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  Novena to St. Joseph - Feast Day March 19th
Posted by: Hildegard of Bingen - 03-08-2021, 01:56 PM - Forum: Novenas - No Replies

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Novena to St. Joseph

Say once a day for nine days, especially beginning on 10 March and ending on 18 March, the eve of the Feast of St. Joseph


 
St. Joseph

O Glorious St. Joseph, faithful follower of Jesus Christ, to thee do we raise our hearts and hands to implore thy powerful intercession in obtaining from the benign Heart of Jesus all the helps and graces necessary for our spiritual and temporal welfare, particularly the grace of a happy death, and the special favor we now implore (state your petitions).

O guardian of the Word Incarnate, we have confidence that thy prayers in our behalf will be graciously heard before the throne of God.

[Then the following seven times, in honor of the seven joys or sorrows of St. Joseph.]

V. O glorious St. Joseph, through the love thou dost bear to Jesus Christ, and for the glory of His name,
R. Hear our prayers and obtain our petitions.
V. Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
R. Assist us!

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  Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard: Ten Aids to Mental Prayer
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 01:51 PM - Forum: Prayers and Devotionals - No Replies

Ten Aids to Mental Prayer
By Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Abbot of the French Cistercian Monastery of Sept-Fons(1858-1935)

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This text is an appendix of the book “The Soul of the Apostolate”, which was a favorite book of Pope Saint Pius X. 
The good Pope said he left this spiritual masterpiece by his night stand, so he could read it in his bed.


Mental prayer is the furnace in which we go to renew the custody of the heart.  By our fidelity to our mental prayer all the other exercises of piety will be rekindled.  The soul will gradually acquire vigilance and the spirit of prayer, that is, the habit of having recourse to God more and more frequently.

Union with God in mental prayer will produce an intimate union with Him, even amongst the most absorbing occupations.

The soul, living thus in union with our Lord, by its vigilance, will attract more and more the gifts of the Holy Ghost and the infused virtues, and perhaps God will call it to a higher degree of mental prayer.

That excellent volume, “The Ways of Mental Prayer” by Dom Vital Lehodey (Lecoffre, Paris), gives an exact account of what is required for the ascension of the soul by the different degrees of mental prayer, and gives rules for discerning, whether higher mental prayer is truly a gift of God or the result of illusion.

Before discussing affective mental prayer (the first degree of the higher classes to which God as a rule calls only the souls that have reached the state of vigilance by meditation),  Fr. Rigoleuc, S.J., gives in his fine book (Œuvres Spirituelles, Avignon, 1843, page 1 ff.) ten ways of discoursing with God – when after a serious effort, one finds it a moral impossibility to meditate on a subject prepared the night before.

I sum up the pious author:

1st Way. – Take a spiritual book (New Testament or “Imitation of Christ”) – read a few lines at intervals – meditate a little on what has been read, try to fix the sense and impress it on your mind.    Draw from it some holy thought, love, penance etc., resolve to practice this virtue when opportunity offers.

Avoid reading or meditating too much.  Stop at each pause as long as the mind find agreeable and useful converse.

2nd Way. – Take some text of Scripture or some vocal prayer – Pater, Ave, Credo, for instance – repeat it, stopping after each word, drawing from it various sentiments of piety on which you dwell as long as it pleases you.

At the end, ask God for some grace or virtue, according to the subject meditated upon.

You are not to stop on any word if it wearies or tires you, but if you find nothing more to think on, pass on quietly to another.  When you are touched by some good thought, dwell on it as long as it lasts without troubling to go any further.  Nor is it necessary to make fresh acts always, it is sometimes enough to keep in God’s presence, reflecting in silence on the words already meditated or in enjoying the feelings they have already produced in your heart.

3rd Way. – When the prepared subject matter does not give you enough scope, or room for free action, make acts of faith, adoration, thanksgiving, hope, love, and so on, letting them range as wide and free as you please, pausing at each one to let it sink in.

4th Way. – When meditation is impossible, and you are too helpless and dried-up to produce a single affection, tell Our Lord that it is your intention to make an act, for example, of contrition, every time you draw breath, or pass a bead of the rosary between your fingers, or say, vocally, some short prayer.

Renew this assurance of your intention from time to time, and then if God suggests some other good thought, receive it with humility, and dwell upon it.

5th Way. – In time of trial or dryness, if you are completely barren and powerless to make any acts or to have any thoughts, abandon yourself generously to suffering, without anxiety, and without making any effort to avoid it, making no other acts except this self-abandonment into the hands of God to suffer this trial and all it may please Him to send.

Or else you may unite your prayer with Our Lord’s Agony in the garden of desolation upon the cross.  See yourself attached to the Cross with the Saviour and stir yourself up to follow His example, and remain there suffering without flinching, until death.

6th Way. – A survey of your own conscience. – Admit your defects, passions, weaknesses, infirmities, helplessness, misery, nothingness. – Adore God’s judgments with regard to the state in which you find yourself. – Submit to His holy will. – Bless Him both for His punishments and for the favors of His mercy. – Humble yourself before His sovereign Majesty. – Sincerely confess your sins and infidelities to Him and ask Him to forgive you. – Take back all your false judgments and errors. – Detest all the wrong you have done, and resolve to correct yourself in the future.

This kind of prayer is very free and unhampered, and admits of all kinds of affections.  It can be practiced at all times, especially in some unexpected trial, to submit to the punishments of God’s justice, or as a means of regaining recollection after a lot of activity and distracting affairs.

7th Way. – Conjure up a vivid picture of the Last Things.  Visualize yourself in agony, between time and eternity – between your past life and the judgment of God. – What would you wish to have done?  How would you want to have lived?  – Think of the pain you will feel then. – Call to mind your sins, your negligence, your abuse of grace. – How would you like to have acted in this or that situation?  – Make up your mind to adopt a real, practical means of remedying those defects which give you reason for anxiety.

Visualize yourself dead, buried, rotting, forgotten by all.  See yourself before the Judgment-seat of Christ: in purgatory—in hell.

The more vivid the picture, the better will be your meditation.

We all need this mystical death, to get the flesh off of our soul, and to rise again, that is, to get free from corruption and sin.  We need to get through this purgatory, in order to arrive at the enjoyment of God in this life.

8th Way. — Apply your mind to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.  Address yourself to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  With all the respect that His Real Presence demands, unite yourself to Him and to all His operations in the Eucharist, where He is ceaselessly adoring, praising, and loving His Father, in the name of all men, and in the condition of a victim.

Realize His recollection, His hidden life, His utter privation of everything, obedience, humility, and so on. – Stir yourself up to imitate this, and resolve to do so according as the occasions arise.

Offer up Jesus to the Father, as the only Victim worthy of Him, and by whom we offer homage to Him.  Thank Him for His gifts, satisfy His justice, and oblige His mercy to help us.

Offer yourself to sacrifice your being, your life, your work.  Offer up to Him some act of virtue you propose to perform, some mortification upon which you have resolved, with a view to self-conquest, and offer this for the same ends for which Our Lord immolates Himself in the Holy Sacraments.  – Make this offering with an ardent desire to add as much as possible to the glory He gives to His Father in this august mystery.

End with a spiritual Communion.

This is an excellent form of prayer, especially for your visit to the Blessed Sacrament.  Get to know it well, because our happiness in this life depends on our union with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

9th Way. — This prayer is to be made in the name of Jesus Christ.  It will arouse our confidence in God, and help us to enter into the spirit and the sentiments of Our Lord.

Its foundation is the fact that we are united to the Son of God, and are His brothers, members of His Mystical Body; that He has made over to us all His merits, and left us the legacy of all the rewards owed Him by His Father for His labors and death.  And this is what makes us capable of honoring God with a worship worthy of Him, and gives us the right to treat with God, and, as it were, to exact His graces of Him as though by justice.  – As creatures, we have not this right, still less as sinners, for there is an infinite disproportion between God and creatures, and infinite opposition between God and sinners.  But because we are united to the Incarnate Word, and are His brothers, and His members, we are enabled to appear before God with confidence, and speak familiarly with Him and oblige Him to give us a favorable hearing, to grant our requests, and to grant us His graces, because of the alliance and union between us and His Son.

Hence, we are to appear before God either to adore, to praise, or to love Him, by Jesus Christ working in us as the Head in His members, lifting us up, by His spirit, to an entirely divine state, or else to ask some favor in virtue of the merits of His Son.  And for that purpose we should remind Him of all that His well beloved Son has done for Him, His life and death, and His sufferings, the reward for which belongs to us because of the deed of gift by which He has made it over to us.

And this is the spirit in which we should recite the Divine Office.

10th Way. – Simple attention to the presence of God, and meditation.

Before starting out to meditate on the prepared topic, put yourself in the presence of God without making any other distinct thought, or stirring up in yourself any other sentiment except the respect and love for God which His presence inspires.  – Be content to remain thus before God, in silence, in simple repose of the spirit as long as it satisfies you.  After that, go on with your meditation in the usual way.

It is a good thing to begin all your prayer in this way, and worth while to return to it after every point. – Relax in this simple awareness of God’s presence. – It is a way to gain real interior recollection. – You will develop the habit of centering your mind upon God and thus gradually pave the way for contemplation. – But do not remain this way out of pure laziness or just to avoid the trouble of making a meditation.

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  Fr. Andrew de Bavier: From Liberal Protestantism to the True Church of Christ
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 12:59 PM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors - No Replies

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Andrew de Bavier
(1890 – 1948)

From Liberal Protestantism to the True Church of Christ
Andrew de Bavier (From Geneva to Rome, by way of Canterbury” – abridged text).
Andrew de Bavier was ordained a Priest on April 21, 1924. He passed away in 1948.



I was born into Protestantism.  I called myself a Christian, but I didn’t recognize any authority other than my own conscience, and no revelation other than religious experience.  I recognized in Christ a unique personality, but I refused to concede Him any supernatural character.

Besides, the problem of the Divinity of Christ didn’t make sense anymore, in this day and age.  Doesn’t God dwell within man?  The divine and the human, don’t they make one and the same thing?

Imbued, without even realizing it, with this pantheism which has poisoned modern thinking, I saw prayer not as an act of adoration or as the call from an indigent creature to its Creator, but as an excellent way of accumulating in myself the spiritual energies spread throughout the universe.

In fact, I had lost any notion of the Divine transcendence and all sense of the supernatural.  I never gave a thought to the laws of God.  Besides, religion, being essentially a life, what does our Creed matter, provided that our religious experiences are strong? One must be broad-minded, if one desires to be penetrated by the breath of the Holy Ghost.  I was broad-minded, very broad-minded, and I had a holy hatred for “narrow-mindedness”, that is those who held traditional ideas.

My liberalism made me into a sectarian opponent of sectarianism! Disciples of the new liberal orthodoxy, my companions and I were virtually scandalized when we heard a preacher repeat an old formula or profess any veneration for Jesus-Christ which was in harmony with the Nicene Creed.

As for Catholicism, it was the incarnation of all that we detested.  Didn’t the Roman Church press an iron yoke upon souls?  She was the most faithful ally of all reactionaries and of all those in authority.  Happily the Church died slowly but surely, decrepit and powerless. The modern spirit was incapable of interesting itself in the old fashioned rites which made up the cult of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, I was completely unaware of what those rites were.  As I understood nothing of the gestures of the priest, the Mass (which I had only attended one or two times), appeared to me to be an artificial and theatrical ceremony; and I proudly compared the vain pomp of Catholicism to our cult in spirit and in truth.  I had, like almost all Protestants, a conception of Catholic dogma that was absolutely false on every point, and I never even thought of verifying.


Experience as an Anglican

In the spring of 1909 I went to the Kings College in London, a School of Anglican theology.

I will never forget the first impression I had of the Anglican environment in which I found myself.  The College Chapel was more like a Catholic Church than a Protestant one.  I was astonished.  I was even more astounded when I understood the thoughts or ideas of my companions.  Their faith was dogmatic.  They believed, like the Catholics, in the Real Presence in the Protestant Communion or Lord’s Table which they went so far as calling the Mass.  For me, the visible Church was nothing more than a political and administrative machine; for them, she was the mystical body of Jesus Christ, his Spouse.

My time spent at the King’s College would have a decisive influence on my entire life.  I wouldn’t realize this until later however.  At that particular time my liberal ideas weren’t damaged in the least.  I had already entered the School of Theology of Paris in November 1909.  My liberal Protestant tendencies, which Anglican influences began to undermine, without my having been aware of it, were accentuated again at the same time as was my hostility towards Rome.

I soon became one of the most Rationalist students at the College.  Exclusively taken up with social questions, I abandoned my Bible for the “apostles” of the Revolution.


A Crisis: Faced with my nothingness

The crisis came suddenly in January of 1911.

My whole being was profoundly shaken; I was forced to face myself and to put into question my most cherished ideas.

I had exalted this earthly existence; I hadn’t come to the realization that our temporal life is fragile, fleeting, incapable of satisfying our most noble aspirations.  Blinded by spiritual pride, I relegated “sin” to those old fashioned notions of days gone by; and behold! how I now awoke, poor and guilty, having an immense need of the love and forgiveness of God.

I suddenly felt the need of a mediator and of a Savior, and the problem of the Divinity of Christ took upon itself an altogether new significance for me.

Liberal Protestantism could suit, if need be, the rich and happy of this world, but it folds up before the great truths and realities of this life: sin, suffering and death.

I understood that my most grievous fault had been to separate myself from Christ.  Without Him, I sadly discovered, religious faith finishes being absorbed into a vague pantheism.  I knew not yet if Christ was the Son of God, but I now knew He was the Way, the Truth and the Life.  I resolved to place myself quite simply before the Christ of the Gospels without any preconceived notions, and to allow myself to be taught by Him.

A work that I did at the School on the Cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages made me enter for the first time into contact with Catholic devotion.  It was a true revelation for me.

I found in the meditations and prayers of Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas, a fervor, a tenderness, a simplicity, which I had never ever been accustomed to.  Saint Anselm made me understand the beauty of the dogma of the Communion of Saints.  Why had I not till then believed what was evidently so natural?  God, being the bond which held souls together, were not deceased Christians then more alive than us, and even closer to us?  From then on it was easy to enter into contact spiritually with those souls and to ask their prayers.

I persevered however in my daily meditations on the Gospels.  The more I lived in union with Jesus Christ, the more He grew in my eyes.  Not content with upsetting all the values of this world, Jesus dared to go so far as to say that none could come to the Father save through Him.  He incarnated something of the Absolute.

For a long time I refused to affirm His Divinity, for fear of falling into dogmatism.  However, there arrived a time when it was impossible for me to hide from the question that Our Lord asked me, as he had asked so many others, “Who do you say that I am?”

Upon returning to Switzerland, I took up first the Catechism of the Council of Trent, then the excellent manual of Father Lesetre called “The Catholic Faith”.  I went from one discovery to another.

I soon had to admit that the Catholic Faith had an extraordinary sense of the Divine about it.  Nowhere was God so transcendent and yet immanent; so far and yet so close.

He was the Unique, the Inaccessible, the Ineffable.  “I am He Who Is”, said Our Lord to Saint Catherine of Siena, “and you are she who is not.”  And yet the God who surpasses any framework of our mind, the God of the mystery of the Trinity, was at the same time the God of the mystery of the Incarnation, the God who had espoused our frail humanity in the Person of Christ, the God who continues to unite Himself to us in the Eucharistic Communion and who lives in the soul in the state of grace.

Liberal Protestants and modernists, in neglecting the Divine transcendence, to insist uniquely on the immanence, belittled God, under the pretext of drawing man closer to God.


A Problem of Authority

Christianity was a revealed Religion, or it wasn’t: it therefore implicated a dogmatic element and Christians never considered Religion as a thing of mere sentiment.

If Christianity was a gift from God, a revelation from on High, it must necessarily be a Religion of Authority.  Neither the Protestant ‘solution’, nor the Anglican ‘solution’ of the problem of Authority was satisfying.  Didn’t all Protestant denominations claim to have their roots in the Bible, and with equal right, because there is no authorized interpreter of Biblical Revelation?  As for Anglicanism, where does the authority lie in this National Church, which holds within itself tendencies which are not only different, but contradictory?

Perhaps only the Catholic Church had a conception of Authority which was capable of resisting all the effects of time and of satisfying all the demands of reason.

