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| Archbishop Lefebvre and other Priests in the 'Holy Resistance' - 1981 Declaration |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 01:23 PM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Communiqué Published by Archbishop Lefebvre and Several Other Priests Active in the "Holy Resistance"
28 May 1981
Archbishop Lefebvre, Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, Rev. Dom Gerard, OSB, Rev. Father Eugene, OFM Cap. Father André, Father Aulagnier (District Superior of the Society of St. Pius X for France), were invited to the Maison Lacordaire, Flavigny, to meet their host, Father Coache. They understand and share the distress of many of the faithful at the "self-destruction" of the Church, which is proceeding ever more rapidly and deeply, and the concern of many traditionalists over the entrenched ambiguity of Rome. They decided to give some encouragement to these troubled souls, to help them remain steadfast in the Faith, to persevere in Tradition without wavering.
For this purpose they make the following Declaration:
1. They remain attached heart and soul to the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman church, to all She has taught and defined as part of Revelation, and to everything which, though not yet defined, has been consistently taught by the Magisterium, especially regarding the Liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments. This is all the more necessary as they observe that the so-called progressives, embracing novelties and ecumenical reforms, are already for the most part hardly any different from Protestants and are thus no longer Catholic.
2. They remain attached to the See of Peter and to the Successor of Peter, in spite of the serious criticisms which can be justly made concerning him, especially for his decision to further the work of the Council, which is purely and simply the "self-destruction" of the Church. We must pray that he may be enlightened by the Holy Ghost and return to Tradition, which is eternal, and that in all areas.
3. They make the firm resolution to maintain Tradition at all costs, especially in the Liturgy of the Mass and the Sacraments, sources of supernatural grace and pledges of their salvation. They thus support all institutions and seminaries designed to train true priests to offer the true Sacrifice.
4. They encourage and support all traditional forms of religious life, orders and contemplative congregations, semi-contemplative, and active congregations of fraternities which make the Holy Sacrifice of the immemorial Mass the source of their supernatural life.
5. They hope to see multiplied and developed teaching orders, to give solidly Catholic training to young people, based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent and the catechisms which derive from it.
Modem catechisms twist the sense of the Faith and lay the foundation for generations of Modernists and atheists. It is better for parents to teach their children themselves than to hand them over to intellectual, spiritual and moral perversion.
In short, the faithful must be aware that we are living in more subtle and dangerous times of persecution against Our Lord Jesus Christ than ever, because, as in the time of Modernism, this persecution takes on misleading appearances and even uses the same Gospel (as for the theology of liberation), invoking the "rights of Man" and "human dignity" and such phrases well known among progressivists, socialists and even Marxists (cf. Pius X's Letter on the Sillon, 1910).
Everything is geared to the total destruction of Christian institutions and of the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, especially His social reign, i.e., His laws and the Ten Commandments.
Only by relying on the eternal tradition of the Faith, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, on the Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, on the Rosary and the Spiritual Exercises[/b], can we hold out against the plague of destruction which is coming over us.
6. They ask the faithful to gather around priests faithful to Rome and to the Successor of Peter. These bulwarks of resistance, by their prayers and spirit of penance, will finally succeed in touching the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and bring about the end of this dreadful and destructive time of trial to souls.
They should guard against being led astray by false messages from heaven, false devotions such as pentecostalism, which is a work of the devil. Our Lord Himself warns us against these seductive movements.
They should commit themselves to Mary, Joseph, the archangels, and angels and to all the elect of heaven. They should invoke their guardian angels. They should unite themselves to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, make frequent acts of adoration, carry out the duties of their state in life, observe the Ten Commandments and practise charity on an individual and social level. In this way they will receive the graces necessary to get them through this wicked world and into heaven.
7. They are in favor of the development of a great Rosary Crusade to storm heaven through the Heart of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, Help of Christians and consolation of the Afflicted; they invite priests and faithful, with this goal in view, to take whatever initiatives their zeal and charity will suggest.
The aforesaid declaration was released to the press on May 28, 1981. It was signed by Archbishop Lefebvre and the above-named priests and sums up the fundamental traditionalist position. Many priests and laity, organizers of centers and groups, other activities, periodicals, etc., were given the opportunity to sign.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: The Psychology of a Liberal Pope |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 01:10 PM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Obviously, the Church will one day judge this council and these popes. How will Paul VI, in particular, fare? Some call him heretic, schismatic, and apostate; others believe themselves to have proved that he could not have acted for the good of the Church, and that therefore he was not in fact pope - the theory held by Sedevacantists. I do not deny that these opinions have some arguments in their favor. Perhaps, you will say, in 30 years secrets will have been revealed, or elements that should have been obvious to contemporary observers will stand out, statements made by this pope in complete contradiction to the traditions of the Church, etc. Perhaps. But I do not believe that such hypotheses are necessary; in fact, I think it would be a mistake to espouse them.
Others think, simplistically, that there were two popes: one, the true pope, imprisoned in the cellars of the Vatican, and the other, an imposter, his double, seated on the throne of Peter, working for the destruction of the Church. Books have been published about the two popes, based on the ‘revelations’ of a possessed person and on supposedly scientific arguments that state, for instance, that the double’s voice is not the same as that of the real Paul VI…!
The real solution seems entirely different to me, much more complex, more difficult, and more painful. It is given us by a friend of Paul VI, Cardinal Danielou. In his Memoirs, published by a member of his family, the cardinal clearly states, “It is clear that Paul VI is a liberal Pope.”
Such is the solution that seems the most historically likely, because this pope was himself a fruit of liberalism. His whole life was permeated with the influence of the men he chose to surround him or to rule him, and they were liberals.
Paul VI did not hide his liberal leanings; at the Council, the men he chose as moderators to replace the presidents appointed by John XXIII, were Cardinal Agagianian, a cardinal of colorless personality from the Curia, and Cardinals Lercaro, Suenens and Dopfner, all three liberals and the pope’s friends. The presidents were sidelined at the head table, and these three liberals directed the conciliar debates. In the same way, Paul VI supported the liberal faction that opposed the tradition of the Church throughout the entire Council. This is a recognized fact. Paul VI repeated – I quoted it to you - the exact words of Lammenais at the end of the Council: “L’Eglise ne demande que la liberte” – the Church only seeks freedom - a doctrine condemned by Gregory XVI and Pius IX.
Paul VI was undeniably very strongly influenced by liberalism. This explains the historic evolution experienced by the Church over the last few decades, and it describes Paul VI’s personal behavior very well. The liberal, as I have told you, is a man who lives in constant contradiction. He states the principles, and does the opposite; he is perpetually incoherent.
Here are a few examples of the thesis-antithesis conundrums that Paul VI loved to present as so many insoluble problems, mirroring his anxious and conflicted mind. The encyclical Ecclesiam suam, (August 6, 1964), provides an illustration:
Quote:If, as We said, the Church realizes what is God’s will in its regard, it will gain for itself a great store of energy, and in addition will conceive the need for pouring out this energy in the service of all men. It will have a clear awareness of a mission received from God, of a message to be spread far and wide. Here lies the source of our evangelical duty, our mandate to teach all nations, and our apostolic endeavor to strive for the eternal salvation of all men. (…) The very nature of the gifts which Christ has given the Church demands that they be extended to others and shared with others. This must be obvious from the words: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations,” Christ’s final command to His apostles. The word apostle implies a mission from which there is no escaping.
That is the thesis, and the antithesis follows immediately:
Quote:To this internal drive of charity which seeks expression in the external gift of charity, We will apply the word ‘dialogue.’ The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make.
And finally he attempts a synthesis, which only reinforces the antithesis:
Quote:Before we can convert the world - as the very condition of converting the world - we must approach it and speak to it.[1]
Of greater gravity are the words with which Paul VI suppressed Latin in the liturgy after the Council, and they are even more characteristic of his liberal psychology. After restating all the advantages of Latin: a sacred language, an unchanging language, a universal language, he calls, in the name of adaptation, for the “sacrifice” of Latin, admitting at the same time that it will be a great loss for the Church. Here are his very words, reported by Louis Salleron in his book La nouvelle messe [The New Mass] (Nouvelles Editions Latines, 2nd ed., 1976, p. 83)
On March 7, 1965, he said to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s square
Quote:It is a sacrifice that the Church makes in renouncing Latin, a sacred language, beautiful, expressive, and elegant. The Church sacrifices centuries of tradition and unity of language in the name of an ever-growing desire for universality.
The ‘sacrifice’ of which he spoke became a reality with the Instruction Tres abhinc annos (May 4, 1967) which established the use of the vernacular for reciting the Canon of the Mass aloud.
This ‘sacrifice,’ in Paul VI’s mind, seems to have been final. He explained it once again on November 26, 1969, when he presented the new rite of the Mass:
Quote:The principal language of the Mass will no longer be Latin, but the vernacular. For anyone familiar with the beauty and power of Latin, its aptness for expression of the sacred, it will certainly be a great sacrifice to see it replaced by the vernacular. We are losing the language of centuries of Christianity, we become as intruders, reduced to the profane in the literary domain of expressing the sacred. We lose, too, the greater part of the admirable, incomparable wealth of art and spirituality contained in Gregorian chant. It is with good reason, then, that we experience regret and even distress.
Everything therefore should have dissuaded Paul VI from imposing this ‘sacrifice’ and persuaded him to maintain the use of Latin. On the contrary, deriving a singularly masochistic pleasure from his ‘distress,’ he chose to act against the principles he had just set forth, and decreed the ‘sacrifice’ in the name of promoting understanding of prayer, a specious argument that was only a modernist pretext.
Never has liturgical Latin been an obstacle to the conversion of infidels or to their education as Christians. Quite the opposite: the simple peoples of Africa and Asia loved Gregorian chant and the one sacred language, the sign of their affiliation to Catholicism. And experience shows that where Latin was not imposed by missionaries of the Latin Church, there the seeds of future schism were planted.
Paul VI followed these remarks with this contradictory pronouncement:
Quote:The solution seems banal and prosaic, but it is good, because it is human and apostolic. The understanding of prayer is more precious than the dilapidated silks in which it has been royally clad. More precious is the participation of the people, the people of today who want us to speak clearly, intelligibly, in words that can be translated into their secular tongue. If the noble Latin language cuts us off from children, from youth, from the world of work and business, if it is an opaque screen instead of a transparent crystal, would we fishers of men do well to maintain its exclusive use in the language of prayer and religion?
Alas, what mental confusion. Who prevents me from praying in my own tongue? But liturgical prayer is not private prayer; it is the prayer of the whole Church. Moreover, another lamentable lack of distinction is present: the liturgy is not a teaching addressed to the faithful, but the worship the Christian people address to God. Catechism is one thing, and the liturgy is another. The point is not that we “speak clearly” to the people assembled in the church, but rather that these people may praise God in the most beautiful, most sacred, and most solemn manner possible. “Praying to God with beauty” was St. Pius X’s liturgical maxim. How right he was!
