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Anonymous Catholic: "Why I Decapitated the Obscenity of Linz" |
Posted by: Stone - 07-02-2024, 07:59 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- Replies (1)
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The Catacombs refuses to include an image of 'the Obscenity of Linz' but the image is widely available on the internet for those interested...
Anonymous Catholic: "Why I Decapitated the Obscenity of Linz"
gloria.tv | July 2, 2024
The anonymous "Catholic" who claims to have beheaded the obscenity in the cathedral of Linz, Austria, writes a testimony on Telegram (1 July).
He calls it not his task to prevent what Bishop Manfred Scheuer of Linz is doing: "But it is our task to prevent any defamation of God and His Most Holy Mother".
Since the Blessed Mother protects him every day, he wanted to be there for Her.
The alleged "Catholic" explains why he acted instead of seeking dialogue: "Unfortunately, emails are ignored by the Diocese of Linz, phone calls are abruptly ended, and there is no outlet for criticism".
And: "In the face of this abominable and blasphemous caricature, urgent and decisive action was required".
At first, the "Catholic" wanted to saw off the torso of the statue. But he realised that it would be too noisy and take too long. So he changed his plan on the spot and opted for the head: "Without the head and the halo, there would be no doubt that it was a caricature of the Virgin Mary".
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Opinion: Lefebvre, Viganò and the Post-Conciliar Struggle Against the Catholic Church’s Enemies |
Posted by: Stone - 07-02-2024, 07:20 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Lefebvre, Viganò and the Post-Conciliar Struggle Against the Catholic Church’s Enemies
Robert Morrison, Remnant Columnist [Emphasis mine]| July 1, 2024
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò began his recent statement (responding to accusations of schism) by quoting Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre from 1979:
Quote:“‘When I think that we are in the palace of the Holy Office, which is the exceptional witness of the Tradition and of the defense of the Catholic Faith, I cannot stop myself from thinking that I am at home, and that it is me, whom you call ‘the traditionalist,’ who should judge you.’ So spoke Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1979, when he was summoned to the former Holy Office, in the presence of the Prefect, Cardinal Franjo Šeper, and two other Prelates.” (June 28, 2024)
Although Archbishop Viganò chose these words in part to draw the comparison between his situation and that of Archbishop Lefebvre, they also show that the present enmity between the anti-Catholic revolutionaries in Rome and Catholicism was already apparent in the 1970s. As we know from Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s biography of Archbishop Lefebvre, this was not the first encounter between Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Seper:
Quote:“On November 18, [1978,] through an initiative of Cardinal Siri, the new Pope received the Archbishop, who said he was ready ‘to accept the Council in the light of Tradition,’ an expression used by Pope John Paul himself on November 6: ‘The Council must be understood in the light of all holy Tradition and on the basis of the constant Magisterium of the holy Church.’ The Pope said he was happy and saw the problem of celebrating the old Mass only as a disciplinary question. Then Cardinal Franjo Seper, whom the Pope had summoned, exclaimed: ‘Be careful, Holy Father, they make a banner out of this Mass!’”
Both Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Seper understood that the Traditional Latin Mass and defense of the unadulterated Catholic Faith are naturally intertwined, and we can describe that relationship in various ways:
- Love for the Traditional Latin Mass generally leads souls to want to defend the unadulterated Catholic Faith from errors contrary to it.
- Wanting to disfigure or reject the Traditional Latin Mass goes hand-in-hand with wanting to disfigure or reject the unadulterated Catholic Faith
- Abolishing, or radically changing, the Traditional Latin Mass tends to drive a wedge between Catholics and the unadulterated Catholic Faith.
- Failing to defend the unadulterated Catholic Faith — by accepting errors contrary to it — will eventually lead to attacks on the Traditional Latin Mass.
As we know from the warnings of the pre-Vatican II popes, the Catholic Church has enemies who have sought to destroy the unadulterated Catholic Faith from within the Church. Archbishop Viganò referred to some of these enemies in his recent statement:
Quote:“As Romano Amerio pointed out in his seminal essay Iota Unum, this cowardly and culpable surrender began with the convocation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and with the underground and highly organized action of clergymen and laity linked to the Masonic sects, aimed at slowly but surely subverting the structure of government and magisterium of the Church in order to demolish Her from within.”
Given the connection between the Traditional Latin Mass and the unadulterated Catholic Faith, it should not surprise us that these enemies have also worked to undermine the Mass. As we know, it was a Freemason, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who oversaw the design of the Novus Ordo Missae, which eliminated so much of the content of the Mass that offended non-Catholics that the New Mass bears almost no resemblance to the Traditional Latin Mass. Again, wanting to disfigure the Traditional Latin Mass goes hand-in-hand with wanting to disfigure the unadulterated Catholic Faith.
Knowing that the enemies of the Catholic Church want to destroy both the unadulterated Faith and the Traditional Latin Mass, we might naturally ask why they have taken so long to completely ban the Mass and introduce more overt heresy? Why has the process been gradual? The enemies who have overseen the Vatican II revolution do not mind if their innovations have caused many Catholics to lose the Faith — this was indeed desirable — but they have always needed to maintain a sufficient number of Catholics who go along with the revolution. To accomplish this, they have introduced their poisons gradually. Those who credibly identify as Catholics, and yet go along with the revolution, provide the necessary cover for our enemies seeking to gradually dismantle the Church. For this reason, the most valuable assets of the Vatican II revolutionaries have been those otherwise good Catholics who defend the Council and denounce men like Archbishop Lefebvre.
In their cynical hatred for Catholicism, the Church’s enemies have even been willing to barter access to the Traditional Latin Mass in exchange for silence about the doctrinal and disciplinary aberrations flowing from the Council. By all appearances, this strategy has been successful with some Traditional Catholics because many people have the Mass and feel no need to join the battle until it begins to harm them, and we generally do not suffer the direct consequences of anti-Catholic errors flowing freely in the Church. Thus, even though men like Archbishop Lefebvre saw the battle clearly several decades ago, many more Catholics have awakened only with Francis because his over-the-top attacks on Catholicism are inescapable, especially when he threatens the Traditional Latin Mass.
Where does Archbishop Viganò fit into this analysis? Whether or not one agrees with his fiery rhetoric about Francis, the fact remains that he generally responds to the ongoing crisis like a man who sees the big picture and has no qualms about telling the truth in a manner that is capable of alerting others to the nature and severity of the ordeal we face. Worse for the revolutionaries, he is a Successor of the Apostles who places the blame where it belongs, as we see in his recent statement:
Quote:“Since the Council, the Church has thus become the bearer of the revolutionary principles of 1789, as some of the proponents of Vatican II have admitted, and as is confirmed by the appreciation on the part of the Lodges for all the Popes of the Council and of the post-conciliar period, precisely because of the implementation of changes that the Freemasons had long called for. Change – or better still, aggiornamento – has been so much at the center of the conciliar narrative that it has been the hallmark of Vatican II and has posited this assembly as the terminus post quem that sanctions the end of the ancien régime – the regime of the ‘old religion,’ of the ‘old Mass,’ of the ‘pre-council’ – and the beginning of the ‘conciliar church,’ with its ‘new mass’ and the substantial relativization of all dogma.”
Many critics of Francis have a vested interest in protecting Vatican II, and so they cannot bring themselves to speak the entire truth on these matters. Archbishop Viganò apparently has no such vested interests, so his words ring true in a way that pose a unique threat to the revolutionaries today.
Unfortunately, many who champion Archbishop Viganò today appear to care far less about his assessment of the entire crisis than his opposition to its most prominent fruit, Francis. Many, in fact, appear to misinterpret his words to imagine that Archbishop Viganò is saying that the crisis can be solved merely by saying that Francis is an anti-pope, which is a position that Archbishop Viganò has clearly rejected:
Quote:“What we cannot do, because we do not have the authority, is to officially declare that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not Pope. The terrible impasse in which we find ourselves makes any human solution impossible.” (Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, December 9, 2023 intervention)
We can also see from his recent statement that he acknowledges that Francis must be “removed from the Throne,” which would make no sense if he was not somehow occupying it:
Quote:“Before my Brothers in the Episcopate and the entire ecclesial body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years.”
This statement essentially echoes the ultimate “call for action” of the “Major Statement” published by Rorate Caeli in May, in which several prominent Catholics accused Francis of numerous crimes, and called on bishops and cardinals to effectively “remove him” if he refused to resign:
Quote:“If Pope Francis refuses to resign, the duty of the bishops and cardinals is to proceed to declare that he has lost the papal office for heresy.”
As described in a previous article, these approaches resemble that which St. Robert Bellarmine presented in his defense of the Church against Protestants who argued that Catholics had no recourse against a pope who would try to destroy the Church:
Quote:“I respond: No wonder, if the Church remains without an efficacious human remedy, seeing that its safety does not rest principally upon human industry, but divine protection, since God is its king. Therefore, even if the Church could not depose a Pope, still, it may and must beg the Lord that He would apply the remedy, and it is certain that God has care for its safety, that He would either convert the Pope or abolish him from their midst before he destroys the Church. Nevertheless, it does not follow from here that it is not lawful to resist a Pope destroying the Church; for it is lawful to admonish him while preserving all reverence, and to modestly correct him, even to oppose him with force and arms if he means to destroy the Church.” (De Controversiis, On the Church: On Councils, On the Church Militant, On the Marks of the Church, p. 220)
So St. Robert Bellarmine (a) acknowledged the possibility of a pope who should be deposed, (b) recognized that the Church may not actually be able to remove such a pope, and © confirmed that the proper response in that case would be to resist his efforts to destroy the Church, even with “force of arms” if necessary. One may quibble over terminology (i.e., “pope” vs. “anti-pope,” and “remove” vs. “declare to be anti-pope”) but the fundamental realities do not change.
From St. Robert Bellarmine’s position, we can see the problems with two opposing errors found today among sincere Catholics:
- The error of those who think that individual Catholics can declare Francis to be an anti-pope and that there is no real need for the faithful bishops and cardinals to attempt to remove and replace him.
- The error that there could never be a situation in which faithful bishops and cardinals should at least consider removing a pope who was clearly attempting to destroy the Church.
Among those who sincerely hold either of these positions, the most common reason (among those who actually think about the matter) is the same: that the Church’s indefectibility would be compromised if we entertained a different view.