An anguishing problem posed itself from then on to my soul, and never ceased haunting me for many long months:

« Would Christianity in its entirety be found only in Catholicism? Was Protestantism vitiated at its roots? »

I was incapable, at the time, to answer.  But my duty (or task) was clear: I had but to study Catholicism very seriously and to redouble with fervor in my religious life.  Three years of Protestant theology imbued me with the idea that the Religion of the New Testament was different from that of the Council of Trent.

Was primitive Christianity truly in opposition with Catholicism?  This question was vital to me.  What I was searching for was the Religion which Jesus Christ had founded.  I put my whole soul into re-reading the New Testament, leaving aside, as much as possible, any preconceived notions.  I had already been struck for a long time by the Catholic character of certain passages in the Gospels and Epistles.  I believed to have seen, in analyzing the notion of the Church in the Epistles of Saint Paul, that the great Apostle of the Gentiles already possessed all the essential elements of the Roman conception of the Church.

I began researching Catholic works on the first Centuries of Christianity.  The more I examined the Christianity of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, the more I was struck with its resemblance to Catholicism.  My eyes were beginning to open.  The Religion of the New Testament was a Religion of authority, a dogmatic Religion which imposed itself upon men as a supernatural revelation, independent of human judgments, rising above the changes of time, absolute and Divine.  The Church had always remained faithful to herself; and the Sovereign Pontiff, in warning Christians against modernism, had repeated the actions of Saint Paul writing to Saint Timothy:  “O Timothy, guard that which is committed to thy trust, and keep free from profane novelties in speech…” (I Tim. 6:20)


Was the Church human or Divine?

When I condemned the subjection of Catholics to Rome, I had forgotten that the Church, in the eyes of a Catholic, was not an administrative organization, created by man, fallible and obsolete like them; but that, for a Catholic, the Church is the Spouse of Christ, She is animated and directed by the Holy Ghost.  I had been wrong in believing the Church to be as it were a barrier between God and the soul, preventing the soul from communicating directly with God.

I had forgotten that mankind is not made up of a simple dust of individuals, each one a law unto himself.  Christians are the members of the body of Christ, and they only participate in the life of Christ by participating in the life of the Body, which doesn’t prevent them from entering directly into communion with Christ.  In the same way as an arm or a leg united to the body directly experiences the effects of the soul which governs the body, so does the Christian united to the Church directly experience the effects of Christ who governs the Church.

Personal observation also proved Catholicism to be right: it is in the Roman Church that one finds souls that have had the most direct vision of God.  Saints such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila, who had received admirable revelations, distinguished themselves just as much by their scrupulous obedience to the Hierarchy of the Church.

Dogma opened up an infinite amount of points of view; Dogma was even of such greatness that the Church would never have been capable of conserving it, and fully developing it without the assistance of the Holy Ghost.  Heretics are always offering us a shriveled and mutilated Christianity; our poor human brains never being able to see but one side of things.

On the contrary, the Church was essentially comprehensive. She has ever refused to place herself at an exclusive point of view.  She combats with equal vigor:
  • The Docetists, who denied the humanity of Christ; 
  • the Arians, who deny the Divinity of Christ;
  • The Pelagians, who didn’t believe in Grace; 
  • the Calvinists and the Jansenists, who didn’t believe in free will;
  • The Rationalists, who denied the Faith; 
  • and The Pragmatists, who denied that man is endowed with reason.
Yet, Catholic doctrine wasn’t a vague compromise between several contradictory tendencies.  The more I studied it, the more I admired its harmony.  Everything flowed from a single source: Jesus Christ.  And everything tended towards the same end: the Glory of God. By no means did the unity of Dogma exclude the diversity of systems of thought, and the theologians divided themselves into numerous schools.

Far from oppressing the intelligence, Catholicism essentially liberated it.  Catholics were unaware of the painful divorce of mind and heart which so many Protestants suffered from.  I was soon to experience myself this double action of the intellect on the heart and the heart on the intellect.  The winter of 1911-1912 was not only for me a year of hard work, but also a time of fervent religious life.


The Gift of the Faith

I loved to pass entire hours in the Chapel of the Benedictines.

I hadn’t yet the Faith, but I often assisted at the Mass.  The ceremonies which I had judged to be devoid of sense some years ago, took up for me a greatness all their own.  Didn’t the Catholic have the privilege of assisting at the greatest Drama in History, the mystical representation of the Sacrifice of Calvary? In union with the Priest, he could even offer himself to God with Jesus Christ present in the Sacred Host, and unite himself closely in Holy Communion with the Sacred Victim.

All other Sects appeared poor to me when I understood the profound Mystery of the Mass.

A day came when God granted me the greatest grace of my life.  On Easter Sunday, in 1912, while the Priest elevated the Consecrated Host, I was granted the grace to believe.  I adored God made man, who continues to live with us under the veil of the Eucharistic Bread.

My conversion was virtually completed.  My Protestant friends tried to dissuade me by recommending a book to me called: “What One Has Made Of The Church” (which was anonymously written).  It was full of errors and contradictions and made all sorts of accusations against the Church and Her Leaders.  I must say that the long enumerations of scandals made no impression on me.  There had been bad Bishops and even bad Popes.  There would always be scandals in the Church.  How could it be otherwise?  The Church is Divine, but it is composed of sinful men.  God promised infallibility to the Pope, but he never promised that he would be impeccable.  God asks our collaboration, but He leaves us free to accord it or not to Him.  It is this collaboration of God and man which makes up the drama of the life of the Church; and the great miracle of History is that the Church has been able to live and develop itself despite Christians.

Conversion became for me a serious obligation.  I had been led from liberal Protestantism to the Christianity of the Gospels.  I now saw clearly that the Religion of the Gospels and Catholicism were one and the same thing.  Orthodox Protestantism and even Anglicanism were nothing more than imperfect realizations of the Christian ideal.  Only the Catholic Church had remained faithful to Christ and the glorious freedom of the children of God could not be found but in being submissive to the Vicar of Jesus-Christ1.

Those around me asked me to wait a few months before taking such a decisive step.  I wasn’t received into the Church until the Eve of All Saints Day, 1912, in the Dominican Monastery of Saulchoir.

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  Dominicans of Avrillé: Assisting at the New Mass
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 12:05 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition - No Replies

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 29 [September 2015]

Assisting at the New Mass


Is it permitted to take part in the New Mass?
Even if the New Mass is valid, it displeases God in so far as it is Ecumenical and Protestant. Besides that, it represents a danger for the faith in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It must therefore be rejected. Whoever understands the problem of the New Mass must no longer assist at it, because he puts voluntarily his faith in danger, and, at the same time, encourages others to do the same in appearing to give his assent to the reforms.


How can a valid Mass displease God?
Even a sacrilegious Mass celebrated by an apostate priest to mock Christ can be valid. It is however evident that it offends God, and it would not be permitted to take part in it. In the same way, the Mass of a Greek Schismatic (valid and celebrated according a venerable rite) displeases God insofar as it is celebrated in opposition to Rome and to the unique Church of Christ.


Can one attend the New Mass however when it is celebrated in a worthy and pious manner by a Catholic priest with a faith that is absolutely certain?
It is not the celebrant who is called into question, but the rite that he is using. It is unfortunately a fact that the new rite has given very many Catholics a false notion of the Mass, which is closer to that of the protestant last supper than that of the Holy Sacrifice. The new Mass is one of the principal sources of the current crises of the faith. It is therefore imperative that we distance ourselves from it.


Can one assist at the new Mass in certain circumstances?
We must apply to the new Mass the same rules we use for the attendance at a non-Catholic ceremony. One can be present for family or professional reasons, but one behaves passively, and especially does not receive Holy Communion. 


What can one do when it is not possible to assist every Sunday a traditional Mass?
Whoever does not have the possibility to assist at a traditional Mass is excused from the Sunday obligation. The precept of the Sunday obligation only obliges in the case of a true Catholic Mass. One must however, in this case strive to assist at a traditional Mass at least regular intervals. What’s more, even if one is thus dispensed from assistance at Mass (which is a commandment of the Church), one is not thus so for the commandment of God (“Thou shalt sanctify the Day of the Lord”). One must replace, by one manner or another this Mass which one cannot have, with for example the reading of the text in one’s missal, and uniting the intention, during the time of the Mass to a Mass celebrated elsewhere, and in practicing a spiritual communion. 

[Editor’s Postscript - With regard to that last point, care must be taken not to be misled by the way it is phrased. We do not believe that the author means to suggest that any Mass will do, so long as it is “Traditional”. It would surely be better to avoid any public Mass, even a Traditional Mass, where attendance might mean a compromise on matters concerning the Faith. This would include Ecclesia Dei Masses and those of the SSPX.  -Recusant Ed.]

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  Dominicans of Avrillé: Assisting at the New Mass
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 12:05 PM - Forum: New Rite Sacraments - Replies (2)

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 29 [September 2015]

Assisting at the New Mass


Is it permitted to take part in the New Mass?
Even if the New Mass is valid, it displeases God in so far as it is Ecumenical and Protestant. Besides that, it represents a danger for the faith in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It must therefore be rejected. Whoever understands the problem of the New Mass must no longer assist at it, because he puts voluntarily his faith in danger, and, at the same time, encourages others to do the same in appearing to give his assent to the reforms.


How can a valid Mass displease God?
Even a sacrilegious Mass celebrated by an apostate priest to mock Christ can be valid. It is however evident that it offends God, and it would not be permitted to take part in it. In the same way, the Mass of a Greek Schismatic (valid and celebrated according a venerable rite) displeases God insofar as it is celebrated in opposition to Rome and to the unique Church of Christ.


Can one attend the New Mass however when it is celebrated in a worthy and pious manner by a Catholic priest with a faith that is absolutely certain?
It is not the celebrant who is called into question, but the rite that he is using. It is unfortunately a fact that the new rite has given very many Catholics a false notion of the Mass, which is closer to that of the protestant last supper than that of the Holy Sacrifice. The new Mass is one of the principal sources of the current crises of the faith. It is therefore imperative that we distance ourselves from it.


Can one assist at the new Mass in certain circumstances?
We must apply to the new Mass the same rules we use for the attendance at a non-Catholic ceremony. One can be present for family or professional reasons, but one behaves passively, and especially does not receive Holy Communion. 


What can one do when it is not possible to assist every Sunday a traditional Mass?
Whoever does not have the possibility to assist at a traditional Mass is excused from the Sunday obligation. The precept of the Sunday obligation only obliges in the case of a true Catholic Mass. One must however, in this case strive to assist at a traditional Mass at least regular intervals. What’s more, even if one is thus dispensed from assistance at Mass (which is a commandment of the Church), one is not thus so for the commandment of God (“Thou shalt sanctify the Day of the Lord”). One must replace, by one manner or another this Mass which one cannot have, with for example the reading of the text in one’s missal, and uniting the intention, during the time of the Mass to a Mass celebrated elsewhere, and in practicing a spiritual communion. 

[Editor’s Postscript - With regard to that last point, care must be taken not to be misled by the way it is phrased. We do not believe that the author means to suggest that any Mass will do, so long as it is “Traditional”. It would surely be better to avoid any public Mass, even a Traditional Mass, where attendance might mean a compromise on matters concerning the Faith. This would include Ecclesia Dei Masses and those of the SSPX.  -Recusant Ed.]

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  CV-19 Vaccines UNAPPROVED, but given Authority
Posted by: SAguide - 03-08-2021, 11:44 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines - Replies (1)

Taken from here: https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download

The vaccines are unapproved, free of all liability, admit may not prevent CV-19.  Who accepts this baloney?  You can read it for yourself on the FDA website.  
Below are the first 2 pages of 5 pages.  Type in FDA Moderna fact sheet for the complete pdf.


 FACT SHEET FOR RECIPIENTS AND CAREGIVERS
EMERGENCY USE AUTHORIZATION (EUA) OF THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE TO PREVENT CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) IN INDIVIDUALS 18 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER

You are being offered the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2. This Fact Sheet contains information to help you understand the risks and benefits of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, which you may receive because there is currently a pandemic of COVID-19.

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is a vaccine and may prevent you from getting COVID-19.
There is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

Read this Fact Sheet for information about the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine. Talk to the vaccination provider if you have questions. It is your choice to receive the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine.

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is administered as a 2-dose series, 1 month apart, into the muscle.
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine may not protect everyone.

This Fact Sheet may have been updated. For the most recent Fact Sheet, please visit https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GET THIS VACCINE
WHAT IS COVID-19?   COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. This type of coronavirus has not been seen before. You can get COVID-19 through contact with another person who has the virus. It is predominantly a respiratory illness that can affect other organs. P eople with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms reported, ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Symptoms may appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus. Symptoms may include: fever or chills; cough; shortness of breath; fatigue; muscle or body aches; headache; new loss of taste or smell; sore throat; congestion or runny nose; nausea or vomiting; diarrhea.

WHAT IS THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is an unapproved vaccine that may prevent COVID-19. There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

The FDA has authorized the emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

For more information on EUA, see the “What is an Emergency Us e Authorization (EUA)?section at the end of this Fact Sheet.

Revised: 12/ 2020                                                                                                                                                                                          [page] 1

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT SHOULD YOU MENTION TO YOUR VACCINATION PROVIDER BEFORE YOU GET THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?
Tell your vaccination provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:
have any allergies
have a fever
have a bleeding disorder or are on a blood thinner
are immunocompromised or are on a medicine that affects your immune system
are pregnant or plan to become pregnant
are breastfeeding
have received another COVID-19 vaccine

WHO SHOULD GET THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?
FDA has authorized the emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in individua ls 18 years of age and older.

WHO SHOULD NOT GET THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?
You should not get the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine if you:
had a severe allergic reaction after a previous dose of this vaccine
had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient of this vaccine

WHAT ARE THE INGREDIENTS IN THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine contains the following ingredients: messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), lipids ( SM-102, polyethylene glyc ol [ P EG] 2000 dimyristoyl glycerol [DMG], cholesterol, and 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine [DSP C]), tromethamine, tromethamine hydrochloride, acetic acid, sodium acetate, and sucrose.

IS THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE GIVEN?
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine will be given to you as an injection into the muscle. The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine vaccination series is 2 doses given 1 month apart. If you receive one dose of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, you should receive a second dose of the same vaccine 1 month later to complete the vaccination series.

HAS THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE BEEN USED BEFORE?
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is an unapproved vaccine. In clinical trials, approximately 15,400 individuals 18 years of age and older have received at least 1 dose of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine.WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?In an ongoing clinical trial, the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine has been shown to prevent COVID-19 following 2 doses given 1 month apart. The duration of protection against COVID-19 is currently unknown.


Revised: 12/ 2020                                                                                                                                                                                           2

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  The Recusant: Authority, Religious Liberty, and the New Mass (Analysis)
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 11:23 AM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition - Replies (1)

Taken from The Recusant Issue 29 – September 2015

Concerning ‘Liberty in Matters of Religion’ OR ‘Religious Liberty’,
Authority AND Whether we can attend the New Mass


1.Authority vs. ‘Liberty’ Religious
Authority vs. ‘Religious Liberty’
  • At the risk of destroying all authority, human liberty cannot be defined as freedom from any constraint. Constraints can be physical or moral. Moral constraint in the religious domain is extremely useful and is found throughout Sacred Scripture. ‘The Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps.110:10) Authority is there to help men do good and avoid evil. It is meant to help men use their freedom well.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council, p.30)
  • The search for truth, for men living on this earth, consists above all in obeying and submitting their intelligence to whatever authority may be concerned: be it familial, religious or even civil authority. How many men can reach the truth without the help of authority?” (Ibid. p.32)
  • Where, in point of fact, did this concept [Religious Liberty] come into force? Inside the Church or outside the Church? Clearly it made its appearance among the self styled philosophers of the 18th century: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire. . . . In the middle of the 19th century, with Lamennais, the Liberal Catholics attempted to reconcile this concept with the Church’s doctrine. They were condemned by Pius IX. This concept, which in his encyclical Immortale Dei Leo XIII calls ‘a new law,’ was solemnly condemned by that Pontiff as contrary to sound philosophy and against Holy Scripture and Tradition.” (Ibid. p.87ff)
  • 15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” (Pius IX, Syllabus Errorum [syllabus of condemned propositions]) “If I really thought that I had religious liberty, I would find an easier religion to belong to. Why not be an Anglican? They have nicer churches, they are more musical, their laws are not as strict... But I am not an Anglican, I am a Catholic because I do not have ‘religious liberty’, I have no choice: I am bound in conscience to be a Catholic if I want to save my soul. G.K. Chesterton said: ‘If I were not a Catholic I would have a harem.’” (Fr. Gregory Hesse, Ten Errors of Vatican II, Recusant 16, May 2014)
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Summary
Authority’ has different forms: it does not have to mean official jurisdiction but can also include moral authority. If authority exists, we may not do whatever we choose. All authority comes from God who is the author of all things. Authority exists for good. God is good. Therefore authority exists for God and exists to bring us to Him. As a result, therefore:

1) Even the greatest authority on earth cannot be used to lead us away from God, since He is the source of all authority and He cannot be made to contradict Himself.