You see, the liberal mind is conflicted and confused, anguished and contradictory. Such a mind was Paul VI’s. Louis Salleron explained it very well when he described Paul VI’s physical countenance, saying “he was two-faced.” Not duplicitous—this word expresses a malicious intent to deceive which was not present in Paul VI. No, he had a double personality, and the contrast between the sides of face expressed this: traditionalist in words, then modernist in action; Catholic in his premises and principles, and then progressive in his conclusions; not condemning what he should have, and then condemning what he ought to have preserved.
This psychological weakness afforded an ideal opportunity for the enemies of the Church. While maintaining a Catholic face (or half-face, if you like) he contradicted tradition without hesitation, he encouraged change, baptized mutation and progress, and followed the lead of the enemies of the Church, who egged him on.
Did not the Izvestia, official newspaper of the Communist Soviet party, demand from Paul VI my condemnation and that of Econe in the name of Vatican II? And the Italian Communist paper L’Unita followed suit after the sermon I gave in Lille on August 29, 1976; furious because of my attack on Communism, they devoted an entire page to their demand.
Quote:“Be aware,” they wrote, addressing Paul VI, “be aware of the danger Lefebvre represents, and continue the magnificent approach initiated through the ecumenism of Vatican II.”
With friends like these, who needs enemies? This is a sad illustration of a rule we have already established: liberalism leads from compromise to treason.
The psychology of a liberal pope is easy enough to imagine, but difficult to bear! Indeed, such a leader—be it Paul VI or John Paul II—puts us in a very delicate position.
In practice, our attitude must base itself on a preliminary distinction, made necessary by the extraordinary circumstances of a pope won over by liberalism. This is the distinction we must make: when the pope says something in keeping with tradition, we follow him; when he opposes the Faith, or encourages opposition of the Faith, or allows something to be done that attacks the Faith, then we cannot follow him. The fundamental reason for this is that the Church, the pope, and the hierarchy must serve the Faith. They do not make the Faith, they must serve it. The Faith cannot be made; it is immutable, and must be transmitted.
This is why papal teachings intended to validate actions opposed to tradition cannot be followed. In following, we would participate in the self-destruction of the Church, in the destruction of our Faith.
It is clear that what is unceasingly demanded of us—complete submission to the pope, complete submission to the Council, acceptance of the entire liturgical reform—is in opposition to tradition, in the sense that the pope, the Council and the reforms lead us far from tradition, as the facts show more overwhelmingly every year. Therefore, to demand these things is to require us to participate in the downfall of the Faith. Impossible! The martyrs died to defend the Faith; we have the example of Christians imprisoned, tortured, sent to concentration camps for the Faith. One grain of incense offered to an idol, and their lives would have been safe. I was advised once, “Sign, sign saying you accept everything, and then you can continue as before!” No! One does not play games with the Faith.
Footnote
1. English translation taken from the Vatican’s website
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 'The Practice of the Virtue of Religion |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 12:09 PM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
- Replies (1)
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The Practice of the Virtue of Religion—The Essential Link between a Holy Life and a Life of Prayer
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth
If God is sanctity itself, if we sing of Our Lord that He alone is holy, “Tu solus sanctus,” it is that God is the source of all sanctity, and that it is inasmuch as we are united with God and Our Lord that we will be saints. But how can this union with God be concretely realized? Under the influence of the grace of the Holy Ghost. This union has a name: prayer—oratio.
In studying deeply both the nature of prayer and its extension in our human and Christian existence, we become convinced that the profound life of the created spirit must be one of continual prayer. Every angelic or human spirit is ordered to God by its spiritual nature, by its intellect and will, and gratuitously elevated by grace to enter and participate in the eternal beatitude of the Holy Trinity.Therefore every spirit is fundamentally religious, and its religious life manifests itself in prayer: vocal, mental and spiritual.
Vocal prayer, which includes all liturgical prayer, instituted by God Himself and by God Incarnate and fashioned by the Holy Ghost, especially in the Roman Liturgy, is the most sublime source and expression of mental and spiritual prayer. The place of this prayer in the life of the priest is considerable. To neglect it, to limit it, to render it superficial, is to ruin the essential prayer, the spiritual prayer, to which vocal prayer is ordered by the Holy Ghost.
It is good to read what spiritual authors such as St. Louis-Marie de Montfort in his “Prière embrasée” (Oeuvres compl., p. 673), or Father Emmanuel in his Traité du ministère ecclésiastique, or Abbot Marmion in Christ, Ideal of the Monk (Chapter XIII, “Monastic Prayer”) think on this subject. The chapter by Abbot Marmion is remarkable, and would sanctify all priests if his counsels were put into practice. Finally, Dom Chautard in The Soul of the Apostolate (“Prayer: The Indispensable Element of the Interior Life”).
All the saints practiced mental prayer, which is at the same time an effect and a cause of sanctity. Many have written on this subject, in particular St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales. This they did because they had a very elevated notion of this life of prayer. Penetrating both the will and the heart, it enables us to attain the end for which God has created and redeemed us: namely, to adore Him in a total offering of ourselves, following the example of Our Lord coming into this world and saying to His Father: “Ecce venio ut faciam voluntatem tuam—I come...to do Thy will...” (Heb. 10:7).
The conception that reduces prayer to vocal prayer or mental prayer is a disastrous one. For prayer should involve all our being, like the prayer of the angels and of the elect in heaven. The petitions of the Pater Noster cannot be separated. The first three petitions are indissolubly linked. Likewise, the First Commandment of God cannot be separated from the other Commandments.
“Ignem veni mittere in terram et quid volo nisi ut accendatur—I have come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled” (Lk. 12:49). The fire is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Charity which fills the Holy Trinity and which created spiritual beings to set them afire with this charity.
This burning fire is the prayer of every soul adoring his Creator and Redeemer, surrendering itself to the holy Will, following Jesus Crucified, who offered His life in a great transport of charity toward His Father and to save souls.
Whence the “oportet semper orare—we must always pray” (Lk. 18:1). If that prayer ended, that would signify that the Holy Ghost had abandoned us!
May we be able to live this ardent prayer of the will and of the heart in a constant manner even in our absorbing apostolic activities, which should never absorb us to the point of hindering our wills and our hearts from belonging to God! May our apostolate actually nourish and promote our self-offering to God.
This profound attitude of our soul, in such great conformity both with its nature and with grace, will foster in it a desire for silence and contemplation which will be fulfilled in the common and private practices of piety. Our spiritual life will find there its unity, its constancy, and its truly Christian peace.
These brief considerations open horizons on the accomplishment of the divine will in our daily lives. It is the introduction of this program for our sanctification which must be the thread of our priestly life. “Elegit nos in Ipso, ante constitutionem mundi, ut essemus sancti—He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy” (Eph. 1:4).
The young seminarian entering the seminary should strive to penetrate with all his soul this life of prayer, which unreservedly hands him over to Our Lord and to the Holy Trinity, placing his mind in subjection to Revelation, which enlightens for us the Mysterium Christi, by the virtue of faith and obedience: “Redigere omnem intellectum in obsequium Christi—bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:5); placing his will and his entire soul under the impetus of the charity of the Holy Ghost in imitation of Jesus Christ, in obedience to the law of charity expressed by the Ten Commandments in imitation of Jesus Christ, in obedience to the law of charity expressed by the Ten Commandments and especially by the First Commandment as well as by Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5 through 7). Thus, his entire soul will be animated with the virtue of religion, and with virtue both natural and supernatural, in union with the Sacrifice of Our Lord renewed and continued on the altar. Thus will he be best fitted to ascend the degrees of holiness, the goal desired by God the Creator and Redeemer, expressed in the first three petitions of the Our Father.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1976 Sermon - Destroyers of the Church are Doing the Work of Freemasonry |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 11:12 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - July 2013
The Name Written on Her Heart
Sermon by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, August 22, 1976
Dear Brethren,
The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose solemnity we celebrate today, is a comparatively new feast and an example of what the Church can do and has done in relatively recent times to adapt the spirit and the riches of the Church to the present day. If any feast reminds us of the truths we need, of truths that when meditating we desire to apply to our souls, that of the Immaculate Heart of Mary certainly does.
This feast clearly has a special link to the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima, and it was Pius XII who wished that we honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the octave day of the Assumption.
Ah, yes, since the 17th century devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary has existed. We just celebrated this week the feast of St. John Eudes, who founded congregations under the patronage of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. But if our Holy Father Pius XII decided to honor in a special way the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it was because our times had need of the devotion.
In these times of hardship, in these times where Christians are deprived of what they formerly had, we need the manifestation of the charity of Our Lord, which was so clearly seen during other Christian centuries. One saw religious houses everywhere. Throughout Christendom monasteries, convents, and hospitals were thickly sown. So many religious houses peopled our villages, our countryside, and our cities, that we had the impression—I imagine that the people who lived in those times had the impression—to be entirely surrounded by the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. For His love was made manifest, as you might say, on every street corner. There were Calvaries; there were images of Our Lady; there were hospitals run by religious; there were refuges for the poor, pilgrims, and those in suffering. Everywhere the charity of Our Lord was manifest.
But in our times, how harsh our world has become! We no longer find this charity of Our Lord in our cities or our countryside. Oh, there are still, of course, souls devoted to Our Lord, but how many compared to the total population? And how much work there remains to do in those countries that do not yet know of Our Lord’s charity, enormous lands like China, Africa, and many others that are still far from this charity!
And so it seems to me that we need the Blessed Virgin Mary in our times. We need the Blessed Virgin to help us keep the faith, to feel the warmth of Our Lord’s love for us. We no longer see His love with our eyes, and as we see it less and less, we need to feel that Our Lady is near us. And I think that is why Our Lady asked at Fatima that we pray to her Immaculate Heart. We need the divine love which fills the Heart of the Blessed Virgin.
And we also need her Immaculate Heart: immaculate, that is without stain, without sin. God knows that we no longer have around us the example of lives entirely devoted to our Lord Jesus Christ, who carry out the law of Our Lord, His law of love, for the commandments of God are contained in love of God and love of neighbor.
But today, you are witnesses of what goes on in our society, where we murder children, where people commit suicide. Did you know that here in Switzerland, there are more suicides than fatalities due to car accidents? A newspaper recently reported that there were 1800 suicides last year, but only 1600 deaths due to car accidents: 1800 suicides! And mostly of young people. What does that mean? It means that these poor souls no longer felt the love of Our Lord around them; they were disgusted by the life that surrounded them, to the point that they committed suicide. And if what happens in a large number of other countries was made public, we would be horrified.
When one thinks about divorce! So many abandoned children who are torn between father and mother. We live painful lives in a harsh society, where charity is no longer practiced.
Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother
I experienced this personally when I was sent to the African nations, where I worked for 30 years. What struck me the most was the hatred one sensed there. The people were full of hate: one village hated another, one family hated another. The result of this hatred was suicide, poisonings and murders. The love of our Lord Jesus Christ did not reign.
We do not know how fortunate we are to have our Lord Jesus Christ as our Father and the Blessed Virgin Mary as our Mother. From these examples we must draw our love for God and for our models. For if the Blessed Virgin Mary had a most loving heart, her love was all for our Lord Jesus Christ and for all those “attached” to Him, and to lead all souls to our Lord Jesus Christ, to her Son Jesus. She lived for this love.
And because she loved Our Lord she was never able to offend Him; she simply couldn’t. She was conceived immaculate, born immaculate, and she remains immaculate all her life. She is then for us a model of purity of heart, of obedience to the law of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And because she loved Our Lord, she wanted to suffer with Him and share His sufferings. Sharing suffering is a sign of love. She saw her Son Jesus suffer and she wished to suffer with Him. When the heart of Jesus was pierced, so was hers, the heart of Mary! These two pierced hearts lived in unity for the glory of God, for the reign of God, for the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. They fought for that alone.
And for this reason we too must be ready to suffer for the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. He no longer reigns in our societies, nor in our families, nor in our own selves. Yet we need His reign. It is the only reason for the existence of our souls, our bodies, of humanity, and this earth and all of God’s creation: that Jesus Christ may reign; that He may give to souls His life, His salvation, His charity, His glory.
It is because we are aware of what has been happening in the Church for over 15 years—a true revolution has occurred, attacking the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ, clearly and evidently intending to destroy His reign—that our eyes were opened and that we were able to see this. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s law is no longer followed, and, unfortunately, those who should teach us to follow His law encourage us on the contrary to disobey it.
For seeking the secularization of the state brings about the destruction of Christ’s Kingship. When doubt is cast on the reality of the sanctity of marriage and its laws, the love of our Lord Jesus Christ in our homes is destroyed.
When we fail to speak, or fail to speak loudly and openly against abortion, we do not build Christ’s reign.
Devotion to Christ the King
When devotion to Christ the King is torn down, the reign of Christ in souls is destroyed.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, dear brethren, is nothing other than the proclamation of the reign of Christ the King.
How did our Lord Jesus Christ reign? Regnavit a ligno Crucis. He reigned by the wood of the Cross. He defeated the devil and defeated sin with the wood of the Cross. So the renewal on the altar of the Holy Sacrifice of Our Lord at Calvary is a declaration of the royalty of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a declaration of His divinity.
And somehow, by destroying the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, one destroys the affirmation of the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has diminished so much in our times. Rather let us say that sacrileges have grown innumerably since the Council. It must be said. It is clear and obvious.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist has been sent away from the altar. He is no longer adored. People do not genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament any more. But recognizing the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ means recognizing that He is God. It means recognizing that He is our King. And therefore we must express this love of our Lord Jesus Christ, recognize the existence of His divinity.
For proof I need only refer to something that just occurred and is publicly known in the United States. At the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, was a procession with the Blessed Sacrament held? No! There was no procession with the Blessed Sacrament, just like four years ago at the Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne, where I was present.
Why no procession with the Blessed Sacrament? Because they wanted to make the Eucharistic Congress an ecumenical congress.Ecumenical, that means bringing together Protestants and Jews, people who deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, who are opposed to His reign.
How can we pray with people who are opposed to our faith, who reject our faith?
The condition set by the non-Catholics invited was, “We will be happy to participate in the Eucharistic Congress as long as there is no procession with the Blessed Sacrament.” In other words, as long as no homage is paid to the One who is our King and our Father, our Creator and our Redeemer, the One who shed His blood for us. People no longer want to honor Him. And this condition was accepted: In order to have Protestants and Jews at the Congress, no procession with the Blessed Sacrament was held.
On top of that, a sort of concelebration was held with the Protestant ministers, and it was a Protestant minister who presided over the event!
All of this cries out to heaven for vengeance! Our Lord is no longer honored, our Lord is no longer King. He is insulted by events like these.
And if one day Communist armies take over our countries, well, we will have richly deserved it for the sacrileges committed that we allowed, that we did not put a stop to, for the honor denied to our Lord Jesus Christ. If we refuse our Lord Jesus Christ as our King, we will have the devil for king. He will come and then we will see what liberty is... Those who desired liberty wanted a liberty that would free man from the commandments of God and of the Church.
Liberation! They wanted to free themselves from our Lord… Another prince will come to teach us about liberty!
And so we who are fortunate enough to understand these things, who are fortunate enough to believe in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Kingship, we must make manifest, we must proclaim His Kingship in our families and wherever we are. We must join forces with those groups of Christians who still believe in the divinity of Christ and in His Kingship and who have love in their hearts, the love that the Blessed Virgin Mary had for her Son Jesus.
1789 in the Church
And may those who share that love join forces and hold fast, without faltering. Those Christians are the Church. They are the ones, not those who tear down the reign of our Lord. This fact must be proclaimed!1
Cardinal Suenens said: “The Council was 1789 in the Church.” I didn’t make up this definition. Yes, I believe he was right: it was 1789 in the Church. He rejoiced at it; we deplore it. For 1789 in the Church means the reign of the goddess Reason, worshipped by our ancestors of 1789, who worshipped the goddess Reason, who led clergy and religious to the scaffold, who pillaged our cathedrals, destroyed our churches, violated our houses of worship.
And is the revolution we are witnessing now not worse than that of 1789?
If we review what has happened since the Council in our churches, our homes, our schools, our universities, our seminaries, our religious congregations, the result is worse than in 1789.
For at least in 1789 the monks and nuns climbed the scaffold and spilled their blood for our Lord Jesus Christ, and I think that you are ready to give your blood for our Lord Jesus Christ.
But today, how shameful it is to see these priests who have abandoned their priesthood, and to see how every month still so many priests send to Rome a request for permission to abandon the vow they made to serve our Lord Jesus Christ so that they can get married. And a mere three weeks later they receive permission to marry.
Is that not worse? Would it not be better for these priests to climb the scaffold, declaring their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, instead of abandoning Him?
What has happened since the Council is worse than what happened in the Revolution. It is better to have enemies openly declaring war on the Church and on our Lord Jesus Christ. But that those who ought to honor our Lord Jesus Christ, who ought to adore Him, who ought to make their faith in Him known, that these should teach us to commit sacrilege, to abandon Our Lord, to vilify Him in a way—that, we cannot accept!
We are the Catholic Church. They have separated themselves from the Catholic Church.2 We are not schismatic. We long for the reign of our Lord. We want His Kingship proclaimed. We are ready to follow! If our pastors everywhere said, “We want one God alone, our Lord Jesus Christ. We have only one King, our Lord Jesus Christ,” then we would follow them!
But we cannot allow, for instance, the cross to disappear from our altars; we will not allow the cross to disappear from our churches. That we must maintain. We must be firm on these points.
And it is because I proclaim all of this that I am called disobedient, that I will soon be called schismatic. But not at all! I am neither disobedient nor schismatic because I obey the Church and our Lord Jesus Christ.
“You disobey the pope.”I disobey the pope insofar as the pope identifies with the revolution that took place at the Council and after the Council.
For this revolution is the Revolution of 1789, and I cannot obey the Revolution of 1789 in the Church. I cannot obey the goddess of Reason; I will not bow down to the goddess of Reason.
And that is what they want us to do. They want us to close this seminary so that all together we may adore the goddess of Reason, Man, and the cult of Man.
No. Never! We will not accept. We will obey God, submit ourselves to our Lord Jesus Christ. We will submit ourselves to the extent that those who must transmit to us our Faith submit themselves to the Faith as well. They have no right to sell off the Faith: it is not theirs. The Faith belongs to God, it belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ. And the pope and the bishops exist to transmit it.
Insofar as they transmit it, we fall to our knees, we obey; we are ready to obey immediately.
Insofar as they destroy our faith, we no longer obey. We cannot allow our faith to be destroyed.
Our faith is attached to our hearts until we die. That is what we must say and what we must proclaim.
So we are not disobedient; we are obedient to our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the Church has always asked of the faithful.
And when we are told, “You are judgmental; you judge the pope, you judge the bishops,” it is not we who judge the bishops, but our Faith, our Tradition, our pocket catechism!
A five-year-old child can correct his bishop. If a bishop were to tell a child, “You have been taught that the Blessed Trinity has three Persons, but that is not true,” the child could refer to his catechism and say, “My catechism teaches me that there are three Persons in the Blessed Trinity. You are wrong, and I am right.”
The child would be right. He would be right because he has all of Tradition on his side, all of the Faith on his side.
And that is what we have, nothing else. We say, “Tradition condemns you; Tradition condemns what you are currently doing.”
We Must Stand Firm
We are with two thousand years of the Church, not with twelve years of a new Church, a conciliar Church, as we were told when Msgr. Benelli asked us to submit ourselves to the “conciliar Church.” I do not know this Conciliar Church; I only know the Catholic Church.
So we must stand firm on our positions. For our Faith, we must accept everything, all the snubs, the scorn, excommunication, blows, persecution. Tomorrow, perhaps, the civil authorities may persecute us as well; that too may come.
Why? Because those who are currently destroying the Church are doing the work of Freemasonry. Freemasonry is in control everywhere.
So if Freemasonry realizes that we are a force that may threaten their plans, governments will persecute us.
Then we will return to the catacombs; we will go anywhere, but we will continue to believe; we will not abandon our Faith. We will be persecuted, but many others were persecuted before us for their Faith. We will not be the first. But we will at least honor Our Lord, be faithful to Him, not abandon Him, not betray Him. That is what we must do.
We must therefore be strong and ask the most blessed Virgin Mary on this day that we, like her, may have only one love in our hearts: that of our Lord Jesus Christ; only one name written on our hearts: that of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is God! He is the Redeemer. He is the Eternal Priest. He is King of all and He is King in heaven. He is alone King in heaven. There is no other king than our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. He is the joy of the elect, of the angels, of His Blessed Mother, of St. Joseph.
And we too wish to partake of this honor, this glory, this love of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know Him alone and we wish to know Him alone.
In the name of the Father…
Notes
1 The year before delivering this sermon, Archbishop Lefebvre was suspended a divinis and commanded to shut down his seminary and the SSPX. These Roman punishments gave the appearance of placing the SSPX outside of the Church’s legal framework, and this appearance troubled some consciences, making them think that fidelity to Tradition was infidelity to the Church. Thus, the Archbishop emphasizes here that, in fact, those who destroy the Church cannot properly be said to belong to her, while those who are faithful to Tradition do properly belong to her. He is speaking of belonging to the Church in a specific sense, i.e. by sharing her ideals and mission. He is clearly not speaking of belonging to the Church through baptism or by being part of its visible hierarchy, as such a sense would falsify his statement. Such verbal ambiguity is part and parcel of the rhetorical context of a sermon, and is in fact needed to emphasize a key point, as the Archbishop does here.