However, Our Lord’s promise that the Church would never fail is not a litmus test by which we need to evaluate whether Jesus was telling the truth: we know that He established the Catholic Church, and that it will not fail because He told us it would not. Moreover, He would not have had any real reason to tell us the Church would not fail if there would not be times (such as the Arian crisis and the current one) in which it might seem that the Church had defected.
In such times, our fidelity to the Church certainly demands our adherence to the unadulterated Faith and unwavering trust in God; but it also calls for our humble acknowledgment that His Providence may lead us to paths that we never would have considered in ordinary times — this indeed was a constant theme of Archbishop Lefebvre’s life from the time of the Council until his death in 1991. Now, for example, it is scarcely worthy of our Catholic Faith to assume that the realities presented by the Pachamama, Fiducia Supplicans, Traditiones Custodes, and the newly created Synodal Church are not signs that our shepherds may need to at least prayerfully consider if it is God’s will that faithful bishops and cardinals take steps to discern whether Francis should be removed and replaced.
Conversely, this consideration of God’s will in responding to the current crisis highlights why it is such a debilitating mistake to concentrate on removing Francis — or worse, simply branding him an “anti-pope” — while ignoring everything else that Archbishop Viganò has to say about the crisis. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that Archbishop Lefebvre and Archbishop Viganò correctly identified the role of Vatican II in fostering this crisis, why would God allow us to escape the crisis without repudiating the errors of the Council? It seems, rather, that He would allow the crisis to grow progressively worse until we finally overcome our blindness and lethargy to fight for Catholic truth, which truly means choosing Him over the sinful world, with which Vatican II made peace.
This is not the first time God has had to demonstrate to us the staggering evil of choosing the sinful world over Him. Just as God willed that Our Lord suffered and died on the Cross to show us the enormous evil of sin, so too it seems that He is allowing the Mystical Body of Christ to undergo such an excruciating Passion to show us the gravity of Vatican II’s abandonment of objective, immutable truth. Archbishop Viganò put it this way in his recent statement:
Quote:“This happens when the absolute is removed from the Truth and relativized by adapting it to the spirit of the world.”
If we want to cooperate with God’s grace to help resolve this crisis, then it seems clear that we must reject and counteract the Council’s sin of abandoning unadulterated Catholic Truth. Along with this, according to Archbishop Viganò’s exhortation to end his recent statement, we should fight with the spiritual weapons Our Lord has given us:
Quote:“To the Catholic faithful, who today are scandalized and disoriented by the winds of novelty and the false doctrines that are promoted and imposed by a Hierarchy rebellious against the Divine Master, I ask you to pray and offer your sacrifices and fasts pro libertate et exaltatione Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, so that Holy Mother Church may find Her freedom and triumph with Christ, after this time of passion.”
God will triumph over those who today subject the Mystical Body of Christ to this tremendous Passion. And just as the Blessed Virgin Mary helped St. John stand faithfully beneath the Cross during Our Lord’s Crucifixion, Our Lady will help us remain faithful if we turn to her, even if Providence leads us to paths that we never would have considered in ordinary times. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!
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Pope Francis meets with climate activist Al Gore |
Posted by: Stone - 07-01-2024, 07:21 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope Francis meets with climate activist Al Gore
Pope Francis receives Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States, in a private audience on Friday.
Pope Francis receives Al Gore at the Casa Santa Marta residence (ANSA)
Vatican News | June 29, 2024
Pope Francis met Friday with former US vice president Al Gore, who is in Rome for a three-day summit sponsored by his “Climate Reality Project.”
According to a statement from the Holy See Press Office, Gore praised the Pope for the impact of the encyclical Laudato sí on the 2015 Paris Accords on climate change, and for the recent Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum. Gore described the Vatican as an example of “ecological transition” in practice, pointing to the announcement of the establishment of an agrivoltaic plant at Santa Maria di Galeria.
For his part, Pope Francis thanked Gore for the “‘climate concern’ that has always inspired his political activity.” The two leaders agreed “on the need to accelerate the transition despite the resistance of large fossil fuel companies” and “discussed possible forms of collaboration to try to have a greater impact on public opinion.”
After the private meeting at the Pope’s residence in Casa Santa Marta, Gore visited St Peter’s Basilica, where he met with Cardinal Archpriest Mauro Gambetti. The Director of Communications for the Papal Basilica, Father Enzo Fortunato, said that the Gore made a commitment to contribute to the next World Children’s Day, in 2026, as well as for the upcoming Jubilee Year of 2025.
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St. Basil of Caesarea: The Catholic Must Stand Alone If Necessary to Uphold the Truth |
Posted by: Stone - 06-30-2024, 07:03 AM - Forum: The Saints
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The Catholic Must Stand Alone If Necessary to Uphold the Truth
St. Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 128
TIA [Emphasis in the original] | June 29, 2024
Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ, was at its height in the mid 4th century. Emperor Valens put great pressure on St. Basil to remain silent and admit the heretics to communion. St. Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea, remained firm, and Valens backed down. He strove mightily to unite and rally his fellow Catholics who were crushed by tyranny and torn by internal dissension. At the end of his life, his efforts might have seemed in vain. His health was breaking, the Goths were at the door of the Byzantine Empire, Antioch was in schism, the Bishops refused to be brought together as he wished. Yet he made no compromises in doctrine to bring the heretics into communion.
St. Basil describes his apostolate succinctly: Expose error, preserve the Faith of the Fathers integrally, and help the faithful to avoid following apostates to damnation. As St. Basil tells us, he absolutely refused to remain silent to have peace. He counseled the faithful to not follow the multitude, but remain completely alone if necessary to uphold the truth.
St. Basil of Caesarea:
Let the Faith of our Fathers be proposed to those who are misled but of good will, with all tenderness and charity. If they will assent thereunto, let us receive them into our midst. Should they not assent, let us dwell by ourselves alone, regardless of numbers; and let us keep aloof from equivocating souls, who are not possessed of that simplicity without guile, indispensably required in the early days of the Gospel.
The believers, as written in Scriptures, had but one heart and one soul. Let those, therefore, who would reproach us for not desiring pacification, mark well who are the real authors of the disturbance. Let them not call for reconciliation on our side anymore.
To every specious argument that would seem to counsel silence on our part, we oppose this other argument, namely, that charity counts as nothing, either her own proper interests or the difficulties of the times. Even though no man is willing to follow our example, what then? Are we for that reason alone to abandon duty? In the fiery furnace, the children of the Babylon captivity chanted their canticle to the Lord, without making any reckoning of the multitude who set truth on one side. They were quite sufficient for one another, merely three as they were! …
So, take heart! under every stroke, renew yourselves in love; let your zeal gain strength every day, knowing that in you are to be preserved the last remains of godliness which the Lord, at His return, may find upon the earth. …
Heed not what the crowd may think, for a mere breath of wind is sufficient to sway the crowd to and fro, like the rippling wave. Even though only one were to be saved, as in the case of Lot out of Sodom, it would not be lawful for him to deviate from the path of rectitude, merely because he finds that he is the only one that is right. No; he must stand alone, unmoved, holding fast his hope on Jesus Christ.”
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Opinion: How and Why Do Traditional Priestly Institutes Fit Within Francis’s Synodal Church? |
Posted by: Stone - 06-30-2024, 06:52 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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How and Why Do Traditional Priestly Institutes Fit Within Francis’s Synodal Church?
Robert Morrison Remnant Columnist [Emphasis mine] | June 27, 2024
By prohibiting Traditional Latin Masses other than those offered by the ex-Ecclesia Dei communities (e.g., the FSSP and ICKSP), the new document would dramatically reduce the number of Traditional Latin Masses, harming souls in various ways.
On June 13, 2024, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity published a “study report” entitled The Bishop of Rome. Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut unum sint, which helpfully outlines how the various pieces of Vatican II’s ecumenical movement fit together to form a Synodal Church. The first paragraph of the document’s introduction functions both as a high-level history lesson about the ecumenical movement, as well as a thorough repudiation of those who have argued that Vatican II’s novelties are consistent with what the Church taught prior to the Council:
Quote:“The understanding and exercise of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome entered a new phase with the Second Vatican Council. The very act of calling a Council with Christian unity as one of its primary goals and with the participation of other Christians already indicated Saint John XXIII’s approach to the role of the Bishop of Rome in the Church. Complementing the definitions of the First Vatican Council on papal primacy, the Constitution Lumen gentium strengthened the office of bishops who govern their particular churches as ‘vicars and ambassadors of Christ [...] and not as vicars of the Roman Pontiffs’ (LG 27) and emphasized the significance of episcopal collegiality (LG 23). The Decree Unitatis redintegratio marked the official entry of the Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement and opened the way to the establishment of theological dialogues, many of which would address the question of primacy.”
As we know, the pre-Vatican II popes consistently taught that “Christian unity” could occur only through a process of non-Christians accepting the unadulterated Catholic Faith. John XXIII explicitly changed course with the Council; and for the past sixty years we have seen two primary initiatives aimed at accomplishing the goals he announced: modifying Catholic belief and practice to remove elements that non-Catholics reject; and, more subtly, restructuring the Catholic Church to allow non-Christian denominations to be “in union with the Bishop of Rome.”
These ecumenical initiatives converge in the new Synodal Church, which is meant to be the “church” that unifies all Christians. The new document on the Bishop of Rome emphasizes this relationship between the Synodal Church and the ecumenical movement:
Quote:“The synodal shaping of the Catholic Church is crucial for her ecumenical commitment. It is a duty that the Catholic Church owes to its dialogue partners to demonstrate in its own ecclesial life a convincing and attractive model of synodality. As Pope Francis states, ‘the commitment to build a synodal church – a mission to which we are all called, each with the role entrusted him by the Lord – has significant ecumenical implications.’ Indeed, ‘it is clear that the way in which the Catholic Church experiences synodality is important for its relations with other Christians. This is a challenge for ecumenism.’”
This paragraph appears to hold a vital key to understanding how Francis treats the traditional priestly institutes, including the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP), and even the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). If the Synodal Church needs to offer a “convincing and attractive model of synodality” to its “dialogue partners” (i.e., non-Catholics such as Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, etc.), then it must demonstrate that the Synodal Church can accommodate a wide range of religious beliefs and practices.
In this light, we can consider two news items from June 25, 2024. In the first, Diane Montagna reported additional information on the rumored restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass:
Quote:“Well-informed sources have confirmed that the new document, if published, would prohibit all priests other than those belonging to approved ex-Ecclesia Dei institutes from offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Vetus Ordo, or old rite as it is commonly called.”