2) Like a refusal to obey authority on the part of subjects (e.g. the French Revolution), a refusal to exercise authority on the part of one who has been given it means a denial to serve the interests of good and is thus, in effect, a denial of God who is the source.

3) Religious Liberty represents, in effect, a denial of God’s authority and thus, in the end, a denial of God Himself. The authority of the Church, and all of Tradition and Scripture, is thus by its very existence an implicit denial of Religious Liberty.


2. The New Mass and Whether We Ought to Attend it
  • On the contrary, adherence to the truth and the love of God are the principles of authentic religious liberty, which we can define as the liberty to render to God the worship due to Him and to live according to His commandments.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics, pp.83,84)
  • It seems to me preferable that scandal be given rather than a situation be maintained in which one slides into heresy. After considerable thought on the matter, I am convinced that one cannot take part in the New Mass, and even just to be present one must have a serious reason. We cannot collaborate in spreading a rite which, even if it is not heretical, leads to heresy. This is the rule I am giving my friends.” (Bishop de Castro Mayer, Letter to Archbishop Lefebvre, 29th Jan. 1970)
  • Little by little the Archbishop’s position hardened … In 1975 he admitted that one could ‘assist occasionally at the New Mass when one feared going without Communion for a long time.’ [. . .] Soon, Archbishop Lefebvre would no longer tolerate participation at Masses celebrated in the new rite except passively, for example at funerals. … He considered that it was bad in itself and not only because of the circumstances in which the rite was performed.” (Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre the Biography, p465 ff.)
  • To avoid conforming to the evolution slowly taking place in the minds of priests, we must avoid - I could almost say completely - assisting at the New Mass.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference at Écône, 21st March, 1977)
  • Born of liberalism and modernism, this Reform is poisoned through and through. It begins in heresy and ends in heresy even if not all its acts are formally heretical. Hence it is impossible for any informed and loyal Catholic to embrace this Reform or submit himself to it in any way whatsoever.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, November 1974 Declaration) “The New Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is [still] impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the Faith.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, “Open Letter to Confused Catholics”, p. 29)
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3. Bishop Williamson and Authority

I think – I may be wrong – that [God] wants a loose network of independent pockets of Resistance, gathered around the Mass, freely contacting one another, but with no structure of false obedience [i.e. no structure] such as served to sink the mainstream Church in the 1960’s, and is now sinking the Society of St Pius X.” (Eleison Comments 277)

A number of good souls wish that a Congregation were founded to replace the Society of St Pius X. But [Archbishop Lefebvre] ... had the Church’s authority to build a Congregation of the Church. … How many sane bishops are there left in the mainstream Church [today]? And how could any of them today approve of Traditional and anti-Conciliar Statutes? … And that is why, right now, I envisage being little more than father, adviser and friend for any souls calling for a bishop’s leadership and support.” (Eleison Comments #307)

As for an alternative to the SSPX, we must learn the lessons to be drawn from its present severe crisis. The Catholic Church runs on authority, from the Pope downwards… We have, so to speak, run out of that peasant common sense that enabled Catholic authority to function.” (Eleison Comments #278)

Again I am being urged by a valiant participant in today’s Catholic “Resistance” to put myself at the head of it. … But God gave the dying breath of true Church authority to Archbishop Lefebvre… ‘The wide diversity of opinion amongst Resistance priests confuses the laity.’ But to control opinions requires authority (see above). ... ‘There is no Church without a head or hierarchy. God wants us organized.’ Normally indeed there is no Church without head or hierarchy, but modern man has created an abnormal situation.” (Eleison Comments #311)

But authority comes from the Pope. Which is why if the Pope is not in his right mind, you can’t get Catholic authority from above. You just can’t get it. … In which case the Church is crippled, the Church is paralysed. . . . I don’t have authority. I cannot have authority. Friendship, advice, contact, support: no problem. Authority: problem. Can you imagine that commanding resistant priests is like herding cats, can you imagine? In which case, is it worth trying if it is bound to fail?”

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4. Bishop Williamson and ‘Liberty’
  • Therefore, it seems to me, if James is convinced that to save his soul he must stay in the Newchurch, I need not hammer him to get out of it. If Clare is persuaded that there is no grave problem within the Society of St. Pius X, I need not ram down her throat why there is. And if John can see no way to keep the Faith without believing that the See of Rome is vacant, I need urge upon him no more than that that belief is not obligatory.” (Eleison Comments #348)
Comment:
1. There is absolutely no need for the excessively emotional language. Why say “hammer him” and “ram down her throat” when “tell him” and “seek to persuade her” would do just as well? This tends to serve as a distraction from the meaning of what is being said.

2. Is this not the essence of indifferentism? If God has given me the grace to find Catholic Tradition and to see the conciliar church for what it really is, am I not obliged by the law of Charity to help my neighbor to see too, to bring them to Tradition and ultimately to safety? Do we not risk being condemned for the good we did not do, for the souls we did not bring to the truth?

  • [T]he opinion itself [i.e. sedevacantism] is dangerous precisely because it can be the beginning of a slide towards losing the Faith. … Now if a Catholic needs to hold that opinion in order not to lose his Catholic Faith, let him hold it.” (Eleison Comments #417)
Comment:
1. How can a bishop counsel somebody to hold an opinion if a) that opinion is dangerous and b) it leads to a risk of losing the Faith altogether?

2. God never requires us to endanger our Faith. Therefore no Catholic ever really “needs to hold” a dangerous opinion. An individual Catholic may feel or think he needs to, but that is subjective, not objective. But if it is objectively dangerous, then objectively there is no need to embrace it, quite the contrary.

3. Does not the permission (“If you ‘need to’ do it, do it!”) have the effect of cancelling out the prior warning? If the conclusion is that you can hold an opinion if you feel you need to, then the final result is that you can do what you like, all warnings to the contrary notwithstanding.


  • I do not say to everybody inside the Novus Ordo, priests and laity, I don’t say: ‘You’ve got to get out!’ ” (St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada 5th November 2015) “At present I am more and more disinclined to impose even a true viewpoint on anybody.” (Eleison Comments #420)
  • [As a reason for not advising priests to leave the SSPX]: “I believe in liberty!” [In answer to the question ‘Can I attend the New Mass during the week?’]: “Even there you may find the grace of God. If you do, make use of it in order to sanctify your soul.”
  • While the new religion is false, it’s dangerous, it strangles grace and it’s helping many people to lose the Faith: at the same time, there are still cases where it can be used and is used still to build the Faith.” “The essential principle is: do whatever you need to do to keep the Faith.” “You must work it out for yourselves. Any other question?” (New York, 28th June 2015)
Comment:
1. Nobody disputes that we are all ultimately responsible for our own decisions, and will be answerable for whose advice we accepted and whose we rejected. But a layman cannot accept or reject advice, he cannot decide for or against a course of action, unless he is actually given advice to begin with! What is the point in even asking a priest (or bishop!) for advice on such a question if this is what his answer amounts to?

2. Once again, if I know that the New Mass poses a danger, and another soul asks me for advice, does not the law of Charity demand that I tell the truth and leave up to them the question of whether they follow my advice or not? Does this not apply even more for a priest and a hundredfold the more so for a bishop?

[Image: recusant-29-4.png]


Summary:
Bishop Williamson says consistently that he will not tell people, laity or priests, what they should do. Even with something as basic and important as the question of attending the New Mass, he insists on leaving people to make up their on minds. In practice, this means leaving their consciences completely uninformed and untroubled and leaving them with a readymade excuse to not do the right thing.

Bishop Williamson’s refusal to exercise even moral authority, to help compel souls towards the good even in the slightest way and his washing his hands of any responsibility for where they end up, leads in practice to a ‘soft’ version of Religious Liberty.



5. Objections:

A) But you’re exposing a split in the Resistance!
How can anyone cause a split in the Resistance by disagreeing with someone who does not even believe in the Resistance?
  • ...any so-called movement of “Resistance” today…” (Eleison Comments #354)
  • ...any number of us in the quote-unquote Resistance…” (Eleison Comments #386)
  • The second email comes from a “Resistance” priest…” (Eleison Comments #413)
  • ...Society priests are not yet joining the “Resistance”…” (Eleison Comments #404)
  • ...questions ranging over the Church, Tradition, the “Resistance” and the XSPX.” (Eleison Comments #395)
  • ...one thinks of the present difficulties of the “Resistance”…” (Eleison Comments #375)
  • If the “Resistance” is presently making so little apparent headway…” (Eleison Comments #370)
  • The resistant groups, the resistants - a - n - t - s - and I very much prefer the expression resistants to the expression resistance … I very much believe in the resistants, I’m not sure I believe in the Resistance.” (Post Falls, Idaho, USA, June 2014)
Comment
Notice that the word “Resistance” always has quotation marks placed around it, whereas even the term “XSPX” does not! The effect of the quotation marks around “Resistance” is to suggest what he himself says elsewhere, that he does not really believe that there is such a thing as the “Resistance.”

Nevertheless, whether or not one believes in it, the Resistance does exist. It is and strives to be the continuation of the work of Archbishop Lefebvre: to save and to spread Catholic Tradition and to oppose Vatican II and conciliarism. It is the coalescing of laity and clergy to that end, the organizing of the apostolate to that end, the training of a new generation of priests to that end, and all the rest. That is the reality behind the term. It exists whether one wants it to or not, whether one believe in it or not, but it is up to us whether we wish to see it and support it. It seems that Bishop Williamson does not.

  • It is not clear that the present need is to rebuild a classic Congregation or Seminary. Both may be somehow out-dated.” (Eleison Comments #278)
  • But God is God, and for the salvation of souls tomorrow it may be that he will no longer resort to the classical Congregation or seminary of yesterday.” (Ibid.)
  • In the early 21st century there seems to me to be just not enough Catholic straw left to make a Catholic brick like the SSPX of the late 20th century.” (Eleison Comments #311)
  • Don’t be under any illusion: it’s not going to be me who puts together a new SSPX. No way! The time for that is over. Put away your toys everybody and get with it. Grow up!” (St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada, 5th Nov. 2014)
Summary:
Whether mistakenly or out of convenience, the outside world and in particular the enemies of the Resistance (neo-SSPX, sedevacantists, etc.) see the Resistance and Bishop Williamson as being one and the same thing. The reality is otherwise. Bishop Williamson himself appears to be undecided as to whether or not he supports the Resistance, or whether there even is such a thing at all! He does not use the term except in quotation marks, and he does not believe in what it stands for.


B) But you can’t disagree with him! He’s a bishop!
  • People followed the Archbishop because here was the truth. In other words, the truth created authority. … Then today what do we have? Today, since the Archbishop’s successors have turned against the truth, the Society is losing its authority as well.” (Mahopac, New York, 28th June 2015)
  • If you are following me, it is because you are following not me but true Catholic doctrine. If one day I cease giving you true Catholic doctrine or change what I teach you, leave me!” (Archbishop Lefebvre, various conferences to the seminarians at Écône)
  • Objective truth is above Masters and people alike, so that if the people have the truth on their side, they are superior to their Masters if the Masters do not have the truth. ... In brief, if they are right, they have the right.” (Eleison Comments #366)
  • I am interested in your accusation of disloyalty. I know exactly what you mean but I happen to see things exactly in reverse. The trouble is that people always think of loyalty as being due to themselves. You automatically think of loyalty as working upwards. This is natural as you spring from a well-to-do family... I come from an eminently respectable but very poor background... I, consequently, think of loyalty as working downwards. I don't say the Squire wasn't tough - he was - but we knew he would see us through: he was loyal to us humble folk... You see the point? You blame me for not being loyal to my superiors. It has never crossed my mind: they are perfectly capable of defending themselves and even of breaking me if they so wish ... I, on the other hand, accuse you of being disloyal to your inferiors. It has never crossed your mind, although they are totally defenceless against you. And your disloyalty, George, is quite irreparable: thanks to it countless souls are seared in this life and may be lost in the next. My disloyalty to you can do little more than melt your collar - if, in fact, I am disloyal.” (Fr. Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook)

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  Third Week in Lent [Monday - Saturday]
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 07:38 AM - Forum: Lent - Replies (7)

Monday of the Third Week of Lent
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)

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The Station is in the Church of Saint Mark, which was built in the fourth century, in honour of the Evangelist, by the holy Pope Mark, whose relics are kept there.

Collect
Cordibus nostris, quæsumus, Domine, gratiam tuam benignus infunde: ut sicut ab escis carnalibus abstinemus, ita sensus quoque nostros a noxiis retrahamus excessibus. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. 
We beseech thee, O Lord, mercifully to pour forth thy grace into our hearts; that, as we abstain from flesh, so we may keep our senses from all noxious excesses. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.


Epistle
Lesson from the book of Kings. IV. Ch. V.

In those days: Naaman, general of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable: for by him the Lord gave deliverance to Syria, and he was a valiant man and rich, but a leper. Now there had gone out robbers from Syria, and had led away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she waited upon Naaman’s wife. And she said to her mistress: I wish my master had been with the prophet that is in Samaria; he would certainly have healed him of the leprosy which he hath. Then Naaman went in to his lord, and told him, saying: Thus and thus saith the girl, that come from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said to him: Go, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment, and brought the letter to the king of Israel, in these words: When thou shalt receive this letter, know that I have sent to thee Naaman my servant, that thou mayest heal him of his leprosy. And when the king of Israel had read the letter, he rent his garments, and said: Am I God, to be able to kill and to give life, that this man hath sent to me, to heal a man of his leprosy? Mark, and see how he seeketh occasions against me. And when Eliseus the man of God had heard this, to wit, that the king of Israel had rent his garments, he sent to him, saying: Why hast thou rent thy garments? Let him come to me, and let him know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and stood at the door of the house of Eliseus; and Eliseus sent a messenger to him, saying: Go, and wash seven times in the Jordan, and thy flesh shall recover health, and thou shalt be clean. Naaman was very angry, and went away, saying: I thought he would have come out to me, and standing, would have invoked the name of the Lord his God, and touched with his hand the place of the leprosy, and healed me. Are not the Abama, and the Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel, that I may wash in them, and be made clean? So as he turned, and was going away with indignation, his servants came to him, and said to him: Father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, surely thou shouldst have done it; how much rather what he now hath said to thee, “Wash, and thou shalt be clean?” Then he went down, and washed in the Jordan seven times, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a little child, and was made clean. And returning to the man of God with all his train, he came and stood before him, and said: In truth I know there is no other God in all the earth, but only in Israel.

Quote:Yesterday, the Church made known to our Catechumens that the day of their Baptism was at hand; today she reads them a passage from the Old Testament which relates a history that admirably symbolizes the saving Font prepared for them by divine Mercy. Naaman’s leprosy is a figure of sin. There is but one cure for the loathsome malady of the Syrian officer: he must go, and wash seven times in the Jordan, and he shall be made clean. The Gentile, the infidel, the infant, with its stain of original sin—all may be made just and holy; but this can only be effected by water and the invocation of the Blessed Trinity. Naaman objects to the remedy as being too simple; he cannot believe that one so insignificant can be efficacious; he refuses to try it; he expected something more in accordance with reason—for instance, a miracle that would have done honor both to himself and the Prophet. This was the reasoning of many a Gentile, when the Apostles went about preaching the Gospel; but they that believed, with simple-hearted faith, in the power of Water sanctified by Christ, received Regeneration; and the Baptismal Font created a new people, composed of all nations of the earth. Naaman, who represents the Gentiles, was at length induced to believe; and his faith was rewarded by a complete cure. His flesh was restored like that of a little child, which has never suffered taint or disease. Let us give glory to God, who has endowed Water with the heavenly power it now possesses; let us praise him for the wonderful workings of his grace, which produces in docile hearts that Faith whose recompense is so magnificent.

