known as a friend of the Jesuits; he now assumed the role of friend of the common people, to which he adhered sincerely and consistently to the day of his death. The Urbina faction, then in power, were quick to recognize the importance of "La Nación", which was suppressed before the appearance of its third number, and its proprietor was exiled, for the second time.

Having been, meanwhile, elected senator by his native province of Guayaquil, he was prevented from taking his seat, on the ground that he had returned to Quito without a passport. After a sojourn at Paita, García Moreno once more visited Europe. He was now thirty-three years of age, and his experience of political life in Ecuador had deeply convinced him of his people's need of enlightenment. It was undoubtedly with this conviction as his guide and incentive that he spent a year or more in Paris, foregoing every form of pleasure, a severe, indefatigable student not only of political science, but also of the higher mathematics, of chemistry, and of the French public school system.

On his return home, under a general amnesty in 1850, he became rector of the central University of Quito; a position of which he availed himself to commence lectures of his own in physical science. Next year he was active in the senate in opposition to the Masonic party, which had gained control of the government, while at the same time he persistently and forcibly, though unsuccessfully, struggled for the passage of a law establishing a system of public education modelled on that of France. In 1858 he once more established a paper, "La Union Naciónal", which became obnoxious to the government by its fearless exposure of corruption and its opposition to the arbitrary employment of authority; and once more a political crisis ensued.

García Moreno was on principle an advocate of orderly processes of government, and that his professions in this regard were sincere his subsequent career fairly demonstrated, but at this juncture he was obliged to realize that his country was in the grip of a corrupt oligarchy, bent upon the suppression of the Church to which the whole mass of his fellow countrymen were devoted, and disposed to keep the masses in ignorance so as to sway them the more easily to its own ends. He had, years before, attacked "the revolutionary industry", a phrase probably first used by him, in the prospectus of "La Nación"; it now became necessary for him to descend to revolutionary methods.

Besides, the little Republic of Ecuador was at this time menaced by its more powerful neighbour on the south, Peru. García Moreno, if he was sure of opposition at the hands of the soi-disant Liberals, was also, by this time, recognized by the masses as a leader loyal to both their common Faith and their common country, and thus he was able to organize the revolution which made him head of a provisional government established at Quito. The republic was now divided, General Franco being at the head of a rival government established at Guayaquil.

In vain did García Moreno offer to share his authority with his rival for the sake of national unity. As a defensive measure against the threat of Peruvian invasion, García Moreno entered into negotiations with the French envoy with a view to securing the protection of France, a political mistake of which his enemies knew how to avail themselves to the utmost. He was now obliged to assume the character of a military leader, for which he possessed at least the qualifications of personal courage and decisive quickness of resolution. While García Moreno inflicted one defeat after another upon the partisans of Franco, the latter, as representing Ecuador, had concluded with Peru the treaty of Mapasingue. The people of Ecuador rose in indignation at the concessions made in this treaty, and Franco, even his own followers being alienated, was defeated at Babahoya (7 August, 1860) and again at Salado River, where he was driven to take refuge on a Peruvian vessel.

When his adversary had been forcibly driven from the country, García Moreno showed his magnanimity in the proclamation in which he sought to heal as quickly as possible the scars of this civil war: "The republic should regard itself as one family; the old demarcations of districts must be so obliterated as to render sectional ambitions impossible". In the reorganization of the Constituent Assembly, which was summoned to meet in January, 1861, he insisted that the suffrage should not be territorial, but "direct and universal, under the necessary guarantees of intelligence and morality, and the number of representatives should correspond (proportionally) to that of the electors represented". The Convention, which met on 10 January, elected García Moreno president; he delivered his inaugural address on the 2d of April following. Then began that series of reforms among which were the restitution of the rights of the Church and a radical reconstruction of the fiscal system. In the immediate present he had to deal with the machinations of his old adversary Urbina, who, from his retirement in Peru, kept up incessant intrigues with the opposition at home, and still more with the governments of neighbouring republics. García Moreno soon came to a sensible and honourable understanding with the Peruvian government.

A violation of Ecuadorean territory by New Granada, though it led to a hostile collision in which García Moreno himself took part, had no serious consequences until the Arboledo administration gave place to that of General Mosquera, whose ambition it was to make New Granada the nucleus of a great "Colombian Confederation", in which Ecuador was to be included. Urbina was not above writing encouraging letters to the New Granadan or Colombian dictator who was scheming against the independence of Ecuador. An invitation to García Moreno to confer with Mosquera elicited a very plain intimation that, so far as the national obliteration of Ecuador was concerned, there was nothing to confer about. But in the meantime the Republic of Ecuador had ratified a concordat with Pope Pius IX (1862), and the discontent of the Regalista party at home with the provisions of that instrument gave Mosquera an excellent pretext for encroaching upon his neighbour's rights.

The Regalistas were, without knowing it, a kind of Erastians, who claimed the appointment to ecclesiastical benefices as an inalienable right of the civil power. The President of Ecuador was charged with "casting Colombia, manacled, at the feet of Rome"; Urbina issued "manifestos" from Peru in the sense of "South America for the South Americans"; while the proclamation of President Mosquera recited, with others which seem to have been introduced merely for the sake of appearances, his three really significant grounds of complaint against García Moreno: that the latter had ratified the concordat; that he maintained a representative of the Holy See at Quito; that he had brought Jesuits into Ecuador. It may be remarked here, in passing, that if Mosquera had added to this catalogue of offences those of insisting upon free primary education for the masses, upon strict auditing of the public accounts, and a considerable bona fide outlay upon roads and other public utilities, his proclamation might have served adequately as the indictment upon which García Moreno was condemned and eventually put to death by those whom Pius IX ironically called "the valiant sectaries".

Mosquera was determined to have war, and all the efforts of the Ecuadorean government were of no avail to prevent it. At the battle of Cuaspud all but two battalions of the forces of Ecuador fled ignominiously. It is a matter for wonder, considering the grounds upon which he had declared war, that Mosquera, in the Peace of Pinsaquí, which followed this victory, should have left the Concordat of 1862, the delegate Apostolic, and the Jesuits just as they were. In March,1863, García Moreno tendered his resignation to the National Assembly, who insisted upon his remaining in office until the expiration of his term. Nevertheless he had to face, during the next two years, repeated seditions and filibustering raids. After sparing the lives of the leaders in one of these movements, though they had by all law and custom incurred the penalty of death, he was severely criticized for ordering the execution of another such when it had become evident that an example was necessary for the peace of the republic. In a naval battle at Jambelí (27 June, 1865) at which García Moreno was personally present, the defeat of the Urbina forces was complete, and tranquillity reigned until the presidential term expired on the 27th of the following August.

In the following year began what may be considered as a connected series of attempts which terminated, nine years later, in the assassination of García Moreno. The dispute between Spain and Peru over the Chinchas Islands had led to a war in which, following García Moreno's advice, his successor Jeronimo Carrión had cast in the lot of Ecuador with that of the sister republic and its then ally, Chile. The ex-president was sent as minister plenipotentiary to Chile, with a commission to transact business with President Prado of Peru on his way. On his arrival at Lima an attempt was made to assassinate him, but it ended in the death of his assailant. His diplomatic mission resulted excellently for the friendly relations between Ecuador and its neighbours; the sojourn at Santiago also inspired García Moreno with a high admiration for Chile, and he even made up his mind to attempt a change of the Ecuadorean constitution so as to make it more like that of Chile, a project which he carried into effect in the National Convention of 1869. On his return to Ecuador he found himself a second time in the uncongenial position of leader of a revolution. To anticipate a plot which the Liberals, led by one of Urbina's relations, were known to be forming, the conservatives of Ecuador had risen, declared Carrión deposed, and made García Moreno head of the provisional government. The justice of the grounds on which this extreme action was taken was established by the attempt of Veintemilla, at Guayaquil, only two months later, in March, 1869.

Having been duly confirmed as president ad interim by the National Convention of May, 1869, García Moreno resumed his work for the enlightenment, as well as the religious well-being, of his people. It was in these last years of his life that he did so much for the teaching of physical sciences in the university by introducing there the German Fathers of the Society of Jesus. The medical schools and hospitals of the capital benefited vastly by his intelligent and zealous efforts. In September, 1870, the troops of Victor Emmanuel occupied Rome; and on 18 January, 1871, García Moreno, alone of all the rulers of the world, addressed a protest to the King of Italy on the spoliation of the Holy See. The pope marked his appreciation of this outburst of loyalty by conferring on the President of Ecuador the decoration of the First Class of the Order of Pius IX, with a Brief of commendation dated, 27 March, 1871. It was, on the other hand, notorious that certain lodges had formally decreed the death of García Moreno, who, in a letter to the pope, used about this time the following almost prophetic words: "What riches for me, Most Holy Father, to be hated and calumniated for my love for our Divine Redeemer! What happiness if your benediction should obtain for me from Heaven the grace of shedding my blood for Him, who being God, was willing to shed His blood for us upon the Cross!" The object of numberless plots against his life, García Moreno pursued his way with unruffled confidence in the future — his own and his country's. "The enemies of God and the Church can kill me", he once said, "but God does not die" (Dios no muere).

He had been re-elected president, and would soon have entered upon another term of office, when, towards the end of July, 1875, the police of Quito were apprised that a party of assassins had begun to dog García Moreno's footsteps. When, however, the chief of police warned the intended victim, the latter so discouraged all attempts to hedge him about with precautions, as to almost excuse the carelessness of his official guardians. It came out in evidence that within the fortnight preceding the finally successful attempt, the same assassins had at least twice been foiled by the president's failing to appear on occasions when he had been expected. Finally, on the evening of 6 August, the assassins found their prey unprotected, leaving the house of some very dear friends; they followed him until he had reached the Treasury, and there Faustino Rayo, the leader of the band, suddenly attacked him with a machete, inflicting six or seven wounds, while the other three assisted in the work with their revolvers. On hearing of the death of García Moreno, Pope Pius IX ordered a solemn Mass of Requiem to be celebrated in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The same sovereign pontiff erected to his memory, in the Collegio Pio-Latino, at Rome, a monument on which García Moreno is designated:

Religionis integerrimus custos
Auctor studiorum optimorum
Obsequentissimus in Petri sedem
Justitiae cultor; scelerum vindex.

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  Pope St. Pius V: Regnans in Excelsis - Excommunicating Elizabeth I of England
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:56 AM - Forum: Papal Documents and Bulls - No Replies

Regnans in Excelsis
Excommunicating Elizabeth I of England


Pius Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in lasting memory of the matter.

He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and earth, has committed one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon earth, namely to Peter, the first of the apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the pope of Rome, to be by him governed in fullness of power. Him alone He has made ruler over all peoples and kingdoms, to pull up, destroy, scatter, disperse, plant and build, so that he may preserve His faithful people (knit together with the girdle of charity) in the unity of the Spirit and present them safe and spotless to their Saviour.

1. In obedience to which duty, we (who by God’s goodness are called to the aforesaid government of the Church) spare no pains and labour with all our might that unity and the Catholic religion (which their Author, for the trial of His children’s faith and our correction, has suffered to be afflicted with such great troubles) may be preserved entire. But the number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gather with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom- which had already been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits- to a miserable ruin.

2. Prohibiting with a strong hand the use of the true religion, which after its earlier overthrow by Henry VIII (a deserter therefrom) Mary, the lawful queen of famous memory, had with the help of this See restored, she has followed and embraced the errors of the heretics. She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics; oppressed the followers of the Catholic faith; instituted false preachers and ministers of impiety; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fasts, choice of meats, celibacy, and Catholic ceremonies; and has ordered that books of manifestly heretical content be propounded to the whole realm and that impious rites and institutions after the rule of Calvin, entertained and observed by herself, be also observed by her subjects. She has dared to eject bishops, rectors of churches and other Catholic priests from their churches and benefices, to bestow these and other things ecclesiastical upon heretics, and to determine spiritual causes; has forbidden the prelates, clergy and people to acknowledge the Church of Rome or obey its precepts and canonical sanctions; has forced most of them to come to terms with her wicked laws, to abjure the authority and obedience of the pope of Rome, and to accept her, on oath, as their only lady in matters temporal and spiritual; has imposed penalties and punishments on those who would not agree to this and has exacted then of those who persevered in the unity of the faith and the aforesaid obedience; has thrown the Catholic prelates and parsons into prison where many, worn out by long languishing and sorrow, have miserably ended their lives. All these matter and manifest and notorious among all the nations; they are so well proven by the weighty witness of many men that there remains no place for excuse, defense or evasion.

3. We, seeing impieties and crimes multiplied one upon another the persecution of the faithful and afflictions of religion daily growing more severe under the guidance and by the activity of the said Elizabeth -and recognizing that her mind is so fixed and set that she has not only despised the pious prayers and admonitions with which Catholic princes have tried to cure and convert her but has not even permitted the nuncios sent to her in this matter by this See to cross into England, are compelled by necessity to take up against her the weapons of justice, though we cannot forbear to regret that we should be forced to turn, upon one whose ancestors have so well deserved of the Christian community. Therefore, resting upon the authority of Him whose pleasure it was to place us (though unequal to such a burden) upon this supreme justice-seat, we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ.