By prohibiting Traditional Latin Masses other than those offered by the ex-Ecclesia Dei communities (e.g., the FSSP and ICKSP), the new document would dramatically reduce the number of Traditional Latin Masses, harming souls in various ways. Montagna also noted that the restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass correspond with the Vatican’s desire to eliminate or silence those who refuse to accept changes (such as the changes necessary to fully establish the Synodal Church):
Quote:“[A]t a January 2020 meeting at the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Parolin claimed that traditional priestly institutes refuse to accept change and are unwilling to concelebrate. Parolin also said he shared the concern of other prelates assembled that these groups are popular with young people.”
Almost all of these concerns about the Traditional Latin Mass have been known for decades, as they were the same arguments made in connection with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s work to preserve and promote the Traditional Latin Mass. However, the growth of the Traditional Latin Mass outside of the SSPX and the ex-Ecclesia Dei communities would seem to be potentially more problematic for those in the Vatican who oppose Tradition because that growth has been rapid and far less predictable than the the growth of the formally established priestly institutes (e.g., the SSPX, FSSP, and ICKSP).
Why, then, would the Vatican allow the FSSP and ICKSP Traditional Latin Masses to continue? As always, it seems that there is some desire to preserve an “approved” alternative to the historically more problematic SSPX, which would presumably absorb many of the FSSP and ICKSP priests, religious, and laity if the Vatican banned all Traditional Latin Masses in those communities. Beyond this, permitting these ex-Ecclesia Dei communities to exist helps fulfill the objective noted above from the new document on the Bishop of Rome:
Quote:“The synodal shaping of the Catholic Church is crucial for her ecumenical commitment. It is a duty that the Catholic Church owes to its dialogue partners to demonstrate in its own ecclesial life a convincing and attractive model of synodality.”
As discussed in previous articles, the Synodal Church already embraces all baptized people, many of whom belong to Protestant denominations that both reject the papacy and fundamentally oppose Church teaching. And so allowing the continued existence of these traditional priestly institutes — even though they fundamentally oppose Synodal Church teaching — helps demonstrate “a convincing and attractive model of synodality.” To see the issue from another angle, even though Francis and company detest Traditional Catholicism, they would undermine their ecumenical and synodal objectives if they completely suppressed the traditional priestly institutes.
The other news story from June 25, 2024 to consider in connection with the Synodal Church highlights a related aspect of the Vatican’s willingness to permit the traditional priestly institutes to continue: the public relations value of genuinely Catholic priests on cordial terms with Francis and the Synodal Church. As reported by the Catholic News Agency, Francis met with leaders of the ICKSP on June 24th:
Quote:“Pope Francis on Monday met with three leaders of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) — an institute whose priests celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and live according to the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales. The June 24 meeting comes at a time when celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass are restricted by the pontiff’s motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. Although the ICKSP’s news release following the meeting did not reference any discussion of the Traditional Latin Mass, the institute said ‘the pope insisted that we continue to serve the Church according to our own, proper charism, in the spirit of unity and communion which the harmony and balance of the Salesian spirituality allow.’”
At least from the Vatican’s public relations standpoint, this meeting resembles the February 2024 meeting between Francis and leaders of the FSSP. In a real sense, the FSSP and ICKSP would be betraying their missions if they were to refuse to meet with Francis, so there is no apparent “capitulation” involved with these meetings. And yet these meetings do allow Francis and the Vatican to demonstrate that there is room for a large amount of theological difference within the Synodal Church, so long as those who dissent from the Vatican’s positions remain respectful to the “Bishop of Rome.”
All of this recalls one of the conditions of the document that Cardinal Ratzinger presented to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in attempt to avoid the unauthorized episcopal consecrations that led to the 1988 excommunications. The Protocol of Agreement dated May 5, 1988 would have granted the SSPX at least one bishop (approved by John Paul II), and included the following condition among others:
Quote:“Regarding certain points taught by Vatican Council II or concerning later reforms of the liturgy and law, and which do not appear to us easily reconcilable with Tradition, we pledge that we will have a positive attitude of study and communication with the Apostolic See, avoiding all polemics.”
Archbishop Lefebvre initially signed the Protocol and then retracted his agreement the following day. Thus we know that for several decades the Vatican has been willing to allow for some degree of dissent so long as it is respectful, “avoiding all polemics.” Naturally, the SSPX’s polemics were especially strident days after John Paul II excommunicated Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, and the newly consecrated bishops, as we can see from the July 6, 1988 Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, signed by the district superiors and other leaders of the SSPX:
Quote:“You thought it good, by your letter of July 1st, to inform Their Excellencies Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, and the four Bishops whom they consecrated on June 30, at Ecône, of the excommunication latæ sententiæ. We let you judge for yourself the value of such a declaration, coming from an authority who, in its exercise, breaks with all its predecessors down to Pope Pius XII, in worship, teaching and government of the Church.
As for us, we are in full communion with all the Popes and Bishops before the Second Vatican Council, celebrating precisely the Mass which they codified and celebrated, teaching the Catechism which they drew up, standing up against the errors which they have many times condemned in their encyclicals and pastoral letters. We let you judge on which side the rupture is to be found. We are extremely saddened by the blindness of spirit and the hardening of heart of the Roman authorities.
On the other hand, we have never wished to belong to this system which calls itself the Conciliar Church, and defines itself with the Novus Ordo Missæ, an ecumenism which leads to indifferentism and the laicization of all society. Yes, we have no part, nullam partem habemus, with the pantheon of the religions of Assisi; our own excommunication by a decree of Your Eminence or of another Roman Congregation would only be the irrefutable proof of this. We ask for nothing better than to be declared out of communion with this adulterous spirit which has been blowing in the Church for the last 25 years; we ask for nothing better than to be declared outside of this impious communion of the ungodly. We believe in the One God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and we will always remain faithful to His unique Spouse, the One Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.
To be publicly associated with this sanction which is inflicted upon the six Catholic Bishops, Defenders of the Faith in its integrity and wholeness, would be for us a mark of honor and a sign of orthodoxy before the faithful. They have indeed a strict right to know that the priests who serve them are not in communion with a counterfeit church, promoting evolution, pentecostalism and syncretism.”
Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer
In recent years, some observers have perceived that the SSPX has “softened” some of the “polemics” in conjunction with friendlier relations with Rome, which perhaps has played some role in Benedict XVI and Francis making various conciliatory overtures to the SSPX. As a result, the SSPX may ironically now be the ideal example of how the Synodal Church would accommodate the churches that have historically been most opposed to the Catholic Church.
What is the proper balance between defending immutable Catholic teaching while maintaining friendly relations with those in Rome who appear to be determined to destroy the Catholic Church? Those of us who are not members of the respective priestly institutions do not have the “grace of state” that God grants to the leaders of those institutions, but many of us do have some concerns. Granting that God can intervene at any moment to stop the Synodal process, we nonetheless cannot but notice that real damage is being done through the largely unopposed continuation of the Synod. The fact that the Synodal train wreck may be going in slow motion is of little comfort for those who see no way to stop it.
God will provide, but it is worth considering the wisdom of Archbishop Lefebvre for our times — although he directed it specifically to SSPX priests, it applies to all priests, religious, and faithful who want to fight on the side of Our Lord:
Quote:“We cannot be priests only halfway. We cannot have a hesitant, stumbling vocation. To lead this combat, we need men with profound convictions, men who have the faith, who have charity. We need men who are ready to give everything in order to help bring about the kingdom and the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are living in a time when you have to be a hero or nothing at all. You have the choice: either to abandon the fight, or to fight like heroes. You cannot compromise or you are going to be struck down in the first engagement; you are not going to be able to resist the repeated attacks of the devil. You can see how the devil tries every possible means to divide us, to corrupt us, to diminish our ranks, even within the Society. He is very clever in creating oppositions, divisions, in order to weaken our forces.” (Priestly Holiness, pp. 469-470)
At some point in the near future, fighting like heroes may require taking extraordinarily difficult positions, accepting the condemnation of sinful men in exchange for honoring God and serving the Church. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
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Archbishop Viganò: J'Accuse - Statement on the Accusation of Schism |
Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 10:57 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- Replies (2)
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Holy Mother Church will have much to settle in the future...
J’ACCUSE
STATEMENT
by H.E. Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò,
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, Apostolic Nuncio
on the accusation of schism
“But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you a gospel other than the one that we preached to you,
let that one be accursed.
As we have said before, and now I say again,
if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received,
let him be anathema.”
Gal 1:8-9
“When I think that we are in the palace of the Holy Office, which is the exceptional witness of the Tradition and of the defense of the Catholic Faith, I cannot stop myself from thinking that I am at home, and that it is me, whom you call “the traditionalist,” who should judge you.” So spoke Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1979, when he was summoned to the former Holy Office, in the presence of the Prefect, Cardinal Franjo Šeper, and two other Prelates.
As I stated in my Communiqué of June 20, I do not recognize the authority of the tribunal that claims to judge me, nor of its Prefect, nor of the one who appointed him. This decision of mine, which is certainly painful, is not the result of haste or a spirit of rebellion; but rather is dictated by the moral necessity which, as Bishop and Successor of the Apostles, obliges me in conscience to bear witness to the Truth, that is, to God Himself, to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I face this trial with the determination that comes from knowing that I have no reason to consider myself separate from communion with the Holy Church and with the Papacy, which I have always served with filial devotion and fidelity. I could not conceive of a single moment of my life outside this one Ark of salvation, which Providence has constituted as the Mystical Body of Christ, in submission to its Divine Head and to His Vicar on earth.
The enemies of the Catholic Church fear the power of Grace which works through the Sacraments, and above all the power of the Holy Mass, a terrible katechon which frustrates many of their efforts and wins to God so many souls who would otherwise be damned. And it is precisely this awareness of the power of the supernatural action of the Catholic priesthood in society that lies at the origin of their fierce hostility to Tradition. Satan and his minions know full well what a threat the one true Church poses to their antichristic plan. These subversives – whom the Roman Pontiffs have courageously denounced as enemies of God, the Church, and humanity – are identifiable in the inimica vis, Freemasonry. It has infiltrated the Hierarchy and succeeded in making it lay down the spiritual weapons at its disposal, opening the doors of the Citadel to the enemy in the name of dialogue and universal brotherhood, concepts that are intrinsically Masonic. But the Church, following the example of her Divine Founder, does not dialogue with Satan: She fights him.
THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT CRISIS
As Romano Amerio pointed out in his seminal essay Iota Unum, this cowardly and culpable surrender began with the convocation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and with the underground and highly organized action of clergymen and laity linked to the Masonic sects, aimed at slowly but surely subverting the structure of government and magisterium of the Church in order to demolish Her from within. It is useless to look for other reasons: the documents of the secret sects demonstrate the existence of an infiltration plan conceived in the nineteenth century and carried out a century later, exactly in the terms in which it was conceived. Similar processes of dissolution had previously taken place in the civil sphere, and it is no coincidence that the Popes were able to grasp in the uprisings and wars that bloodied the European nations the disintegrating work of international Freemasonry.
Since the Council, the Church has thus become the bearer of the revolutionary principles of 1789, as some of the proponents of Vatican II have admitted, and as is confirmed by the appreciation on the part of the Lodges for all the Popes of the Council and of the post-conciliar period, precisely because of the implementation of changes that the Freemasons had long called for.
Change – or better still, aggiornamento – has been so much at the center of the conciliar narrative that it has been the hallmark of Vatican II and has posited this assembly as the terminus post quem that sanctions the end of the ancien régime – the regime of the “old religion,” of the “old Mass,” of the “pre-council” – and the beginning of the “conciliar church,” with its “new mass” and the substantial relativization of all dogma. Among the proponents of this revolution appear the names of those who, until the pontificate of John XXIII, had been condemned and removed from teaching because of their heterodoxy. The list is long and also includes Ernesto Buonaiuti, the excommunicated vitandus, a friend of Roncalli, who died unrepentant in heresy, and whom just a few days ago the President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, commemorated with a Mass in the cathedral of Bologna, as reported with ill-concealed emphasis by Il Faro di Roma (here): “Almost eighty years later, a cardinal who is completely in line with the Pope is starting again with a liturgical gesture that has in all respects the flavor of rehabilitation. Or at least a first step in that direction.”
THE CHURCH AND THE ANTICHURCH
I am therefore summoned before the tribunal that has taken the place of the Holy Office to be tried for schism, while the head of the Italian Bishops – identified as being among the papabili and completely in line with the Pope – is illicitly celebrating a Mass of suffrage for one of the worst and most obstinate exponents of Modernism, against whom the Church – the one from which according to them I am separated – had pronounced the most severe sentence of condemnation. In 2022, in the Italian Bishops’ Conference newspaper Avvenire, Professor Luigino Bruni praised Modernism in these terms:
Quote:[…] “a process of necessary renewal for the Catholic Church of its time, which was still impervious to the critical studies on the Bible that had been established for many decades in the Protestant world. For Buonaiuti, accepting scientific and historical studies on the Bible was the main way for the Church’s encounter with modernity. A meeting that did not take place, because the Catholic Church was still dominated by the theorems of neo-scholastic theology and blocked by the Counter-Reformation fear that the Protestant winds might finally invade the Catholic body.”
These words would suffice to make us understand the abyss that separates the Catholic Church from the one that replaced Her, beginning with the Second Vatican Council, when the Protestant winds finally invaded the Catholic body. This very recent episode is only the latest in an endless series of small steps, of silent acquiescence, of complicit winks with which the very leaders of the conciliar hierarchy made possible the transition “from the theorems of neo-scholastic theology” – that is, from the clear and unequivocal formulation of Dogmas – to the present apostasy. We find ourselves in the surreal situation in which a Hierarchy calls itself Catholic and therefore demands obedience from the ecclesial body, while at the same time professing doctrines that before the Council the Church had condemned; and at the same time condemning doctrines as heretical that up until then had been taught by all the Popes.
This happens when the absolute is removed from the Truth and relativized by adapting it to the spirit of the world. How would the Pontiffs of recent centuries have acted today? Would they judge me guilty of schism, or would they rather condemn the one who claims to be their Successor? Together with me, the modernist Sanhedrin judges and condemns all Catholic Popes, because the Faith that they defended is mine; and the errors that Bergoglio defends are those that they, without exception, condemned. The words of the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion in response to the verdict finding him guilty of treason in 1581 apply to the present Vatican no less than they did then to the Defender of the Faith: “In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors.”
HERMENEUTIC OF RUPTURE
I ask myself, then: what continuity can be given between two realities that oppose and contradict each other? between Bergoglio’s conciliar and synodal church and the one “blocked by counter-reformation fear” from which he ostentatiously distances himself? And from what “church” would I be in a state of schism, if the one that claims to be Catholic differs from the true Church precisely in its preaching of what She condemned and in its condemnation of what She preached?
The adepts of the “conciliar church” will reply that this is due to the evolution of the ecclesial body in a “necessary renewal;” while the Catholic Magisterium teaches us that the Truth is immutable and that the doctrine of the evolution of dogmas is heretical. Two churches, certainly: each with its own doctrines and liturgies and saints; but whereas for the Catholic believer the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, for Bergoglio the Church is conciliar, ecumenical, synodal, inclusive, immigrationist, eco-sustainable, and gay-friendly.
The Self-Removal of the Conciliar Hierarchy
Is it possible then that the Church has begun to teach error? Can we believe that the one Ark of salvation is at the same time also an instrument of perdition for souls? That the Mystical Body separates itself from its Divine Head, Jesus Christ, making the Savior’s promise fail? This cannot, of course, be admissible, and those who support such an idea fall into heresy and schism. The Church cannot teach error, nor can her Head, the Roman Pontiff, be at the same time heretical and orthodox, Peter and Judas, in communion with all his predecessors and at the same time in schism with them. The only theologically possible answer is that the Conciliar Hierarchy, which proclaims itself Catholic but embraces a faith different from that constantly taught for two thousand years by the Catholic Church, belongs to another entity and therefore does not represent the true Church of Christ.
To those who remind me that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre never went so far as to question the legitimacy of the Roman Pontiff, while acknowledging the heresy and even the apostasy of the conciliar Popes – as when he exclaimed: “Rome has lost the Faith! Rome is in apostasy!” – I remind them that in the last fifty years the situation has dramatically worsened and that in all probability this great Pastor today would act with equal firmness, publicly repeating what he said then only to his clerics: “In this pastoral council, the spirit of error and lies has been able to work at ease, planting time-bombs everywhere that will blow up institutions in due course” (Principes et directives, 1977). And again: “He who is seated on the Throne of Peter participates in the worship of false gods. What conclusion should we draw, perhaps in a few months’ time, in the face of these repeated acts of communication with false cults? I don’t know. I wonder. But it is possible that we will find ourselves forced to believe that the Pope is not Pope. Because at first sight it seems to me – I do not yet want to say it in a solemn and public way – that it is impossible for someone who is a heretic to be publicly and formally Pope” (March 30, 1986).
What makes us understand that the “synodal church” and its head Bergoglio do not profess the Catholic Faith? It is the total and unconditional adherence of all its members to a multiplicity of errors and heresies already condemned by the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church and from the ostentatious rejection of any doctrine, moral precept, act of worship, and religious practice that is not sanctioned by “their” council. Neither of them can in conscience subscribe to the Tridentine Profession of Faith and the Anti-Modernist Oath, because what they both express is the exact opposite of what Vatican II and the so-called “conciliar magisterium” insinuate and teach.
Since it is not theologically tenable that the Church and the Papacy are instruments of perdition rather than of salvation, we must necessarily conclude that the heterodox teachings conveyed by the so-called “conciliar church” and the “popes of the Council” from Paul VI onwards constitute an anomaly that seriously calls into question the legitimacy of their magisterial and governing authority.
THE SUBVERSIVE USE OF AUTHORITY
That is, we must understand that the subversive use of authority in the Church aimed at Her destruction (or at Her transformation into a church other than the one willed and founded by Christ) constitutes in itself a sufficient element to render null and void the authority of this new subject which has maliciously superimposed itself onto the Church of Christ, usurping power. That is why I do not recognize the legitimacy of the Dicastery that is putting me on trial.
The manner in which the hostile action against the Catholic Church was carried out confirms that it was planned and intended, because otherwise those who denounced it would have been listened to and those who cooperated in it would have immediately stopped. Certainly, with the eyes of that time and the traditional formation of most of the Cardinals, Bishops, and Clergy, the “scandal” of a Hierarchy that contradicted itself appeared as such an enormity as to induce many prelates and clerics not to believe that it was possible that revolutionary and Masonic principles could find acceptance and promotion in the Church. But this was precisely the masterstroke of Satan – as Archbishop Lefebvre called it – who knew how to make use of the natural respect and filial love of Catholics for the sacred authority of the Pastors to induce them to put obedience before the Truth, perhaps hoping that a future Pope could in some way heal the disaster that had been accomplished and whose explosive results could already be guessed. This did not happen, despite the fact that some had courageously sounded the alarm. And I also count myself among those who, in that troubled phase, did not dare to oppose errors and deviations that had not yet fully shown themselves in their destructive value. I do not mean to say that I did not have an inkling of what was happening, but that I did not find – because of the intense work and the all-encompassing tasks of a bureaucratic and administrative nature at the service of the Holy See – the right conditions that would have allowed me to grasp the unprecedented gravity of what was taking place before our eyes.
THE CLASH
The occasion that led me to clash with my ecclesiastical superiors began when I was Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, then as Secretary General of the Governorate, and finally as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. My war against moral and financial corruption unleashed the fury of the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, when – in accordance with my responsibilities as Delegate for the Papal Representations – I denounced the corruption of Cardinal McCarrick and opposed his promoting corrupt and unworthy candidates for the Episcopate presented by the Secretary of State, who had me transferred to the Governorate because “I prevented him from making the bishops he wanted.” It was always Bertone, with the complicity of Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who hindered my work aimed at combating widespread corruption in the Governorate, where I had already obtained important results beyond all expectations. It was also Bertone and Lajolo who convinced Pope Benedict to expel me from the Vatican and send me to the United States. There I found myself having to confront the vile events of Cardinal McCarrick, including his dangerous relationships with political representatives of the Obama-Biden Administration and also on an international level, which I did not hesitate to report to Secretary of State Parolin, who took no account of it.
This led me to consider many events I had witnessed during my diplomatic and pastoral career in a different light, and to grasp their coherence with a single project that by its nature could be neither exclusively political nor exclusively religious, since it included a global attack on traditional society based on the doctrinal, moral, and liturgical teaching aspects of the Church.