Gospel
Sequel of the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Ch. IV.

At that time: Jesus said to the Pharisees: Doubtless you will say to me this similitude: Physician, heal thyself; as great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum, do also here in thy own country. And he said: Amen, I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country. In truth, I say to you, there were many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the land; and to none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarephta of Sidon, to a widow woman. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue, hearing these things, were filled with anger, and they rose up and thrust him out of the city; and they brought him to the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through the midst of them, went his way.

Quote:Here again, we find our Savior proclaiming the mystery of the Gentiles being called to take the place of the incredulous Jews; and he mentions Naaman as an example of this merciful substitution. He also speaks, in the same sense, of the widow of Sarephta, whose history we had a few days ago. This terrible resolution of our Lord to transfer his light from one people to another irritates the Pharisees of Nazareth against the Messias. They know that Jesus, who has only just commenced his public life, has been working great miracles in Capharnaum: they would have him honor their own little city in the same way; but Jesus knows that they would not be converted. Do these people of Nazareth so much as know Jesus? He has lived among them for eighteen years, during all which time he has been advancing in wisdom and age and grace before God and men; but they despise him, for he is a poor man, and the son of a carpenter. They do not even know that, though he has passed so many years among them, he was not born in their city, but in Bethlehem. Not many days before this, Jesus had gone into the synagogue of Nazareth, and had explained, with marvelous eloquence and power, the Prophet Isaias; he told the audience that the time of mercy was come, and his discourse excited much surprise and admiration. But the Pharisees of the city despised his words. They have heard that he has been working great things in the neighborhood; they are curious to see one of his miracles; but Jesus refuses to satisfy their unworthy desire. Let them recall to mind the discourse made by Jesus in their synagogue, and tremble at the announcement he then made to them, that the Gentiles were to become God’s chosen people. But the divine Prophet is not accepted in his own country; and had he not withdrawn himself from the anger of his compatriots of Nazareth, the blood of the Just would have been shed that very day. But there is an unenviable privilege which belongs exclusively to Jerusalem;—a Prophet cannot perish out of Jerusalem!

Humiliate capita vestra Deo. 
Bow down your heads to God.

Subveniat nobis, Domine, misericordia tua: ut ab imminentibus peccatorum nostrorum periculis, te mereamur protegente, eripi, te liberante, salvari. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. 
May thy mercy, O Lord, assist us, that by thy protection we may be delivered from the dangers of sin that surround us, and so brought to eternal happiness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.


Let us, on this day, offer to God the following solemn Supplication, taken from the Gothic Missal.
Supplication
(In Dominica Quadragesimæ.)
Rogamus te, Rex sæculorum, Deus sancte, jam miserere; peccavimus tibi. 
We beseech thee, O King Eternal! O holy God! have mercy now upon us, for we have sinned against thee.

℣. Audo clamantes, Pater altissime, et quæ precamur, clemens attribue: exaudi nos Domine. 
℣. Hear our cry, O Father, most high God! and mercifully grant us our requests. Graciously hear us, O Lord!

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Bone Redemptor, supplices quæsumus de toto corde flentes; requirimus, adsiste propitius.
℣. O good Redeemer! we suppliantly beseech thee, and with our whole heart we pour out our tears before thee. We seek after thee; be propitious, and show thyself unto us.

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Emitte manum, Deus omnipotens, et invocantes potenter protege ex alto, piissime. 
℣. Stretch forth thy hand, O Almighty God! and, in thy exceeding goodness, powerfully protect us from on high.

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Fertilitatem et pacem tribue: remove bella, et famen cohibe, Redemptor sanctissime. 
℣. Grant us fertility and peace, O most holy Redeemer! Drive wars away from us, and deliver us from famine.

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Indulge lapsis: indulge perditis, dimitte noxia: ablue crimina: acclines tu libera. 
℣. Grant pardon to the fallen; pardon them that have gone astray; forgive us our sins; cleanse us from our iniquities; deliver us who are here prostrate before thee.

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Gemitus vide: fletus intellige: extende manum: peccantes redime. 
℣. See our sighing; hear our weeping; stretch forth thy hand; redeem us sinners.

℟. Jam miserere. 
℟. Have mercy now upon us.

℣. Hanc nostram, Deus, hanc pacem suscipe: supplicum voces placatus suscipe: et parce, piissime. 
℣. Receive, O God, receive this our prayer for reconciliation; be appeased, and receive the petition of thy suppliants; and spare us, O most loving God!

℟. Rogamus te, Rex sæculorum, Deus sancte, jam miserere: peccavimus tibi. 

℟. We beseech thee, O King Eternal! O holy God! have mercy now upon us, for we have sinned against thee.

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  CDC Claims Mask Mandates Don’t Have Statistically Improved Impact on Spread of COVID
Posted by: Stone - 03-08-2021, 07:29 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

CDC Claims Mask Mandates Don’t Have Statistically Improved Impact on Spread of COVID Than No Masks At All – Will Therefore Continue Pushing Masks

Gateway Pundit | March 7, 2021 


The CDC recommends wearing masks after their study showed that related to COVID, the results of wearing masks were statistically the same as the results when not wearing masks.


The results of a CDC study at first appear to show that wearing masks help reduce the spread of COVID:



The results were inside the statistical margin of error:



The results from before wearing masks were not statistically different than the period wearing masks – thus the CDC will continue recommending Americans wear masks???



This leads to an observation from George Carlin:

[Image: George-Carlin.jpg]

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  Prayers for the Conversion of a Child
Posted by: Hildegard of Bingen - 03-07-2021, 06:06 PM - Forum: Prayers and Devotionals - No Replies

Taken from the the Book “Mother Love a Manual for Christian Mothers” – page 134-135


[Image: RCMHeartsJesusMary.jpg]


Prayers for the Conversion of a Child


To the Heart of Jesus

    O Heart of Jesus, I humbly prostrate myself before Thee, adoring Thee as the heart of my Lord and my God!  Pardon the sins by which I have offended Thee and rendered myself undeserving of Thy mercies.  For Thine own sake, O Lord, for the honor and glory of Thy infinite mercy, have pity on me!  Hearken to my supplications for grace and salvation for my strayed child.  From all eternity Thou hast loved it and borne it in Thy Heart.  Have mercy on it.  Thou dost will that it should be converted and live.  Effect in it what Thou hast decreed.  Thou canst do all that Thou wilt!  Thou dost not will the perdition of my child.  Draw him (her) from the deep abyss into which he (she) has sunk.  From Thy cross Thou didst draw all to Thyself – loosen the bonds in which he (she) lies chained. Thou hast bought him (her) at a great price – take possession of Thy property.  He (she) was once dedicated to Thee in holy Baptism – let not Thine enemies rejoice longer over him (or her).  Thou hast opened in Thy Church a fountain of pardon and grace – lead him (her) to where he (she) may imbibe new life.  O give me back the child that hell has torn from my embrace!  Thou, O Heart of Jesus, canst do this!  Hearken to the prayers of Thy Blessed Mother, of Thy saints, and of all the elect for this my child, that once belonged to their society, but now is so far astray.  Listen to my prayers, the prayers of a mother, O Thou who canst not hear unmoved a mother’s supplication for her child!  Grant me what is dearest to me on earth, the salvation of my child, and I will eternally praise thy holy name!  Amen.


To the Heart of Mary

    O Heart of Mary, most maternal Heart, sweet Comfort of all in distress!  To Thee I have recourse, to thee I confide my sorrow! My child has abandoned his (her) God, my child is the slave of sin!  Have pity on me, a poor mother, and help me in my affliction.  I remind thee of the heartrending sorrow Thou didst endure when Thou didst pillow the head of thy Crucified Son on thy maternal bosom.  My child is also dead, dead as to his (her) precious soul!  Would that in innocence he (she) had endured the death of the body!  He (she) is help captive by the spirits of hell, who are forcing him (her) into the abyss!  O my Mother, thou wilt not permit this to happen!  Throughout the whole earth, thy Heart is magnified as the refuge of sinners – thou wilt not allow my child to be lost!  Thou hast gained for so many restoration to the grace and love of God – prove the power of thy motherly intercession in the case of this sinful soul.  I remit it into thy hands.  I place it in thy maternal arms.  Receive it, O kindest of mothers!  Press it to thy bosom!  Enclose it in thy heart until life is restored to it and hell is forced to retreat.  And then, dear Mother, protect the conquest that thou hast gained; preserve what thou hast granted; watch over what thou hast sown; increase what thou hast planted.  Lead, O sweet friend of souls, this soul that is now staying in darkness on the brink of the abyss, into the way of life and salvation, that, during life here below and throughout all eternity, it may unceasingly praise and exalt thy maternal goodness and mercy.  Amen.

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  Archbishop Lefebvre: 1990 Conference Extract in Albias, France
Posted by: Stone - 03-07-2021, 05:25 PM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences - No Replies

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 28 [July-August 2015]

Extract from a talk given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in Albias (Tarn et Garonne, France), 10th October 1990
What can one do against this profound deviation from the Catholic Faith within the Church? One can only train good priests.”


Ladies and Gentlemen!

Many thanks to Father Marziac and Father Denis Roch for their short talks through which you have already gained a glimpse of the atmosphere which has existed for twenty years. Father Marziac also talked about Senegal. Thus it would cover already forty years.

We have experienced difficult and tragic moments. Sometimes I feel obliged to summarise my life. Father Londos could probably do that even better. He is five years older than me, almost a century old.

We had to live through three wars. The war of 1914 to 1918, the war from 1939 to 1945 and the war from 1962 to 1965. You might say that no war took place between 1962 and 1965. I am not mistaken. It was the most horrible war which we have lived through. The death of the body is better than the death of souls. This war represented at the same time a climax, a conclusion and a beginning. It was the conclusion of a truly diabolical enterprise and the beginning of a true revolution within the Church. We want to stay Catholic. Because of that it was impossible for us to accept these revolutionary changes without having to forsake our Faith.

The facts show the horrendous consequences – the introduction of revolutionary ideas into the interior of the Church through men of the Church. These men used the Second Vatican Council in order to help these revolutionary ideas to victory. In my opinion this is the most grievous fact of the last 30 years.

There were always enemies outside the Church. There were also enemies of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He had hardly appeared in His official life, when He was already in opposition with the Pharisees and Scribes. During His three years of public ministry they persecuted Him and nailed Him to the cross. Since then this war has not stopped and it is being waged with all means against Our Lord. You will know the history of the Church well enough. You know what the Church had to suffer through the centuries from men who wanted to continue the downfall of the Church and of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Although this situation was known, it took place outside the Church. People who had a hostile disposition towards the Church left it through heresies and schisms. Today the Church is in a much more serious and horrible situation. The enemies are inside the Church. Whether these people are aware of their actions is not important. It is also unimportant whether they act with intent or whether they are true enemies of the Church. Only God alone knows that.

They do act however as enemies of the Church. 

This became obvious during the Council. I have often given as an example the violent opposition between two representatives of the Church: Cardinal Ottaviani, who stood for the Catholic Church and Her twenty centuries’ old tradition, and Cardinal Bea who supported the liberal and modern spirit. This liberal and modern spirit could already be found within the Church during the time of Pope Pius X, who therefore had to condemn it. 

During the last session of the Central Preparatory Commission of the Council, I witnessed this opposition. Two ideologies clashed violently against each other. On the one side were people who represented the revolutionary ideas of Human Rights and have acquired their principles, or wanted to acquire them. With this kind of profound atheism man only considers his freedom. He no longer wants to consider God’s Commandments and does not want anymore to contemplate himself in relation to God. He wants to be independent from God and the Church. Cardinal Bea represented this liberation theology. The text which he had prepared entitled “Religious Liberty” was the best proof of that. Cardinal Ottaviani prepared a text on the same topic however entitled “Religious Tolerance”. The Church tolerates error and false religions, she does not place them however on the same level as the true religion.

Traditionally the Church claimed to be the only true religion which was founded by God himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, all other religions are wrong. One has to be a missionary in order to convert the followers of false religions, so that they can be saved. This was always the Faith of the Church. The raison d’etre of missions in the Church is to convert souls and not to tell souls that their religion is as good as the Catholic Faith. The ideologies of these two Cardinals violently clashed together. In some way it represents the opposition within the Church. Cardinal Ottaviani has openly voiced his opinion in front of Cardinal Bea. He told him that he did not agree with his text and that he had no right to compose it. Cardinal Bea equally rose and replied that he also could not accept Cardinal Ottaviani’s text in principle. Who was right? Cardinal Bea or Cardinal Ottaviani? The revolution or the Catholic Church? The revolution has risen against the Catholic Church. There was the opinion that a final line had to be drawn under clericalism, the authority of the Church and the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church could only condemn the principles of the revolution if it wanted to stay loyal to Our Lord Jesus Christ. During the 19th Century and during the first half of the 20th century, all popes have acted that way until Pope Pius XII. All these popes have condemned the principles of the revolution. Within the Central Preparatory Commission a group of Cardinals was formed who wanted to accept together with Cardinal Bea the principles of the revolution. Cardinal Ruffini rose and regretted the violent opposition of his confreres whose content was of fundamental importance for the Faith and the teaching of the Church. He wanted to present this matter to the higher authority, the pope himself. Pope John XXIII usually chaired our meetings. He was not present at that meeting. Cardinal Bea was against this suggestion and asked for a vote. He wanted to know which Cardinals voted for him and which voted against him. Then, a vote was held. The 70 Cardinals who were present were divided in two camps. One half voted for Cardinal Bea, the others for Cardinal Ottaviani. In general, the German, Dutch, French and all Cardinals from USA and the UK voted for Cardinal Bea. Cardinal Ottaviani received the votes from the Italian, Spanish and South American Cardinals, in general from Cardinals from the Latin countries who still had a sense for the tradition of the Church.

In this way the council started. The last session of the Central Preparatory Commission ended with a violent opposition between two groups of Cardinals. One group, headed by Cardinal Bea was leaning towards the revolutionary ideas, which means the atheism of the state instead of the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ over society. The other group followed Cardinal Ottaviani. They stood for the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ over society. Indeed, they tolerated the false religions but did not put them on the same level as the true religion, as Our Lord Jesus Christ, which the Church regards as God, and of whom she claims, He is God. In this way, the revolution as a matter of fact entered into interior of the Church.

In order to understand this situation one has to look at history since the French Revolution. Thanks to Liberalism and Sillonism, these ideas have spread within the Church and slowly prevailed in the different European countries. All false ideas have penetrated into the interior of the Church. Not for nothing did Pope Pius IX condemn the ideas of the French Revolution in his encyclical “Quanta Cura” and in his “Syllabus”. Then, Pope St. Pius X condemned Modernism which was nothing else than the continuation of revolutionary ideas, in his encyclical “Pascendi dominici gregis” and in his decree “Lamentabili”. All these false ideas originated in the revolutionary principles.

In 1962 the Church allowed Herself to stand in opposition to the thirteen popes who had ruled since the French Revolution and who had publicly condemned all errors resulting from it. With whom will the members of the Council side? The tradition of the Church and therefore those thirteen popes who have issued the condemnation of these revolutionary ideas? Or will they follow those revolutionary ideas which spread in the interior of the Church? The liberals won.

They dominated the council through the support of the popes John XXIII and Paul VI. The Church in some way allows this drama to take place publicly. She endorses Human Rights and the revolutionary principles in the interior of the Church. On the other hand, she disapproves of the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ over civil society. Thereby she only asks for the common right which is also granted to the other religions. Thus, all other religions are equally considered as valuable as the Catholic religion. This causes naturally deplorable consequences for Christian families and for the Faith of the people. How did these changes in the Church come about? The council approved of the liberals. All instructions and rules which were given after the council were geared towards putting the new revolutionary principle into practice. The Council was against authority, especially against the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as against the authority of the pope, the bishops, priests and family fathers. All authorities were practically decapitated. One had to give men freedom of conscience. The conscience of man was glorified, which in its truest sense represents the basic principle of Human Rights. Man has a conscience.

He is therefore allowed to decide over his future, his life, his thoughts, his religion and morals. The result is a shift. On the one hand there is still authority, which comes from God. This authority is put into effect through various authorities, even through civic society, in order to lay down God’s law and to encourage men to abide it. On the other hand there is liberation. Man liberates himself from law and from authority. There is the total anarchy in which we presently live. What will the bishops and cardinals do against this situation? The council practically divided itself. 250 bishops joined the liberal cardinals. Further 250 united themselves to defend the traditional ideas. Why could the liberals win? There were 2500 bishops present at the council. A large number of bishops therefore would be the ones who decided which way the council developed.