4. And moreover (we declare) her to be deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever.

5. And also (declare) the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths to her, to be forever absolved from such an oath and from any duty arising from lordship. fealty and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents , so absolve them and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the above said matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

6. Because in truth it may prove too difficult to take these presents wheresoever it shall be necessary, we will that copies made under the hand of a notary public and sealed with the seal of a prelate of the Church or of his court shall have such force and trust in and out of judicial proceedings, in all places among the nations, as these presents would themselves have if they were exhibited or shown.

Given at St. Peter’s at Rome, on 25 February 1570 of the Incarnation; in the fifth year of our pontificate.

Pius PP.

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  Elizabethan Catholics and the Mass
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:53 AM - Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith - Replies (2)

The Angelus - October 1982


Elizabethan Catholics and the Mass
I. The Gathering Storm
by Philip Caramon, S.J.


The article which follows (and two subsequent which will follow) originally appeared in 1974. The manuscript was written and put to one side before the changes which came to the Church in the wake of the Council. It is important to note this, for those who read these moving articles will be struck by certain parallels with our own day, which are the more powerful for not having been intended; they should cause us all to pause and think. As an historian of the Elizabethan period, Father Caramon, of course, needs no introduction.  It is a privilege to publish his work. Acknowledgments to Christian Order.

Queen Mary died on 17 November 1558 while Mass was being celebrated in her bed-chamber. No day had passed in her adult life without her hearing Mass. When the priest came to the words, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, she answered distinctly Miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem; then, as he took the Host to consume it, the Queen adored it. Afterwards she closed her eyes for the last time.


Elizabeth proclaimed Queen

Between eleven and twelve o'clock the same morning Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, was proclaimed Queen by the heralds of arms. In the afternoon the bells of all London churches were rung for joy; that night bonfires were lit and tables set out in the streets; there was plentiful eating, drinking and merry-making. The next day, Friday, being a fast day, there were no public rejoicings, but on Saturday, 19 November, the Te Deum Laudamus was sung in all the churches of the kingdom.

During her last sickness Queen Mary had sent messengers to Princess Elizabeth to examine her on her religious beliefs, for no one was certain exactly where she stood. "Surely the Queen must be persuaded that I am a Catholic, for I have protested this time and again," Elizabeth assured her. Then she swore and vowed that she was a Catholic. She said she believed in the Real Presence and would make no alteration in the principal points of religion.

Today people are free to profess whatever religion they choose; then it was different. Until Henry VIII, the father of Mary and Elizabeth, came to the throne, the only religion of Europe was the Catholic one. It was thought that anyone who did not believe in it was wilfully wrong. If he persisted or tried to propagate his beliefs, he was imprisoned as a heretic and sometimes burnt at the stake. Queen Mary had done this; earlier still the English soldiers in France had burnt Joan of Arc; she was thought to be directed by the devil, though, in fact, she was a saint. It was accepted by all that the State was bound to save the souls of its citizens from contamination by false doctrine, just as much as it was bound to protect their lives and property from murderers and highwaymen.

No one thought it possible for different religions to exist side by side in the same country. So it happened that, when Martin Luther and others started the Protestant religion and converted to it German, Swiss and other rulers, the entire area governed by them became Protestant. If any individual felt in conscience that he could not fall in with the new religion of his country, he left his home and went to another city, which adhered to his own religion.

On Mary's death the question that concerned everybody was whether the new Queen, Elizabeth, (and with her the whole of England) would remain Catholic or turn Protestant. Elizabeth was astute and did not show her hand at once. The truth is that she did not care very much about religion, but wanted to be secure on her throne, and thought she had more chance of this if eventually she declared herself a Protestant.

It so happened that, within twenty-two hours of Queen Mary's death, there died also the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole. And nearly at the same time, there died no less than thirteen Bishops and a great number of the clergy from Quartan fever, which was then raging like the plague. Thus, by chance, a great barrier to a change in religion was removed.

The first weeks of the new reign passed and the people were still puzzled. Elizabeth delayed at Hatfield in Hertfordshire before taking possession of London. In preparation for her entry all the streets of the city were spread with gravel. Then, finally, she came, riding a horse apparelled in purple velvet. She passed through Cripplegate and along London Wall to Bishopsgate, then up Leadenhall and Fenchurch Street, turning down Mark Lane into Tower Street and so to the Tower. There was great shooting of guns, such as had never been heard before. At certain points along the route children made speeches to her; in other places groups sang songs to the accompaniment of portable organs. However, the uncertainty about her religion continued.

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First Signs of Protestantism

On 9 January 1559, just seven weeks after Mary's death, a statue of St. Thomas of Canterbury, patron of England, which had stood for centuries over the door of the chapel attached to the Mercers' Hall in London, was thrown down and broken. The offense went unpunished and some persons took this as an omen for the future.

The coronation was fixed for Sunday, 15 February 1559, in Westminster Abbey, which was decorated for the event with the most precious tapestries ever seen, representing on one side the whole of Genesis and, on the other, the Acts of the Apostles, from designs by Raphael. The rooms off the Church were hung with the history of Caesar and Pompey. On a table at the buffet were laid out a hundred and forty gold and silver drinking cups.

After making her entry into the Church the Queen ascended a lofty tribune erected between the high altar and the choir, in view of all the people, who were asked if they wished her to be crowned. When they shouted, "yes," the organs, fifes, trumpets, and drums played, and it seemed, as an eye-witness reported, that the world had come to an end.

Then the choristers began the Mass which was sung by the Dean of her chapel.

As senior prelate in England, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, had been asked to crown the Queen. He had refused, for he suspected there would be innovations in the service. All the other bishops had refused also, except the Bishop of Carlisle, not because he favored the Protestant religion but for fear that, if the Queen was angered that no one would anoint her, she might be more easily moved to overthrow the Catholic faith. The rest of the bishops were present at the ceremony until the point of the Mass when the host is elevated, for adoration. This was not done, for the Queen had forbidden it.

Other changes ordered in the days following the coronation confirmed that Archbishop Heath had been right. On 25 January Elizabeth was once more at the Abbey, with all the peers of the realm, for the Mass of the Holy Ghost, before the opening of Parliament. The Benedictine Abbot John Feckenham, and all his community, each of them carrying a lighted candle in his hand, met her in procession at the West Door. When the Queen saw them, she said angrily, "Away with those torches, for we can see very well." During the service, Dr. Richard Cox, a married priest, who had been an exile during Mary's reign, preached a sermon in which, after saying many abusive things about the monks, he exhorted the Queen to destroy all the images of the saints, the monasteries and all that went with Catholic worship. He tried to prove that it was a very great impiety to endure such superstitious survivals.

Nevertheless for a time the administration of the sacraments continued in all the churches, though the litanies of the saints were no longer recited and parts of the Mass were said in English. Plays were performed in derision of the Catholic faith, but no one was persecuted: placards were posted at street corners inviting passers-by into taverns to watch them. Churches were broken into, windows shattered and chalices stolen. In March the same year rogues raided St. Mary-le-Bow's, in the middle of Cheapside, burst open the tabernacle and smashed every sacred object on which they could lay their hands.

About the same time the last public Catholic funeral was seen in London. On 12 April the corpse of Sir Rice Mansfield was brought from Clerkenwell for burial from Blackfriars Church; two heralds went behind the coffin and twenty-four priests and clerks before it, singing the Office of the Dead. The church of the friars was draped with black cloth and coats of arms. The next day the Requiem was sung and, after it, the knight's standard, coat, helmet and target were offered up at the high altar as had been done for centuries past. For it was the customary manner of a knight's funeral. London was never to see this ceremony again.


Plea from an Archbishop

Meanwhile, Nicholas Heath, the Archbishop of York (he had opposed the burning of heretics under Queen Mary and was considered the most prudent man in the kingdom), had an audience with the Queen. As soon as he was alone with her, he fell on his knees and invoked with tears the name of Jesus Christ. He begged Elizabeth, being a woman, to refrain from tampering with the sacred mysteries. He said that he had been through the English schools and universities and had attained the highest honors; he had been a bishop under her father Henry VIII, and her brother, Edward VI and Lord Chancellor under Mary, and that from his experience in the course of a long life, to say nothing of his own studies, he had learned that the State suffered great harm from frequent changes, even in the laws relating to the administration of justice. How much greater harm, he argued, would result from alterations in religion, where antiquity was held at such great account.

It was a wise and moderate speech. The Archbishop, recalling all that had recently happened, said that it was now proposed to make changes, not simply in ceremonies, but in the highest mysteries of the Faith, which (as the name implied) should be reverenced in silence rather than made the subject of popular debate. To call in question the sacraments of the Church, after such a length of time and in a kingdom which had only recently recovered from schism, would be disastrous in the extreme.

Finally, asking the Queen's pardon for his freedom of speech, the Archbishop concluded;
Quote:"But if (which God avert) the Catholic religion should unhappily be overthrown in England, I warn, I proclaim and I declare beforehand that I will not recede a nail's breadth in the least thing from the decrees of the Catholic Church, and in that quarrel I will resist every suggestion from others, and even from your Majesty, by every means in my power, to the last moment of my life."

The Queen bade him rise, comforted him with many words and ended by promising the Archbishop that she would do nothing that was not approved by her Councillors and by the whole nation assembled in Parliament. She gave him to think that in some measure she still wished to profess the Catholic Faith.

On 23 April, St. George's Day, the patronal feast of the Knights of the Garter, the Queen attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. During the procession not a single cross was carried. The following day Mass was sung as usual for the souls of the deceased knights, but the Queen, who was to have been present, altered her mind, and the Mass was said without the elevation of the Host.


Returned Exiles Strike

On 25 April, the feast of St. Mark and the last of the three rogation days, there were processions in the London parishes, and the citizens went with their banners through the streets, singing the litanies in Latin in the old fashion. On Ascension Day, while the parish procession of St. Paul's was going round the Cathedral precincts, a servant-lad, an apprentice to a Protestant printer, violently snatched the cross out of the hands of the bearer, struck it on the ground three times, breaking it into many small pieces. Then he took the figure from the cross and went off, saying as he showed it to some women, that he was carrying away the Devil's guts. In another London parish, on the same day, when the procession was about to come out of the church, two scoundrels with drawn swords in their hands placed themselves at the gate, swearing that ecclesiastics should not carry such an abomination, and that, if they left the church, they should never re-enter it.

This was the work of the men who had been in exile in Germany and Switzerland under Queen Mary. Now, one of their number, Richard Cox, boasted in a letter to a friend at Zurich:
"We are thundering forth in our pulpits, and especially before our Queen, Elizabeth, that the Roman Pontiff is truly antichrist and that traditions are for the most part blasphemies";
but he went on to admit that none of the clergy had changed their beliefs. "The whole body," he said, "remains unmoved"; that is, loyal to the Old Faith.


Parliament and the Mass

Meanwhile, in Parliament, a Bill laying down a new service of common prayer to replace the old Mass was debated. When it was read in the Lords for the third time all the Bishops, as before, dissented; and among the chief peers, they were supported by the Marquis of Winchester, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Viscount Montagu, and Barons Morley, Stafford, Dudley, Wharton, Rich and North.

True to his undertaking, Archbishop Heath spoke out firmly:
Quote:"The unity of the Church of Christ doth depend upon the unity of Peter's authority. Therefore, by our leaping out of Peter's ship, we must needs be overwhelmed with the waters of schism, sects and divisions which spring only from this, that men will not be obedient to the Head Bishop of God."

The Archbishop asked the Lords whether they thought the Church of Rome was not of God, but a malignant Church, and then went on:
Quote:"If you answer yes, then it will follow that we, the inhabitants of this realm, have not as yet received any benefit from Christ, for we have received no other gospel, no other doctrine, no other Faith, no other sacraments than were sent us from the Church of Rome."

Cuthbert Scot, Bishop of Chester, spoke twice. He pointed out that as God had sent one Holy Ghost to rule and govern His people inwardly, so he had appointed one governor to rule and lead them outwardly. And he asserted that no temporal prince had any authority whatsoever in or over the Church, since the keys of the heavenly kingdom had never been given to any of them, but only to Peter. Abbot Feckenham of Westminster, who also sat in the House of Lords, compared Queen Mary's days to the present. Then no churches were spoiled, he said, no altars pulled down, nor was the sacrament ever trodden blasphemously under foot and the knave of clubs hung in its place; there was no defiant eating of meat in Lent and on prohibited days. Now all things were changed and turned upside down.

But these protests were of no avail. Things got worse. At the end of May the Queen's Councillors, who were the men responsible for the alterations in religion, summoned to their presence Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London, and gave him orders to do away with the Mass and Divine Office at St. Paul's. The Bishop answered intrepidly:
Quote:"I possess three things: soul, body, and property: of the two last you can dispose at your pleasure, but as to the soul God alone can command me."


Last Public Masses in London

A few days later, on 11 June, St. Barnabas' day, the last Mass was said at St. Paul's. By the end of the month there were no public Masses anywhere in London, except in the houses of the French and Spanish ambassadors. All the friars and monks of every order received their passports to go abroad; the Franciscan friars from Greenwich, the Blackfriars from Smithfield, the monks and nuns from Sion and Westminster. The Carthusians refused to leave until they were compelled by force, which was soon used. Under the Queen's father, Henry VIII, they had resisted the King's attempt to claim headship of the Church, and had suffered death for it, some at Tyburn by hanging, others in Newgate by starvation. John Houghton, their prior, had been the first martyr of the Reformation. His community, re-established under Mary, was proud of its fidelity to the Church, and rather than give up their religion went into exile.