CORRUPTION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF BLACKMAIL
This is why from once having been an esteemed Apostolic Nuncio – for which few days ago Cardinal Parolin himself recognized me for my exemplary loyalty, honesty, correctness, and efficiency – I have now become an inconvenient Archbishop, not only because I have asked for justice in the canonical processes undertaken against corrupt prelates, but also and above all for having provided an interpretive key that shows how corruption within the Hierarchy was a necessary premise to control, manipulate, and coerce it with blackmail to act against God, against the Church, and against souls. And this modus operandi – which Freemasonry had described in detail before infiltrating the ecclesial body – mirrors that adopted in civil institutions, where the representatives of the people, especially at the highest levels, are largely blackmailable because they are corrupt and perverted. Their obedience to the delusions of the globalist elite leads peoples to ruin, destruction, disease, and death – death not only of the body, but also of the soul. Because the true project of the New World Order – to which Bergoglio is enslaved and from which he draws his own legitimacy from the powerful of the world – is an essentially Satanic project, in which the work of the Creation of the Father, the Redemption of the Son, and the Sanctification of the Holy Spirit is hated, erased, and counterfeited by the simia Dei and his servants.
IF YOU DO NOT SPEAK, THE VERY STONES WILL CRY OUT
Witnessing the total subversion of the divine order and the propagation of infernal chaos with the zealous collaboration of the leaders of the Vatican and the Episcopate makes us understand how terrible are the words of the Virgin Mary at La Salette – Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist – and what a hateful betrayal is constituted by the apostasy of the Pastors, and by the even more unheard-of betrayal of the one who sits on the Throne of the Most Blessed Peter.
If I were to remain silent in the face of this betrayal – which is consummated with the fearful complicity of many, too many Prelates who are reluctant to recognize in the Second Vatican Council the principal cause of the present revolution and the adulteration of the Catholic Mass as the origin of the spiritual and moral dissolution of the faithful – I would break the oath taken on the day of my Ordination and renewed on the occasion of my episcopal Consecration. As the Successor of the Apostles, I cannot and will not accept to witness the systematic demolition of Holy Church and the damnation of so many souls without trying by every means to oppose all this. Nor can I consider a cowardly silence for the sake of a quiet life preferable to giving witness to the Gospel and defending Catholic Truth.
A schismatic sect accuses me of schism: this should be enough to demonstrate the subversion taking place. Imagine what impartiality of judgment a judge will be able to exercise when he depends on the one whom I accuse of being a usurper. But precisely because this event is emblematic, I want the faithful – who are not required to be familiar with the functioning of the ecclesiastical tribunals – to understand that the crime of schism is not committed when there are well-founded reasons to consider the election of the Pope dubious, due both to the vitium consensus as well as to the irregularities or violations of the norms which govern the conclave (cf. Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum, Rome, Pont. Univ. Greg., 1937, vol. VII, p. 439).
The Bull Cum ex apostolatus officio of Paul IV established in perpetuity the nullity of the nomination or election of any Prelate – including the Pope – who had fallen into heresy before his promotion to Cardinal or elevation to Roman Pontiff. It defines the promotion or elevation as nulla, irrita et inanis – void, invalid, and without any value – “even if it took place with the agreement and unanimous consent of all the Cardinals; nor can it be said that it is validated by the receipt of the office, consecration, or possession […], or by the putative enthronement […] of the Roman Pontiff himself or by the obedience given to him by all and by the course of any duration of time in the said exercise of his office.” Paul IV adds that all the acts performed by this person are to be considered equally null, and that his subjects, both clerics and lay people, are freed from obedience with regard to him, “without prejudice, however, on the part of these same subjected people, to the obligation of fidelity and obedience to be given to future Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals, and Roman Pontiffs who are canonically installed.” Paul IV concludes: “And to the greater confusion of those thus promoted and elevated, where they claim to continue their administration, it is permissible to request the help of the secular arm; nor for this reason are those who withdraw from loyalty and obedience towards those who have been promoted and elevated in the way already mentioned, to be subject to any of those censures and punishments imposed on those who would like to tear the tunic of the Lord.”
For this reason, with serenity of conscience, I maintain that the errors and heresies to which Bergoglio adhered before, during, and after his election, along with the intention he held in his apparent acceptance of the Papacy, render his elevation to the throne null and void.
If all the acts of governance and teaching of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in content and form, prove to be extraneous and even in conflict with what constitutes the action of any of the popes; if even a simple believers and non-Catholics understand the anomaly of the role that Bergoglio is playing in the globalist and anti-Christian project carried out by the World Economic Forum, the UN Agencies, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the World Bank, and by all the other sprawling branches of the globalist elite, this does not demonstrate even slightly that I desire schism by highlighting and denouncing this anomaly. Yet I am attacked and prosecuted because there are those who delude themselves that by condemning and excommunicating me my denunciation of the coup d’état will somehow lose its coherence and consistency. This attempt to silence everyone solves nothing; indeed it makes those who try to conceal or minimize the metastasis that is destroying the ecclesial body all the more culpable and complicit.
THE “DEMINUTIO” OF THE SYNODAL PAPACY
To all this we may add the Study Document The Bishop of Rome (here) which the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity recently published and the downgrading of the Papacy which is theorized in it, in application of John Paul II’s Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, which in turn refers to the Constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II. It appears entirely legitimate – and dutiful, in the name of the primacy of Catholic Truth sanctioned in the infallible documents of the Papal Magisterium – to ask whether Bergoglio’s deliberate choice to abolish the apostolic title of Vicar of Christ and choose to define himself simpliciter as Bishop of Rome does not constitute in some way a deminutio of the Papacy itself, an attack against the divine constitution of the Church, and a betrayal of the Munus petrinum. And upon closer inspection, the previous step was taken by Benedict XVI, who invented – along with the “hermeneutic” of an impossible “continuity” between two totally foreign entities – the monstrum of a “collegial Papacy” exercised by the Jesuit and the Emeritus simultaneously.
It is no coincidence that the Study Document cites a phrase from Paul VI: “The Pope […] is undoubtedly the most serious obstacle on the path of ecumenism” (Speech to the Secretary for the Promotion of Christian Unity, 28 April 1967). Montini had began to prepare the ground four years earlier when he dramatically laid aside the Tiara. If this is the premise of a text that is intended to serve to make the Roman Papacy “compatible” with the denial of the Primacy of Peter that the heretics and schismatics reject; and if Bergoglio himself presents himself as merely primus inter pares amidst the assembly of Christian sects and denominations not in communion with the Apostolic See, failing to proclaim the Catholic doctrine on the Papacy defined solemnly and infallibly by the First Vatican Council, how can one fail to think that the exercise of the Papacy and indeed the very intention to accept it has been affected by a defect of consent (here and here), such as to render the legitimacy of “Pope Francis” null or at least highly doubtful? Which “church” could I separate myself from, which “pope” would I refuse to recognize, if the former defines itself as the “conciliar and synodal church” in antithesis to the “pre-conciliar church” – i.e. the Church of Christ – and the latter demonstrates that he considers the Papacy as his own personal prerogative to be disposed of by modifying and altering it at will, always in coherence with the doctrinal errors implied by Vatican II and the post-conciliar “magisterium”?
If the Roman Papacy – the Papacy, to be clear, of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII – is considered to be an obstacle to ecumenical dialogue, and ecumenical dialogue is pursued as the absolute priority of the “synodal church,” represented by Bergoglio, what better way could this dialogue be implemented than by removing those elements that make the Papacy incompatible with it, and therefore tampering with it in a completely illegitimate and invalid way?
THE CONFLICT OF SO MANY BROTHER BISHOPS AND FAITHFUL
I am convinced that among the Bishops and priests there are many who have experienced and still experience today the excruciating internal conflict of finding themselves divided between what Christ the Pontiff asks of them – and they know it well – and what the one who presents himself as Bishop of Rome imposes with force, with blackmail, and with threats.
Today it is more necessary than ever for us Pastors to wake up from our torpor: Hora est iam nos de somno surgere (Rom 13:11). Our responsibility before God, the Church, and souls requires us to unequivocally denounce all the errors and deviations that we have tolerated for too long, because we will not be judged either by Bergoglio or by the world, but by Our Lord Jesus Christ. We will give an account to Him of every soul lost through our negligence, of every sin committed by each soul because of us, of every scandal before which we have remained silent out of false prudence, through a desire for quiet living, through complicity.
On the day on which I was supposed to present myself to defend myself before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, I have decided to make public this declaration of mine, to which I add a denunciation of my accusers, their “council,” and their “pope.” I ask the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, who consecrated the soil of the Alma Urbe with their own blood, to intercede before the throne of the Divine Majesty, so that they may obtain for the Holy Church that She may finally be freed from the siege that eclipses Her and from the usurpers who humiliate Her, making the Domina gentium the servant of the antichristic plan of the New World Order.
IN DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH
My defense is therefore not a personal one, but rather a defense of the Holy Church of Christ, in which I have been constituted a Bishop and Successor of the Apostles, with the precise mandate of safeguarding the Deposit of Faith and preaching the Word, insisting opportune importune – in season and out of season – rebuking, reproving , exhorting with all patience and doctrine (2 Tim 4:2).
I strongly reject the accusation of having torn the seamless garment of the Savior and of having departed from being under the Supreme Authority of the Vicar of Christ: in order to separate myself from ecclesial communion with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I would have to have first been in communion with him, which is not possible since Bergoglio himself cannot be considered a member of the Church, due to his multiple heresies and his manifest alienness and incompatibility with the role he invalidly and illicitly holds.
MY ACCUSATIONS AGAINST JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO
Before my Brothers in the Episcopate and the entire ecclesial body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years. This in no way contradicts the adage Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur, because it is evident that, since a heretic is unable to assume the Papacy, he is not above the Prelates who judge him.
I also accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of having caused – due to the prestige and authority of the Apostolic See which he usurps – serious adverse effects, sterility, and death in the millions of faithful who followed his insistent invitation to undergo the inoculation of an experimental gene serum produced with aborted fetuses, even to the point of issuing a formal “Note” declaring that using the vaccine is morally permissible (here and here). He will have to answer before the Tribunal of God for this crime against humanity.
Finally, I denounce the secret agreement between the Holy See and the Chinese communist dictatorship, by which the Church has been humiliated and forced to accept the government appointment of Bishops, the control of liturgical celebrations, and limitations on its freedom of preaching, while Catholics loyal to the Apostolic See are persecuted with impunity by the Beijing government with the complicit silence of the Roman Sanhedrin.