Around 1800 bishops watched the pope to see which side he would choose. If the pope were to choose the liberals, they would also choose the side of the liberals. Should the pope choose the side of the conservatives, these bishops would also side with the conservatives. The pope granted his approbation to the liberals. This decision caused dreadful and horrendous events. One effect of this decision was that the Council was not prepared to condemn Communism. 450 bishops submitted an application to achieve the condemnation of communism. This application was refused. However, sometimes a petition was granted which was only submitted by two or three bishops.

When the liberals took office after the council, Cardinal Ottaviani was removed from his post. Likewise, many traditional minded cardinals who felt wounded by this handed in their resignation. Some died out of sorrow over it. I knew Archbishop Morcillo from Madrid and Archbishop MacQuaid from Dublin very well. They were my friends. When they had to witness what was going on during the Council they died out of sorrow over it. They have felt, seen and witnessed the ruin of the Church and the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. What took place at the Second Vatican Council was the suicide of the Catholic Church. They were right. We realise it every day. The Church commits suicide. That does not mean the Catholic Church itself, but the men of the Church who reign inside the Church. They undermine the life of the Church and they are going to ruin Her completely. Today the bishops are discussing priestly vocations and the training for the priesthood. They won’t reach any result as long as they don’t define the priest as what he really is. They do not want to specify a definition. Actually, they do not want to specify anything anymore. A definition has its consequences, asks for changes and a return to tradition.

There is no hope of a return of a great vitality of the Church as long as there is no return to Tradition, to the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to the fundamental principles of the Church. They are committing treason against Our Lord Jesus Christ! They do not want His reign any more, neither over the souls, nor over the families or society! Where Our Lord Jesus Christ does not reign anymore there is disorder which will lead to total ruin.

Unfortunately one can summarise the council with these words. What could I have done had I remained bishop of Tulle? Suppose I had resolved to keep Tradition. After the Council I would have returned as bishop of Tulle into my diocese. Half of the clergy maybe even two thirds would have been against me. With certainty also half of the faithful. The results of the Council were overpowering. One has to change – the liturgy, the catechism, the atmosphere. One has to grant freedom. The laity need to receive more room within the church. How can one govern a diocese if more than half of the clergy and faithful are against you?

Many bishops which were responsible for their dioceses and wanted to fight handed in their resignation. The authorities accepted these resignations immediately, of course. They were happy to replace the traditional bishops with a new bishop who represented the conciliar, modern spirit of freedom and revolution within the Church. It was difficult to resist. Bishop de Castro Mayer in Brazil managed to resist. He had to look after 29 priests in his diocese. When he left his diocese, 27 of these 29 priests followed him. Thus it was possible in the diocese of Campos to uphold Tradition. Over a certain period of time, resistance was possible in unimportant dioceses. 

However, I am convinced that such a resistance would not have been possible in Europe. I myself fought for Tradition at the council together with 250 bishops. We did everything to contain the devastation. Yet, we couldn’t prevent the passage of the revolutionary texts concerning religious liberty which represents the fundamental principle of Human Rights. Furthermore we couldn’t prevent the document on the Constitution of the Church in the World which also contains the application of revolutionary ideas within the Church. We only managed to modify some minor points.

At this time I was not in charge of any diocese anymore. But I was Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers. I had to hand in my resignation. I found myself in an impossible situation within the congregation. A large number of members rose up against me as I wanted to preserve tradition and the pre-conciliar training of the seminarians and priests. I wanted to preserve the thomistic instruction according to St. Thomas Aquinas which was recommended by all popes before the Council. Within the congregation I wanted to keep a certain discipline, amongst others the prohibition to watch television in our communities. Almost two thirds of the members were against me.

All congregations were bound to convene an extraordinary General Chapter in order to adjust to the Council and the new spirit of freedom. In 1968 all congregations came together to discuss in which way the constitutions should be changed and the spirit of the council should be implemented. This revolutionary spirit of freedom revealed itself in the abandonment of all traditions, the religious dress, the traditional mass, the abandonment of the traditional doctrine as well as in the abolition of the normal relationship between subjects and superiors. It was no longer possible for superiors to issue orders. They always had to ask their subjects for their opinions. It was an inextricable situation. I give you an example which took place in all congregations. When I arrived at the General Chapter, I was told “We don’t want the Superior General to chairs the General Chapter any more.” I responded, “Our constitution says that the Superior General needs to lead the Chapter. A change in the constitution can only take place by submitting a request to the Congregation for Orders in Rome.” I received the answer, “We want a triumvirate to chair our chapter.” I was elected for six years as Superior General. It was therefore out of question to change Superior Generals. I explained to the members that I am not going to accept this decision as it contradicts the definitions of our congregation as well as the spirit of Rome. I therefore asked for a vote.

The vote was against me. Three members of the triumvirate received the votes. Due to this fact I went to Rome to the Congregation of Religious. Rome will have to agree to such a decision. I wanted to find out whether Rome would accept it. The prefect was travelling in South America. I therefore went to his deputy, his secretary, the second person in the congregation. I explained to him what had happened in our congregation during the course of the General Chapter and asked for his advice. He said to me, “Monseigneur, remember, the Council has taken place! One has to take into account that the situation will change now. Your members certainly don’t have the right to act in that way. In my opinion you should however tolerate this. I advise you to travel to America and go for a walk. I have also told this to the General Superior of the Lazarists.” 

In light of these conditions, I handed in my resignation. It was impossible to lead a congregation which was in the midst of a revolution. I would have been forced to put my signature underneath all the changes. It was not my intention that the history of the congregation would read, “Mgr. Lefebvre introduced the revolution inside the congregation.” I addressed my resignation letter to Paul VI. He replied within a week. “Your resignation was accepted. You are relieved from your duties as Superior General.” In my opinion Providence expected this to force me to take a decision. I was free and did not have to govern a diocese or a congregation anymore. Since I was already 65 years old, I could have requested to retire. Our dear Lord did not want that, even though I would have had the right to do so, as I had already spent 30 years in the missions. 

At this time, some seminarians visited me who asked me for help. They explained to me the situation in the seminaries. I had then taken a small flat with the sisters of the Lithuanian College. I lived secluded and thought I would be able to conclude my days in peace there. These seminarians however didn’t let go. “Monseigneur, do something! The liturgy is exposed to the freedom of the seminarians. Every week another group of seminarians is allowed to decide the liturgy for the following week. Everything was changed, the Holy Mass, the prayers, the canon. The seminarians wear their cassock less and less and are allowed to go out at night. There is the greatest liberty. We want to become true priests. We cannot bear such a situation.” 

What should I do for those few seminarians? Amongst them was Fr. Aulagnier and Fr. Cottard. I knew Bishop Charriere of Fribourg in Switzerland very well. I wanted to try to accommodate these seminarians at the university in Fribourg. They would be better off. Bishop Charriere would certainly be ready to accept them in his inter-diocesan seminary.

I went to Fribourg. Bishop Charriere responded to my question. “Monseigneur, our seminaries are gone. Don’t put your seminarians into my seminary. There is no discipline anymore. A proper formation is not possible.” His answer astonished me. I asked him what I should do with those seminarians. He advised me to build up a seminary myself. I was already 65 years old – an impossible idea. I told him that I would give them into his seminary. He responded, “I give you the permission to rent a house in my diocese. Settle down and train the seminarians yourself.” 

Providence apparently wanted me to put this plan into action. At the beginning there were nine seminarians. At the end of the academic year there were only two left, Aulagnier and Tissier de Mallerais, today an auxiliary bishop. I said to them, “The seminary cannot be continued with only two seminarians. Our dear Lord does not want it to be continued. I am going to have to close the seminary. They will go to the seminary of Bishop Charriere.”

I spoke these words in May. Already in June I received eleven application letters. Eleven seminarians asked me to receive and train them. I faced the question whether I should continue this work. I would have loved to close the seminary. The two seminarians, Abbe Aulagnier and Abbe Tissier de Mallerais were against my plan and urged me to accept those eleven seminarians who applied to the seminary. Thus, I decided to continue the seminary.

We bought a house in Fribourg. Subsequently, the seminary was moved to Écône. Seminarians from all over the world and professors came to our seminary. Father Roch has already spoken about our beginnings. I thought to myself, if the Society is meant to be international one day, it is a sign that God wanted to preserve Tradition in the whole world. How should we obtain this goal? Advertising was out of question for me.

We were able to continue Tradition unmolested from 1970 to 1975. The French bishops heard about us and were very indignant. They did not want any priests who were wearing the cassock, were teaching outdated things, and were celebrating an outdated mass. Thus, our seminary received a canonical visit. I lodged a complaint with Cardinal Villot in Rome. He quite clearly stood in opposition to me. 

Rome prepared for the fight, and wanted a visitation and my condemnation. Bishop Mamie, the successor of Bishop Charriere sent a letter to me which contained the following, “Close your seminary and immediately dismiss all your professors!” I received this in writing at the beginning of May 1975. Should I really close down the seminary? I could not close it. A bishop does not have the right to issue such a decision. If a bishop has approved of something, his successor cannot revoke this. One needs to formally apply for such an intention in Rome, a decree needs to be issued in order to close down a house. This procedure is mandatory to avoid a lack of stability in the houses. I possessed the approval of Bishop Charriere. Thus, Bishop Mamie could not annul the Society nor close the seminary. Only Rome could do that.

I refused to close down the seminary as I regarded this approach as illegal. I had lodged a complaint with Rome and payed the fees for it. My complaint was accepted. I engaged a solicitor. Cardinal Villot wrote a personal letter to Cardinal Staffa, the prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the highest court in Rome. In this letter he told him not to initiate proceedings. Again, this was unlawful. Justice must be exercised freely. If the governmental power interferes with the judicial power then there is tyranny. That is inadmissible. Clearly, Cardinal Staffa obeyed Cardinal Villot’s prohibition. Since this whole procedure was in the highest degree illegal, I continued to ordain priests. In the years 1975 and 1976 I also ordained priests. I received a written warning from Rome which threatened me with suspension. The whole proceeding was illegal. Maybe you are of the opinion that I am obstinate. I think however, that I fulfilled the will of God. I am also  convinced that Providence demanded of me to continue in that way. I didn’t do this for me, but for the Church so that in future there are still priests at Her disposal. 

The infamous Mass at Lille should have been celebrated in front of 50 people. The organisers announced 500 people. In the following weeks people were speaking of 5000. In the end, 20,000 people from all over the world attended. If I remember correctly, a special congress took place in Paris in which people from all over the world participated. All these people rushed to Lille when they read in the newspapers “The suspended bishop is going to celebrate Mass.” All over the world the media reported about the suspended bishop and his forthcoming Mass. 

My sister who lived in Columbia wrote to me that every day there was an article about me in the newspapers. I didn’t know anything about this. Also from Australia, I received letters with the same content. I was certain that this was coming from providence. Providence wanted that we and our Resistance in favour of Tradition and the Catholic Faith might be made known all over the world.

All over the world this piece of news raised interesting questions. Many young men wanted to join our seminaries. We received vocations from the whole world. We had to open new seminaries – in the United States, In Germany, Australia and South America. So many people wanted to keep Tradition and the Catholic Faith. We were facing everywhere the same problems. 

Frightened families could not believe that this revolution in the Church was in accordance with the true, Catholic spirit, but that it was the spirit of the demon, the devil which had entered the Church. We did not want to follow it but simply wanted to stay Catholic. That was a sign! The progress of the Society was unbelievable. With the generosity of all the Catholic faithful who wanted to keep Tradition we were able to open up priories, colleges and churches. Many priests reacted in the same way. They wanted to keep the Catholic Faith and not abandon themselves to the changes. The Faith which they had learnt in their seminaries was certainly true. They did not want to change, to become modernists or Protestants. It was out of the question for them to teach a catechism which was not a Catholic catechism anymore. They wanted to keep wearing the cassock, and celebrate the Mass of all times. Everywhere one could witness this reaction. Of course we might have wished to see a stronger and more significant reaction. But we have always to remember how hard it was for many priests.

I saw many priests and priors crying out of sorrow when they realised the changes in the Church. They realised that this meant the complete collapse of the priesthood. They saw their confreres going away and getting married. Clearly they recognised that the catechisms were not Catholic anymore. The altars were demolished in order to exchange them with a table, on which they turned to the people in order to carry out a kind of distribution. They were completely aghast. Many handed in their resignation. It was not possible for them to accept this situation. Had we been able to see the sorrow in the hearts of many priests and bishops we would have truly been shocked. The faithful were in a similar situation. The true catechism and true religion was not taught to the children anymore. 

This resistance in the Church is normal if one has to survive in an organism. We are the Catholic Church and continue the Catholic Church. The other side are the ones moving away from the Church and thus becoming schismatic. All schismatic novelties were introduced through these people. I assure you that these people do not possess the Catholic Faith any more.

What can one do against this profound deviation from the Catholic Faith within the Church? One can only train good priests.

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  Prayers in Honor of the Five Wounds - Devotion to the Passion by St. Alphonsus Liguori
Posted by: Hildegard of Bingen - 03-07-2021, 03:12 PM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lord - No Replies

DEVOTION TO THE PASSION

Prayers in Honor of the Five Wounds.

(Taken from St. Alphonsus’ Prayer-Book – pages 453)


   O my Jesus, by the pain Thou dist suffer when Thy left Hand was nailed to the cross, give me true sorrow for my sins.

    O my Jesus, by the pain which Thou didst suffer when Thy right Hand was nailed to the cross, grant me perseverance in Thy grace.

    O my Jesus, by the pain which Thou didst suffer when Thy left Foot was nailed to the cross, save me from the pains of hell.

    O my Jesus, by the pain which Thou didst suffer when Thy right Foot was nailed to the cross, grant me the grace of eternally loving Thee in heaven.

    O my Jesus, by the Wound made in Thine adorable Heart, procure for me the happiness of ever loving Thee in this life and in the next.  Amen.

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  Bishop de Mallerais [1988]: The Conciliar Strategy to Marginalize Traditional Priests
Posted by: Stone - 03-07-2021, 01:03 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition - Replies (1)

The Strategy of "Rehabilitation" Unveiled by Cardinal Decourtray
An Analysis by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais [adapted]


In this text on of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais analyzed the Declaration of Cardinal Decourtray, President of the French Bishops' Conference, published in Documentation Catholique, No.1969, Oct. 1988. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais cites from Cardinal Decourtray and follows with his commentary.
The Cardinal's Declaration exposes a strategy by which a traditional priest is to be marginalized and made of no effect in a diocese.

Bishop de Mallerais: In a communique to the priestly council and to the diocesan pastoral council which met in an extraordinary session, the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon did not hide the fact that the reception of the priests who leave Archbishop Lefebvre will be made with no gift attached; it will be, in fact, their rehabilitation into the Conciliar Church. Let us take up the interesting passage of the Cardinal's document. We emphasize below what should be emphasized:

Declaration of Cardinal Decourtray: Friends, From now on you will know a little better the conditions under which I was brought to welcome Fr._____, lately ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre and put in charge of the St. Pius X priory on the Rue de Marseille, and to entrust him, in urgency and in a provisional way, with the agreement of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, with the Chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Martyrs at the Place Saint-Irene. Obviously it is not a question of a parish but of a shrine open to the faithful who desire to follow the Tridentine Tradition of the Mass (according to the typical edition of the Roman Missal of 1962)....I have given a place of worship for the Tridentine celebration of the Mass.[/quote]

Bishop de Mallerais: Thus no parish apostolate, only the celebration of Mass. One is far from the activity of the priory: catechism classes, youth movements, conferences, etc.

Declaration: ...This priest is therefore right now in order with the Church and has received the necessary jurisdiction for the valid exercise of the ministry of Penance or Reconciliation. The questions relative to the other sacraments, notably to marriage, remain pending. It will be necessary to take one's time. While waiting, Father 'will see with the pastor of Saint-Irene how to respond, in a way that is pastoral and consistent with the present day law of the Church, to certain prompt and exceptional requests.

Bishop de Mallerais: Thus we have dependence with respect to an official parish and its pastor. The only autonomy is to be in the administration of the Sacrament of Penance.