New Bill of Supremacy

Now a new Bill of Supremacy, making the Queen Head of the Church, was passed in Parliament; and in the same session also a Bill of Uniformity that permitted only one form of worship, namely, the new form. Commissioners were sent out from London to visit the universities, the cathedral churches and the city parishes throughout England with the task of enforcing these measures. This was in the summer of 1559, less than a year after Elizabeth had given a solemn undertaking to her half-sister, Mary, that she would make no change in religion. There was great opposition in court to the new services and also among the clergy and people, and had it not been for the persistence of Sir William Cecil, the Queen's Chief Councillor, the reformation, as it was called, would certainly have failed.

The Queen's commissioners first visited the London churches. On their orders the rood screens and altars were pulled down. The Lord Major, returning on St. Bartholomew's Day from the fair at Clerkenwell, where he had been watching sports and wrestling, saw in Cheapside two great bonfires made of statues, missals, crosses, copes, censers, altar-cloths, banners and other ornaments from Catholic times. The same was to be seen in other parts of London.

To show greater contempt for Our Blessed Lady, the official birthday of the Queen was now kept on 7 September, the eve of the nativity of Our Blessed Lady, which was marked in the calendar in small black letters, while that of Elizabeth was in large red capitals. In St. Paul's and elsewhere the praises of Elizabeth were now sung at the end of the public prayers in the place where the antiphon of Our Lady had been sung in former days.


Catholic Bishops Removed

One by one the Catholic bishops were removed from their sees. In a last brave attempt to change the Queen's mind Bishop Tunstall of Durham, who had been excused from attending Parliament because of his great age, came riding on horseback to London to see the Queen. In spite of her prohibition he preached to the people on his way. Everywhere he exhorted them to remain constant in the Catholic Faith. When the old man was brought into the presence of the Queen, he reprimanded her severely, because she had taken on herself to meddle in religion and had removed all the bishops, whose equals, he said, were hardly to be found in the Christian world.

"I confess," the Queen said, "that I grieve for York and Ely."

"But," replied Tunstall, "how can you grieve, when you have the remedy in your hands?"

The Councillors sat with the Queen. They urged Tunstall to change his religion. 
Quote:"Do you think that I, who as a priest and a bishop have taught the Catholic Faith for more than forty years, would be doing right, after so many years of study, after such practice and experience, on the very verge of the grave, to accept a rule of faith from laymen, my juniors?"

The Councillors flushed. They then demanded that he should take the oath acknowledging the supremacy of the Queen over the Church.

The old man refused, and he was deprived of his bishopric and put in charge of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, a married man. After a few weeks of imprisonment Tunstall died at Lambeth.


The Old Priests Removed

Almost all the clergy were on the side of the Catholic hierarchy. For as long as they were permitted, they spoke from the pulpits against the new form of service; they protested that it was iniquitous to do away with the Mass, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, allegiance to the Pope and all that had been part of the English Church since the time of St. Augustine and before him. One by one, as the Commissioners went their circuits, these old priests were removed: most of them refused to be ministers of the new religion. Many continued to say Mass secretly, hear confessions, and baptize children, either in their own homes or in the houses of gentlemen.


The Country Folk Stay Loyal

For many years still the country people, particularly the shepherds and farmers, remained loyal to the old Faith. In large towns, like Norwich and Bristol, the artisans, weavers and shoemakers for the most part fell in with the new form of worship. But in the remoter parts of the kingdom, the population as a whole stayed Catholic. Hence the reformers, writing to German friends, continued for many years to talk always of their "little flock." One of them, John Jewel, now Bishop of Salisbury, complained:
Quote:"The papists (as Catholics were now called) oppose us spitefully. Thus it is to have once tasted of the Mass. He who drinks of it is mad."

For the first time in the history of England, indeed of any country, fines were imposed for non-attendance at church. This was the beginning of the persecution. In Winchester, which was strongly Catholic, the poor people who could not pay these fines were sentenced to be dragged through the streets, stripped of their clothes and cruelly whipped.

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School & University

The old school there, founded by William of Wykeham, remained Catholic in sympathy. When the headmaster was imprisoned and a Protestant put in his place, the boys refused to attend public prayers and shut themselves in their dormitories. The headmaster was compelled to summon the military commander from Portsmouth, the nearest seaport, to restore order. About twelve boys took to flight; the rest, terrorized by the troops, went most unwillingly to church. As one chronicler wrote:
"In this persecution there is no order, or sex or age that has not nobly defended the Catholic Faith."

The universities, which formerly had been the training places of the clergy, did not take to the changes. Nearly all the heads of Colleges and the Fellows gave up their posts rather than subscribe to the oath of supremacy. By comparison with what it had been in the past, Oxford, particularly, was now somnolent. At New College, founded at the same time and by the same Catholic bishop as the school at Winchester, the old customs were slowly destroyed. On holidays after dinner the students no longer gathered around the fire in the hall to sing hymns. Many eminent university men crossed the sea to get a livelihood in foreign universities. Among them was Dr. William Allen, who was to become the chief adversary of the new religion.


First Arrest for Saying Mass

The first arrest of a priest for saying Mass contrary to the Queen's orders occurred in Fetter Lane, London. Treated as a traitor, the poor man was dragged violently through Holborn, Newgate Market, and Cheapside to the Counter Prison, with all his vestments on him, for he had been caught at the altar. A crowd followed him, mocking, cursing and wishing evil to him: some said he should be set in a pillory, others that he should be hanged, or hanged and quartered, or burned. All tried to pluck at him or give him a thump with their feet or spit in his face. Some shouted at him Ora pro nobis, sancta Maria, because it was the feast of Our Lady's Nativity (1562), though the day was not kept holy; they also sang mockingly Dominus vobiscum and such like phrases from the Mass.


Rosaries, Crucifixes, Statues—Out!

So things continued. Every year saw new measures of suppression. No person was permitted to carry beads or use them for prayers, to read the Book of Our Lady's Hours, or to burn candles on the Feast of the Purification. It was forbidden to pray before a crucifix or statue or picture of a saint, and it was thought superstitious to make the sign of the cross on entering a church, or to say the De profundis for the dead, or even to rest at a wayside cross while carrying a corpse to the grave: and to leave little crosses there. All altars were taken down in the churches. The places where they had stood were now paved, and the wall into which they had been set whited over. The altar stones were broken, defaced and turned to common uses.

But the people clung hard to the old customs. In some places, after the Rood had been taken away, they drew a cross in its place with chalk; and when the crosses in the graveyard were uprooted, they painted small crosses on the church walls inside and out, and on the pulpit and the new Communion tables. They still brought their primers to church and used them all the time the lessons were being read. In many churches the chalices were hidden away in readiness for the return of the Mass.

Finally, in 1570, the Pope, acting on his own counsels, issued a Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Elizabeth an heretic and excommunicate. Many Catholics at home judged this an unwise measure; for they feared it would enrage the Queen and lead her to retaliate with still severer legislation against them. However time proved the Pope correct. Now, for the first time, after eleven years of Elizabeth's reign, it was clear to all that none could practice the religion enforced by law and remain a Catholic. Henceforth if any man went to the state church he was no longer considered a Catholic; to receive communion there was a sign of submission to the new doctrines.

In reply the Queen imposed heavier fines for non-attendance at the services. Division now between Catholics and Protestants became sharper than ever before. Catholics, called Papists until this year, were now known as Recusants, for their refusal to take Communion from Protestant ministers.

In England only one man, Mr. Edward Aglionby, dared to raise his voice against the enforcement of conscience by legal penalties. In April 1571, in the House of Commons, Aglionby made a noble speech. He argued that it was not lawful for the State to compel any man's conscience, for the conscience of the individual did not concern the lawmakers: it did not fall even within the power of the greatest monarchy in the world. And he showed that neither the Jews nor Turks had ever required more than silence from their subjects, when they were unable to accept their people's religion. If the Catholics were wicked, as the law made them out to be, it was strange and against Christian practice to force them to take the new Communion; rather they should be forbidden it.


The Coming of the Sects

Meanwhile, as Archbishop Heath had warned the Queen, a large number of sects sprang up and spread throughout the kingdom. The largest of the many strange congregations was the Anabaptists, who called themselves Puritans, or Unspotted Lambs of God. Some of their adherents made mad assertions. In 1573 one Mr. Bloss was arrested for proclaiming that the Queen's late half-brother, King Edward VI, was still alive, that the Queen was married to the Earl of Leicester in 1564 and had four children by him.

The most curious of all these sects was "the family of the mount." It denied the existence of both heaven and hell, teaching that heaven existed wherever men laughed and made merry, and hell, wherever they were in sorrow, grief or pain.

The "family of essentials," a split or subdivision of the "family of love," believed that there was no such thing as sin. Their adherents used to ask, "Sin? What sin, man? There is no man sinneth at all." Their leader compared the altar to a cook's dresser-board. He had many meetings up and down the country.


To be continued

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  Audiobook: Purgatory By Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J.
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:45 AM - Forum: Resources Online - No Replies

Purgatory 
by Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J. - Part 1 of 2




Purgatory 
by Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J. - Part 2 of 2

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  Vatican to host conference w/ COVID jab developers, Big Tech leaders, Fauci and Chelsea Clinton
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:16 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

Vatican to host conference featuring COVID jab developers, Big Tech leaders, Fauci and Chelsea Clinton
Vaccine developers, Mormon elders, pro-abortion Chelsea Clinton, population control advocate Jane Goodall, a New Age activist, a prominent UK Muslim scholar, and a pro-abortion American actress known for posing nude, are all speakers at an upcoming Vatican conference on ‘health.’ There are only two Catholic clergy listed amongst the 114 speakers.

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VATICAN CITY, April 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican has announced its fifth International Health Conference on “Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul,” and will host scores of globalist and abortion-promoting speakers such as Chelsea Clinton, the CEOs of abortion-tainted vaccine companies Pfizer and Moderna, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

The conference, entitled “Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul. How Innovation and Novel Delivery Systems Improve Human Health,” is due to take place May 6 through 8. 

An incredible 114 speakers are set to appear at the event, which is hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture, the Cura Foundation, the Science and Faith Foundation (STOQ), and Stem For Life (SFLF).

The speakers include prominent and diverse names such as the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, the former of which produces abortion pills; the Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, who advocates using fetal tissue in research projects; the head of Google Health, David Feinberg; and Dr. Anthony Fauci from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose advice to government officials played a major role in shutting down American churches last year. 

NIH director Francis Collins has a long history of anti-life policies, and has previously acclaimed the “scientific benefits” which come from fetal tissue research, claiming that such work could be conducted “with an ethical framework.” 

He is joined at the Vatican conference by Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who has firmly aligned himself with the globalist, liberal elite, by banning emails from Republicans and the Trump campaign in the wake of the January 6 Capitol protests, as well as prohibiting all clients from even questioning the 2020 U.S. election. Benioff has a history of promoting LGBT issues, and is described by Time as “one of the most outspoken executives,” for LGBT affairs.

Also speaking at the conference will be United Nations representative and conservationist Jane Goodall, who supports population control; new age activist Deepak Chopra; rock guitarist Joe Perry; Mormon Elder William K. Jackson; executive chair of the British Board of Scholars and Imams, Shaykh Dr. Asim Yusuf; pro-abortion model Cindy Crawford; and disgraced ex-prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Monsignor Dario Viganò.

Numerous other medical professionals, representatives of U.S. federal agencies, university lecturers, high-ranking company officials, and musicians also form the number of speakers. There are only two Catholic clergy listed amongst the 114 speakers. 

Taking place within Vatican City, the event is being promoted with the social media messaging of “#UniteToPrevent and #UniteToCure.”

The image promoting the conference (featured at the top of this article) appears to be based on Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam. In the new image two hands reach towards each other, with both hands covered by disposable gloves. 

Indeed, the logo for the conference is a circle of people linking hands, colored in the tones of the LGBT rainbow flag, and positioned next to the crossed keys and Papal tiara of the Pontiff.

The event is hosted by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, along with the General Secretary of the STOQ Monsignor Tomasz Trafny, and Robin L. Smith, who is the founder, president and chairman of Cura Foundation and Stem for Life, and vice-president and director of STOQ. 

However, the trio will not be moderating the event, as this role will fall to ten “world-renowned journalists,” such as the executive VP of Forbes Moira Forbes,, Katie Couric, and journalists from major left-wing media corporations such as CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal. 


Will Vatican conference ignore God?

Perhaps as a sign of the Vatican’s recent declaration of financial difficulties, the conference is supported by numerous large organizations such as Sanford Health, Akkad Holdings, John Templeton Foundation, vaccine company Moderna, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The first stated aim of the conference is to foster “open dialogue” and to nurture “an interdisciplinary approach to tackle major health care challenges around the globe.”

Another goal is to “Examine the mind, body and soul interaction and discuss what it means to be human, and how transformative medical technologies are raising new challenges around human enhancement and the interpretation of the mind, body and soul.”

Given the minute presence of Catholic clergy at the conference, and the moderation by secular journalists, it remains to be seen whether this goal will reference to Catholic teaching on the relation between man and God, and whether it will ignore Catholic theological and philosophical thought regarding the soul. 