2 In common speech, we do not say that a traitor or a spy within an army belongs to that army, because his intentions are completely contrary to those of the moral body of which he is a part. Similarly here, although certain Modernists are baptized Catholics and really are part of the visible hierarchy, yet they have separated themselves from the Church’s spirit and ideals, and in that sense do not belong to her. Such expressions, as Fr. Gleize points out, take the part for the whole. It is not just those who have the spirit of the Church (part) that make up the Catholic Church (whole), but it can be said in a certain sense that only those who have the spirit of the Church belong to the Church, a point the Archbishop wishes to emphasize here.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Major Google outage highlights company’s influence, prompts questions of Great Reset cyber attack |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 10:17 AM - Forum: Great Reset
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Major Google outage highlights company’s influence, prompts questions of Great Reset cyber attack
On Monday, Google services dropped for about an hour shortly before 7am EST, as the company’s various online services underwent a huge outage
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, December 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In the last two days, Google services have suffered major outages, rendering users across the world unable to use the platform. The system failures highlight the manner in which people have come to rely on the platform, despite it spying on its users, along with raising questions about cyber attack relating to the globalist “Great Reset.”
On Monday, Google services dropped for about an hour shortly before 7am EST, as the company’s various online services underwent a huge outage. The Google Workspace Dashboard outlines the extent of the issue, with popular services such as Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, Classroom, and YouTube unusable.
In a statement made to TechCrunch, Google explained the issue. “Today, at 3.47AM PT Google experienced an authentication system outage for approximately 45 minutes due to an internal storage quota issue. Services requiring users to log in experienced high error rates during this period. The authentication system issue was resolved at 4:32AM PT. All services are now restored. We apologise to everyone affected, and we will conduct a thorough follow up review to ensure this problem cannot recur in the future.”
As the system failure affected users worldwide, TechCrunch described it as “an unprecedented failure for a system that has grown to be one of the biggest traffic and activity drivers on the internet with billions of users across Google’s different properties.”
Then the next day, Google suffered a repeat with a similar incident, when its email service Gmail went down, affecting nearly 18,000 users. This time the Workspace Dashboard bore the message “We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.” Some two hours later, the company posted a message to say that the problem had been “resolved.” but no explanation as to the problem itself was provided.
The encrypted email service provider ProtonMail warned its own users about the “serious outage and permanently bouncing emails sent to Gmail users.” It noted that the “[t]he problem is on Google’s side, and is impacting all email traffic.”
Interestingly on the same day as Google’s original outage, December 14, Microsoft also experienced problems, with users reporting issues with it company’s Outlook email service. Whilst not on the same scale as Google’s outage, merely affecting a small number of users in Europe, those affected were reportedly unable to use their email. Microsoft’s other popular services, such as Skype, Teams and One Drive, seemed to be unaffected.
Wider concerns of cyber attack and the Great Reset
The combination and severity of the various system outages highlight how much people all around the globe have come to rely upon technology, particularly when virtual events are currently taking the place of in-person meetings. As TechCrunch noted, such outages “underscore some of the fragility – and ultimate precariousness – of having so much of our communications, our data and our lives tied up in a handful of proprietary cloud-based networks.”
The outages, also take on a different weight in light of the surveillance, the censorship, and the power held by tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
A report by California based group Consumer Watchdog, found that Google’s Voice Assistant was even recording conversations without users’ knowledge. The company “keeps copies of clips made each time you activate it, but it has emerged that background chatter could be enough to trigger recording.” Google avails of the information particularly in sending targeted ads, but hackers and criminals could also access the data, the group warned.
In 2017, conservative Breitbart News network hosted an event outlining how Facebook, Twitter, and Google are actively spying on users and influencing what information we receive from their websites. Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, highlighted Google: “All Gmails, outgoing, the ones you write, and incoming — no matter what email service they’re coming from — they are all recorded, analyzed, every detail is put into your personal profile,” he said.
In contrast, encrypted email provider ProtonMail has been set up with “privacy” as a priority. “We use end-to-end encryption and zero access encryption to secure emails. This means even we cannot decrypt and read your emails. As a result, your encrypted emails cannot be shared with third parties,” the website states. The messaging service, Signal, also uses “end-to-end encryption,” in order to protect users privacy, and is used by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Shortly after the first Google outage, a former senior software engineer at Youtube and Google, Zach Vorhies, posted a message linking to a July videoof World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, which seemed to shed light on the event, as well as other issues regarding electronic voter fraud in the recent presidential election. In the video Schwab spoke about a “comprehensive cyber attack which would bring to a complete halt, to the power supply, transportation, hospital services; our society as a whole.”
“The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyber attack,” Schwab hinted, saying COVID-19 should be used “as a timely opportunity to reflect on the lessons the cyber security can draw, and improve our preparedness for a potential cyber pandemic.”
Schwab is a prominent proponent of the “Great Reset,” the plan designed by globalist elites, gathering at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland once a year, which “seeks to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.”
He has previously stated, “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
“The COVID-19 crisis has shown us that our old systems are not fit anymore for the 21st century,” he claimed. Quote:“It has laid bare the fundamental lack of social cohesion, fairness, inclusion, and equality. Now is the historical moment, the time, not only to fight the virus but to shape the system … for the post COVID era… In short, we need a great reset.”
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1975 Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 09:57 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - August 1990
Sermon given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - August 15, 1975 Ecône, Switzerland
Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dear brethren,
We celebrate today the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Proclamation of the Dogma of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary by our Holy Father Pope Pius XII. It was November 1, 1950. I had the joy and pleasure of being present at Rome in St. Peter's Square on this holy day and I still hear the words of our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, proclaiming the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary as dogma of our Faith.
Did the Holy Church of God hear about the assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary for the first time on November 1, 1950? Certainly not! One needs just to read the text by which Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to see that since the most ancient times of the Church, the faithful already professed faith in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. Whether in icons, whether in stained glass windows, whether in the writings of the Fathers, already everywhere, faith in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary was professed, but it was not yet solemnly defined by Holy Church.
These dogmas, indeed, we must remember, cannot be new truths. The Revelation was wholly completed at the death of the last Apostle. One must therefore look before the death of the last Apostle in the Deposit of Tradition, of Revelation, bequeathed to us, given to us by the Apostles, to find there the truths which we must still believe today. No Pope can invent a new truth which he would like to submit to our Faith. He can only find this truth in the course of centuries, signifying that this truth was already implicitly contained in that Revelation and Faith which the Apostles have given us. This is the teaching of the Church.
Thus when we believe in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, that is, when we believe that the Good Lord granted that the body of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary be already glorified now, we do nothing else than unite ourselves to the faith of the whole Church, to the Church of all the centuries. And this must be for us a great joy, a great consolation, to think that our Faith today, stronger than ever, more solid than ever, is in union with that of the Catholics of all the centuries.
There is in this dogma of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary a very precious truth, very useful for our times, for our days.In these days, some want to deny miracles; in our days, some want to deny all supernatural realities. This word "supernatural" contains something somehow mysterious; the supernatural state may be difficult to understand for some faithful, it may be difficult to grasp. Yet it is present in the whole teaching of the Church.
In our catechisms we have learned that we became the sons of God, that the Good Lord has deigned not only to give us a human nature, a human soul, but that He wanted to make of us His privileged sons, sharing His Divine Nature, and thus being able to know God, to love God and to love our neighbor infinitely more than if we had only our natural state. We must always remember that: the Good Lord has called us to be His children, though we should have been merely His servants. If we had only had our nature, we would have never been able to know God directly, we would have known God only indirectly through creatures, through the effects of His almighty power, ascending from them to the Almighty Cause which made all these things that surround us, and even ourselves. We climb from the effect to the cause and naturally we think there is a Being extraordinarily powerful, a Being that can only be God for He made all these things by His almighty power. And our knowledge of Him would have remained there, without going further.
But the Good Lord did not want that. He wanted us to enter into His intimacy, He wanted us to enter somehow in Him, to know Him better, to love Him better. And this is a grace, a gift—the word "grace" signifies precisely this—an extraordinary, unbelievable gift to which we could not pretend ourselves.
We might be tempted to say, "But why did the Good Lord love us so much, why did He not leave us with our poor human nature? Did we need to enter into the very nature of God, to be so close to God? This gives us greater responsibilities!"
Yes, indeed, indeed! It gives us greater responsibilities. It changes completely our spirituality. It changes our interior life. It must change our whole interior life. And it does!
Our spiritual life is changed right from the beginning, as soon as we receive Baptism.As soon as we receive this grace of divine filiation in Baptism, and original sin is washed away from our soul, we become God's privileged adopted children.
And today, this Feast of the Assumption shows us the very crowning of the work of God, of the supernatural work of God. God wants it for us too, as He did for the Most Blessed Virgin. He wants to "assume" our body, to spiritualize our body in a certain way and to give us all the joys of the spirit and all the joys of our divine filiation.
And how does that change our daily life? How must this supernatural life, this divine adoption, change our daily life?
Because we must not see things as we would have seen them if we had merely had our human nature! To know that we are called to live for God, to live in God, to know Him directly, Him Who has created all things, must arouse in our hearts, in our intelligences, a desire of God, a longing to love God, through this divine nature, which is in us by grace, by sanctifying grace, a longing as those aroused throughout all the centuries of the Church from the very beginning of the Christian era.
It has raised up countless acts of heroism, souls so much drawn by God, so much drawn by the desire to know God, to live with God, that they secluded themselves in deserts, in monasteries, in the religious life. And even in lay life they gave themselves completely: all these families were so Catholic that they lived in God. They prayed from morning to evening, they recited their daily family prayer, they had devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, they lived a Christian life! And thus they had a certain contempt, they esteemed in a lesser way, the things of nature, created things, material things.
But now we are reproached for this, the Church is reproached for this! And now, within the Church itself, those who, in the Church, should continue to teach us these things, reproach the Church for them. They should use as models those who were detached from the things of this world, so that they might already here below give themselves completely to God. They should exalt Christian families who are detached, Christian homes where the family prays, where the idea of a religious vocation, of a priestly vocation in the family is held in esteem, is desired so that in a certain way the whole family is consecrated to God, out of love for God.
This is grace! This is supernatural grace. It is the divine filiation which is in your heart which must make you ask for this, which must make you desire this, long for this, so that your family might be totally consecrated to God, that nothing in your family might become a scandal leading souls away from God. This ought to be your main concern.
How much more this ought to be the main concern of those who give themselves to God, of future priests, of those who want to be united to God in the bonds of religious profession.