Declaration: For the future, here is the text of the declaration that I will ask from the priests who, having recently manifested more or less explicitly, in word or in act, their approval of the actions and of the remarks of Archbishop Lefebvre, desire to exercise the priestly ministry in the Diocese of Lyon (jurisdiction for Confession and the cura animarum) and to obtain contingently the Indult permitting the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.

Bishop de Mallerais: Thus it is not only the ex-members of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X who will be compelled to sign a declaration but all 'suspect' priests, those who would hardly have manifested explicitly, even if only in words, their approval, even though only the utterances of Archbishop Lefebvre. And what is more, it is not certain that these suspect priests will be allowed to celebrate the Mass of all times.


Declaration: The diverse points of this declaration are nearly those of the protocol refused on May 6 by Archbishop Lefebvre. 

I promise always to be faithful to the Catholic Church and to the Roman Pontiff, its supreme Pastor, Vicar of Christ, successor of the blessed Peter in his primacy, and head of the body of bishops, in accordance with the First Council of the Vatican (Denzinger-Schenmetzer, 3059-3064), and with Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, n22), as well as to the bishop of Lyon, to whom I promise respect and obedience.

Bishop de Mallerais: To the text of the Protocol are thus added new requirements. First of all, obedience to the bishop of the place. Will it therefore be necessary to obey his 'pastoral of the Community,'139 and adopt the catechism, Pierres Vivantes?140


Declaration: I declare that I adhere to the teachings of the magisterium of the Pope and the bishops, in conformity with the doctrine of the First Vatican Council (Denzinger-Schonmetzer, 3065-3074) and of the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium, n25).
Bishop de Mallerais: A demand that is new and without limits! This is not to adhere to the magisterium when it is truly a magisterium, that is to say, when it faithfully transmits the revealed deposit; but there is demanded the adherence to the teachings [of the magisterium] of the pope and the bishops of this time: therefore, to ecumenism, to religious liberty, to the rights of man, etc.

Declaration: I pledge myself to have a positive attitude, of studying the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, of the liturgical books, and of the Code of Canon Law promulgated following the Council by the Sovereign Pontiff.


Bishop de Mallerais: It is self-evident that Cardinal Decourtray erased from his text what Cardinal Ratzinger was conceding to Archbishop Lefebvre, namely, the right to consider that 'certain texts' of the Council are 'difficult to reconcile with Tradition.' It is on these texts that Archbishop Lefebvre promised to have a positive attitude of study, etc. Visibly, at Lyon and in the dioceses, no dispute of the conciliar documents will be permitted, not even a question mark. No, one must stick to everything and 'study' everything, as if he were culpably ignorant of these texts, as well as of those of the Mass of Paul VI and of the new Canon Law.

Declaration: I declare that I recognize the validity of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments celebrated with the intention of doing what the Church does in communion with the Pope and according to the rites indicated in the typical editions and the translations of the missal and of the rituals, promulgated and approved by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.

Bishop de Mallerais: You will notice the two added points that we have emphasized. Non-communion with the Pope does not affect, in any case, the validity of the Mass. On the other hand, the bad translations (such as 'pour la multitude' and, still more serious, the 'for all' of the English and German [and Italian] translation 'betrayals) do indeed affect the validity, or, at the least, place a doubt in their regard. Approved of or not by the present-day Roman bureaus, a translation that changes even only partially the meaning of the sacramental words can render the sacrament invalid. The creativity of the national centers of pastoral liturgical study and the frivolity of the Roman commissions are the cause of numerous erroneous vernacular versions, which are indeed bluntly whimsical ones that can bring about the invalidity of the sacrament. Even in Latin certain new sacramentary texts yield, by their ambiguity, to an interpretation that is Protestant in a sense, and that can exert influence on the celebrant by giving him a counter-intention which invalidates the sacrament.


Declaration: I promise to observe the common discipline of the Church and the ecclesiastical laws, particularly those contained in the Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

Bishop de Mallerais: Here there is no change in the text that Archbishop Lefebvre had judged on May 5 as being at the extreme limit of acceptability, with the restriction placed on No. 3, concerning the 'texts difficult to reconcile with Tradition.' Deprived of this restriction, the declaration demanded by Cardinal Decourtray asks for the acceptance of the entirely questionable passages from the new Canon Law. For example: the 'double subject of the supreme power in the Church'; the reversal of the two ends of marriage (the perfecting of the spouses put before the procreation and education of the children!); the suppression of the promises of the non-Catholic spouse in a mixed marriage, concerning the baptism and the Catholic education of all the children; and finally, intercommunion foreseen in certain cases.


Declaration: Thought must also be given to the pastoral accompaniment of the faithful attached to the Tridentine Mass but faithful to the pope and to the bishops...to receive the confidence of the faithful attached to the liturgy and to the catechesis such as they knew them before the reforms, but also to help them progress in the living communion of the Catholic Church. For this I count very much on the movements of Catholic Action, in the strict or the broad sense.

Bishop de Mallerais: In this excerpt you have the purpose of the intended rehabilitation: '...to help them to progress in the Living Communion of the Catholic Church...' How are we to interpret this except to mean that we must 'get into line,' to be 're-integrated' into the system, to accept the new ideology of the conciliar Church?... 'Let us not set foot in the opposing camp, because we would thus be giving the enemy a proof of our weakness, which the enemy would try to interpret as a sign of weakness and a mark of complicity.' - St. Pius X


Tissier de Mallerais

139. i.e., the Cardinal’s pastoral policy to develop base communities.
140. A heretical French catechism.

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  Fr. Peter Scott [2003]: The Anti-Cross Council
Posted by: Stone - 03-07-2021, 12:30 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition - No Replies

The Angelus - February 2003

The Anti-Cross Council
by Rev. Fr. Peter Scott


On the patronal feast of Holy Cross Seminary of the Society of Saint Pius X (Sept. 14) in Goulburn, Australia, its new Rector, Fr. Peter Scott, delivered this sermon on the spirituality of the Cross and the anti-Cross changes introduced into the Catholic Church subsequent to Vatican Council II.

In Roman antiquity, crucifixion was the most cruel, most severe, most terrible, most shameful of all punishments, a torment reserved for slaves and non-Roman citizens who had committed offenses against the public order. In order to add to the disgust with which it was regarded, it was prescribed that the bodies not be removed from the cross, but that they be allowed to be ripped apart by vultures and other birds of prey.

How could such a horrifying and disreputable symbol become the glorious sign of our Faith, our only Hope, and the banner of our King, as we proclaim it in the Vexilla Regis? By what strange kind of paradox could this sign of a curse have been erected into the glorious throne upon which the King of Heaven Himself desired to enter into His Kingdom? What is the sublime novelty that enabled the mystery of the Cross to bring about the transformation of the world?


The Mysterious Power of the Cross

Our Lord certainly spoke very explicitly about the Cross. However, it is hardly to be supposed that the Apostles, vying for the highest position as they did, unable to stand faithful at the foot of the Cross during the crucifixion, truly understood the full import of such expressions as: "He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me" (Mt. 10: 38) or Our Lord's assurance that without taking up our Cross we cannot follow him: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." However, as St. Luke adds, he who does not do so "cannot be my disciple" (Lk. 14:27). St. Matthew expresses the same astounding reality in slightly different words: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake, will find it" (Mt. 10:39).

In fact, it was only the Holy Ghost who could enlighten the Apostles as to the power that the Cross had acquired on Good Friday, when God the Son deigned to shed His divine blood upon the Cross for the Redemption of mankind. It is from the moment of the Passion that this mystery shines forth (fulget Crucis Mysterium), as we sing on Good Friday: "Behold the wood of the Cross, upon which the Savior of the world hung."

St. Paul's extraordinary understanding of this mystery is repeatedly the focus of his Epistles. He explains how the humiliation of the Cross was the necessary means chosen by God to overcome the opposition of the sinners that we are and bring us back to Himself, reconciling "both in one body to God by the Cross, having slain the enmity in himself" (Eph. 2:16), "author and finisher of Faith, Jesus, who for the joy set before Him, endured a Cross, despising shame and sits at the right hand of the throne of God." It was only by emptying and humbling Himself that he would be exalted and win the victory that was His: He "emptied Himself, taking the nature of a slave...He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even to the death on a Cross" (Phil. 2:7,8). It is for this reason that he teaches that it is only through the imitation of the lowliness of Our Savior's humiliated state, i.e., through the mystery of the Cross, that eternal salvation and the gates of heaven will be opened wide to us, for thus He will "refashion the body of our lowliness, conforming it to the body of His glory" (Phil. 3:21). Thus he has no hesitation whatsoever at condemning those who refuse this mystery, who "are enemies of the Cross of Christ" and proclaiming their eternal damnation: "Their end is ruin, their god is the belly, their glory is in their shame, they mind the things of earth" (Phil. 3:18, 19).

Hence the universality and obligatory nature of devotion to the Holy Cross among Catholics, truly the sign of the Son of man by the love of which the elect will be recognized on the last day. The vision of Constantine the Great, "In hoc signo vinces–In this sign you will vanquish," his subsequent victory over Maxentius, the first display of the sign of the Cross on his labarum, and the subsequent discovery of the true Cross by his mother, St. Helen in 326, simply furthered the recognition of this most profound and simple truth of our Catholic Faith. This appreciation of the Cross as inseparable from the living of our Faith is magnificently expressed by Pope Pius XI in his letter to the German hierarchy condemning the evils of National Socialism Mit Brennender Sorge of 1933:
Quote:The Cross of Christ...is still for the Christian the hallowed sign of Redemption, the standard of moral greatness and strength. In its shadow we live. In its kiss we die. On our graves it shall stand to proclaim our Faith, to witness our hope turned towards the eternal light (§31).


Mortification: The Mystery of the Cross

What precisely is meant by "the doctrine of the Cross," that it might become "foolishness to those who perish," but "the power of God" "to those who are saved" (I Cor. 1:18), so much that St. Paul "determined not to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2)? What is it about the Cross that is so specifically Catholic that without it is impossible to accomplish God's will?

If the Cross is the instrument of Christ's death, it must necessarily mean for us the dying to ourselves, to our pride, self-love and passions that we call mortification. It must mean the generous and positive will to suffer for the love of Christ, according to the example of St. Paul: "I rejoice now in the sufferings I bear for your sake; and what is lacking of the sufferings of Christ I fill up in my flesh for his body, which is the Church" (Col. 1:24). The Cross consequently symbolizes the willing and joyful death to ourselves: "They who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24).

However, a more precise view of this mystery reveals that the embracing of the Cross involves a multitude of different elements or spiritual convictions, all inspired by divine grace and impossible without it:

1) Profound contrition for sin, for if the Cross is a reparation for the punishment due to our own sins, then it is manifestly obvious that the very first element in understanding its mystery is the consciousness of and sorrow for our sins.

2) Expiation or some kind of suffering to unite with Christ's suffering to pay the temporal punishment due to sin is a necessary consequence.

Such meritorious and temporary suffering takes the place of the eternal and fruitless penalty that we ought to have received for our sins. Thus applies to us what St. Luke says of Our Lord: "It was necessary for him to suffer, and so to enter into His glory" (Lk. 24:46).

3) Sacrifice of our self-will is also necessary, according to Our Lord's command before following Him: "let him deny himself."

4) Poverty of spirit or detachment from the things of this world is also necessary for the imitation of Christ, who had nowhere to lay his head, according to the words of St. John: "Do not love the world or the things that are in the world...the world with its lust is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever" (I Jn. 2:14-17).

5) Chastity according to one's state in life, "because all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh..." (I Jn. 2:16).

6) Obedience and humility, without which there is no imitation of Christ and no overcoming of the pride of life (Cf. Phil. 2:6-8).

7) Abandonment to Divine Providence, as a manifestation of the sacrifice of our self-will, following the example of Our Lord's sixth word on the Cross: "Into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Lk. 23:46). It is from such abandonment that comes the generous acceptation of trials and tribulation, and the desire to bear them after Our Lord, unlike Simon of Cyrene. This is also what enables us to see scourges as a sign of God's blessing, mercy and love: "Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise; be earnest therefore and repent" (Apoc. 3:19).

8) Fortitude, patience in bearing evils, and magnanimity, the great desire to practice virtue for the love of Christ, are the consequence of such abandonment.

9) Hope, finally, is also inseparable from the mystery of the Cross, for it is the assurance that God's mercy and compassion are applied to our souls through the Cross that alone enables us to embrace it, as the Apostle says: "For our present light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all measure" (II Cor. 4: 17).

Such is precisely the mystery of the Cross, that is central to the very life of divine grace in our souls. The question remains to consider whether or not this mystery is present in the theology of the post-conciliar reform.


The Precursors

It is interesting for us to consider two errors that prepared the way for Vatican II, and which were each in their turn condemned for the absence of the mystery of the Cross. The first is the heresy of Americanism, condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 in his encyclical letter to Cardinal Gibbons entitled Testem Benevolentiae. In it, he explains that the essence of Americanism, and the foundation of the new ideas that it represents, is that the Church must adapt to the humanism of the present "adult" times, abandoning its former severity both in doctrine and in the discipline of daily life. It does this by giving precedence to natural abilities, such as the ability to get things done, and to natural virtues, such as efficiency and productivity, demeaning the so-called passive virtues, such as patience, humility and mortification. It is obvious from the preceding considerations that this is effective by a denial of the Cross, and that it means a contempt of the evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience, of which Christ is the perfect model. The consequence of this is the contempt of the religious life and the undermining of a truly supernatural life of grace, built necessarily upon the mystery of the Cross, i.e., mortification. This cult of action, success and progress, as the Pope mentioned, became a kind of dogma, effectively relegating the Cross to the background.

In 1907, St. Pius X was even more clear in his condemnation of Modernism in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, clarifying from the very beginning that the ultimate root of this heresy, the sewer of all heresies, was the rebellion against the mystery of the Cross:
Quote:It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who by arts entirely new and full of deceit are striving...as far as in them lies, to utterly subvert the very kingdom of Christ (§1).


The Spirit of Vatican II

It is not without interest for us to examine the various aspects of the post-conciliar reform, and to consider the relationship that each of them has with the spirituality of the Cross. Most obvious is the very spirit of Vatican II, clearly manifested in Gaudium et Spes, the document on the adaptation of the Church to the modern world. Pope Paul VI described it as a "new humanism" in his discourse at the public session for the formal closing of Vatican II, on December 7, 1965, in which he summed up the whole purpose of the Council. It was, he explained to be a response to the secularism of modern man and to his spirit of independence (which, by the way, St. Pius X, in his first encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus, called apostasy from God):
Quote:"The religion of God who made himself man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God"
 

and he goes on to explain that what happened was neither a clash nor a struggle: 
Quote:"What happened? A shock, a battle, an anathema? This could have happened, but it did not....An immense sympathy for men completely overwhelmed it. The discovery and study of human needs...has absorbed the attention of our synod."

He followed with the following profession of faith in humanism that is the key to understanding the spirit of Vatican II:
Quote:"You, modern humanists, who renounce the transcendence of divine things, at least acknowledge this merit and recognize our new humanism, for we more than anyone practice the worship of man."

Here lies the fundamental motive for the aggiornamento, the continual, ongoing and substantial changes in the teachings and life of the Church: the divinization of man. Placing man first, a new relationship of friendship and not of opposition has been created with the world. However, such is not the Catholic perspective, according to which the love or hatred of the Cross divides mankind into two opposing groups: those who are of the world and those who are not. Cf. Jn. 17:14: "The world has hated them because they are not of the world, as I am not"; and I Jn. 2:15-17: "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him...." Necessarily small is the number of those who are true followers of Our Lord in poverty, suffering and humiliation, for the Cross is the narrow gate that few find: Mt. 7:14: "How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it." It is consequently manifestly obvious that the one reality that has been evacuated from Christianity by the post-conciliar Church, and that has made possible the new humanistic adaptation to the world is the mystery of the Cross. Moreover, the more one examines the different aspects of the post-conciliar theology, the more one realizes that they are all characterized by the absence of the Cross.


The Liturgy

It is in the Church's public prayer that the post-conciliar spirit is most obvious to the faithful. The list of doctrinal realities that have either been entirely obliterated from the prayers of the liturgy, or at least deliberately pushed into the background, is impressive indeed: hell, judgment, the wrath of God, the wickedness of sin, the greatest evil, the temporal and eternal punishment owed for sins, detachment from this world, purgatory, prayer for the poor souls, the Church militant, Christ's Kingship on earth, the triumph of the Catholic Faith, the merits of the saints, the conversion of non-Catholics. Note that these are the very same truths that are deliberately omitted from sermons, and that they are the dogmas that relate most closely to the mystery of the Cross.