THE REJECTION OF THE ERRORS OF VATICAN II
I consider it an honor to be “accused” of rejecting the errors and deviations implied by the so-called Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which I consider to be completely devoid of magisterial authority due to its heterogeneity compared to all the true Councils of the Church, which I fully recognize and accept, just as I fully recognize and accept all the magisterial acts of the Roman Pontiffs.
I convictedly reject the heterodox doctrines contained in the documents of Vatican II and which have been condemned by the Popes up to Pius XII, or which contradict the Catholic Magisterium in any way. I find it disconcerting to say the least that those who are trying me for schism are those who embrace the heterodox doctrine according to which there exists a bond of union “with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter” (LG 15). I wonder how readily one can challenge a Bishop for the lack of communion which is also claimed to exist with heretics and schismatics.
I equally condemn, reject, and refuse the heterodox doctrines expressed in the so-called “post-conciliar magisterium” that originated with Vatican II, as well as the recent heresies relating to the “synodal church,” the reformulation of the Papacy in an ecumenical key, the admission of concubinaries to the Sacraments, and the promotion of sodomy and “gender” ideology. I also condemn Bergoglio’s adherence to climate fraud, a mad neo-Malthusian superstition engendered by those who, hating the Creator, cannot help but also detest Creation, and man along with it, who is made in the image and likeness of God.
CONCLUSION
To the Catholic faithful, who today are scandalized and disoriented by the winds of novelty and the false doctrines that are promoted and imposed by a Hierarchy rebellious against the Divine Master, I ask you to pray and offer your sacrifices and fasts pro libertate et exaltatione Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, so that Holy Mother Church may find Her freedom and triumph with Christ, after this time of passion. May those who have had the Grace of being incorporated into Her in Baptism not abandon their Mother who is today lying prostrate and suffering: tempora bona veniant, pax Christi veniat, regnum Christi veniat.
Given in Viterbo, on the 28th day of the month of June, in the Year of Our Lord 2024, the Vigil of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
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World’s first carbon tax on livestock will cost farmers $100 per cow |
Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 07:11 AM - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
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World’s first carbon tax on livestock will cost farmers $100 per cow
A herd of cows near Allerup, Denmark, in August 2021. Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/Getty Images
CNN [slightly adapted]| Thu June 27, 2024
Dairy farmers in Denmark face having to pay an annual tax of 672 krone ($96) per cow for the planet-heating emissions they generate.
The country’s coalition government agreed this week to introduce the world’s first carbon emissions tax on agriculture. It will mean new levies on livestock starting in 2030.
Denmark is a major dairy and pork exporter, and agriculture is the country’s biggest source of emissions. The coalition agreement — which also entails investing 40 billion krone ($3.7 billion) in measures such as reforestation and establishing wetlands — is aimed at helping the country meet its climate goals.
“With today’s agreement, we are investing billions in the biggest transformation of the Danish landscape in recent times,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement Tuesday. “At the same time, we will be the first country in the world with a (carbon) tax on agriculture.”
The Danish dairy industry broadly welcomed the agreement and its goals, but it has angered some farmers.
The move comes just months after farmers held protests across Europe, blocking roads with tractors and pelting the European Parliament with eggs over a long list of complaints, including gripes about environmental regulation and excessive red tape.
The global food system is a huge contributor to the climate crisis, producing around a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
Livestock farming has a particularly big impact, accounting for around 12% of global emissions in 2015, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. A share of this pollution comes from methane, a potent planet-warming gas produced by cows and some other animals through their burps and manure.
Reducing livestock emissions
The tax, expected to be approved by Denmark’s parliament later this year, will amount to 300 krone ($43) per tonne (1.1 ton) of CO2-equivalent emissions from livestock from 2030, rising to 750 krone ($107) in 2035.
A 60% tax break will apply, meaning that farmers will effectively be charged 120 krone ($17) per tonne of livestock emissions per year from 2030, rising to 300 krone ($43) in 2035.
On average, Danish dairy cows, which account for much of the cattle population, emit 5.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, according to Concito, a green think tank in Denmark. Using the lower tax rate of 120 krone results in a charge of 672 krone per cow, or $96.
With the tax break in place, that levy will rise to 1,680 krone per cow in 2035 ($241).
In the first two years, the proceeds from the tax will be used to support the agricultural industry’s green transition and then reassessed.
“The whole purpose of the tax is to get the sector to look for solutions to reduce emissions,” Concito’s chief economist Torsten Hasforth told CNN. For example, farmers could change the feed they use.
But Danish farmers’ group Bæredygtigt Landbrug said the measures amounted to a “scary experiment.”
“We believe that the agreement is pure bureaucracy,” chairman Peter Kiær said in a statement. “We recognize that there is a climate problem… But we do not believe that this agreement will solve the problems, because it will put a spoke in the wheel of agriculture’s green investments.”
Peder Tuborgh, the CEO of Arla Foods, Europe’s largest dairy group, said the agreement was “positive” but that farmers who “genuinely do everything they can to reduce emissions” should not be subjected to a tax.
“It is essential that the tax base for a (carbon) tax is solely based on emissions for which there are means to eliminate (them),” he added in statement.
Kristian Hundeboll, the CEO of DLG Group, one of Europe’s biggest agricultural businesses and a cooperative owned by 25,000 Danish farmers, said it was “crucial for competitiveness” for the tax to be “anchored” in European Union legislation. “Neither the climate, agriculture nor the ancillary industries benefit from Denmark acting unilaterally,” he said.
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Finland To Start Bird Flu Vaccinations For Humans |
Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 07:07 AM - Forum: Health
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Finland To Start Bird Flu Vaccinations For Humans
JUN 28, 2024
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Finland plans to offer avian influenza vaccinations as soon as the week of June 30 to some workers with exposure to animals, health authorities said on June 25. That would make it the first country in the world to do so.
The Nordic country has bought vaccines for 10,000 people, each consisting of two injections, as part of a joint European procurement of up to 40 million doses for 15 nations from manufacturer CSL Seqirus.
“The vaccine will be offered to those aged 18 or over who are at increased risk of contracting avian influenza due to their work or other circumstances,” the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said in a statement.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, has circulated for decades in birds but has recently jumped to other species, including cattle in the United States.
Three humans in the United States have had confirmed infections this year, while Finland has none.
However, Finnish authorities are rolling out the vaccine to try to curb the transmission of the virus.
“The conditions in Finland are very different in that we have fur farms where the animals can end up in contact with wildlife,” Dr. Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, said.
The mostly open-air fur farms saw widespread outbreaks of bird flu among mink and foxes, leading to the culling of about 485,000 animals in 2023 to cut down on transmission risk.
Vaccinations are likely to start as early as next week, according to a spokesperson for the institute. People deemed at risk, including workers at the fur farms and lab technicians who handle bird flu samples, are eligible for the shots.
If any human infections are confirmed, people in close contact with the patients would also be offered the vaccine.
US Orders Vaccines
The U.S. government has ordered nearly 5 million doses of the influenza vaccine made by CSL, and manufacturing is slated to be completed by the end of the summer.
However, the U.S. government has no concrete plans yet to start vaccinating farm workers or others.
Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), said in May that government officials were “looking closely” at moving forward with vaccinations. Still, the government has made no formal announcements on the front since then.
Robert Johnson, director of ASPR’s medical countermeasures program, was asked during a call with reporters on June 25 about Finland’s choice to start vaccinating some people. He said that ASPR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in agreement that H5N1 is currently a low public health risk.
“Further sort of deliberations or decisions around vaccine really will require further conversations around the U.S. government,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC official, told reporters.
In a strategy document released on June 25 aimed at a pandemic caused by influenza, U.S. officials said that vaccines “could be deployed before an outbreak begins and provide immune responses to a broad range of influenza viruses [and] could enable the population to have some level of protection against H5Nx viruses prior to a pandemic.”
Officials are backing the testing of multiple experimental vaccines against influenza, including two self-amplifying RNA vaccines targeting H5N1.
Pfizer and Moderna are also in talks with U.S. officials about messenger RNA vaccines against H5N1, after developing two widely used COVID-19 vaccines.
Although three farm workers in the United States have tested positive for H5N1 recently, officials have stressed that the illnesses are believed to have come from cows and that there are no signs as of yet of person-to-person transmission.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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New Vatican document reveals Francis’ plan for a grotesque parody of the papacy |
Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 09:10 PM - Forum: Pope Francis
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New Vatican document reveals Francis’ plan for a grotesque parody of the papacy
A new Vatican document reveals the roadmap by which Francis intends to establish a new 'synodal papacy,' intended to replace the papacy permanently established by Christ.
EDMONTON, AB - JULY 25: Pope Francis gives a blessing at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples
on July 25, 2022 in Edmonton, Canada.
The pope is meeting with Indigenous communities and community leaders in Canada. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
Jun 27, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — A new Vatican document reveals the roadmap by which Francis intends to establish a new “synodal papacy,” which will preside over a new “synodal church.”
This new “synodal papacy,” which is intended to replace the papacy permanently established by Christ, would lead a global ecumenical church without doctrine or discipline.
The new “working document,” called “The Bishop of Rome,” outlines a number of objections to Catholic doctrine and presents suggestions of how the exercise of the papal office can be transformed.
These objections and suggestions have been drawn from submissions sent to the Vatican by non-Catholic denominations in response to John Paul II’s 1995 document Ut Unum Sint.
That the Vatican is revisiting these submissions 29 years after Ut Unum Sint was first issued should be a cause of alarm to everyone who is aware of the methods deployed by the Vatican under Francis.
Presenting heterodox ideas in non-authoritative documents, and then later attempting to make them “official” teachings, is a strategy that has been used many times during the last decade.
We have seen it used, for example, to pursue Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried and “blessings” for same-sex “couples.”
For this reason, this 150-page compilation of theological errors and radical suggestions for reform deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.
If we approach the document with the known methodology of the Vatican in mind, we come to a startling conclusion: that they intend to abolish the papacy – at least in the eyes of the world – and replace it with a new institution, which will serve as the head of an institution that the documents call “an authentic conciliar/synodal Church.” (No. 112)1
This article sets out what would occur if the objections to Catholic doctrine and the suggestions for reform made in this non-authoritative document were to be accepted and implemented – in the same way as Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, and same-sex “blessings” have been before them.