And see today how they have under-esteemed religious life, how they have under-esteemed Christian life in Catholic families, to such a point that they ceaselessly repeat the esteem that they have for the values of this world, for human values, the values of our reason, for the values of science. All this is false. All this is rooted in the contempt for the supernatural order, in the negation of the grace of the Good Lord, in the negation of all that Our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring us. This amounts to a denial of Our Lord Jesus. Continually insisting upon the human values, the values of this world, the values of science, one ends up denying Our Lord Jesus Christ!
Indeed, for what did Our Lord Jesus Christ come? For what purpose did He die on the cross? Why did He become incarnate? "Propter nos et nostrum salutem—For us and for our salvation!" To give us His grace, to restore this Divine filiation. Our Lord is God, He is the True Son of God, the only Son of God, First-born of all creatures; He came to give us His Blood, His life, and to communicate to us His Divine Life already here below. Thus, by participation in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we truly participate in the Divine Nature.
Therefore, if we are truly conscious of this, we must despise the things of this world, despise the goods of the body, despise the good of our senses, as centuries of Christendom have done in the past. But today they desire to satisfy all their natural desires. Our Lord Jesus Christ never taught us this! Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us precisely to despise the things of this world because we are called to a life infinitely greater, infinitely higher.
This has been the whole spirituality of Christian life for all the centuries before us. The example of all those faithful who withdrew from the world and enclosed themselves for their whole life in a monastery was admirable, it was an encouragement for all Catholics.
But now see these deserted monasteries, these broken grilles in the convents of Franciscan nuns, of Carmelites. These nuns had a very strict enclosure, to be with God, to become more aware of their Divine filiation, to live already with heaven before being in heaven. Knowing that the few years they had to live on earth had to prepare them for heavenly life, they took refuge far from the world, far from the pleasures of this world, in order to live this life they received at Baptism, that was confirmed by the Sacrament of Confirmation and vivified by the Holy Eucharist and Penance. Those elite souls wanted to be enclosed! But what happened? The [Modernists] have broken the enclosures, they have broken the grilles, they have asked the nuns to leave; Our Lord Jesus Christ too left the convent!
And this is why there are no more vocations, this is why there is no more contemplative life. What shall draw souls to this contemplative life if one does not speak of the life of God which we have in us? What shall draw Christian families to live in a more Christian way, if they are not taught that through marriage they receive the special grace where the Most Blessed Virgin Mary is honored, where the crucifix is in a place of honor, where the Blessed Virgin Mary reigns, a family which is the beloved kingdom of Jesus and Mary. If this is no longer taught, there shall be no more Catholic families, there shall be no more vocations, and souls will be lost!
This is what the mystery of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us today. And there shall be a similar crowning for us too. We must expect this, we must hope for this. This is the great virtue of Hope. Now, this virtue of Hope is disappearing today precisely because all hope is here below. Now social progress, social justice, material progress, the equal distribution of goods of this world: these are the great themes of today's sermons!
But we were not made for this. We are made, first of all, to be the children of God, to live with God. It does not matter whether we have lived in poverty or at ease, all that matters is the love that we have had for God, how we have spent these years which the Good Lord has given us to live here below with Him. How did we spend them in regard to this hope of heaven? How did we hand on this hope of heaven to our children, these heavenly realities? This is what the Good Lord shall ask of us.
Thus, my very dear friends, who in a few moments are going to pronounce your Profession of Faith and to repeat the Anti-Modernist Oath, you shall notice that this Anti-Modernist Oath is precisely almost in each one of its points a profession of the supernatural realities, against those who want to destroy the grace of the Good Lord, to destroy the Divine reality of the grace of God and of Our Divine filiation. Doing this they reduce to naught their very own intelligence. They pretend that their intelligence is incapable to know God, this is the first part [of the oath].
These people despise the Divine intelligence, the Divine life in which we somehow partake; despising the grace which the Good Lord has given us, the light which the Good Lord has put in our hearts and in our minds, they lose at the same time their own reason. They themselves say that they are no longer capable of knowing God. Thus according to them man is radically, definitively cut off from God, incapable of knowing Him. As a consequence they despise all the goods that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us—Divine grace, the Sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—all this is reduced to a natural state.
But you, on the contrary, you shall profess your faith in the grace of the Good Lord, in the supernatural life which the Good Lord has given us and in which He enables us to participate. And this on the Feast of the Assumption; you could not do this on a better day, all these blessings which the Good Lord has given us, this great charity which the Good Lord has had for us.
Indeed, it is a blasphemy to say what the Modernists say. It is to blaspheme against Our Lord Jesus Christ because they deny all that Our Lord Jesus Christ came to do here below: they deny His Church, they deny His Sacrifice, they deny His Sacraments, they deny everything and nothing is left. And this is what the modern catechisms teach today. For this reason these catechisms are very harmful because they reduce to naught the entire life of grace, the entire Divine Life, which is what is most precious to us.
Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary on this day of her Assumption to help us truly understand what our supernatural life is, a participation in the Divine Life. God knows that She knows it, this participation in the Divine Life, She who has given natural life to Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the grace of the Holy Ghost. How much did the Good Lord flood her with spiritual graces! And how much is She capable of making us understand how beautiful, how good, how sweet it is to be united with Our Lord, to know the Good Lord and to live with God!
Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to put in our souls, in our hearts, this immense desire, this unquenchable desire, of all the moments of our life, of our whole life, of each week, month and year, to be with God for all eternity.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: An Interview Suppressed by the American Bishops for 10 Years |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 09:15 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Interview with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Editor's Note:
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of France made headlines when he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II for consecrating bishops in contravention of orders from Rome. While much has been written about the controversial churchman, very little has been heard directly from him. As a consequence, many people are confused about what is involved in his so-called rebellion and what motivates him.
The following interview with the archbishop was to have been published in 1978 by a leading American Catholic publication. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops threatened the publication's publisher with excommunication and decreed virtual extinction for the publication itself if the interview were run. In fact, the bishops ordered that no Catholic publication could run this interview with Archbishop Lefebvre.
An edited version of the interview was finally published in The Spotlight, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C., in its issue of July 18, 1988. The complete and unedited interview is transcribed below.
The Spotlight makes no case for or against the doctrinal positions of Archbishop Lefebvre. We printed the interview for we find his statements of 14 years ago, if read in the light of current events, to be extremely timely.
The world itself we find to be in a state of near collapse and the Catholic Church an institution that was once regarded by friend and foe alike to be changeless, now to be riddled with elements of moral relativism, communism, homosexuality and gross uncertainty. Archbishop Lefebvre speaks out in opposition to these trends. The questions asked of the archbishop are in dark type; his responses in light type.
You have debated and taken part in the deliberations of the second council of the Vatican, have you not?
Yes.
Did you not sign and agree to the resolutions of this council?
No. First of all, I have not signed all the documents of Vatican II because of the last two acts. The first, concerned with "Religion and Freedom," I have not signed. The other one, that of “The Church in the Modern World”, I also have not signed. This latter is in my opinion the most oriented toward modernism and liberalism.
Are you on record for not only not signing the documents but also on record to publicly oppose them?
Yes. In a book, which I have published in France, I accuse the council of error on these resolutions, and I have given all the documents by which I attack the position of the council - principally, the two resolutions concerning the issues of religion and freedom and "The Church in the Modern World.”
Why were you against these decrees?
Because these two resolutions are inspired by liberal ideology which former popes described to us-that is to say, a religious license as understood and promoted by the Freemasons, the humanists, the modernists and the liberals.
Why do you object to them?
This ideology says that all the cultures are equal; all the religions are equal, that there is not a one and only true faith. All this leads to the abuse and perversion of freedom of thought. All these perversions of freedom, which were condemned throughout the centuries by all the popes, have now been accepted by the council of Vatican II.
Who placed these particular resolutions on the agenda?
I believe there were a number of cardinals assisted by theological experts who were in agreement with liberal ideas.
Who, for example?
Cardinal (Augustine) Bea (a German Jesuit), Cardinal (Leo) Suenens (from Belgium), Cardinal (Joseph) Frings (from Germany), Cardinal (Franz) Koenig (from Austria). These personalities had already gathered and discussed these resolutions before the council and it was their precise aim to make a compromise with the secular world, to introduce Illuminist and modernist ideas in the church doctrines.
Were there any American cardinals supporting these ideas and resolutions?
I do not recall their names at present, but there were some. However, a leading force in favor of these resolutions was Father Murray.
Are you referring to Father John Courtney Murray (an American Jesuit)?
Yes.
What part has he played?
He has played a very active part during all the deliberations and drafting of these documents.
Did you let the pope (Paul VI) know of your concern and disquiet regarding these resolutions?
I have talked to the pope. I have talked to the council. I have made three public interventions, two of which I have filed with the secretariat. Therefore, there were five interventions against these resolutions of Vatican II. In fact, the opposition led against these resolutions was such that the pope attempted to establish a commission with the aim of reconciling the opposing parties within the council. There were to be three members, of which I was one.
When the liberal cardinals learned that my name was on this commission, they went to see the holy father (the pope) and told him bluntly that they would not accept this commission and that they would not accept my presence on this com- mission. The pressure on the pope was such that he gave up the idea. I have done everything I could to stop these resolutions which I judge contrary and destructive to the Catholic faith. The council was convened legitimately, but it was for the purpose of putting all these ideas through.
Were there other cardinals supporting you?
Yes. There was Cardinal (Ernesto) Ruffini (of Palermo), Cardinal (Giuseppe) Siri (of Genoa) and Cardinal (Antonio) Caggiano (of Buenos Aires).
Were there any bishops supporting you?
Yes. Many bishops supported my stand.
How many bishops?
There were in excess of 250 bishops. They had even formed themselves into a group for the purpose of defending the true Catholic faith.
What happened to all of these supporters?
Some are dead; some are dispersed throughout the world; many still support me in their hearts but are frightened to lose the position, which they feel may be useful at a later time.
Is anybody supporting you today (1978)?
Yes. For instance, Bishop Pintinello from Italy; Bishop Castro de Mayer from Brazil. Many other bishops and cardinals often contact me to express their support but wish at this date to remain anonymous.
What about those bishops who are not liberals but still oppose and criticize you?
Their opposition is based on an inaccurate understanding of obedience to the pope. It is, perhaps, a well-meant obedience, which could be traced to the ultramontane obedience of the last century, which in those days was good because the popes were good. However, today, it is a blind obedience, which has little to do with a practice and acceptance of true Catholic faith.
At this stage it is relevant to remind Catholics allover the world that obedience to the pope is not a primary virtue.
The hierarchy of virtues starts with the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity followed by the four cardinal virtues of justice, temperance, prudence and fortitude. Obedience is a derivative of the cardinal virtue of justice. Therefore it is far from ranking first in the hierarchy of virtues.
Certain bishops do not wish to give the slightest impression that they are opposed to the Holy Father. I understand how they feel. It is evidently very unpleasant, if not very painful. I certainly do not like to be in opposition to the Holy Father, but I have no choice considering what is coming to us from Rome at present, which is in opposition to the Catholic doctrine and is unacceptable to Catholics.