For, firstly, the apparently "negative" dogmas, such as hell, judgment, the wrath of God, the wickedness of sin, detachment from this world would be incomprehensibly harsh without the mystery of the Cross, in which God's mercy is allied to His justice, His patience is associated with His holiness, His love united to His majesty, and His kindness inseparable from His greatness.

Secondly, the teachings that express the necessity of reparation for sin, including purgatory, penance, sacrifice, would fill us with dread and despair if it were not for the Cross and its continuation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Thirdly, the dogmas that express the Communion of the Saints necessarily take their root in the merits of the Cross, upon which all human merit, effort and good works are entirely founded. These dogmas include the invocation of the merits of the saints, praying for the poor souls, the combat of the Church militant herself, fighting for the (Social) Kingship of Christ on this earth and for the conversion of non-Catholics.

Also crucial for an understanding of the new liturgy is the whole question of the new theology of the Paschal Mystery that is at the basis of the reforms of the New Mass (Cf. The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, published by the Society of Saint Pius X). This Paschal mystery theory is that of a redemption without the cross and without reparation for sin. For sin does not, according to this theory, incur a debt owed to divine justice, and nothing needs to be done to repay the outrage to the divine Majesty that sin brought about. Consequently, it considers that Christ's vicarious satisfaction, that is, His paying for our sins and on our behalf, was not essential to the Redemption. The Redemption is really just the ultimate manifestation of the eternal love of the Father. It is for this reason that every reference to propitiation, that is, to the satisfaction owed to God to repay the punishments due for our sins, has been removed from the new reformed rite of Mass. The exclusive reference to the Risen Christ, as symbolized by crosses that no longer have a corpus, is ultimately an indirect negation of the mystery of the Cross. The Vatican II beliefs that believers of all religions can be saved, since Christ enters into union with every man in virtue of the Incarnation, are the corollary.


The Priesthood

The post-conciliar Church's manifest difficulties with celibacy, particularly manifested by the unhindered infiltration of homosexuals and pedophiles, is but the consequence of a new concept of the priesthood, in which the priest is reduced to the level of a presider or president, as indicated in the definition contained in Art. 7 of the instruction that introduced the new Missal of Paul VI (Instructio Generalis), especially in its original text. This new concept, however, goes even further than this. At its root it is a deliberate confusion between the spiritual priesthood shared by all the faithful and the sacramental priesthood that the priest alone has and that enables him to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This confusion is deliberate because it has as its purpose to introduce into the minds of priests and laity alike the idea that the priest is just a man like other men, that he is not to be regarded any differently from them, and certainly not as another Christ, personally standing in the place of God made man and representing Him on this earth. He has the same needs and rights as any other man, for example with respect to recreation, and, for those who are logical with themselves, ultimately with respect to marriage also.

One wonders what could be the motive of such deliberate confusion, so alien to the Faith and to the Catholic way of thinking. In fact, there is only one explanation. It is the deliberate elimination of the mystery of the Cross. The new Mass is no longer essentially regarded as an unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary. Being a meal of men, it needs a president to preside, just like the traditional Mass, being the sacrifice of God, needs a priest to offer it. The priest of the New Mass consequently no longer needs to live a life of ascetical mortification, sacrifice and obedience, nor to follow the example of Our Lord, who "was heard because of his reverent submission. And he, Son though he was, learned obedience from the things that he suffered" (Heb. 5: 7,8).


The Religious Life

The defections from the religious life are legion, as every Catholic knows. It is no accident that many of these took place in the fifteen years that followed the close of Vatican II. This was not just because the doors were opened to change, and the religious no longer felt bound by a ball and chain. The reason was the lack of a special goal for religious. The service of God became equated with the service of man, which then became the new end of the religious life, rather than striving for perfection through self-denial in order to assure one's own eternal salvation. This anthropocentric revolution in the minds of those in religious life removed the special ideal from their lives. Why make the efforts any more? A person can serve man and be kind to man in the world just as easily as in the convent, without the restrictions and hindrances of the religious life.

Humanism replaced the Cross, through which alone we have at the same time the love of our own soul, and the true, supernatural love of our neighbor. It was an immediate consequence that religious obedience, or entire submission simply out of the love of God, disappeared to be replaced by utilitarianism, or what is useful to one's neighbor in the purely temporal order. The destruction of the community life followed in turn, replaced by individualism or self-government at all costs, applying to religious the liberal principles of independence and egalitarian emancipation.


Education

A marked characteristic of the post-conciliar Church has been the idealization of youth, that has been called "Juvenilism" (cf. Iota Unum, p. 196.). According to this way of thinking youth is to be particularly honored for its continual seeking, its uncontrolled spontaneity, and for its liberation from formal ties and rules.

This, however, is the destruction of education, for it neglects the fact that youth is a time of potency, that is, of incompleteness, of imperfection, of frequent and ready change, and of lack of conviction. It is far less perfect, since it is far removed from the immutability of God. It consequently needs a firm master to draw it towards true convictions and to protect it from fallen human nature's rebellion and propensity to sin. So readily even the idealistic youth will be entirely subverted by his passions, by his self-centered feeling of infallibility, that he will convince himself in apparent "good faith" of error, all due to a lack of willingness to receive the wisdom handed down by the experience and knowledge of older persons. Education ought consequently to be the drawing out of a person's potential by forming true convictions by dependence upon a wise instructor. It is the exact contrary of spontaneous self-seeking.

Where does this replacement of spontaneity for education by handing down, that is by tradition, come from? Surely from the absence of the Cross. Does it not take a great mortification of the intellect as well as of the will to receive from another? Is it not the Cross which alone will ensure that we seek dependence upon others rather than independence by ourselves, by which we know and recognize our personal inadequacy and insufficiency (Jn. 15:5: "Without me you can do nothing"), by which we overcome our selfish self-sufficiency and learn to depend upon the wisdom of the ancients. It is this mortification of the spirit, essential consequence of living the mystery of the Cross, that the idealization of youth entirely rejects.

The modern pedagogy is based upon the philosophy that truth transcends both student and teacher, that is, that it is essentially subjective. Education is consequently nothing more than the transmission of an experience of learning. It is ultimately but self-education, the very notion of authority and submission of one's intellect to it being removed. A teacher is a helper and a friend, but not a master who directs. Just as Protestantism substituted private judgment for dogmatic authority, so does the modernist educator substitute subjective examination or personal choice for objective truth. But just as the ultimate self-teaching and self-government was the sin of our first parents, in which we participate through our own sins, so likewise can there be no substitute for the Cross in the re-establishing of order, in the denying personal autonomy, in submitting ourselves to the objective truth of our sinfulness, showing us our wound of ignorance, our need for the Redemption, for grace, and for guidance. There can be no substitute for the Cross in a Catholic philosophy of education.


Feminism

The post-Vatican II woman is proud of her emancipation. She is now on an equal level with man, and she can do everything he can, including read in church, speak publicly or even preach in church, distribute Holy Communion, make sick calls, and even to be appointed "pastor." She considers that she can be just as much a leader as man can be. The principle of such unnatural egalitarianism, woman's rejection of her traditional functions and duties is not really feminism at all, but masculinism, making women as much like men as possible. This is nothing less than the application of the principle of independence to the social role of women, unshackling things that are dependent by nature and confined to specific roles of support, as if there were something inferior or pejorative about a role of dependence and support. It is also a refusal of the so-called "passive" virtues so well demonstrated by Our Lord on the Cross, notably patience, meekness, gentleness, humility.

Can there be any doubt that the obliteration of the feminine and supportive role of women is a denial of the Cross, its humble self-abnegation, its lesson of denying our self will to help another and to do God's will? Many consequences follow. Mary's so magnificently feminine role of dependent cooperation in the mystery of our Redemption, the mystery of her Co-redemption at the foot of the Cross, by which she became Mediatrix of all graces, is thereby evacuated of all meaning. For the modernists she is just there to watch, or as John Paul II puts it several times in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, to contemplate the face of Christ. If the Woman who brought God into this world and who crushed the serpent's head is not necessary, then the same must be said of any other woman.

Another consequence is rampant vanity, the abandonment of the sense of modesty (i.e., of the sense of shame of one who is aware of the disorder of fallen human nature), and the denial of the Church's teaching on the necessity of avoiding proximate occasions of sin, under the excuse that the forming of relationships is a necessary step in growth in maturity and in the capacity to love. If woman has, by losing her femininity, cheapened herself, it is because she practically denies the necessity of mortifying fallen human nature, that is, of the Cross once more.


Penance

The modern abandonment of works of penance on the grounds that sorrow for sin should be interior is ultimately a denial of the unity of body and soul. In fact it is just as necessary for the human sinner to express his compunction by physical acts of penance as it was for Our Lord to redeem us by his physical death on the Cross. It is not hard to see that this exclusive emphasis on the interior is but an excuse to eliminate all true sorrow and expiation for sin, and to deny the reality of the debt of the temporal punishment for sin, which no longer has to be paid, according to the new theology. The minimization of purgatory and indulgences goes hand in hand with the elimination of outward words of penance. Of course, according to such a perspective the sufferings of the Cross have no purpose either.


Ethics

Situation ethics is the name that Pope Pius XII gave to the transference of the judgment of right and wrong, and of good and evil from the objective to the subjective domain. All morality depends upon the situation in which a person finds himself. There is no outside rule. It eliminates the natural law, making all morality depend upon the eye of the beholder. Personal conscience becomes a rule unto itself, in direct contradiction with the very notion of law, according to which an individual, contingent being conforms itself to an absolute by the ordering of reason, that derives from the eternal law, the mind of God Himself.

This independence of the conscience and its refusal of submission to any external standard is based upon the theory of man's autonomy, which is called anthropocentrism. This theory was clearly taught by the Vatican II document on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes. It is there stated that it is to man that 

Quote:"all things must be ordered, as to the center and culmination" of all creation (GS §14), and that man is willed "for himself" (GS §24)
 

... and that consequently he is no longer willed for the greater glory of God. It is a practical denial that God is the center of all things, which He made for Himself (Prov. 16:4), and that if God was made Incarnate on this earth for us and for our salvation, it was not that we are the end of the creation and the Redemption. To the contrary, it was to make satisfaction to divine justice for our offenses, and to restore to God the due honor that He is owed by His creatures, and which can only be given by our salvation. Consequently, there is only one answer to anthropocentrism, and it is the very same mystery that anthropocentrism denies-the mystery of the Cross. Just as the Cross demonstrates how hopelessly inadequate we are by ourselves, so also is it that Our Lord died on the Cross because He loved us and because it was His Father's will that by such satisfaction He would redirect sinful human nature back to God, its only final end. It is this direction of everything in him to Almighty God, effectively denied by the new theology, that can alone be the basis of true objective morality.


The Death Penalty

The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, while admitting the possibility of the legitimate use of the death penalty in the Church's traditional teaching, strictly limits it to its deterrent and remedial benefits for society (§2266), thereby "rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm." However, it entirely overlooks the principal reason in the Church's traditional teaching, which is that of restitution of the public order of justice, so disturbed by the crime. If it does admit that punishment can have an expiatory value, it is only "when his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender" (ibid.), thereby making it a purely subjective and personal expiation, rather than the public, social restitution demanded by justice. Furthermore, there are in the same catechism such strong statements against capital punishment in virtue of the dignity of the human person (ibid. §2267) and the demands of evangelical charity (ibid. §2306), that even the above-mentioned possibility is practically denied, as can be seen by the universal opposition to the death penalty by the Pope and the modernist bishops. This denial of the objective requirements of justice is inseparable from the denial of the mystery of the Cross, which is that of Christ's vicarious satisfaction for the punishment due for our sins. Consequently, it is ultimately the refusal of the Cross which is at the root of the refusal of the demands of justice present even in the natural law.


Dialogue

Both the word and the reality of dialogue are an entire post-conciliar novelty in the Catholic Church. It is based not only on the false principle of freedom of expression, but also on the idea that all truth is problematic and open to discussion. Furthermore, it is understood that Catholics have something to learn from non-Catholics in spiritual things, for they must speak with them as if they did not possess the truth. After a while, the whole question of who possesses the truth becomes considered as irrelevant. For it necessarily maintains that nobody has to sacrifice his opinion in the mutual exchanges that take place, that is, that there are no fundamental points of contradiction between opposing religious viewpoints. It is consequently in its very nature a denial of Christ's superior authority, and of His use of that authority in instituting the Church. It is the Cross that teaches the mortification of the intellect, by which it will only discuss on the level of objective truth, which makes all dialogue impossible. Cf. Gal. 2:20: "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the Faith of the Son of God who loved me and delivered himself up for me."


Ecumenism

The fundamental basis of Ecumenism, the sharing of prayers and religious experience with non-Catholics, is the principle of non-proselytism, namely of the abandonment of all effort to make converts. This renunciation of all proselytism was explicitly acknowledged with respect to the Orthodox in the 1993 Balamand Agreement, and with respect to the Jews in the August 12, 2002 statement of the US bishops. It has likewise been the necessary understanding for all inter-religious meetings, in particular those sponsored by Pope John Paul II in Assisi in 1986 and again in January 2002. This clearly means indifferentism with respect to the universality and expansion of the Catholic Faith and of supernatural truth throughout the world, and consequently indifference to the mystery of the Cross, the objective cause of our Redemption.

The harmony of Catholics with non-Catholic and even non-Christian religions that is sought for by such meetings is not unity and is consequently not the fruit of the Cross, only capable of creating unity amongst those who are at odds, as St. Paul states: "For he himself is our peace, he it is who has made both one" (Eph. 2:14). Clearly this is not possible with non-Christians, who do not believe in the divinity of Christ, or with non-Catholics who, although they may believe in Christ, do not venerate the passion or understand the power of the mystery of the Cross. In its place ecumenism establishes an egalitarian humanism, according to which false religions must be recognized as valuable means of salvation, for as Vatican II says, they have
Quote:"many elements of sanctification and of truth" (Lumen Gentium, §7), for they "have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation" (Unitatis Redintegratio, §3).

They are consequently all valid, changeable, historical expressions of a single world-wide religion of immanence, which means that God is to be found in every man, regardless of his character, of his virtue or of his life, and regardless of his acceptation of supernatural truth. This is, in fact, exactly what Gaudium et Spes (Vatican II document, "On the Church and the Modern World") means when it states that "Christ is in a certain way united to every man" (§22). In this way the Cross is entirely evacuated of meaning, and if all men are united to Christ, it is whether they know it or not, and whether they love the Cross or not. Consequently the Christ that they are united to is a disincarnate, cosmic Christ, one in whom the real human nature, and the superabundant sufferings of the Passion have somehow become superfluous.


Collegiality, Religious Liberty, and Liberation Theology

You might wonder what these three novelties have in common. Collegiality is the denial of personal authority in the government of the Church, reducing it to a democratic process, and making all the world's bishops (together with the Pope) a second supreme authority in the Church, equal with the Pope himself. Religious Liberty is the new idea that all the false religions have equal rights to practice their false worship as the Catholic Church has, and that they cannot be prevented from doing so, provided that they do not harm the public order. Liberation Theology is the substitution of earthly justice and peace as the Church's goal, instead of a heavenly kingdom.

They do indeed all have a common denominator. All three groups of ideas have as their goal earthly happiness. They aim at some human harmony to be found on this earth, either 

  • amongst Catholics by the democratic process in the Church allowing the expression of all ideas (=collegiality), 
  • or with non-Catholics by allowing to all religions freedom of expression (=religious liberty), 
  • or with non-religious people by demonstrating that Catholics can be just as zealous for earthly well-being as they are (=liberation theology). 

In all cases, it is an attempt to "rescue" the Church, considered unpopular, by making it appealing to the world, and by making it embrace the false principles of the French revolution, which are anti-Catholic because they limit human life to the dimensions of this earthly existence: namely Liberty (=Religious Liberty), Equality (=Collegiality) and Fraternity (=Liberation Theology). By promoting such ideas the Church becomes a modern democracy with a religious veneer, namely the vehicle for a man-centered, immanentist religious feeling to promote earthly well-being.