Pope Francis’s recent environmental encyclical Laudato Si, is a guiding theme of the three-day conference. 

Quoting from the document, the conference aims to “facilitate a conversation…‘about how we are shaping the future of our planet (...) which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all’.”

In the ten goals listed for the upcoming 2021 conference, the Pontifical Council for Culture made no reference to God or the Catholic Church. 

As part of the conference, a smaller roundtable event will also take place, entitled “Bridging Science and Faith,” and is directed at the “relationship of religion and spirituality to health and wellbeing, including the relationship between mind, body and soul.”


Fauci to deliver conference’s opening address

The opening day of the conference will be headed by an intervention from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief health advisor, who recently assured the World Health Organization of the Biden regime’s commitment to funding abortion, and last year suggested that sex with strangers was safer than receiving Holy Communion during COVID times. 

Fauci has spent more than a year stoking fear in the American public over the Wuhan coronavirus, despite it only having an infection fatality rate of 0.15%, and able to be effectively treated using Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, and zinc.

Topics for the conference range from “Are We What We Eat?” and “Human Enhancement,” to “Living Healthily to 120 and Beyond” and “Sustainable Health Care: Protecting Our Environment.”

Only six of the topics are remotely connected to religion, and deal with themes such as “Religious Dietary Practices and Health” and “How Do You Define the Soul?”

The conference will also address issues related to the current domination of global affairs by governmental responses to COVID-19.

Aided by the presence of the CEOs of both Pfizer and Moderna, whose abortion-tainted vaccines are increasingly followed by deaths and serious injuries in the thousands, the conference will discuss the “revolutionising” of cell therapy, as well as “Comprehensive COVID-19 Solutions” and “A New Generation of Vaccines.”

Pope Francis will close the event by giving the participants a private, virtual “audience.”

With the first such conference taking place back in 2011, previous events have seen individuals such as pro-LGBT pop star Katy Perry addressing attendees on the subject of transcendental meditation.

This year’s iteration of the event has the largest number of speakers by far, and with its advertised line up of speakers and topics, looks set to continue the irreligious and anti-Catholic themes of previous conferences. 


‘Another body blow to the Church’s prophetic witness against the abominable crime of murdering pre-born babies’

Already, faithful Catholics have taken to social media to express their consternation at the conference. Commenting on the manipulated image of the Creation of Adam, U.K. commentator Deacon Nick Donnelly, wrote: “The Vatican’s pastiche of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam exposes their promotion of ‘a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God’ (CCC 675).” 

In a comment provided to LifeSiteNews, Deacon Donnelly said that Pope Francis’s condemnations of abortion are undermined by the choice of speakers due to appear at the event. 

Quote:There is a strange disjunction between Pope Francis’ words about abortion and his actions.  While Pope Francis has issued some very strong statements condemning abortion these have been gravely undermined by his actions.

In 2016 he publicly praised Emma Bonino who boasts about facilitating 10,000 illegal abortions and who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in Italy.

In 2018 he gave a major papal honor to the Dutch militant abortion activist Lilianne Ploumen, six months after she led a campaign to raise $300 million to fund abortions around the world. 

In 2020 the world’s media trumpeted the pope accepting the use of cell lines in COVID vaccines that originate from aborted babies. 

Now he’s welcoming to the Vatican, Chelsea Clinton, the vice-president of the Clinton Foundation that has deep ties with industrial scale abortionists Planned Parenthood, and the CEO’s of Moderna and Pfizer, experimenters on aborted babies.

The inclusion of prominent abortion advocates such as Chelsea Clinton as speakers at the Vatican’s Conference is another body blow to the Church’s prophetic witness against the abominable crime of murdering pre-born babies. 

In the case of abortion, actions really do speak louder than words.

Similar concerns were expressed by Restoring the Faith Media, who noted how “The COVID Religion appears to have eclipsed the Catholic Faith in Rome. Complete with its own liturgy (socialist distancing), sacramentals (masks, hand sanitizer), and even its own sacraments (unless you inject this tainted serum, you have no life in you), the overt mockery of the faithful is on full display.”

A representative of Restoring the Faith commented to LifeSite: “Rather than correcting course, officials in the Eternal City appear to be accelerating towards that Great Apostasy Our Lady warned us would someday be upon us.”

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  NIH awards $500K grant to General Electric to build COVID-detecting microchip
Posted by: Stone - 04-15-2021, 04:50 PM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

National Institute of Health awards $500K grant to General Electric to build COVID-detecting microchip
The project is to create a device, small enough to fit inside a phone or watch, that can 'directly capture, detect, and identify' COVID-19 virus particles.


BETHESDA, Maryland, April 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The National Institute of Health (NIH) has awarded a two-year grant to multinational company General Electric to develop a microchip that can detect the presence of COVID-19 particles.

The two-year contract began on December 21, 2020, and funding for the initial year amounts to $581,785.

General Electric has been awarded the grant by the government health agency as the NIH looks to fund development projects for “novel, non-traditional approaches to identify the current SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

The project is to create a device, small enough to fit inside a phone or watch, that can “directly capture, detect, and identify” COVID-19 virus particles. The idea is that the “bioreceptors” would be able to detect particles of the virus, and able to differentiate between them and other particles they come into contact with.

Once the sensors have determined the presence of the virus, they would “automatically” transmit this information “to a touchscreen or other digital device.”

General Electric’s New York based team is led by one of their principal research scientists, Radislav Potyrailo, who hailed the project as creating one of the “first lines of defense.”

“The holy grail is to detect a single virus particle,” he said.

Potyrailo’s team is thus designing a “digital bloodhound,” a “microchip smaller than a dime with nanowells, or tiny pores, that can only be activated by a particular molecule — in this case, a molecule from the coronavirus causing COVID-19.”

Each of the nanowells will contain “bioreceptors” which would only be activated upon recognition of the virus particles that they were designed for.

Despite the small size of the sensors, Potyrailo declared that they would have “the same detection capabilities as the high-end analytical instruments the size of a microwave oven.”

Although the initial focus is on using touchscreen devices to collect such data due to their exceptionally widespread usage in every day, the technology is not limited merely to phones. The NIH predicted that it could be “integrated into keyboard, mouse and other frequently touched surfaces.”

Additionally, the sensors could be built into “the surface of specialized virus detectors,” which would thus be used in public places to detect presence of the virus “in respiratory droplets in the air.” Envisaging the sensors being as commonplace as fire alarms or smoke detectors, the NIH proposed that they could be installed in locations like “senior living centers, hospitals, airplanes, and meeting spaces.”

The technology would thus become a part of daily life, and “other digital apps for health and disease conditions will capture the immediate impact of viruses or other pathogens on health and behavior in real-time.”


A new digital age of microchip tracking

While General Electric’s project has made the news headlines, the company is by no means on its own in being tasked with developing technology that could force people to have their surroundings and health constantly monitored. The NIH has predicted it would fund projects up to a total of $10 million.

A number of other, similar projects are being funded by the NIH, focussed on creating sensors for the detection of COVID-19.

The University of Washington, is also developing a “touchscreen-compatible,” virus sensing device, after being awarded $466,500 from the NIH.

Emory University has received $449,696 to develop technology for “automatic surveillance and tracing of airborne” COVID particles. This would be based on “‘Rolosense’ technology” which is a “DNA micromotor” to detect the virus, and can be seen by a normal smart phone camera connected to an app, providing “both geographical tracing and surveillance.”

Washington University in St. Louis has accepted a grant of $433,266 to develop an “electrochemical biosensor,” which would detect airborne particles of COVID-19, as well “other and future pathogens.”

These, and many others, are all part of the NIH’s “Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program,” which has been drawn up to accelerate development and roll-out of novel technologies for COVID-19 testing.

As a further sub-group of this initiative, NIH also launched the “RADx Radical (RADx-rad) initiative,” which is focused on using new or existing technologies in unique ways, including “unconventional screening, biological or physiological markers, new platforms, and point-of-care devices.”

The RADx-rad, whilst initially drawn up under the guises of detecting and sharing information about COVID-19, will also be used with reference to “other, yet unknown, infectious agents.”

Concerns regarding privacy and potential breach of human rights are not hard to imagine, as all data collected by the various projects are sent to a newly created “hub” - the Data Coordination Center (DCC) - and then in turn to the larger NIH framework. This would include information from the sensors themselves, but also data from “public sources” such as census data, electronic health records, and administrative data.

The DCC will additionally co-operate with other “large-scale COVID-19 research efforts,” by sharing its own harvest of data.

Such revelations come alongside the Pentagon’s own invasive technology in the state funded drive for the recording and tracking of individual’s health and daily life. Scientists from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have manufactured a gel tissue-like substance, which is to be inserted underneath the skin.

The insert would “continuously test your blood,” and react with substances in the body, to emit a low level light, visible to a sensor or a smart phone app.

Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, a scientific researcher based at the Pentagon, echoed the peculiar comments expressed in the various grants awarded by the NIH, claiming that they were working on technology and vaccines which would be universally effective: “We’re trying to not just make a vaccine for this virus, we’re trying to make a vaccine for the whole family of coronaviruses.”

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  St. Edmund Campion
Posted by: Stone - 04-15-2021, 01:02 PM - Forum: The Saints - Replies (1)

Saint Edmund Campion: Priest and Martyr
B. January 25, 1540------D. December 1, 1581
Feast Day: December 1
Taken from here.

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"There will never want in England men that will have care of their own salvation, nor such as shall advance other men's; neither shall this Church here ever fail so long as priests and pastors shall be found for their sheep, rage man nor devil never so much."

"And touching our Societie, be it known to you that we have made a league----all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England----cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored."

The year was 1566 in the reign of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been Martyred and buried for almost a generation. By now merry Olde England was becoming drenched with the blood of Martyrs who died for the Faith, which was on the horizon, the bright horizon of Truth, to be for the sake of the Holy Roman Mass, the immemorial Mass given to the Church by Christ Himself and safeguarded by the Apostles and the sainted Popes, handed down to Catholics as their especial patrimony, not to be touched by innovation, apart from an occasional organic addition, neither a rupture nor a dissolving, whether by priest alone or committee, for it was, is sacred, to be held inviolable as promulgated by Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent, complete with anathemas, even for the suggestion of such a possibility, and in the words of English priest, Fr. Fabian Fortescue, "the nearest thing to Heaven."

I was reminded of the indispensable need of the Holy Roman Mass, the Traditional Mass as we now refer to it as I was coming out of church, this last Sunday in August, 2006 A.D. Three people were visiting the locale and had stopped in for Mass. As they exited just ahead of me they were enrapt in conversation, filled with awe. One of the women was almost moved to tears. Her words, as close as I can recall: "How beautiful is that Mass in Latin! I remember it from years ago, when we had it every day in our parish. We need it back again . . ." I dared not intrude . . . Since we do have the Mass, because it never went away------never officially abrogated by the Holy See despite the claims of the Modernists who are ever so willing to cite the modern tendencies in the useless and ceaseless documents from Rome, yet remain mute when the highest cardinals in the Vatican admit at last that such is the case, had always been the case------I am presuming wherever those visitors are from, they are even more impoverished than those of us in Maine, for they were so struck that there could be once again the Mass of the ages, the Mass that has given us countless Saints and Martyrs, and not this little runted stump, this banal imitation of the Anglican service or "mass" as some still call it, the Novus Ordo sacrilege, the "mass" so beloved by heretics and compromisers with the world. We have had this so-called "mass" or "mess" more like it, for a over generation now, and can anyone tell me how many Martyrs, apart from those Saints who were forced to endure it, how many Saints actually died for it, specifically for it? No, no one has yet to recount to me the number, even one. But lo! a time is coming fast upon us when the number of Martyrs, dry and otherwise, for the Roman Rite of Mass, the Mass of Tradition, will increase to the point where even the most sand-immersed ostrich will take note at last! For now it is a little dry martyrdom, the odd withering look from someone when they learn you attend the Mass of Tradition, as if you had an incurable contagion, the inconvenience of time and location, the uncertainty of when it will be taken away, for now . . . the time is coming when we will be known once more as recusants, in hiding, hunted down like heretics and a threat to the public order.

Elizabeth had gone to Oxford, where there were to be a round of speeches and debates, in the interest of garnering intellectuals for the Protestant cause. One such academic shone apart from the others that day, Edmund Campion, a spell-binding orator. The royal entourage, including the Earl of Leicester, close confidante of the Queen, met with him privately, promising him advancement in his endeavors. Campion was invited to speak on the need for learning at the Royal Court on several occasions. He did not as yet realize this heady atmosphere was not his future, for he was still practicing Anglicism and was indeed, preparing for the "priesthood" [Anglican orders are invalid] and had taken "the Oath of Supremacy". He had received the "deaconate" and because he had taken the Oath, he was already excommunicated in reality. His intellectual honesty and keen penetration of the facts at hand were to be his undoing as an Anglican and would be the instruments by which he would be ordained, instead, a Catholic priest in order to serve as a missionary in his own land, now blighted with the revolution against Pope and True Church and her most beautiful legacy, the Holy Mass.