Do you suggest that the holy father accepts these particular ideas?
Yes. He does. But it is not only the holy father. It is a whole trend. I have mentioned to you some of the cardinals involved in these ideas. More than a century ago, secret societies, Illuminati, humanist, modernist and others, of which we have now all the texts and proofs, were preparing for a Vatican council in which they would infiltrate their own ideas for a humanist church.
Do you suggest that some cardinals could have been members of such secret societies?
This is not a very important matter at this stage whether they are or not. What is very important and grave is that they, for all intents and purposes, act just as if they were agents or servants of humanist secret societies.
Do you suggest that these cardinals could have taken up such ideas deliberately or were they given the wrong information or were they duped or a combination of all?
I think that humanist and liberal ideas spread throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These secular ideas were spread everywhere, in government and churches alike. These ideas have penetrated into the seminaries and throughout the church. And today the church wakes up finding itself in a liberal straitjacket.
This is why one meets liberal influence that has penetrated all strata of secular life during the last two centuries, right inside the church. Vatican Council II was engineered by liberals; it was a liberal council; the pope is a liberal and those who surround him are liberals.
Are you suggesting that the pope is a liberal even if he has never declared himself to be a liberal?
The pope has never denied that he was (a liberal).
When did the pope indicate that he was a liberal?
The pope stated on many occasions that he was in favor of modernist ideas, in favor of a compromise with the world. In his own words, it was necessary.’to throw a bridge between the church and the secular world.'
The pope said that it was necessary to accept humanist ideas, that is was necessary to discuss such ideas; that it was necessary to have dialogs. At this stage, it is important to state that dialogs are contrary to the doctrines of the Catholic faith. Dialogs presuppose the coming together of two equal and opposing sides; therefore, in no way could (dialog) have anything to do with the Catholic faith.
We believe and accept our faith as the only true faith in the world. All this confusion ends up in compromises, which destroy the church's doctrines, for the misfortune of mankind and the church alike.
You have stated that you know the reason for the decline in church attendance and lack of interest in the church today, which you reportedly attributed to the resolutions of Vatican II. Is that correct?
I would not say that Vatican II would have prevented what is happening in the church today. Modernist ideas have penetrated everywhere for a long time and that has not been good for the church. But the fact that some members of the clergy have professed such ideas, that is to say the ideas of perverted freedom, in that case-license.
The idea that all truths are equal, all religions are the same, consequently, all the moralities are the same, that everybody's conscience is equal, that everybody can judge theologically what he can do - these are really humanist ideas – (the idea) of total license with no discipline of thought whatever which leads to the position that anybody can do whatever he likes. All of this is absolutely contrary to our Catholic faith.
You have said that most of these theological counselors and experts only pretend that they are representing the majority of the people, that in fact the people are really not represented by these liberal theologians. Could you explain?
By 'majority of the people,' I mean all the people who honestly work for a living. I mean the people on the land, people of common sense in contact with the real world, the lasting world. These people are the majority of the people, who prefer traditions and order to chaos.
There is a movement of all these people throughout the world, who are slowly coalescing in total opposition to all the changes that were made in their name, of their religion.
These people of good will and good sense have been so traumatized by these dramatic changes that they are now reluctant to attend church. When they go into a modernist church, they do not meet what is sacred-the mystical character of the church, all that which is really divine.
What leads to God is divine and they no longer meet God in these churches. Why should they come to a place where God is absent?
People perceive this very well and the liberal cardinals and their advisers have seriously underestimated the loyalty of the majority to their true faith. How (else) can you explain that as soon as we open a traditional chapel or church, every-body rushes in from everywhere? We have standing room only. The Masses go on all day to accommodate the faithful.
Why? Because they find once again what they need: the sacred, the mystical, the respect for the sacred.
For instance, you would see at the airport different people coming to the priests who were there to meet me, shaking their hands - total strangers. Why? Because where people find a priest, a real priest, a priest that behaves like a priest, who dresses like a priest, they are attracted to him immediately and follow him.
This happens here in the United States, it happens in Europe and everywhere in the world. People in the street coming to greet a priest; they come to congratulate him out of the blue and tell him how glad they are to see a real priest, to tell him how glad they are that there are still some priests.
Do you suggest that clothes and habit make a difference in the quality of the priest?
Habits and clothing are, of course, only a symbol, but it is to what this symbol represents that people are attracted, not, of course, the symbol itself.
Why do you appear to attach such importance to the rituals of the Tridentine Mass?1
We certainly do not insist on rituals just for the sake of rituals but merely as symbol of our faith. In that context, we do believe they are important. However, it is the substance and not the rituals of the Tridentine Mass that has been removed.
Could you be more specific?
The new Offertory prayers do not express the Catholic notion of the sacrifice. They simply express the concept of a mere partaking of bread and wine. For instance, this Tridentine Mass addressed to God the prayer: "Accept O Holy Father, heavenly and eternal God, this immaculate victim which your unworthy servant offers to you, my living and true God to atone for my numberless sins, offenses and negligences." The New Mass says: 'We offer this bread as the bread of life.' There is no mention of sacrifice or victim. This text is vague and imprecise, lends itself to ambiguity and was meant to be acceptable to Protestants. It is, however, unacceptable to the true Catholic faith and doctrine. The substance has been changed in favor of accommodation and compromise.
Why do you appear to attach such importance to the Latin Mass rather than the vernacular Mass approved by Vatican Council II?
First the question of the Latin Mass is a secondary question under certain circumstances. But under another aspect it is a very important question. It is important because it is a way to fix the word of our faith, the Catholic dogma and doctrines. It is a way of not changing our faith because in translations affecting these Latin words, one does not render exactly the truth of our faith as it is expressed and embodied in Latin.
It is indeed very dangerous because little by little one can lose faith itself. These translations do not reflect the exact words of the Consecration. These words are changed in the vernacular.
Could you give me an example?
Yes. For instance, in the vernacular, it is said that "the Precious Blood is for all." When in the Latin text (even the latest, revised Latin text), the text says, "the Precious Blood is for many" and not for all. All is certainly different from many. This is only a minor example that illustrates the inaccuracies of current translations.
Could you quote a translation, which would actually contradict Catholic dogma?
Yes. For example, in the Latin text, the Virgin Mary is referred to as “Semper Virgo," "always virgin.” In all the modern translations, the word "always" has been deleted. This is very serious because there is a great difference between "virgin" and "always virgin." It is most dangerous to tamper with translations of this kind.
Latin is also important to keep the unity of the Church because when one travels - and people travel more and more in foreign countries these days - it is important for them to find the same echoes that they have heard from a priest at home, whether in the United States, South America, Europe or any other part of the world. They are at home in any church. It is their Catholic Mass, which is being celebrated. They have always heard the Latin words since childhood, their parents before them, and their grandparents before them. It is an identifying mark of their faith.
Now, when they go into a foreign church, they don't understand a word. Foreigners who come here don't understand a word. What is the good of going to a Mass in English, Italian or Spanish when no one can understand a word?
But wouldn't most of these people understand Latin even less? What is the difference?
The difference is that the Latin of the Catholic Mass has always been taught through religious instruction since childhood. There have been numerous books on the matter. It has been taught throughout the, ages - it is not that difficult to remember.
Latin is an exact expression, which has been familiar to generations of Catholics. Whenever Latin is found in another Church, it immediately creates the proper atmosphere for the worship of God. It is the distinctive tongue of the Catholic faith, which unites all the Catholics throughout the world regardless of their national tongue.
They are not disoriented or baffled. They say: This is my Mass, it is the Mass of my parents, it is the Mass to follow, it is the Mass of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the eternal and unchanging Mass. Therefore from the point of view of unity, it is a very important symbolic link; it is a mark of identity for all Catholics.
But it is far more serious than simply a change of tongue. Under the spirit of Ecumenism, it is an attempt to create a rapprochement with the Protestants.
What proof do you have of this?
It is quite evident because there were five Protestants who assisted in the reform of our Liturgy. The archbishop of Cincinnati, who was present during these deliberations, said that not only these five Protestants were present but also they took a very active part in the debates and participated directly in the reform of our Liturgy.
Who were these Protestants?
They were Protestant ministers representing different Protestant denominations who were called by Rome to participate in the reform of our Liturgy which shows clearly that there was a purpose to all this. They were Dr. George, Canon Jasper, Dr. Sheperd, Dr. Smith, Dr. Koneth and Dr. Thurian. Msgr. Bugnini did not hide this purpose. He spelled it out very clearly. He said, “We are going to make an Ecumenical Mass as we have made an Ecumenical Bible."
All this is very dangerous because it is our faith that is attacked. When a Protestant celebrates the same Mass as we do, he interprets the text in a different way because his faith is different. Therefore, it is an ambiguous Mass. It is an equivocal Mass. It is no longer a Catholic Mass.
What Ecumenical Bible are you referring to?
There is an Ecumenical Bible made two or three years ago, which was recognized by many bishops. I do not know whether the Vatican publicly endorsed it, but it certainly did not suppress it because it is used in many dioceses. For instance, two weeks ago, the Bishop of Fribourg in Switzerland had Protestant pastors explaining this Ecumenical Bible to all the children of Catholic schools. These lessons were the same for Catholics and Protestants. And what has this Ecumenical Bible to do with the Word of God?
Since the Word of God cannot be changed, all this leads to more and more confusion. When I think that the archbishop of Houston, Texas will not allow Catholic children to be confirmed unless they go with their parents to follow a 15-day instruction course from the local rabbi and the local Protestant minister.
If the parents refuse to send their children to such instructions, they (the children) cannot get confirmed. They have to produce a signed certificate from the rabbi and the Protestant minister that both the parents and the children have duly attended the instruction and only then can they (the children) be confirmed by the bishop.
These are the absurdities with which we end up when we follow the liberal road. Not only this, but now we are even reaching the Buddhists and the Moslems. Many bishops were embarrassed when the representative of the pope was received in a shameful manner by the Moslems recently.
What happened?
I do not recall all the specific details, but this incident happened in Tripoli, Libya, where the representative of the pope wanted to pray with the Moslems. These Moslems refused and went about their separate ways and prayed in their fashion, leaving the representative high and dry, not knowing what to do. This illustrates the naiveté of these liberal Catholics who feel that it is enough to go and talk with these Moslems and for them to accept immediately a compromise of their own religion.
The mere fact of wanting to have a close relationship with the Moslems for that purpose only attracts the contempt of the Moslems toward us. It is a well-known fact that Moslems will never change anything of their religion; it is absolutely out of the question.