All three of these false philosophies–for they are philosophy and not religion at all–are a manifest rebellion against the authority of God, to whom all of mankind must be subject, which is only possible through the power of the Cross, "exerting the power by which he is able also to subject all things to himself" (Phil. 3:21). There is no other source of divine order, no other means to give true, supernatural freedom, dignity and harmony to mankind, as St. Paul says: "For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness should dwell, and that through him he should reconcile to himself all things, whether on the earth or in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20). All three of these philosophies have become autonomous, self-sufficient good, independent of and devoid of all reference to God, by their absence of any connection with the mystery of the Cross.


The Sacraments

The new post-conciliar theology constantly emphasizes the aspect of the sacrament that they are a sign, overlooking that they are efficacious signs, producing the grace that they symbolize. The downgrading of the ex opere operate effect of the sacraments reduces them to becoming symbols of subjective events, and thus a "sacrament" comes to include everything that symbolizes the sacred, and no longer the seven sacraments that "contain and effectuate" (Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 139) the grace that they symbolize. It is in this sense that the Church itself is defined as a sacrament (Lumen Gentium, §1). However, to redefine the sacraments in such a way is to confuse the true sacraments with any other symbolic mystery and to undermine not only Catholic doctrine, but also the basis of the Catholic life in the administration of the sacraments.

The seven sacraments are profoundly different from all the other signs or mysteries that can be spoken of. The seven sacraments not only symbolize something present, as every sign does, but also symbolize a past real event and a future grace to be obtained. The past reality is the cause through which all seven sacraments bring about our sanctification, namely the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The future reality is the final end for which the sacraments exist, namely everlasting life, to which the sacraments give a right. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches this very simply:
Quote: "Consequently a sacrament is a sign that is both a reminder of the past, i.e., the passion of Christ; and an indication of that which is effected in us by Christ's passion, i.e., grace; and a prognostic, that is, a foretelling of future glory" (Summa Theologica, IIIa, Q. 60, Art. 3).
 

All the sacraments have their effect of producing everlasting life through the Passion of Christ.

However, according to the new concept of sacrament, enlarged to include any sacred, symbolic mystery, a sacrament is no longer a sign of the past reality, namely the Passion, nor of our future hope, everlasting life. It is simply a sign of something present, without relation to either of these. A sacrament is a mystery that relates to our consciousness here and now, that is to our gift of faith. It has consequently become a purely subjective symbol, limited to the present, or to the "today" of our experience, separated from the Passion and from eternal life. The new theology of the sacraments, with its whole new emphasis on community experience, is consequently an evacuation of the Cross.

Hence baptism is no longer primarily to remove Original Sin, but to introduce into membership in a community. Penance is for reconciliation, and no longer for the forgiveness of the guilt of actual sin and for the remission of the punishment that is due to it, possible only through the mystery of the Cross. The beautiful prayer that the priest recites after each Confession in the traditional rite is an illustration of this traditional understanding of the sacrament of Penance:

Quote:Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi, merita Beatae Mariae Virginis et omnium sanctorum, quidquid boni feceris vel mali sustinueris sint tibi in remissionem peccatorum, augmentum gratiae et praemium vitae aeternae.

May the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints obtain for you that whatever good you do or whatever evil you bear might merit for you the remission of your sins, the increase of grace and the reward of everlasting life.

Likewise, Extreme Unction is no longer considered as a purification and immediate preparation for death, nor Confirmation the source of fortitude that will enable us to die for the Faith as Christ did on the Cross, nor is Matrimony considered as the source of the spirit of self-sacrifice that makes parents place children first. Matrimony is now considered primarily as a "communion of life and love" (Gaudium et Spes, §48). In each case the Cross is evacuated as the source of the holiness that the sacraments give.

The same applies even more for the Blessed Eucharist, in which the concept of a meal has totally taken over and eliminated the Blessed Sacrament as a remedy for our failures, venial sins and weaknesses, and as the gage of everlasting life, for it has eliminated the mystery of the Cross. Hence the love that it inspires is not a love of reparation for the ingratitude of men, starting with ourselves, which is so much a part of our daily visits of adoration to the Blessed Sacrament. Entirely different is the traditional devotion to the Blessed Eucharist, not just as to a meal, but as to the sacred banquet that opens up to our souls to everlasting life by applying the grace of the Passion in the most sublime and perfect way. This is described beautifully in the antiphon written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi, that the priest recites in the traditional rite when he administers Holy Communion outside Mass:

Quote:O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria passionis eius, mens impletur gratia et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

O holy banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace, and there is given to us a pledge of future glory.



Conclusion

The Cross is not simply omitted from the spirit of Vatican II and its reforms. It is not just a disjunction or separation. There is a profound, consistent, fundamental and across the board opposition to the Cross. Whatever aspect of life is examined under the optic of Vatican II, we find every time a deliberate and universal rejection of the mystery of the Cross. It is for this reason that Vatican II can legitimately be called the Anti-Cross Council.

As Romano Amerio points out in Iota Unum (p. 754), whenever there is crisis or confusion, the cause must be sought for in the absence of a principle of unity coordinating the multiplicity of different goods and activities into one. However, the Church's principle of unity is precisely the mystery of the Cross, for this was His hour, for which He came into the world: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again" (Jn. 10:17). It is the elimination of this principle of unity that is responsible for the crisis of the post-conciliar Church, that, in 1972, Pope Paul VI rightly called "auto-destruction."

Every attempt to find another principle of unity has failed; e.g., the dignity of man, human consciousness, liberty, equality, and human brotherhood. The reason for this is that it takes an external and transcendent principle to unite a society, group or organization. It cannot attain to unity by something within itself, that is immanent to itself, but only by some superior principle over, beyond and superior to that which is to be united. Falling back upon some interior element such as personal conscience or freedom can only ultimately cause further division, as every member goes his own way.

It is the grace of the Passion and the power of the Cross that unites the members of the Church, the mystical body of Christ, to their head, and to one another. It is the only source of justice, restoring the order destroyed by sin, and the only hope for us to practice the charity so necessary to the restoration of divine order. Hence it is ultimately the deliberate exclusion of the Passion and Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ that is the cause of the present crisis in the Church, nor can there be any other response than the total reinsertion of the Cross into theology, spirituality and Catholic life.

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  Before the Fall of Campos: Their 1982 Profession of Faith in the Face of Errors
Posted by: Stone - 03-07-2021, 12:15 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition - No Replies

The Angelus - November 1982

Campos Speaks to the Church
[Before their Fall in 2001...]

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Until the end of 1981 the Diocese of Campos, Brazil, was unique within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Its bishop, Msgr. Antonio de Castro Mayer, had refused to adopt the new rite of Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969. He insisted upon retaining the Tridentine Mass as the official liturgy of his diocese. The Bishop made this decision for two reasons: firstly, he claimed that the New Mass was not mandatory; secondly, he claimed that the New Mass presented a danger to the faith of his people. The Bishop sent a detailed justification of his position to the Vatican in 1980; it was printed in full in the Angelus Press pamphlet, The Legal Status of the Tridentine Mass. We urge our readers to possess several copies of this pamphlet to give to anyone who tells them that celebrating or assisting at the Tridentine Mass is "disobedient."
Bishop de Castro Mayer retired at the end of 1981. He was replaced by a liberal who is attempting to impose the New Mass upon the faithful of the diocese but is meeting with considerable resistance. The reason for this resistance was made clear at Easter, 1982, when five Monsignori and twenty other priests of the diocese signed a "Profession of the Catholic Faith in the Face of Present Errors." Their Profession is herewith printed in full. Grateful acknowledgments to Approaches for use of this translation.


We believe firmly in all that our Holy Mother, the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, believes and teaches, and in this Faith we wish to live and die, since only in the Church is God honored and salvation found.

We believe that Jesus Christ has founded only one Church, the Catholic hierarchical Church, whose chief pastors are the Pope and the Bishops in union with the Pope, and whose aim is to ensure that the men of all ages reach the salvation obtained for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ, together with all the benefits that radiate from it, and to promote on earth the Reign of Our Lord (Mt. 28, 19-20). To do this, the Church does not preach a "new doctrine" but, with the aid of the divine Holy Spirit, faithfully explains the Deposit of Faith received from the Apostles and religiously preserved by her (Vatican Council I).

We profess communion with the See of Peter, in the legitimate successor to which we recognize the primacy and government over the Universal Church, pastors and faithful, and nothing in this world would separate us from the Rock on which Jesus Christ has founded His Church. We believe firmly in papal infallibility as Vatican Council I has defined it. We respect the power of the Holy Father, which is supreme even if not absolute or without limits. It is subordinate to and cannot contradict Sacred Scripture, Traditions and the definitions already proclaimed by the Church in her constant Magisterium. Moreover this power cannot be arbitrary or despotic, such as to impose unconditional obedience or absolve subjects from personal responsibility. We owe unconditional and unlimited obedience only to God.

We are Catholic, Apostolic, Roman and shall be so till death, with the grace of God, and no power or authority will drive us from Holy Church.
We profess the Catholic Faith in an integral and total manner, as it was always professed and transmitted by the Church, by the Sovereign Pontiff, by Councils, and therefore in loyal and perfect continuity and consistency, without excluding a single article of faith.

We reject and anathematize, with the same firmness, all that has been refuted and condemned by Holy Church.

Together with all the Popes, we condemn heresy and all that can favor it: we particularly condemn Protestantism, liberalism, spiritism, naturalism, rationalism, and modernism, in all forms and variants whatever, just as the Popes have done.

We reject equally, together with the Popes and in the same way they have done, all the consequences of these errors.

For these reasons we condemn the present heresy that takes the name of "Progressivism," an improper name besides, since it is nothing but the repetition of errors long ago condemned by Holy Church.

We accept therefore the entire applicability of the words of St. Paul: "Even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven preach to you a gospel different from that which we have preached, let him be anathema" (Gal. 1:8).

Thus, the tendencies of whatever sort emanating even from persons in authority, whenever they be contrary to traditional Catholic doctrine as it has always been taught, giving free rein to the errors already condemned by the Popes and by the Councils, demand from our conscience a formal rejection.

We affirm in consequence that, whatever contradiction becomes manifest between what is taught today and what Tradition teaches, there is a duty to follow what was always taught by all and in every part of the Church, because only this is truly and properly Catholic.

FOR ALL THESE REASONS, and to be consistent with what the Church our Mother has always taught us in her constant Magisterium, with the Faith of our baptism, of our confirmation, of our first Communion and of our priesthood, in order not to be perjurers and contradict what we have always believed—for all these reasons WE REJECT:

THE NEW MASS, whether in Latin or in the vernacular, since "it represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as it was formulated in Session XXIII of the Council of Trent" (Letter of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to Paul VI, 5/10/69). In fact the new Order of Mass obscures the expressions intended to underline the Eucharistic dogmas, bringing the Mass close to the Protestant supper and not accentuating the clear profession of the Catholic Faith.

THE NEW MORAL THEOLOGY—subjective, opportunist, contaminated by permissive liberalism, in which little or nothing any longer constitutes a sin.

THE PROFANATION OF THE CHURCH by dress always considered immodest, just as by certain kinds of music and instruments already rejected by the Church for her places of worship.

THE NEW THEOLOGY of modernism that founds the whole Catholic religion on the evolution of the religious instinct of the first Christian communities.

THE NEW CATECHISMS, purveyors more or less covertly of the modernist errors and not infrequently vehicles of subversive political doctrines.

THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION, based on a new interpretation of the Gospel, completely opposed to the teachings always held by the Church, and calculated to favor Marxist machinations.

THE TREND TOWARDS SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM that manifestly contradicts the whole social doctrine of the Church and scorns the excommunications of Pius XII directed against those who collaborate in any way with Communism.

THE SECULARIZATION OF THE CLERGY, causing grave scandal to the faith and the inevitable impoverishment of Christian life.

THE CONFORMING TO THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLD on the part of the clergy and the faithful in complete opposition to the teaching of Our Lord and to the spirit of mortification, teaching and example of Jesus Crucified.

THE REFORM OF THE SEMINARIES, carried out in line with these new tendencies.

THE OBSESSIVE CONCERN FOR HUMAN PROGRESS that leads to disregard for the specific purpose of the Church which is the salvation of souls.

THE DILUTION of true spirituality in a vague religious sentimentalism.

THE ECUMENISM that makes the Faith grow cold and makes us forget our Catholic identity, seeking to negate the antagonism between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial (cf. II Cor. 6:14-18), and leads to a panchristianity, "a most grave error and capable of destroying the foundations of the Catholic Faith at their base" (Encyclical, Mortalium Animos of Pius XI).

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, understood in the sense of an equalization of rights between truth and error, giving supremacy to a supposed subjective right of man, to the prejudice of the absolute right of Truth, of Good, of God, and as a consequence laicizing the State, rendered agnostic towards the true Religion.

THE HORIZONTALISM OF THE RELIGION OF MAN, that concretizes what St. Pius X calls the "monstrous and detestable iniquity proper to the times in which we are living, through which man substitutes himself for God" (Enc. Supremi Apostolatus).

DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE CHURCH by means of a collegial government in opposition to the hierarchical and monarchical constitution given to her by Our Lord.

LAICIZATION OF SOCIETY, that brings to life once more the cry of the Jews at the death of Jesus refusing to accept His social Kingship and not even recognizing in Him the Supreme Legislator of human society.

Thus, in the name of Faith, with tranquil conscience, we reject all those who introduce the "smoke of Satan" into the Church and apply themselves to her self-destruction (cf. Paul VI, allo. of 7/12/68).


What We Are For

We love, praise and adopt all the traditional practices, uses and customs of Holy Church that have contributed, and do contribute, so much to the sanctification of the faithful, among them, for example:

AURICULAR CONFESSION;

ESTEEM FOR THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE that ought to have pre-eminence over the active life;

USE OF THE CASSOCK AND HABIT by priests and religious, that marks so well their separation from the spirit of the world and keeps consciences alert to the spirit of Christ;

VENERATION OF IMAGES and relics of the saints;

COMMUNION RECEIVED ON THE TONGUE AND KNEELING, in token of respect and adoration;

PENANCES AND MORTIFICATIONS, internal and external;

THE ORNAMENTATION AND MAGNIFICENCE of the Churches which contribute so much to the splendor of worship;

THE SOLEMNITY AND POMP OF THEIR CEREMONIES, that so impress and move the good people and stimulating their devotion;

LATIN IN THE LITURGY, a factor of the unity and universality of the Church, a precious casket befitting the sacredness expressed by the liturgical prayers;

GREGORIAN CHANT, which has nourished piety for so many centuries.

In particular, we wish to profess and spread a deep and burning devotion to the Mother of God, in whose Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity and universal mediation we believe. We maintain that such practices of devotion, principally the holy Rosary, have a special efficacy for the sanctification of souls and the triumph of Holy Mother Church.

We profess a convinced acceptance and a sincere love of holy priestly celibacy, one of the sources of pastoral zeal that constitutes a firm response to the hedonism in which the neo-pagan society of our day is immersed.

Our position is not one of rebellion, nor of disobedience, or contestation, but of fidelity. It is a question of loyalty to the Faith of our baptism, to our priesthood, to our legitimate superiors and to the faithful.

We do not judge the consciences of others, since this judgment belongs to God, we only claim the right and exercise the duty of every Catholic. We confront what is taught today with what was always taught; we hold on to what is of the Church and refuse what serves only for her self-destruction, whoever may promote it knowingly or unknowingly.

We are not against progress if it represents an organic development of Revelation; we are against that false "progress" that is not consistent with Tradition but is in discontinuity with it.

It is not a matter of indiscriminate attachment to the past, but of clinging to the Faith which does not pass away.

We believe in the permanence of the doctrine traditionally taught by the Church and in the objective sense of the formulas that express the dogma and truth that Holy Church teaches.

We believe that the truths of Faith remain absolutely independent of the ways of thinking and living of men, since Truth comes from God through the Church and her Tradition and does not arise from the instinct and religious feeling of the people.

We have absolute certainty that our position is legitimate, not by virtue of our arguments and ideas, but because we take our stand on that which the Church herself has taught us and in such a way that we could make our own the words of St. Augustine when he exclaimed that, if what we believe were an error, then God Himself would have deceived us.

We have firm hope that within a short time the Church will have overcome the current crisis she is living through, and, dissipating the darkness of heresy will return to shine out as always, as a glorious beacon to the nations: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16,18).

We love from the bottom of our hearts our Mother, the Holy Church, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman. For her we wish to give our lives if it is necessary.

Campos, Easter 1982

(25 signatures appended; 5 monsignori, 20 priests)

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