Stage I. The Redefinition of the Catholic understanding of the Papacy
The first stage would be to undermine the scriptural and theological foundations of the papacy, and to replace Catholic doctrine with “a renewed understanding and exercise of the Petrine ministry” based on “synodality” to fulfil Francis’s vision of a “synodal Church.” (No. 5). This reform of the papacy would flow from the “commitment” of Francis to “build a synodal Church at all levels.” (No.5)
The document indicates they will carry this reinterpretation out as follows:
- They will re-interpret Sacred Scripture so that it supports a “synodal” understanding of the papacy in which the pope is just a figurehead with no real authority (see Nos. 35 -39).
- They will give new meanings to the concepts of “authority” and “service” so that the real authority of the papacy will be destroyed (see Nos. 40-42).
- They will seek out ambiguous passages in the Church Fathers which could be deployed to provide a basis for a new understanding of the papacy (see Nos. 44-47).
- They will reinterpret the infallible teaching of Vatican I on the divine institution of the papacy by means of a new “hermeneutic,” which will bring Catholic doctrine into line with the views of the Orthodox and the Protestants (see Nos. 48-56).
- The same “hermeneutical approach” will be used to solve the “obstacle” of Vatican I’s infallible definitions of papal jurisdiction and papal infallibility. See (No. 57–73).
- They will reinterpret Vatican I in light of (i) Vatican II (see Nos. 61, 66, 72), (ii) a reconstruction of the real “intentions” of the Council Fathers at Vatican I (see No. 62-63) and (iii) a “distinction between the text and its interpretation” which will allow them to interpret the text in a way that suits their agenda (see Nos. 64-66).
- They will rehabilitate the previously condemned error that the exercise of infallibility requires the consent of the Church (see Nos. 72, 106).
Stage 2 – The Establishment of the Synodal Papacy
Once the orthodox idea of the papacy has been discredited, the path will be open to establish the new “synodal papacy,” which will preside over a new inclusive church void of doctrine or discipline. All the baptized will be invited into this synodal church, without having to abandon their doctrinal errors.
The synodal papacy will have these characteristics:
- It will have “a primacy of honor” only, with no real authority over Orthodox and Protestant believers who will be invited to come under its banner (see No. 76-80, 94-98).
- It will preside over a church which is synodal “at every level” and will therefore no longer be subject to authority, or possess the unity of faith, worship and government which are essential marks of the Catholic Church (see Nos 81-83).
- It will preside not by divine right, but simply because there is a “pragmatic argument” for “the need for a ministry of unity at the universal level” (see No. 62-68).
- It will be based on the papacy of the “first millennium,” which will be considered the “decisive” model. Later definitions and developments of doctrine regarding the papacy will be ignored. (See Nos. 89-91, 99-100, 104-107).
- It will shun the exercise of “juridical” authority (See Nos. 92-93).
- It will replace the immediate and ordinary jurisdiction of the papacy with a mere right to appeal to the Roman See (see Nos. 101-103).
- It will exercise its primacy over a new “authentic conciliar/synodal Church” (see No. 112).
The seven steps and seven characteristics outlined above are reasonable inferences from the content of the document.
There will of course be those who reject such an interpretation as an exaggeration or a misinterpretation of the text. These are likely the same people who said there was no danger of Francis ever allowing Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, or ever permitting same-sex ‘blessings”.
But those who understand the true nature of the Francis regime, ought to regard the publication of “The Bishop of Rome” as a warning of what may be to come.
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Archbishop Lefebvre: 1987 Ordination Sermon 'Bishops to Save the Church' |
Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 07:30 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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'Bishops to Save the Church'
Archbishop Lefebvre's Sermon at the Priestly ordinations in Ecône, June 29, 1987
Taken from here.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Dear Brethren,
Let us give thanks to God who allows us once more to meet together again in Ecône to take part in the magnificent ceremony of priestly ordinations, ceremony which is the reason for our seminaries' existence and their crowning glory. Seminaries without ordinations would no longer be seminaries of the Church. nor Catholic seminaries. For this reason, having the joy of imposing hands on the new priests, we give thanks to God for letting our seminaries continue to live and even to expand, since Ecône has had to split in two to enable a larger number of young men desiring the true Catholic priesthood, to find at Ecône and Flavigny the training and graces needed for them to become true and holy priests.
MASS AND THE PRIEST
Dear Ordinands, I shall begin by addressing to you a few words of edification and encouragement. You are going to be ordained within the celebration of the Catholic Mass, not a neo-protestant Mass, and this Catholic Mass has been, is now, and will always be the great programme of the priestly life, the great programme of Christian life. To change this Mass is to change the ideal of the priest and Christian, the Catholic ideal. For above all else, Holy Mass is the Cross of Jesus, the continuation of the Cross of Jesus. The veil of the Temple was rent because Jesus died on the Cross, the Old Testament was giving way to the New - was everything changed? Yes and no. Undoubtedly the whole ritual of the old law and a certain concept of God's law was changed, but the essence of the Old Testament law was being transformed into a living vision of the law of love.
MASS AND THE LAW OF LOVE
What do the Ten Commandments say, other than to love God and to love one's neighbour? Our Lord Jesus Christ himself has told us so. And this law of love is henceforth inscribed not only on stone tablets, it is inscribed in Our Lord Jesus Christ's sacrifice, He is the law of love and He shows it upon His Cross. What more beautiful manifestation of the law of love and charity could Our Lord give us than to die upon the Cross for the glory of His Father and the salvation of our souls? Hence it is the law of love which Jesus preaches to us upon the Cross, and which He preaches to us every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - the same law of love which was deposited in your hearts. my dear friends, and in your souls, through the grace of Baptism.
Indeed the grace of Baptism transformed you and united you deeply to Our Lord Jesus Christ for the realisation of His law of love. His law of charity. And the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated - as I hope God will give you the grace to do - every day of your life, will maintain that baptismal grace. For just as your god-fathers and god-mothers said on your behalf at your baptism that they were cleaving to Our Lord Jesus Christ and shunning all the temptations of this world. so you too, every day you celebrate Mass, will say: "My God, O Jesus. I cleave to you forever, I wish to be your priest, one who preaches the law of love by example and by word. Keep me free of this world and all its temptations, shield me from all influences of this world which are in the service of Satan and of disobedience to God."
MASS, THE PROGRAMME OF THE PRIEST
In this way your souls will take strength in the presence of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of His Body and Blood which you will have in front of you on the altar, and which you yourselves will draw down from heaven by pronouncing the words of consecration. What a sublime mystery! God obeying men so as to continue offering His sacrifice! Here will be the programme of your priestly life: to penetrate the souls coming to you, to penetrate the souls attending your Holy Sacrifice of Mass, with the sentiments of love of God and love of neighbour, even to the sacrifice of self - and God knows if Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the example of that! -even to the sacrifice of self, even to death if need be, even to the shedding of one's blood, in order to remain united to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let that be your programme! And that is why you must cleave in life, in death, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that you are going to celebrate with me today. Do not let yourselves be seduced by the attractions and appeal of the world into transforming the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a purely human assembly. And it is my dearest wish that you remain in these sentiments all the days of your life, all the days of your priestly life, and that you be apostles like those who have gone before you, wherever they have been sent, like the dear priests surrounding us here today who are happy to impose hands on you -priests of Our Lord Jesus Christ, priests of crucified love, priests of Jesus crucified, and not priests of the world, nor priests for the world!
TWO SIGNS OF PROVIDENCE
My dear brethren, allow me also to make use of this occasion to bring you up-to-date with the situation in which we find ourselves today, as indeed is our custom on the occasion of this ceremony of priestly ordinations. Well, I must tell you, I cannot pass it over in silence and I cannot hide it: -this year has been serious, very serious, for the Catholic Church, for us Catholics, for Catholic priests. You are aware that in various writings appearing here and there I have had occasion to say that, yes, I was waiting for signs from Providence to carry out acts seeming to me necessary for the continuation of the Catholic Church. Well, I have to admit that I am convinced that the signs have come. What are they? There are two of them: -the ecumenical meeting held in Assisi last October, and the reply Rome has made to the objections we had sent them concerning religious liberty.
And I state further that this reply made to us after Assisi -since Assisi took place on October 27, whereas the reply reached us this January - I state that Rome's reply to the objections we made to the errors of Vatican II on religious liberty, is graver than Assisi. Assisi is a historical fact, an action; the reply to our objections on religious liberty is a stand taken on principles, a statement of principles, and hence graver! It is one thing to commit a grave and scandalous action; it is quite another to state false and erroneous principles which work out in practice in utterly disastrous conclusions!
JESUS UNCROWNED
Hence it is providential that by a particular set of circumstances we wrote the book that appeared just a few days ago, entitled: "They Uncrowned Him." Who? Who did the uncrowning and who was uncrowned? Who was uncrowned? Our Lord Jesus Christ. Who uncrowned him? The authorities in Rome today. And the uncrowning shows in a very clear way in the Assisi ceremony. Jesus Christ is uncrowned. He is no longer King. Universal King, the King we proclaim in our liturgy from Christmas through to His Ascension. All the Liturgical feasts proclaim the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From end to end of the Liturgical year we chant:
"King of Kings, Lord of Lords," Our Lord Jesus Christ. But now instead of extolling the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, here they are instituting a pantheon of all religions. And just as it was the Roman authorities, or pagan emperors, who built the pagan Pantheon then, so too the pagan pantheon of today, the meeting-place of all religions, is being constructed by the church authorities of Rome! What an immense scandal for souls, for Catholics who already question the universal kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
LIBERALISM
This is exactly what is meant by liberalism. Liberalism means establishing the freedom of man from God; hence the man who believes in, hopes in, and professes any religion whatsoever is just as worthy of respect as the man who says he professes the true religion. According to Liberalism, the State, or civil society. is no longer capable of knowing which is the true religion. That much is stated in the document given us by Rome: the State is incompetent in matters of religion, and so cannot decide which is the true or false religion, and by that very fact is bound to allow within the "autonomous social area -as they call it, autonomous social area meaning practically the entire life of the State - is bound to allow all religious errors to spread, whatever they be, because man is free to have his own religion. Well, we say no, no, no!
And Holy Mass proves it to us: there is one law, a law of love, and Our Lord Jesus Christ proclaims to us on the Cross this law of love. He preaches it to us. He tells us. "You must obey the law of love. Whosoever does not obey the law of love is not worthy of eternal life." Hence it is a binding law. We are not free. Our holy religion is not a matter of free choice, it is the only one, the one which Our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed from His Cross.