If the Catholics come to equate our religion with theirs, it only leads to confusion and contempt, which they take as an attempt to discredit their religion and not caring about our religion. They are far more respectful of anyone who says that, “I am a Catholic; I cannot pray with you because we do not have the same convictions.” This person is more respected by the Moslems than the one who says that all the religions are the same; that we all believe the same things; we all have the same faith. They feel this person is insulting them.
But doesn't the Koran display moving verses of praise toward Mary and Jesus?
Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet and has great respect for Mary, and this certainly places Islam nearer to our religion than say, for instance, Judaism, which is far more distant from us. Islam was born in the 7th century and it has benefited to some degree from the Christian teachings of those days.
Judaism, on the other hand, is the heir to the system, which crucified our Lord. And the members of this religion, who have not converted to Christ, are those who are radically opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ. For them, there is no question whatever of recognizing our Lord.
They are in opposition to the very foundation and existence of the Catholic faith on this subject. However, we cannot both be right. Either Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Lord and Savior or He is not. This is one case where there cannot be the slightest compromise without destroying the very foundation of Catholic faith. This does not only apply to religions, which are directly opposed to the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God but also to religions, which, without opposing Him, do not recognize Him, as such.
Therefore you are very sure and dogmatic on this point?
Completely dogmatic. For example, the Moslems have a very different way to conceive God than we have. Their conception of God is very materialistic. It is not possible to say that their God is the same as our God.
But isn't God the same God for all the people of the world?
Yes. I believe that God is the same God for the whole universe according to the faith of the Catholic Church. But the conception of God differs greatly from religion to religion. Our Catholic faith is the one and only true faith. If one does not believe in it absolutely, one cannot claim to be a Catholic. Our faith is the one that in the world we cannot compromise in any way. God as conceived by the Moslems says: "When God says to His believers, 'When you go to paradise, you will be a hundred times richer than you are now on earth. This also applies to the number of wives that you have here on earth'." This conception of God is hardly what our Lord and Savior is about.
Why do you attach more importance to Pope St. Pius V than to Pope Paul VI? After all, both are equally pope. Do you not accept the doctrine of papal infallibility? Do you feel that this doctrine applies more to one than the other?
I feel that on the side that Pope St. Pius V wanted to engage his infallibility because he used all the terms that all the popes traditionally and generally used when they want(ed) to manifest their infallibility. On the other hand, Pope Paul VI said himself that he didn't want to use his infallibility.
When did he indicate that?
He indicated this by not pronouncing his infallibility on any matter of faith as other popes have done throughout history. None of the decrees of Vatican II were issued with the weight of infallibility. Further, he has never engaged his infallibility on the subject of the Mass. He has never employed terms that have been employed by Pope St. Pius V when he (Paul VI) decided to allow this new Mass to be foisted on the faithful. I cannot compare the two acts of promulgation because they are completely different.
Has Pope Paul VI ever said that he did not believe in papal infallibility?
No. He never actually said this categorically. But Pope Paul VI is a liberal and he does not believe in the fixity of dogmas. He does not believe that a dogma must remain unchanged forever. He is for some evolution according to the wishes of men. He is for changes that are originated by humanist and modernist sources. And this is why he has so much trouble in fixing a truth forever. In fact, he is loathe to do so personally and he is very ill at ease whenever such cases have arisen. This attitude reflects the spirit of modernism. The pope has never employed his infallibility in the matter of faith and morals to date.
Has the pope stated himself that he was a liberal or modernist?
Yes. The pope has manifested this in the council, which is not a pastoral council. He has also clearly stated so in his encyclical called Ecclesiam Suam. He has stated that his encyclicals would not define matters but he wished that they would be accepted as advice and lead to a dialogue. In his Credo, he said that he did not wish to employ his infallibility, which clearly shows where his leanings are.
Do you feel that his evolution toward dialogue is what allows you not to be in disagreement with the pope?
Yes. From the liberal standpoint they should allow this dialogue. When the pope does not use his infallibility on the subject of faith and morals, one is very much freer to discuss his words and his acts. From my point of view, I am bound to oppose what has taken place because it subverts the infallible teachings of the popes over 2,000 years. I am, however, not in favor of such dialogues because one cannot seriously dialogue about the truth of the Catholic faith. So really this is an inverted dialogue, which is forced upon me.
What would happen if the pope suddenly utilized his infallibility to order you to obey him? What would you do?
In the measure where the pope would employ his infallibility as the successor of St. Peter in a solemn manner, I believe that the Holy Ghost would not allow the pope to be in error at this very moment. Of course, I would heed the pope then.
But if the pope invoked his infallibility to back the changes you so strongly object to now, what would your attitude be then?
The question does not even arise, because, fortunately, the Holy Ghost is always there and the Holy Ghost would make sure that the pope would not use his infallibility for something that would be contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is for this very reason that the pope does not employ his infallibility because the Holy Ghost would not allow such changes to take place under the imprimatur of infallibility.
But if this should come to pass?
It is inconceivable, but if it did, the church would cease to exist. That would mean there would be no God, because God would be contradicting Himself, which is impossible.
But isn't the fact that Pope Paul VI occupies the seat of St. Peter enough for you to heed whatever the pontiff as the vicar of Christ on earth asks you to do, just as other Catholics do?
Unfortunately, this is an error. It is a misconception of papal infallibility because since the Council of Vatican I, when the dogma of infallibility was proclaimed, the pope was already infallible. This was not a sudden invention. Infallibility was then far better understood than it is now because it was well known then that the pope was not infallible on everything under the sun.
He was only infallible in very specific matters of faith and morals. At that time, many enemies of the church did all they could to ridicule this dogma and propagate misconceptions. For example, the enemies of the church often said to the unknowing and naive that if the pope said a dog was a cat, it was the duty of Catholics blindly to accept this position without any question.
Of course this was an absurd interpretation and the Catholics knew that. This time the same enemies of the church, now that it serves their purpose, are working very hard to have whatever the pope says accepted, without question, as infallible, almost as if his words were uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
This impression, although widely promoted, is nevertheless utterly false.
Infallibility is extremely limited, only bearing on very specific cases which Vatican I has very well defined and detailed. It is not possible to say that whenever the pope speaks he is infallible. The fact is that the pope is a liberal, that all this liberal trend has taken place at the Council of Vatican II, and created a direction for the destruction of the church - a destruction which one expects to happen any day.
After all of these liberal ideas have been infiltrated into the seminaries, the catechisms and all the manifestations of the church, I am now being asked to align myself with these liberal ideas. Because I have not aligned myself with these liberal ideas that would destroy the church, there are attempts to suppress my seminaries. And it is for this reason that I am asked to stop ordaining priests.
Enormous pressure is being exerted on me to align myself and to accept this orientation of destruction of the church, a path which I cannot follow. I do not accept to be in contradiction with what the popes have asserted for 20 centuries. Both myself and those who support me obey all the popes who have preceded us, or we obey the present pope. If we do (obey the present pope, i.e. Paul VI), we then disobey all the popes that have preceded us. Finally we end up disobeying the Catholic faith and God.
But as the bishops (of old) obeyed the popes of their days, shouldn't you obey the pope of your day?
The bishops do not have to obey the humanist orders that contradict Catholic faith and doctrine as established by Jesus Christ and all the various popes throughout the centuries.
So then are you deliberately choosing to disobey the present pope?
It has been a soul-searching and painful choice because events have really made it a choice of whom you disobey rather than whom you obey. I am making this choice without doubt or hesitation. I have chosen to disobey the present pope so that I could be in communion with 262 (former) popes.
Your independence has been attributed by several observers to a tradition of Gallicanism.2
On the contrary, I'm completely Roman and not at all Gallican. I'm for the pope as successor of St. Peter in Rome. All we ask is that the pope be, in fact, St. Peter's successor, not the successor of J.J. Rousseau, the Freemasons, the humanists, the modernists and (the) liberals.
Since you have said that these ideas have been widely spread and accepted throughout the world, including within the church, do you not consider you are taking on too much? How do you expect the Society of St. Pius X to counteract such a trend against what would appear overwhelming odds?
I trust our Lord the Saviour. The priests of the Society of St. Pius X trust our Lord and I have no doubt that God is inspiring us all. All those who fight for the true faith have God's full support. Of course, compared to the liberal machine, we are very small. I could die tomorrow. But God is allowing me to live a little longer so that I can help others in fighting for the true faith. It has happened before in the church. True Catholics had to work for the survival of the faith under general opprobrium and persecution from those who pretended to be Catholics. It is a small price to pay for being on the side of Jesus Christ.
When did this happen?
It happened with the very first pope. St. Peter was leading the faithful in error by his bad example of following Mosaic Laws. St. Paul refused to obey this order and led the opposition to it. Paul won out and St. Peter rescinded his error.
In the fourth century. St. Athanasius refused to obey Pope Liberius's orders. At that time, the church had been infiltrated by the ideas of the Arian heresy and the pope had been pressured to go along- with them. St. Athanasius led the opposition against this departure from church doctrine.
He was attacked mercilessly by the hierarchy. He was suspended. When he refused to submit, he was excommunicated. The opposition to the heresy finally built up momentum and at the death of Pope Liberius, a new pope occupied St. Peter's seat and recognized the church's indebtedness to St. Athanasius. The excommunication was lifted. He was recognized as a savior of the church and canonized.
In the seventh century, Pope Honorius I favored the Monotheletism heresy - the proposition that Jesus Christ did not possess a human will and hence was not a true man. Many Catholics who knew the church doctrines refused to accept this and did everything they could to stop the spread of this heresy.
The Council of Constantinople condemned Honorius I in 681 and anathematized him. There are many more examples of this nature when true Catholics stood up against apparent great odds, not to destroy or change the church but to keep the true faith.
I do not consider the odds overwhelming. One of the major aims of our society is to ordain priests - real priests - so that the Sacrifice of the Mass will continue; so that catechisms will continue; so that the Catholic faith will continue. Of course some bishops attack and criticize us. Some try to thwart our mission. But this is only temporary because when all the seminaries will be empty – they are almost empty now - what will the bishops do? Then there will be no more priests.
Why do you think there will be no more priests?
Because the seminaries of today are not teaching anything about the making of a priest; they teach liberal psychology, sociology, humanism, modernism and many other sciences and semi sciences that are either contrary to Catholic doctrine or have nothing whatever to do with church teachings or with what a priest should know. As for Catholic teachings, they are hardly being taught in today's seminaries.
What is being taught in the seminaries today?
For instance, in a New York seminary, theology professors are teaching seminarians that, "Jesus did not necessarily see what the result of His death on the Cross would be;" that: "No one is so thoroughly consistent that he does not say something that disagrees with what he said in the past. This even applies to Jesus;" that, "Joseph may have been the natural father of Christ;” and another professor teaches that: "One psychiatrist recommends extramarital sexual relations as a cure for impotence - I am open in this area and not closed to possibilities.”
Are these statements documented and on record?
Yes.
Have they been brought to the attention of the hierarchy?
On numerous occasions.