In the course of his studies, Campion came upon the Fathers of the Church and from them, many of whom are Saints, he realized with certainty that the Church of Elizabeth and Cranmer was not the Church of St. Augustine and St. Thomas à Beckett. Now Campion, thoroughly honest, was also thoroughly frank and thus he discussed his disposition with everyone in a time when any leaning towards Catholicism was politically dangerous. Meanwhile a close friend of his at Oxford, Gregory Martin, had gone to Douay and suggested that Campion join him. Martin was a Catholic. It was now the summer of 1569, but still, Edmund Campion was not prepared to go the full way and was diligently looking for the so-called "middle way". This attempt failed when he saw that there was none and that "Anglicanism" just would not work. It was untenable without foundation in Tradition, in Scripture. And yet, when he knew that Catholicism was required for the salvation of his soul and that he must leave Oxford, he could not bring himself to go to Douay, where there was an English Catholic College. Rather, he accepted the invitation of an Irish family, the Stannihursts, as household tutor. There was discussion to establish a college in Dublin and he hoped to be part of that enterprise. This was where he wrote his History of Ireland. His life there was serene and appealing but even then the same religious and political divisions that had brought England to such turmoil were brewing in Ireland and before long, Campion found himself again almost a fugitive. Despite the tensions and conflict, Campion was certain of one thing, he was called to the priesthood, so two years after landing in Ireland he was sailing for Douay as a "religious heretic" to study with Richard Allen, the founder of the seminary there. He was there for two years when he felt drawn to the Jesuits, which Allen, later to be a Cardinal, encouraged him in because he thought it was better for his growth in sanctity.

Campion went to Rome where he was accepted by the Society of St. Ignatius or the Jesuits, and was sent to the novitiate in Prague. He studied and prayed and worked for five more years, and was ordained in in 1578, saying his first Mass that September. At the time the Jesuits were not established as missionaries in England, but Campion was bound to try, so he went in June of 1580, to find the Catholics still left in England, almost in despair, certainly demoralized and at the point of what can only be called desperation. Many of the more fervent Catholics were in prison, had been executed or sent into exile. Those who remained were so driven by hopelessness of ever being able to openly practice their faith that some of them joined plots whereby the Queen might be assassinated or otherwise dispensed with. This unfortunately lent credence to the government's claim that Catholics were seditious. In any event, setting aside the moral problems with sedition, these attempts would have been short-sighted and impractical since Anglicism was now inbred in most of the powerful and Elizabeth or no Elizabeth it would still be "the law of the land".

To quote Dr. Malcolm Brennan in his work, MARTYRS OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, p. 46:
Quote:"Seminary priests, following the bloody footsteps of Saint Cuthbert Mayne, had continued to filter into the country, and an unknown number of priests who had remained faithful since the reign of Queen Mary twenty years before, continued their perilous ministry. But so many of these were captured, and their visitations were so erratic and brief, and they had to remain in such secrecy, and recourse to them was so dangerous, and so many leading families had been ruined by confiscations and imprisonments and executions, that a mood of desolation oppressed the scattered flock.

"The way in which Saint Edmund announced new hope to English Catholics was clearly providential. After establishing their necessary contacts in London, and before beginning their ministry in the provinces, Saint Edmund and Father Robert Parsons, S.J., his friend and superior, were persuaded to write a brief defense of their purpose and case. The idea for this was proposed by Thomas Pounde, a Catholic gentleman imprisoned in the Marshalsea, a notoriously lax prison. He had escaped for the day, or bribed his way out, to caution the fathers that when they were captured------as was inevitable sooner or later------they might be executed summarily and false evidence of treason produced against them afterwards. Why not state your cause and your defense, he argued, before the event? They agreed and spent half an hour following his advice before proceeding on their separate journeys.

"Back at the Marshalsea, Pounde read Campion's paper, and its effect on him was intoxicating. He showed it to other prisoners, copies were made and found their way into London and indeed across England. It electrified Catholics with new confidence, and it established Campion as the leader and spokesman for the Catholic cause."

This paper became known as "Campion's Brag". 

Father Campion, unaware of the sensation his paper caused, went about his missionary work, traveling in disguise by necessity, as a Catholic gentleman. He had opportunity to stop off at Protestant estates and unknown to the owner, administer the Sacraments to the Catholic servants, and even family members.

The "Brag" gave rise to refutations from government officials; Father Parsons had launched a counter-refutation before the end of the week. The Fathers had acquired a small printing press, but they deemed it of more benefit to souls for a larger sort of publication than a reproduction of the "Brag". Campion wrote Ten Reasons which was a well-documented, highly reasoned argumentation for Catholicism and was less easily disputed by the Protestants. Campion and Parsons were bold and daring. When the Anglican Oxfordians went to church they found copies on their seats!

    1. All heretics have been obliged to mutilate Holy Scripture in their own interest. The Lutherans and Calvinists have done this in several instances.
    2. In other cases they retain the text, but pervert the clear meaning of the passage.
    3. The Protestants by denying the existence of a visible Church, deny, for all practical purpose, the existence of any Church.
    4. The Protestants pretend to revere the first four General Councils, but deny many of their doctrines.
    5. and 6. The Protestants are obliged to disregard the Fathers.
    7. The history of the Church is continuous. The Protestants are without living tradition.
    8. The works of Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin contain many grossly offensive statements.
    9. The Protestants are obliged to employ many empty tricks of argument.
    10. The variety and extent of Catholic witness are impressive.

This section contains the eloquent passage: "Listen, Elizabeth, most powerful Queen . . . I tell thee; one and the same Heaven cannot hold Calvin and the Princes whom I have named [Elizabeth's ancestors, and the great heroes of Christendom]. With these Princes then associate thyself, and so make thee worthy of thy ancestors, worthy of thy genius, worthy of thy excellence in letters, worthy of thy praises, worthy of thy fortune. To this effect only do I labor about thy person, and will labor, whatever shall become of me) for whom these adversaries so often augur the gallows) as though I were an enemy of thy life. Hail, good Cross. There will come, Elizabeth, the day that will show thee clearly which have loved thee, the Society of Jesus or the offspring of Luther." . . .

We now cite extensively from the Waugh book referred to on the page, Campion's Brag:
Quote:The government's reply was a proclamation dated January 10, 1581, for "recalling Her Majesty's subjects which under pretense of studies do live beyond the seas both contrary to the laws of God and of the realm, and against such as do receive or retain Jesuits and massing priests, sowers of sedition and of other treasonable attempts."

By this proclamation the relatives of seminarists had to recall them, or lose all civil rights. It was illegal to send them any supplies. Jesuits and priests must be surrendered; anyone knowingly harboring them was guilty of sedition and treason.

The Jesuits were already outlaws, and as regards the legal position of them and their hosts the proclamation made little change, but its significance was that by forcibly reaffirming the existing law, the council was giving warning of a further increase of severity in its application. Already, on December 10, the council had started in the case of Kirby and Cottam what was henceforth to be its consistent policy, of putting their religious prisoners to the torture. In the next four weeks, Sherwin, Johnson, Hart, Orton, Thomson, and Roscarock were racked, Sherwin on two succeeding days. On January 25 Sir Walter Mildmay, in the House of Commons, rose to move the Bill for "the retaining of Her Majesty's subjects in due obedience".

. . . News of these events reached Campion in Lancashire and Yorkshire. About six months passed between the conference at Uxbridge and Campion's return to London. They were spent, as before, in visiting Catholic houses of whose names we have some fragmentary information. He spent Christmas with the Pierrepoints of Holme Pierrepoint; on the Tuesday after Twelfth Night he was in Derbyshire at Henry Sacheverell's, from whom he went to Mr. Langford, to Lady Foljambe of Walton, and to Mr. Powdrell, where he met George Gilbert . . . in the third week of January Mr. Tempest took him in charge and led him into Yorkshire. On January 28 he was at Yeafford as the guest of Mr. John Rookby. In the succeeding weeks he visited Dr. Vavasour, Mrs. Bulmer, Sir William Bapthorpe of Osgodby, Mr. Grimston (probably Mr. Ralph Grimston of Nidd, who was hanged seventeen years later for harboring Father Snow), Mr. Hawkeworth, and Mr. Askulph Cleesby. Tempest was then succeeded by a Mr. Smyth, who took him to his brother-in-law's, Mr. William Harrington of Mount St. John, where Campion made a stay of twelve days, and so impressed William, one of his host's six sons, that he became a priest, and was later hanged. From Mount St. John, Campion traveled with a Mr. More and his wife into Lancashire, where almost the whole county was Catholic in sympathy. Here Campion stayed with the Worthingtons, Talbots, Heskeths, Mrs. Allen, widowed sister-in-law of the Cardinal, Houghtons, Westbys, and Rigmaidens. In the middle of May he was summoned to return to London.

These names are taken from Burghley's list, drawn up after Campion's arrest. It is far from complete . . . Probably twice its number remained undetected, if, as it is reasonable to suppose, Campion maintained the practice of constant change of residence. It is significant that much of Burghley's information seems to be of places where Campion remained some days and thus risked attracting the attention of Protestant informers; other names, such as Sir William Bapthorpe's and Dr. Vavasour's, were already well known to the authorities; Vavasour had been in prison at Hull in the preceding August, and Bapthorpe had given a bond of £200 to the Archbishop for his good behavior.

His work in the north was apostolic, as it had been in the Midlands. Nearly a century later Father Henry More found that the tradition of Campion's passage was still fresh in Lancashire, and that Catholics still spoke of his sermons on the Hail Mary, the ten lepers, the king who went on a journey, and the Last Judgment. . . .

With the publication of the Ten Reasons the first part of Campion's task was accomplished. He had been in England now for over a year; that was his achievement, that in all Her centuries the English Church was to count one year of Her life by his devotion; others were now ready to take over the guard; since Easter thirty of Allens priests had crossed the Channel and landed successfully; the work would go on; Mass would still be offered in England; the growing generation would still learn the truths of the Faith; the Church of Augustine and Edward and Thomas would still live; for Campion there remained only the final sacrifice. His road to Harrow took him past Tyburn gibbet, and here, Persons records, he would often pause, hat in hand, "both because of the sign of the Cross and in honor of some martyres who had suffered there, and also because he used to say that he would have his combat there." . . .


MARTYRDOM

[Father Campion, a naturally friendly and trusting person, had allowed himself to be on too familar terms with the people about him as he served as priest. He was captured at Lyford Grange, a Catholic house, by George Eliot, who had been a servant in two such households and had been jailed for rape and murder. To win his release he offered to inform on "religious services".-----Web Master]

. . . As SOON AS NEWS of the discovery reached him, the High Sheriff, Humphrey Foster, rode over from Aldermaston to take charge of the house. He saw to it that Campion and the other prisoners were decently used, and dispatched a messenger to the court for further instructions. Eliot, however, had anticipated him, arrived first with the news and was given, as was very clearly his right, full credit for the capture. Before Thursday he was back at Lyford with authority to bring Campion and the men taken with him to London as his own prisoners. The Sheriff was instructed to provide a guard.

In Eliot's absence there had been another arrest, of a fourth priest named William Filby, who unwittingly came to call at Lyford Grange and found the magistrates in possession.

The party set out on the twentieth, passed through Abingdon, and rested the first night at Henley. At every stage of the journey large numbers turned out to see them, some with open sympathy. Persons was still in hiding at Stonor; he sent his servant to see how Campion was looking, and the man brought back word that his gentleness and charm had already put him on easy terms with his captors. The party dined together at the same table. Campion chatted easily with them, as well as with several members of the university who had been allowed to approach him.

Eliot was ignored; neither magistrates nor soldiers troubled to hide their dislike of the man; once or twice on the road there had been hostile movements in the crowd as the informer passed, and cries of "Judas"; his first elation was exhausted; the praise which he had received at court sounded faint and distorted; it was almost as though this were Campion's triumph, and he the malefactor.

At last he could bear Campion's neglect no longer, and so broke out: "Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully upon everyone but me. I know you are angry with me for this work."

Then, perhaps for the first time since Sunday morning, when Eliot had knelt after Mass to receive the holy bread from his hands, Campion turned his eyes on him. "God forgive thee, Eliot," he said, "for so judging of me; I forgive thee and in token thereof, I drink to thee." He raised his cup, and then added more gravely, "Yea, and if thou repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large penance must thou have."

According to Eliot, Campion warned him that no good would result from the service he had done; which prediction Eliot, as was his nature, took as a threat of Catholic vengeance; from that day he imagined he was being followed and bewitched, and, though no attempt was ever made at reprisal, went in fear of his life, so that the report gained credence that he had lost his wits.

At Henley, that night, after they had all retired to bed, there was a sudden wild shouting; the guards took alarm that an attempt was being made to rescue the prisoners; torches were brought and it was discovered that Father Filby was suffering from nightmare; he had dreamed that someone was ripping down his body and taking out his bowels.

They spent the succeeding night at Colebrook and there, on special instructions from the council, the character of the procession was altered. The prisoners were pinioned on their horses; their elbows being tied behind them and their wrists in front; their ankles were strapped together under the horses' bellies. Campion was driven on in front with a paper stuck in his hat reading "Campion the Seditious Jesuit: In this way they were paraded through the London streets, crowded for the Saturday market. At Cheapside, the statues at the foot of the old cross were all defaced by the Protestants, but the cross itself still stood beyond their reach. As he passed it, Campion made a low reverence. Finally they reached the Tower, where the Governor, Sir Owen Hopton, took them into his custody. Before he parted with the Berkshire guard, who had had no responsibility for his humiliation, Campion thanked them and blessed them. Then the gates of the Tower shut behind him.