And liberalism has become the idol of modern times, an idol now adored in most countries of the world, even the Catholic countries -this liberty of man from God, which defies God, which seeks to make its own religion, liberalism, with its own commandments, the rights of man, with its secular states, secular education, empty of God, godless - there is liberalism for you.
DARKNESS IN ROME
And how is it possible for the authorities in Rome to be encouraging liberalism and professing such liberalism in the Decree on Religious Liberty? That is what is so very serious, as I see it. Rome is in darkness, in the darkness of error. There is no denying it. Impossible to deny it. How can we as Catholics, and all the more as priests, bear to look on the spectacle placed before our eyes in Assisi, in St. Peter's Church given over for the practice of their pagan worship to the Buddhists who put their idol on the tabernacle of Jesus Christ, King of Kings, and performed their pagan ceremony in front of this tabernacle, empty no doubt, but capped with a Buddha, their idol. Is it conceivable? In a Catholic Church, a church of Our Lord Jesus Christ? These are facts which speak by themselves. We cannot conceive of an error more grave.
How is it possible? Let us leave the good Lord to answer. He guides all things, He is the master of events, Our Lord Jesus Christ, He knows what will come of this triumph of error over Rome and over the highest authorities, from the Pope to the cardinals and bishops of the entire world following these ideas; for indeed the bishops of the whole world are following the false ideas of the Council with their ecumenism and liberalism. God alone knows where it is all going to end.
WAR WITH SATAN
For our part, however, if we wish to remain Catholic and to continue the Church, we have the grave and imprescriptible duty binding us firstly to increase the number of priests, priests believing in Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Kingship, in His kingship over society, according to the Church's doctrine. That is why I am happy that the book on liberalism has appeared today, my dear friends, so that you may nourish your minds on it and grasp in depth what our combat is all about. It is not a human combat! We are at grips with Satan! It is a combat requiring all the supernatural strength we need to fight against the adversary who means to destroy and uproot the Church, who means to destroy everything Our Lord Jesus Christ did. He meant to destroy Our Lord from the moment He was born, and now He means to continue destroying His Mystical Body, to destroy the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to destroy all His institutions whatsoever.
So we must be aware of this dramatic and apocalyptic combat through which we are living, and not play it down, because the moment we play it down, we no longer wish to give battle, we become weaklings and we dare no longer proclaim the Truth; we no longer dare to proclaim the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ because our godless and atheistic world does not want to hear of it. To say that Our Lord Jesus Christ should reign over societies is folly as far as the world is concerned. "You are backward-looking, out-of-date fossils, stuck fast in the Middle Ages ", we hear, "that doctrine is over and done with, it belongs to the past! Let's hear no more of Our Lord Jesus Christ reigning over societies!"
And so we might tend to be afraid of this public opinion opposing us because we stand for the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us in any case not be surprised to find that any demonstrations of ours in favour of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ come up against an army directed by Satan to destroy us, to hinder and nullify any influence we might have.
THE SOCIETY'S CONTINUATION
Hence we are happy today to be carrying out these priestly ordinations, and in all sincerity we think it is not possible to abandon the Society of St. Pius X placed in our hands by the good Lord. For it is not I that founded it, it is truly Our Lord who founded it, in unbelievable circumstances. And now, after some 17 years of existence, our Society has spread throughout the world, seconded by other initiatives which - thanks be to God - have arisen with us and around us: all the religious and nuns with us today, who have stood up like ourselves, to proclaim that Our Lord Jesus Christ is King, and not to desert Him. Are we going to desert Him? Are we going to let Him be crucified a second time? Are we going to quit the Church presently undergoing her Passion, and not come to her aid ? And what will become of souls if nobody dares any longer proclaim the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ? And what will become of souls if we no longer provide them with the true grace they need? All this is cryingly obvious, and so let us be convinced of it.
MEANS OF CONTINUATION
And that is the reason why it is likely that I shall give myself some successors to be able to continue the work of our Society. Because Rome is in darkness, because Rome at present can no longer hear the voice of truth -Rome no longer hears the voice of truth. Then what are we to do? What answer has there been to our appeals? For 20 years now I have been going to Rome. I have been writing, I have been speaking, I have been sending documents to say to them: -"Follow Tradition, come back to Tradition, otherwise the Church will be ruined. You, the appointed successors of those who built the Church, you must continue to build and not to demolish!" They are deaf, stone deaf to our appeals.
And the last document we have just received from them proves it amply. They are shutting themselves up in their errors, they are shutting themselves up in darkness, and they are quite simply going to lead souls into apostasy, the ruination of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the ruination of the Catholic and Christian Faith. Well, if that is what God asks of us, we shall not hesitate to provide ourselves with auxiliaries to continue the work of the Society, for we cannot believe that God wishes this work to be destroyed, to come to an end, to continue no further, for souls to be abandoned and for the Church by that very fact to have no more pastors.
ABNORMAL TIMES
We are living in a quite unique age, we must realize that. The situation is not normal, least of all in Rome. Read the Italian journal "Si, si, no, no", edited by the dear Sisters who are here today, who have come to see Ecône and to get some encouragement for the work they are doing. The journal "Si, si, no, no" gives us precise information on the situation in Rome, a perfectly incredible situation, unparallelled in all history! Never has there been anything like it!
Never! -The Pope making himself, as I was saying a little while ago, into a sort of guardian of the Pantheon of all religions, making himself the Pontiff of Liberalism! Tell me, tell me, pray - has such a situation ever existed in the Church? What are we to do, faced with such a reality? Weep, no doubt. Oh. weep, we do! Our heart is grieved, our heart is crushed by this situation! We would give our life, we would shed our blood to turn it around -but there it is.
CONSECRATIONS: GOD'S WILL
The situation is such, the work placed in our hands by the good Lord is such, that faced with this darkness in Rome, faced with the Roman authorities' pertinacity in error, faced with this refusal to return to Truth or Tradition on the part of those who occupy the seats of authority in Rome, faced with all these things, it seems to us that the good Lord is asking for the Church to continue. This is why it is likely that before I give account of my life to the good Lord, I shall have to consecrate some bishops.
APPEAL TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN
My dear friends, my dear brethren, let us pray. Let us pray with all our hearts, let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary! We shall go to Fatima on August 22nd to ask Our Lady of Fatima to help us. They would not reveal her Third Secret, they buried the message of the Virgin Mary. No doubt this message was meant to prevent what is happening today. Had her message been made known, most likely we would not be where we are today, the situation in Rome, would not be what it is today. The Pope refused to make public the Virgin Mary's message: well, the punishments foretold by Mary are coming: the apostasy announced in Scripture is on its way; the coming of the Anti-Christ draws near, as is perfectly obvious. So, faced with this quite exceptional situation, we too must take exceptional means.
There you have it, my dear brethren, my dear friends, during this Mass we shall pray, especially to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, guardians of the Church: may they enlighten us! May they help us! May they obtain for us the Gift of Strength and the Gift of Wisdom to continue their work, to carry on the work of Peter and Paul and all their successors. Let us ask for this from the Blessed Virgin Mary above all, and let us consecrate our persons, our families, our cities to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: A Letter to Future Bishops |
Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 07:13 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Adveniat Regnum Tuum
A Letter to Future Bishops
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 1987
Taken from here [Emphasis mine].
My dear friends,
The See of Peter and the posts of authority in Rome being occupied by anti-Christs, the destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord is being rapidly carried out even within His Mystical Body here below, especially through the corruption of the Holy Mass which is both the splendid expression of the triumph of Our Lord on the Cross - Regnavit a Ligno Deus - and the source of the extension of His kingdom over souls and over societies. Hence the absolute need appears obvious of ensuring the permanency and continuation of the adorable Sacrifice of Our Lord in order that "His Kingdom come." The corruption of the Holy Mass has brought the corruption of the priesthood and the universal decadence of Faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
God raised up the Priestly Society of St. Pius X for the maintenance and perpetuity of His glorious and expiatory Sacrifice within the Church. He chose Himself some true priests instructed in and convinced of these divine mysteries. God bestowed upon me the grace to prepare these Levites and to confer upon them the grace of the priesthood for the continuation of the true Sacrifice according to the definition of the Council of Trent.
This is what has brought down upon our heads persecution by the Rome of the anti-Christs. Since this Rome, Modernist and Liberal, is carrying on its work of destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord, as Assisi and the confirmation of the Liberal theses of Vatican II on Religious Liberty prove, I find myself constrained by Divine Providence to pass on the grace of the Catholic episcopacy which I received, in order that the Church and the Catholic priesthood continue to subsist for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls.
That is why, convinced that I am only carrying out the holy will of Our Lord, I am writing this letter to ask you to agree to receive the grace of the Catholic episcopacy, just as I have already conferred it on other priests in other circumstances. I will bestow this grace upon you, confident that without too long a delay the See of Peter will be occupied by a successor of Peter who is perfectly Catholic, and into whose hands you will be able to put back the grace of your episcopacy so that he may confirm it.
The main purpose of my passing on the episcopacy is that the grace of priestly orders be continued, for the true Sacrifice of the Mass to be continued, and that the grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation be bestowed upon children and upon the faithful who will ask you for it.
I beseech you to remain attached to the See of Peter, to the Roman Church, Mother and Mistress of all Churches, in the integral Catholic Faith, expressed in the various creeds of our Catholic Faith, in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in conformity with what you were taught in your seminary. Remain faithful in the handing down of this Faith so that the Kingdom of Our Lord may come.
Finally, I beseech you to remain attached to the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, to remain profoundly united amongst yourselves, in submission to the Society's Superior General, in the Catholic Faith of all time, remembering the words of St. Paul to the Galatians (1:8-9): "But even if we or an angel from heaven were to teach you a different gospel from the one we have taught you, let him be anathema."
As we have said before, now again I say: "if anyone teaches you a different gospel from what you have received, let him be anathema." My dear friends, be my consolation in Christ Jesus, remain strong in the Faith, faithful to the true Sacrifice of the Mass, to the true and holy priesthood of Our Lord for the triumph and glory of Jesus in heaven and upon earth, for the salvation of souls, for the salvation of my own soul.
In the hearts of Jesus and Mary I embrace you and bless you. Your father in Christ Jesus,
+ Marcel Lefebvre
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