The conditions of imprisonment in the Tower were very different from the sociable, haphazard life at the Marshalsea. The regulations for solitary confinement are on record; the windows were blocked up; light and ventilation came through a "slope tunnel," barred at top and bottom, so that nothing could be conveyed to the prisoner from outside. The lieutenant had to be present whenever a keeper entered the cell, and it was rarely possible, and then only under the strictest supervision, for prisoners to receive a visitor. In some cases, no doubt, severity was tempered by venality, but Campion was a prisoner of the highest importance, suspect of having wide, subterranean connections, and Hopton treated him with more than customary harshness. He was placed in the Little Ease, the cell, still an object of interest in the Tower dungeons, in which it was impossible for a full-grown man to stand erect or lie at full length. Here, crouching in the half-dark, he remained for four days. Then the cage was opened and he was summoned to emerge; under a strong guard he was led up to the level of the ground, out into the air and sunshine, across the yard to the water gate, where a boat awaited them; they rowed upstream among the ferrymen and barges and busy river traffic. Presently they reached Leicester House.

We cannot know what hopes may have stirred in Campion's heart as he recognized the home of his old friend and patron, as the guard led him through the familiar, frequented anterooms to the Earl's apartment. The doors were thrown open; the soldiers at Campion's side stiffened; they were in the presence of the Queen. Beside her chair stood Leicester, Bedford, and two Secretaries of State. The guards stood back and Campion advanced to make his salutations.

It was a singular meeting. The grime of the dungeon was still on Campion; his limbs as he knelt were stiff from his imprisonment.

The vast red wig nodded acknowledgment; the jewels and braid and gold lace glittered and the sunken, painted face smiled in recognition. They received him courteously, almost affectionately. "There is none that knoweth me familiarly," Campion had written to Leicester ten years earlier, "but he knoweth withal how many ways I have been beholden to your lordship. How often at Oxford, how often at the Court, how at Rycote, how at Windsor, how by letters, how by reports, you have not ceased to further with advice and to countenance with authority, the hope and expectation of me, a single student."

Campion had followed other advice, recognized another authority, in those ten years; he had lived in a different hope and expectation; he stood before them now as an outcast, momentarily interrupted in his passage from the dungeon to the scaffold. But, for the occasion, politeness was maintained.

They questioned Campion about his purpose in coming to England, about Persons, about his instructions from Rome. He answered easily and quietly; he had come for the salvation of souls. The harsh, peremptory tones of Elizabeth broke in; did he acknowledge her as his Queen or no? Campion replied that he did indeed recognize her as his lawful Queen and governess, and was bound to her in obedience in all temporal matters. She pressed him with the question of her deposition. He answered, with perfect candor, that it was a subject upon which theologians were still divided, and began to explain the distinction between the potestas ordinata and potestas inordinata of the papacy, and quoted the text "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." [Matt. 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25]

But the politicians were not in the mood for a debate upon canon law. They were satisfied that he had no treasonable designs, and told him that they had no fault to find with him except that he was a papist.

"Which is my greatest glory," Campion replied. They then made the proposal for which he had been summoned. The past ten years should be forgotten; the road of preferment was still open; if he would publicly adjure his Faith and enter the Protestant ministry there was still no limit to the heights he might reach. The offer was kind in its intention. They had no desire to kill the virtuous and gifted man who had once been their friend, a man, moreover, who could still be of good service to them. From earliest youth, among those nearest them, they had been used to the spectacle of men who would risk their lives for power, but to die deliberately, without hope of release, for an idea, was something beyond their comprehension.

They knew that it happened; they had seen it in the preceding reign, but not among people of their own acquaintance; humble, eccentric men had gone to the stake; argumentative men had gone into exile in Germany and Geneva, but Elizabeth and Cecil and Dudley had quietly conformed to the prevailing fashion; they had told their beads and eaten fish on Fridays, confessed and taken Communion. Faith------as something concrete and indestructible, of such transcendent value that, once it was held, all other possessions became a mere encumbrance------was unknown to them; in rare, pensive moments shadows loomed and flickered across their minds, sentiment, conscience, fear of the unknown; some years Leicester patronized the Catholics, at others "the Family of Love"; Elizabeth looked now on the crucifix, now on a talisman; Bible and demonology lay together beside her bed. What correspondence, even in their charity, could they have with Campion?

He returned to the Tower, and, five days later, Leicester and Burghley signed the warrant to put him to the torture.

From now until December 1, when he was dragged out to Tyburn, Campion disappeared from the world. He was seen again at the conference in September with the Anglican clergy, and at his trial in November, but of the agony and endurance of those four months we have only hints and fragments of information. The little that we know was hidden from his contemporaries, and rumor was busy with his name.

First it was said that he had turned Protestant, had accepted a bishopric, and was about to make a public avowal of his apostasy and burn the Ten Reasons at St. Paul's Cross. Hopton himself seems to have been responsible for this report, and so authoritatively that it was made an official announcement at many of the pulpits of London. Then it was said that he had taken his own life; then that he had purchased his safety by accusing his former friends of treason. No one was allowed to see him. All over the country gentlemen were being arrested and charged with Catholicism on Campion's authority. His friends were thrown into despair and shame. The Protestants taunted them with their champion's treachery. Then he reappeared, at the conferences, at his trial, at Tyburn. In those brief glimpses they recognized the man whom they had known and trusted, the old gentleness, the old inflexible constancy. Opinion veered again; the confessions were challenged and could not be produced. They were denounced as forgeries. Only in recent years, when the archives are open and the bitter passions still, can we begin to pierce the subterranean gloom and guess at the atrocious secrets of the torture chamber.

Two things seem certain, that Campion told something and that he told very little. The purpose of his captors was to make him convict himself and his friends of treason, and in this they failed absolutely. Hardened criminals, at the mere sight of the rack, would break down and testify to whatever their jailers demanded. Campion, the gentle scholar, was tortured on three occasions and said nothing that was untrue; nothing to which he was bound in secrecy by the seal of confession; nothing which, in the actual event, brought disaster to anyone. He seems, however, to have made certain admissions with which his scrupulous conscience, always more ready with accusation than with excuse, troubled him on the scaffold.

These all dealt with the hospitality he had received during his mission. His first examination took place on July 30 or 31, and immediately afterwards Burghley wrote to Lord Shrewsbury that "he would confess nothing of moment." The subject upon which the council particularly desired a "confession" was the sum of £30,000 which he was reputed to have conveyed to the rebels in Ireland, how the money had been collected, how transferred. On this topic they could obtain no information. Immediately afterwards, however, they had knowledge of names of several people associated with Campion. On August 2 Burghley drew up a list of his hosts in Lancashire, on the fourth in Yorkshire, the sixth in Northamptonshire, and the seventh and fourteenth in Derbyshire. He attributed these to Campion's confessions. Thirty-two persons in all were questioned as a result of the lists, but in no case was the evidence considered strong enough for a conviction.

What importance Campion's admissions had in the compilation, and how those admissions were extorted, cannot be certainly known, but it is possible to make a conjecture.

The examiners were men proficient in every trick of their profession, and they were already well informed from other sources. For months the pursuit had been closing in; there had been other arrests; the two servants, taken at Lyford, had turned Queen's evidence. For over a year spies had been at work all over the country bribing and threatening; indiscreet conversations at the Marshalsea had been overheard; scraps of information from count- less sources had been collected and arranged. Before the examination began the Crown lawyers had a fair idea of Campion's movements.

All the devices of cross-examination were then employed. They would pretend to certain knowledge, where they had only a suspicion. "When you were at such-and-such a house you spoke about Mary Queen of Scots"; "No, we spoke only of religion"; "Then you were at that house"; they would quote to him spurious confessions of others; they would tell him of arrests that had not been made, of false betrayals. All the bluffs and traps which, in a court of law, will confuse a witness, cool-headed and protected by counsel, were now used upon a man stretched in the last extremity of physical agony.

It is certain that neither then, nor in his subsequent examinations, did Campion ever break down. He never blurted out all that he knew, anything his tormentors required of him, only so that he might be released from the unendurable pain. There are no signed depositions. It was the custom of the time for the clerk, seated beside the rack, to record all that the witness said; then, when he was released, as soon as his fingers could hold a pen, he was required to put his name at the foot of each sheet. The pitiful, straggling, barely recognizable signatures were then admissible as evidence. In Campion's case they could produce no such testimony; if in the last minutes before the senses failed, in the delirium of pain before unconsciousness gratefully intervened and he was taken inert from the rack; as the pitiless questioning went on and on and the body lost its dependence upon the will------if then he spoke of things that should have been kept secret, his first conscious act was to repudiate them; the confessions were useful as a bluff to use against other prisoners, but they were valueless in a court of law.

And, even so, it was very little that was wrung from him. . . . It was recognized that the itinerary was incomplete and the details inadequate. On August 7 the council dispatched to the Earl of Huntingdon a list of some of Campion's Yorkshire hosts with instructions to examine "bothe of them and others of their familyes and neighbourhood . . . how long he continued in their said houses or anie others, from where he came, whither he went and with whom; how often he or anie other jesuite or priest said anie masse in their houses . . . whether they themselves or anie other have heard masse or been reconciled or confessed."

On the back of the letter was a list similar to the one quoted: "Campion confesseth he was in the City of York at the house of D. Vavasour. Thither resorted soche of the neighbours as Mrs. Vavasour called her husband being then in prison. He was also at the house of one Mrs. Boulmer. He hath forgotten who brought him thither neither did he know the company" and so on.

The Vavasours were notorious recusants; their house would be under surveillance; Dr. Vavasour was in prison for his religion; it was a common practice to shut up a spy with the prisoners to gain their confidence; a secret note from his wife may have fallen into the jailer's hands. There are many ways in which the council might have information about Campion's visit. But of the details which only Campion could tell, the waverers who conformed in public to the state Church but came to him secretly for advice, there is not a word. "He hath forgotten who brought him thither." One can guess what efforts were made to stimulate his memory; what endurance and triumph is recorded in that phrase.

It will be seen from the above quotations that Campion very rarely admitted to having performed any priestly office, and without that admission the case against his hosts was extremely slender. The recent proclamation had made it treasonable to harbor a priest, but Campion had traveled in disguise and under an assumed name. In the open hospitality of the age, the mere fact of Campion having slept under a certain roof was not enough to convict the master of complicity. Persons's letter, quoted in the preceding chapter, shows that he frequently stayed, unsuspected, in the houses of irreproachable Protestants.

But the men who were now arrested and questioned on the authority of Campion's "confessions" had no means of judging the weakness of the case against them. They were told that Campion had betrayed them. The news reached Pounde in prison, and impetuous as ever, he wrote a letter to Campion, which his jailer accepted a bribe to deliver. The whole incident is obscure. He may have written in reproach or in inquiry about the authenticity of the "confessions:' In any case, the message was shown to Hopton who, having read it, told the man to deliver it to Campion and bring him back the answer.

This note has not been preserved, nor have we any exact transcript of its terms; it was quoted at the trial of Lord Vaux, Tresham, Catesby, and others before the Star Chamber as follows: "A letter produced, said to be intercepted, which Mr. Campion should seem to write to a fellow prisoner of his, namely, Mr. Pounde; wherein he did take notice that by frailty he had confessed of some houses where he had been which now he repented him, and desired Mr. Pounde to beg pardon of the Catholics therein, saying that in this he rejoiced, that he had discovered no things of secret, nor would he, come rack, come rope. Without Pounde's letter, to which it was a reply, this message is capable of more than one interpretation. Its value to the council was as evidence of conspiracy, "the things of secret" being taken as a political plot. The plainest and most probable meaning would seem to be that by "frailty", either of endurance or astuteness, Campion had been forced into admissions which he now repented, but that he had merely confirmed what they already knew and had given no new information to the inquisitors------nothing that had hitherto been secret to them. His anxiety was not to defend his own reputation, but to warn his friends against an attempt to bluff them, as he had himself been bluffed.

One other point must be noticed regarding the "confessions." At the beginning of his conferences with the Anglican clergy there was some discussion of Campion's treatment on the rack. Beale, the Clerk of the Council, asked if he had been examined on any point of religion. Campion answered, "that he was not indeed directly examined of religion, but moved to confess in what places he had been conversant since his repair into the realm." Beale replied, "that this was required of him because many of his fellows and by likelihood himself also, had reconciled divers of her Highnesses subjects to the Romish Church." To which Campion replied, "that forasmuch as the Christians of old time being commanded to deliver up the books of their religion to such as persecuted them, refused so to do, and misliked with them that did so, calling them traditores, he might not betray his Catholic brethren which were, as he said, the temples of the Holy Ghost."

Now Beale himself had been present at the racking; Hopton, Hammond, and Norton, the other examiners, were present in the conference room. The chief purpose of the meeting was to discredit Campion publicly in every way they could. And yet when he made this provocative comparison of himself with the Christian Martyrs in ancient Rome, no one retorted that he had betrayed his brethren, the temples of the Holy Ghost, and that out of his own mouth he was condemned as traditor. Instead the question was immediately dropped. The examiners did not wish to give Campion the opportunity of challenging the "confessions" that were being circulated under his name.

The conferences referred to above were four in number. They were held at the express orders of the council, who were anxious that Campion's challenge, contained in the Brag and in the Ten Reasons, should not seem to go unanswered. Aylmer, the Bishop of London, chose the disputants.

The first took place in the Tower of London on September 1. No opportunity was given to Campion to prepare himself; he was roused without warning, unfettered, and led from his cell. Sherwin, Bosgrave, Pounde, and some other Catholic prisoners were waiting under escort. They may well have supposed that their hour had come, and that they were being taken to summary execution. Instead they were marched to the chapel, where they found a formidable array drawn up to meet them. On one side a state box had been erected in which lounged members of the court and council; opposite stood a table littered with books and papers, behind which were enthroned two clergymen, in starched linen and voluminous, academic robes. They were Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's, and Day, the Dean of Windsor; round them sat a number of chaplains and clerks, helping to arrange the notes and mark the passages to be quoted. Another table, and other high chairs, accommodated Charke and Dr. Whitaker, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, who were to act as notaries. The Governor of the Tower sat with the rack-master and other officials; a large and varied audience filled every available space, for theological dispute was a popular recreation of the day. Some Catholics were in the crowd, one of whom took notes which furnished Bombinus with the material for his description. The official reports, both of this and the subsequent conferences, were not published until two years after Campion's death. The Anglicans had then the opportunity to revise them, and one editor, Field, admitted in his preface that "If Campion's answers be thought shorter than they were, you must know that he had much waste speech, which, being impertinent, is now omitted." Throughout all the conferences Campion shows constant anxiety that he is not being reported justly.

A little stool was set for him among the soldiers in the body of the court. He had now been in solitary confinement for five weeks; his second examination under torture had taken place ten days before and, although he was gradually recovering the use of his limbs, his health was broken. The Catholic witness reports that his face was colorless, "his memory destroyed and his force of mind almost extinguished: With unconscious irony the Dean of St. Paul's opened the discussion by blandly rebuking Campion for having, in his Ten Reasons, dared to accuse Her Majesty's most merciful government of "inusitata supplicia"------"uncommon cruelty"------and the Anglican bishops of offering "tormenta non scholas"------"tortures instead of conference."

Campion replied by protesting against the manifest inequality of the contest, his own lack of preparation, his deprivation of texts and notes. It was here that the subject of his "confessions" was raised, and hastily shelved, as described above.

The Deans then proceeded to the debate, the scheme of which was that they should propose the subjects, taken from the Ten Reasons, should state their argument in the form of a syllogism, and Campion should answer them. In this way, with a recess for dinner, they continued until nightfall. The chief topic was the Anglican defense of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. The report makes tedious and shameful reading, and the results were inconclusive. Campion was freely insulted, described as "os impudens" and "miles gloriosus," and any demonstration in his favor was instantly checked by the soldiers.

Only twice did he seem clearly to be in the wrong. He was unable to verify his quotation from Luther that described the epistle of St. James as "a thing of straw.' It occurred in the Jena edition, from which he had taken it, but not in the expurgated Wittenberg edition, with which he was now provided. The second occasion was when he became confused in a passage from the Greek Testament, and refused to continue the argument. His opponents eagerly seized upon this, and both now and later asserted that his much-advertised scholarship was spurious. Apologists have suggested that the type was too small for him to read, but the simplest explanation is that his Greek was, in fact, rather rusty. He was pre-eminently a Latinist. He had read Greek at Oxford and Douay, could quote it familiarly and write it in a clear and scholarly hand------of this there is abundant proof------but he had used it little at Prague, and, when he did so, spoke it with the Bohemian accent which was confusing in England. He regarded the conference as a test of the truth of his creed, not of his own accomplishments, and he was unwilling to compromise his case by straying on uncertain ground. At the end of the day, when the Catholics returned to the cells and the Deans to their comfortable lodgings, both sides were satisfied that they had had the best of it.

Eighteen days passed, but Campion, in his sunless dungeon, had lost count of time, and, lying in constant prayer, thought that it had been only a week, when he was again led out to debate. This time his opponents were Dr. Goode, the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and William Fulke, the popular preacher whose delight at the execution of Dr. Storey has been reported earlier in this narrative. Fulke was a contemporary of Campion's, and had been his unsuccessful rival for the silver pen offered to the prize boy at the City schools. He was an enthusiastic opponent of the surplice, and had inflamed a riot at the university on that subject which led to his being sent down; he was triumphantly reinstated in 1567, but was again expelled for conniving at an incestuous marriage; court favor did not fail him, and in 1569 he was restored to his fellowship, became Leicester's chaplain, a Doctor of Divinity by royal mandate, and Master of Pembroke Hall, where he augmented the Master's stipend by cutting down the number of fellowships. From 1580 he was in regular employment as an official Anglican controversialist, both against Catholics and the more extreme Protestants of the "Family of Love."

On this occasion the conference took place in greater privacy, in Hopton's Hall, but the method was the same as before, the Anglicans stating their arguments and Campion objecting. In the morning the Anglicans set themselves to deny the existence of a visible Church; in the afternoon to prove that the Church was capable of error. As before, Campion was forbidden to take any lead, and when he attempted to press an argument was sharply reprimanded, "It is your part to answer, not to oppose"------and Campion replied wearily, "I have answered, but I wish to God I had a notary. Well, I commit it all to God."

In the afternoon the dispute veered again to justification by works. Campion asserted that children who died without sin were saved. The Anglicans maintained the contrary doctrine, that they were damned unless specially "elected"; that Baptism had no power to save. . . . Campion was never allowed to forget the difference of position between himself and his opponents.

Later in the afternoon the Anglicans were denying the Real Presence in the Mass, saying that the doctrine denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. Campion broke out impatiently, "What? Will you make Him a prisoner now in Heaven? Must He be bound to those properties of a natural body? Heaven is His palace and you will make it His prison."

. . . Campion was consistently refused the courtesies of debate. "If you dare, let me show you Augustine and Chrysostom:' he cried at one moment, "if you dare."

. . . A majority in the council favored Campion's execution; under the recent laws his office as
priest made him guilty of high treason, but respect for public opinion, both in the country and abroad, made them hesitate to bring him to the scaffold upon this charge alone. Walsingham was in Paris that summer, on an embassy connected with the Queen's marriage; he employed his leisure in interviewing various informers and renegade emigres, and on August 20 he was able to report to Cecil a popish plot for the conquest of Scotland which was being offered for sale at twenty crowns, but the council do not seem to have found it suitable. . . .

. . . On Tuesday, November 14, Campion, Sherwin, Kirby, Bosgrave, Cottam, Johnson, Orton, and Rishton were arraigned at the bar of Westminster Hall, and the preposterous charge was first read to them.

"I protest before God and His holy Angels," Campion replied, "before Heaven and earth, before the world and I this bar whereat I stand, which is but a small resemblance of the terrible judgment of the next life, that I am not guilty of any part of the treason contained in the indictment, or of any other treason whatever."

The jury was impaneled for the following Monday. "Is it possible," Campion said, "to find twelve men so wicked and void of all conscience in this city or land that will find us guilty together of this one crime, divers of us never meeting or knowing one the other before our bringing to this bar?"

"The plain reason of our standing here is religion and not treason," said Sherwin.

Sir Christopher Wray, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench: "The time is not yet come wherein you shall be tried, and therefore you must now spare speech . . . wherefore now plead to the indictment whether you be guilty or not."

When they were called to take the oath, Campion, as was mentioned above, could not lift his arm; his crippled hands were tucked into the cuffs of his gown, whereupon one of his companions drew up the sleeve, kissed his hand, and raised it for him.

Next day Collington, Richardson, Hart, Ford, Filby, Briant, and Short were arraigned in the same manner on the same charge.

The trial took place on November 20. Three gentlemen, originally impaneled as jurymen, refused their attendance, because they doubted that justice would have a free course that day; their places were filled with less scrupulous substitutes . . .

. . . Campion was now allowed to speak to the jury; he did so courteously, reasonably, hopelessly.
"What charge this day you sustain, and what accompt you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is no one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are accused and impleaded to the death. We have no whither to appeal but to your consciences." He showed how the most part of the evidence was general and vague, a matter of conjecture and capricious association. Only a few particulars had been precise and damning, and those had emanated from the gang. "What truth may you expect from their mouths? One hath confessed himself a murderer [Eliot], the other [Munday] a detestable atheist, a profane heathen, a destroyer of two men already. On your consciences, would you believe them -they that have betrayed both God and man, nay, that have left nothing to swear by, neither religion nor honesty? Though you would believe them, can you? . . . I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretions."

The jury retired. Ayloff was left alone on the bench, and, pulling off his glove, found all his hand and signet ring bloody, "without any wrong, pricking, or hurt." The jury returned with the inevitable verdict. The Lord Chief Justice demanded whether there was any cause why he should not pass sentence of death upon the prisoners.

It was then that Campion's voice rose in triumph. He was no longer haggling with perjurers; he spoke now, not merely for the handful of doomed men behind him, nor to that sordid court, but for the whole gallant company of the English Counter-Reformation; to all his contemporaries and all the posterity of his race:

"It was not our death that ever we feared. But we knew that we were not lords of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer would not be guilty of our deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned; but otherwise are, and have been, as good subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors------all the ancient priests, bishops and kings------all that was once the glory of England, the island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.

"For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these lights------not of England only, but of the world------by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us.

"God lives; posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to sentence us to death." The Lord Chief Justice answered: "You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open City of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty's pleasure. And God have mercy on your soul."

While the Lord Chief Justice's final commendation sounded, with peculiar irony, through Westminster Hall, the condemned men broke into the words of the Te Deum and were led back in triumph to their several prisons.

Next day the remaining seven priests were tried on Burghley's indictment and------except for Collington, who could prove that he was in Grays Inn in London when he was supposed to be at Rheims------were condemned in the same way.

An alibi for Ford, similar to Collington's, was offered by a priest named Nicholson, but the judges ordered the witness to be committed to prison, where he came near to death from starvation.

Campion lay in irons for eleven days between his trial and his execution. Hitherto his family have made no appearance in the story; now a sister, of whom we know nothing, came to visit him, empowered to make him a last offer of freedom and a benefice if he would renounce his Faith.

There may have been other visitors------for certain details of his life in prison, such as his statement, quoted above, that in his last racking he thought they intended to kill him, can only have reached Bombinus through the report of friends------but the only one of whom we have record is George Eliot.

"If I had thought that you would have had to suffer aught but imprisonment through my accusing of you, I would never have done it," he said, "however I might have lost by it."

"If that is the case," replied Campion, "I beseech you, in God's name, to do penance, and confess your crime, to God's glory and your own salvation."

But it was fear for his life rather than for his soul that had brought the informer to the Tower; ever since the journey from Lyford, when the people had called him "Judas," he had been haunted by the specter of Catholic reprisal.

"You are much deceived," said Campion, "if you think the Catholics push their detestation and wrath as far as revenge; yet to make you quite safe, I will, if you please, recommend you to a Catholic duke in Germany, where you may live in perfect security."

But it was another man who was saved by the offer. Eliot went back to his trade of spy; Delahays, Campion's jailer, who was present at the interview, was so moved by Campion's generosity that he became a Catholic. . . .

Campion's last days were occupied entirely with his preparation for death; even in the cell he was able to practice mortifications; he fasted and remained sleepless on his knees for two nights in prayer and meditation.

Sherwin and Briant had been chosen as his companions at the scaffold. They met at the Coleharbour Tower, early in the morning of December 1, [1581] and were left together while a search was made for the clothes in which Campion had been arrested; it had been decided to execute him in the buff leather jerkin and velvet venetians which had been so ridiculed at his trial. But the garments had already been misappropriated, and he was finally led out in the gown of Irish frieze which he had worn in prison.

It was raining; it had been raining for some days, and the roads of the city were foul with mud. A great crowd had collected at the gates. "God save you all, gentlemen," Campion greeted them. "God bless you, and make you good Catholics." There were two horses, each with a hurdle at his tail. Campion was bound to one of them, Briant and Sherwin together on the other.

Then they were slowly dragged through the mud and rain, up Cheapside, past St. Martin le Grand and Newgate, along Holborn to Tyburn. Charke plodded along beside the hurdle, still eager to thrash out to the last word the question of justification by faith alone, but Campion seemed not to notice him; over Newgate Arch stood a figure of our Lady which had so far survived the Anglican hammers. Campion saluted her as he passed.

Here and there along the road a Catholic would push himself through the crowd and ask Campion's blessing. One witness, who supplied Bombinus with many details of this last morning, followed close at hand and stood by the scaffold. He records how one gentleman, "either for pity or affection, most courteously wiped" Campion's "face, all spattered with mire and dirt, as he was drawn most miserably through thick and thin; for which charity or haply some sudden moved affection, God reward him and bless him."

The scene at Tyburn was tumultuous. Sir Thomas More had stepped out into the summer sunshine, to meet death quietly and politely at a single stroke of the ax. Every circumstance of Campion's execution was vile and gross.

Sir Francis Knollys, Lord Howard, Sir Henry Lee, and other gentlemen of fashion were already waiting beside the scaffold. When the procession arrived, they were disputing whether the motion of the sun from east to west was violent or natural; they postponed the discussion to watch Campion, bedraggled and mud-stained, mount the cart which stood below the gallows. The noose was put over his neck. The noise of the crowd was continuous, and only those in his immediate neighborhood could hear him as he began to speak. He had it in mind to make some religious exhortation.

"Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et hominibus," he began. "These are the words of St. Paul, Englished thus, 'We are made a spectacle unto God, unto His Angels and unto men,' [1 Cor. 4:9] verified this day in me, who am here a spectacle unto my Lord God, a spectacle unto His Angels and unto you men." But he was not allowed to continue. Sir Francis Knollys interrupted, shouting up at him to confess his treason.

"As to the treasons which have been laid to my charge," he said, "and for which I am come here to suffer, I desire you all to bear witness with me that I am thereof altogether innocent."

One of the council cried that it was too late to deny what had been proved in the court.

"Well, my Lord," he replied, "I am a Catholic man and a priest; in that Faith have I lived and in that Faith I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty; as for other treason I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience."

But the gentlemen round the gallows would not let him go forward; they still heckled him . . .

In a few halting sentences he made himself heard above the clamor. He forgave the jury and asked forgiveness of any whose names he might have compromised during his examination; he addressed himself to Sir Francis Knollys on Richardson's behalf, saying that, to his knowledge, that man had never in his possession a copy of the book which the informers declared they had found in his baggage.

Then a schoolmaster named Hearne stood forward and read a proclamation in the Queen's name, that the execution they were to witness that morning was for treason and not for religion.

Campion stood in prayer. The lords of the council still shouted up questions to him about the Bull of Excommunication, but now Campion would not answer and stood with his head bowed and his hands folded on his breast. An Anglican clergyman attempted to direct his prayers, but he answered gently, "Sir, you and I are not one in religion, wherefore I pray you content yourself. I bar none of prayer; but I only desire them that are of the household of Faith to pray with me, and in mine agony to say one creed."

They called to him to pray in English, but he replied with great mildness that "he would pray God in a language which they both well understood."

There was more noise; the councilors demanded that he should ask the Queen's forgiveness.

"Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit------I have and do pray for her."

Still the courtiers were not satisfied. Lord Howard demanded to know what Queen he prayed for.

"Yea, for Elizabeth your Queen and my Queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity."

The cart was then driven out from under him, the eager crowd swayed forward, and Campion was left hanging, until, unconscious, perhaps already dead, he was cut down and the butcher began his work.

When the spectacle was over the crowd dispersed. An emotional witness records that several thousand were turned to the Faith by the events of that day. Many thousands there have been, but they were not in that assembly. The Elizabethan mob dearly loved a bloody execution, and any felon was the hero of a few hours, whatever his crimes. If any felt uneasy about the Queen's justice, there were gentler pleasures to attract their minds; in particular two Dutchmen, who were the rage of the moment; the one was seven feet seven inches in height, "comelie of person but lame of the legs (for he had broken them of lifting a barrel of beer)"; his companion was a midget who could walk between the giant's legs, wearing a feather in his cap; he had "never a good foot nor any knee at all and yet could dance a gallard, no arm but a stump on which he could dance a cup and after toss it about three or four times and every time receive the same on the said stump." With distractions of this kind the fate of the three priests was soon forgotten. One man, however, returned from Tyburn to Grays Inn profoundly changed: Henry Walpole, Cambridge wit, minor poet, satirist, flaneur, a young man of birth, popular, intelligent, slightly romantic. He came of a Catholic family and occasionally expressed Catholic sentiments, but until that day had kept at a discreet distance from Gilbert and his circle, and was on good terms with authority. He was a typical member of that easygoing majority, on whom the success of the Elizabethan settlement depended, who would have preferred to live under a Catholic regime but accepted the change without very serious regret. He had an interest in theology and had attended Campion's conferences with the Anglican clergy. He secured a front place at Tyburn; so close that when Campion's entrails were torn out by the butcher and thrown into the cauldron of boiling water, a spot of blood splashed upon his coat. In that moment he was caught into a new life; he crossed the sea, became a priest, and, thirteen years later, after very terrible sufferings, died the same death as Campion's on the gallows at York.

And so the work of Campion continued; so it continues. He was one of a host of Martyrs, each, in their several ways, gallant and venerable; some performed more sensational feats of adventure, some sacrificed more conspicuous positions in the world, many suffered crueler tortures, but to his own, and to each succeeding generation, Campion's fame has burned with unique warmth and brilliance; it was his genius to express, in sentences that have resounded across the centuries, the spirit of chivalry in which they suffered, to typify in his zeal, his innocence, his inflexible purpose, the pattern which they followed.

Years later, in the somber, skeptical atmosphere of the eighteenth century, Bishop Challoner set himself to sift out and collect the English Martyrology. The Catholic cause was very near to extinction in England. Families who had resisted the onset of persecution were quietly conforming under neglect. The Church survived here and there in scattered households, regarded by the world as, at the best, something Gothic and slightly absurd, like a ghost or a family curse. Emancipation still lay in the distant future; no career was open to the Catholics; their only ambition was to live quietly in their houses, send their children to school abroad, pay the double land taxes, and, as best they could, avoid antagonizing their neighbors. It was then, when the whole gallant sacrifice appeared to have been prodigal and vain, that the story of the Martyrs lent them strength.

We are the heirs of their conquest, and enjoy, at our ease, the plenty which they died to win.

Today a chapel stands by the site of Tyburn; in Oxford, the city he loved best, a noble college has risen dedicated in Campion's honor,

"There will never want in England men that will have care of their own salvation, nor such as shall advance other men's; neither shall this Church here ever fail so long as priests and pastors shall be found for their sheep, rage man or devil never so much."

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  The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
Posted by: Stone - 04-15-2021, 10:37 AM - Forum: Church Doctrine & Teaching - Replies (3)

Holy Eucharist
(Greek eucharistia, thanksgiving).


The name given to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar in its twofold aspect of sacrament and Sacrifice of Mass, and in which Jesus Christ is truly present under the appearances of bread and wine.

Other titles are used, such as "Lord's Supper" (Coena Domini), "Table of the Lord" (Mensa Domini), the "Lord's Body" (Corpus Domini), and the "Holy of Holies" (Sanctissimum), to which may be added the following expressions, and somewhat altered from their primitive meaning: "Agape" (Love-Feast), "Eulogia" (Blessing), "Breaking of Bread", "Synaxis" (Assembly), etc.; but the ancient title "Eucharistia" appearing in writers as early as Ignatius, Justin, and Irenæus, has taken precedence in the technical terminology of the Church and her theologians. The expression "Blessed Sacrament of the Altar", introduced by Augustine, is at the present day almost entirely restricted to catechetical and popular treatises.

This extensive nomenclature, describing the great mystery from such different points of view, is in itself sufficient proof of the central position the Eucharist has occupied from the earliest ages, both in the Divine worship and services of the Church and in the life of faith and devotion which animates her members.

The Church honors the Eucharist as one of her most exalted mysteries, since for sublimity and incomprehensibility it yields in nothing to the allied mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation. These three mysteries constitute a wonderful triad, which causes the essential characteristic of Christianity, as a religion of mysteries far transcending the capabilities of reason, to shine forth in all its brilliance and splendor, and elevates Catholicism, the most faithful guardian and keeper of our Christian heritage, far above all pagan and non-Christian religions.

The organic connection of this mysterious triad is clearly discerned, if we consider Divine grace under the aspect of a personal communication of God. Thus in the bosom of the Blessed Trinity, God the Father, by virtue of the eternal generation, communicates His Divine Nature to God the Son, "the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18), while the Son of God, by virtue of the hypostatic union, communicates in turn the Divine Nature received from His Father to His human nature formed in the womb of the Virgin Mary (John 1:14), in order that thus as God-man, hidden under the Eucharistic Species, He might deliver Himself to His Church, who, as a tender mother, mystically cares for and nurtures in her own bosom this, her greatest treasure, and daily places it before her children as the spiritual food of their souls. Thus the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist are really welded together like a precious chain, which in a wonderful manner links heaven with earth, God with man, uniting them most intimately and keeping them thus united. By the very fact that the Eucharistic mystery does transcend reason, no rationalistic explanation of it, based on a merely natural hypothesis and seeking to comprehend one of the sublimest truths of the Christian religion as the spontaneous conclusion of logical processes, may be attempted by a Catholic theologian.

The modern science of comparative religion is striving, wherever it can, to discover in pagan religions "religio-historical parallels", corresponding to the theoretical and practical elements of Christianity, and thus by means of the former to give a natural explanation of the latter. Even were an analogy discernible between the Eucharistic repast and the ambrosia and nectar of the ancient Greek gods, or the haoma of the Iranians, or the soma of the ancient Hindus, we should nevertheless be very cautious not to stretch a mere analogy to a parallelism strictly so called, since the Christian Eucharist has nothing at all in common with these pagan foods, whose origin is to be found in the crassest idol- and nature-worship. What we do particularly discover is a new proof of the reasonableness of the Catholic religion, from the circumstance that Jesus Christ in a wonderfully condescending manner responds to the natural craving of the human heart after a food which nourishes unto immortality, a craving expressed in many pagan religions, by dispensing to mankind His own Flesh and Blood. All that is beautiful, all that is true in the religions of nature, Christianity has appropriated to itself, and like a concave mirror has collected the dispersed and not infrequently distorted rays of truth into their common focus and again sent them forth resplendently in perfect beams of light.

It is the Church alone, "the pillar and ground of truth", imbued with and directed by the Holy Spirit, that guarantees to her children through her infallible teaching the full and unadulterated revelation of God. Consequently, it is the first duty of Catholics to adhere to what the Church proposes as the "proximate norm of faith" (regula fidei proxima), which, in reference to the Eucharist, is set forth in a particularly clear and detailed manner in Sessions XIII, XXI, and XXII of the Council of Trent.

The quintessence of these doctrinal decisions consists in this, that in the Eucharist the Body and Blood of the God-man are truly, really, and substantially present for the nourishment of our souls, by reason of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and that in this change of substances the unbloody Sacrifice of the New Testament is also contained.

These three principle truths — Sacrifice, Sacrament, and Real Presence — are given a more detailed consideration in the following articles:

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  ‘Falsifying history’: VICE media flogged for publishing Cambodia genocide victims’ photoshopped
Posted by: Stone - 04-15-2021, 08:55 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism - No Replies

‘Falsifying history’: VICE media flogged for publishing Cambodia genocide victims’ photos with SMILES photoshopped on their faces

[Image: 6073056a2030272a90683004.JPG]
FILE PHOTO. A survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime Hem Sakou, 79,
stands in front of portraits of victims at the Tuol Sleng (S-21) genocide museum in Phnom Penh May 31, 2011. © Reuters / Samrang Pring


RT | 11 Apr, 2021 

Altered images of people executed by the Khmer Rouge regime have been published by VICE media group, with smiles “photoshopped” to the victims’ faces. The now-deleted article has caused a public outcry and a warning from Cambodia.

VICE’s interview with Matt Loughrey, originally published on Friday, contained images from Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S21, where thousands of people were tortured and killed between 1975 and 1979. However, the photographs were not only colorized, but also edited, with the artist adding a fake smile to the victims’ faces. No original images were published alongside the altered ones.



The artist, who apparently claimed he was in close contact with the victims’ families while he was working on this project, had in fact never been in contact with the rightful owners of the photographs, Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts (MCFA) said in a statement on Sunday. “MCFA does not accept this kind of manipulation and considers this work of Matt Loughrey to seriously affect the dignity of the victims, the reality of Cambodia’s history,” it said, calling on the media to remove the images. Cambodia might consider taking legal action, both national and international, it added.

Having been contacted by several media agencies, the artist declined to comment. However, in an alleged screenshot of a private message, he seemingly doubled down on the claim that he “worked with” the relatives and that some of them “requested their relative to smile.” In the same message, he appeared to suggest VICE put his words out of context, claiming that one French outlet managed to do a better job at presenting the altered photos.



While the text of the VICE’s interview did mention Loughrey speculating that the prisoners might have been smiling in some of the photos due to “nervousness,” it never revealed the fact that the people in the images selected for the story did not have smiling faces in the originals.The latter has apparently been confirmed by an army on internet sleuths, who began posting black and white originals from the museum alongside the “enhanced” mugshots.



VICE eventually took the entire article down, replacing it with an editorial note saying that “The story did not meet the editorial standards of VICE and has been removed. We regret the error and will investigate how this failure of the editorial process occurred.”

However, critics on social media were not satisfied with the ‘non-apology’. Numerous outraged readers have called the published works “insulting,” “disgusting” and “falsifying history.”



It quickly turned out that the bizarre approach to “restoring” old photos was Loughrey’s “thing” for quite some time, and he’s apparently dubbed it “service with a smile.”

An online petition that was originally created to pressure VICE into removing the story is now demanding a proper apology.

Minimising the pain and trauma of our community by those who are not connected to the experience is not only revising and erasing history, it is a violent act,” the petition, which has been signed by over six thousand people, says, also calling on the artist to “stop using photos of Cambodian genocide victims for your experimentation and entertainment.”

At least 1.7 million people were killed during the rule of the repressive Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot. While some of them died as result of dislocations and forced labor, others were tortured to death in prisons and camps. Between 14,000 and 17,000 people, including children, were sent into the infamous S21 prison, where many of them were photographed before executions. Only seven of its prisoners survived.

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