Has the hierarchy made any attempt to stop such similar teachings?
Not to my knowledge.
Do you ever feel alone and isolated?
How can I feel alone when I am in communion with 262 popes and the whole of the Catholic faith? If you mean alone among other bishops, the answer is no. Hardly a day goes by that I (do not) receive some communication from some bishops, some priests, some laymen from different parts of the world expressing support and encouragement.
Why do they not come out publicly and support you?
As I have mentioned previously, many feel that they want to keep their positions in order to be in a position to do something about it should the occasion arise.
Does your stand separate you further from other Christian denominations?
Not at all. Only five days ago, some Orthodox heads came to see me to express their support for our stand.
Why should they express support when in fact you say that you are right and they are in error?
It is precisely because my stand is unequivocal that they support me. Many other Christian denominations have always looked at Rome as something of a stabilizing anchor in a tumultuous world. Whatever happened, they felt, Rome was always there, eternal, unchanging.
This presence gave them comfort and confidence.
Even more surprising are the Islamic leaders who have warmly congratulated me on my stand even though they fully know that I do not accept their religion.
Would not Christian charity try to avoid solidifying differences and divisions that could be healed?
Differences and divisions are part of this world. The unity of the church can only be gained by example and unswerving commitment to our Catholic faith. Charity starts with loyalty to one's faith.
What makes you believe that significant numbers of Orthodox, Protestants or Moslems support you?
Apart from direct, frequent contact these people have made with me, there was, for example, an extensive survey conducted by a reputable newspaper in Paris and they have surveyed members of these various denominations. The result was that far from finding our faith offensive or threatening to them, they admired the unequivocal stand, which we are taking.
On the other hand, they show utter contempt for all those liberal Catholics who were trying to make a mishmash of our Catholic faith as well as their religion.
Has not the pope invited you to be reconciled? Have you accepted this invitation?
I requested to see the pope last August. The pope refused unless I signed a statement accepting unconditionally all the resolutions of Vatican II. I would very much like to see the pope, but I cannot sign resolutions paving the way for the destruction of the church.
How can you be loyal to the church and disobedient to the pope?
One must understand the meaning of obedience and must distinguish between blind obedience and the virtue of obedience. Indiscriminate obedience is actually a sin against the virtue of obedience.
So if we disobey in order to practice the virtue of obedience rather than submit to unlawful commands contrary to Catholic moral teachings, all one has to do is to consult any Catholic theology books to realize we are not sinning against the virtue of obedience.
Notes
1 The followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre insist on preserving the so-called Tridentine Mass. This was the Mass (and attendant ritual) that followed upon the Council of Trent (Trento, Italy) and that was pronounced as permanent and irrevocable by Pope St. Pius V in 1570. This is the Mass that Latin Rite Roman Catholics knew for 400 years until the service was rewritten after Vatican Council II (1962-1965).
2 Gallicanism, associated with French Roman Catholicism, was a tradition of resistance to papal authority. There were two aspects of Gallicanism, royal and ecclesiastical. The first asserted the rights of French monarchs over the French Roman Catholic Church; the second asserted the rights of general councils over the pope. Both were condemned as heresies at the First Vatican Council in 1870.
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| Study: Wearing a 'Used' Mask Could be Worse than No Mask at Alll |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 09:02 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
- Replies (2)
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Wearing a used mask could be worse than no mask amid COVID-19: study
NY Post | December 16, 2020
Wearing a used mask could be more dangerous than not wearing one at all when it comes to warding off COVID-19, a new study has found.
A new three-layer surgical mask is 65 percent efficient in filtering particles in the air — but when used, that number drops to 25 percent, according to the study published Tuesday in the Physics of Fluids.
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and California Baptist University say that masks slow down airflow, making people more susceptible to breathing in particles — and a dirty face mask can’t effectively filter out the tiniest of droplets.
“It is natural to think that wearing a mask, no matter new or old, should always be better than nothing,” said author Jinxiang Xi.
“Our results show that this belief is only true for particles larger than 5 micrometers, but not for fine particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers.”
To reach their findings, researchers used a computer model of a person wearing a pleated three-layer surgical mask to track how the face covering affected airflow and how particles passed through. They also looked at how the tiny droplets settled onto the face, in the airway and where they land in the nose, pharynx or deep lung.
They found that wearing a mask “significantly slows down” airflow, reducing a mask’s efficacy and making a person more susceptible to inhaling aerosols into the nose — where SARS-CoV-2 likes to lurk.
“In this study, we found that the protective efficacy of a mask for the nasal airway decreases at lower inhalation flow rates,” the study said.
The pleats of a face mask also significantly affect airflow patterns and their efficacy changes with more use, the researchers found. The team plans to study how mask shapes affect protection from COVID-19.
“We hope public health authorities strengthen the current preventative measures to curb COVID-19 transmission, like choosing a more effective mask, wearing it properly for the highest protection, and avoid using an excessively used or expired surgical mask,” said Xi.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Anti-Religious Bigots Are Using Riots And COVID To Go On A Church Vandalism Spree |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 08:33 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
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Anti-Religious Bigots Are Using Riots And COVID To Go On A Church Vandalism Spree
As our nation wrestles with challenging issues, anti-religious rioters and officeholders are forgetting that successful social movements don’t attack religion.
Rather, they are usually rooted in it.
The Federalist | December 15, 2020
In the chaotic year of 2020, anti-religious activists have learned that the best place to hide is in a crowd. With news cycles crowded by COVID-19, nationwide protests and riots, a contentious election, and much more, such activists were given perfect cover to vandalize houses of worship across America while drawing little criticism from secular media or public officials. These tragic acts of vandalism matter, however, and the motives behind them deserve examination.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently reported at least 39 incidents of vandalism on Catholic Church property since June 22. This alarming number makes sense given the Catholic Church’s history of statuary and the frequent targeting of statues in this year’s riots.
In addition to incidents such as satanic graffiti on a church in Connecticut, and a Florida man driving his van into a church before lighting the vehicle on fire, numerous church statues of Jesus, Mary, saints, and even a monument for children killed by abortion have been toppled, beheaded, and graffitied. That’s not all. The many incidents on church property detailed by the Conference of Catholic Bishops don’t account for the numerous statues of Catholic saints on public property that have been vandalized, too.
In St. Louis, large groups of sometimes-violent protesters graffitied the prominent public statue of St. Louis (King Louis IX), the city’s namesake, who frequently shared meals with beggars and ministered to other outcasts such as lepers, the blind, and even prostitutes.
The violence went further in California. Protesters destroyed a statue of St. Junipero Serra, a Spanish missionary who founded many historic churches (one of which was largely burned down in July) and evangelized thousands of Native Americans. Additionally, as Pope Francis noted when he canonized Serra in 2015, “Junipero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it.”
Certain elements of the race-related protests this year have surely been honest, well-intentioned efforts, but that cannot be said of this violence that has treated St. Junipero and St. Louis the same way it has treated Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Instead, a subgroup of radical secularists among the rioters has used the recent lawlessness as an opportunity to advance their own agenda — one that opposes Judeo-Christian religion in its entirety.
While Catholic statues have been a convenient target, these radicals haven’t chosen to destroy religious figures at random. Their animosity toward faith traditions is intended. As you might recall, rioters set fire to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., this past May. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, rioters graffitied “Free Palestine” at a Jewish synagogue. Further examples abound.
Even more tragically, many people of faith have watched this vandalism while being prohibited from stepping inside their own houses of worship, sometimes due to anti-religious discrimination from government officials. One prime example is Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak’s COVID-19 order, currently being challenged in court, which allowed casinos to open at half capacity while limiting churches to just 50 people.
As Archbishop Charles Chaput and Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Michael Farris pointed out, some officials implementing discriminatory restrictions have also been slow to protect the church property from rioters. As our nation wrestles with challenging issues, officials such as Sisolak and anti-religious rioters are forgetting that successful social movements — including the civil rights movement for racial equality in the law — don’t attack religion. Rather, they are usually rooted in it.
The American Revolution and the French Revolution provide a relevant history lesson. These two movements shared some noble goals, both seeking freedom from national theocracy and monarchy — but those ends were pursued in two very different ways.
The French Revolution was outright hostile toward religion. Church property was vandalized. Priests were arrested just for conducting their normal ministry. Religious statues were removed from the public eye and sometimes demolished because religious devotion threatened the aims of the revolution.
Our Founding Fathers chose a better path. They cared deeply about religion and forged a new nation where people of various faiths could live peacefully without coercion from an all-powerful central government. The founders’ success in winning independence, reforming our governance, and improving American life was rooted in a commitment to free speech and Judeo-Christian principles that fostered a true tolerance.
Whether it be responding to COVID-19, police brutality, or political unrest, the solution to our nation’s present problems will not be found in throwing out those principles of liberty and civility. The answer lies in recommitting to them and working to live them out more fully, more consistently, and more devotedly than ever before.
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| Health Worker Hospitalized After ‘Serious Reaction’ to Pfizer’s CV Vaccine |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 08:28 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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Alaska Health Worker Hospitalized After Experiencing ‘Serious Reaction’ to Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine
Breitbart | 16 Dec 20200
A health worker in Alaska experienced a “serious reaction” and was subsequently hospitalized after receiving a dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved last week, according to reports.
The worker had what the New York Times described as a “serious reaction” after receiving the vaccination and remained in the hospital as of Wednesday morning, according to the paper. The worker had “no history of drug allergies,” the Times reported, adding that it remains “unclear whether he or she suffered from other types of allergies, according to one person familiar with the case.”
This month, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) confirmed that it was providing “resuscitation facilities” in vaccination centers following reports of two individuals experiencing anaphylactic reactions after receiving the vaccine. However, the two health care workers reportedly had histories of allergic reactions.
“Resuscitation facilities should be available at all times for all vaccinations. Vaccination should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available,” the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said, offering “precautionary advice.”
The FDA approved Pfizer’s vaccine for emergency use on Friday. On Monday, a critical care nurse out of New York reportedly became the first person in the U.S. to receive the Pfizer vaccine outside of clinical trials:
Quote:Today, ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay made history as the first American to be vaccinated.
"I felt a huge sense of relief after I took the vaccine… There is hope." pic.twitter.com/45RWerTqdX
The news coincides with a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this week, which found that an increasing number of Americans have expressed willingness to receive a vaccine, contingent on two factors: If it is deemed safe and offered for free. Seventy-one percent indicated that they will “definitely” or “probably” get a coronavirus vaccine based on those factors — an eight-point jump from the 63 percent who said the same in September.
Willingness to get the vaccination rose across ethnic groups and political parties, the survey showed.
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| December 17th - 23rd: The Great 'O Antiphons' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2020, 08:02 AM - Forum: Advent
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DECEMBER 17 - THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT ANTIPHONS
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)
The Church enters to-day on the seven days, which precede the Vigil of Christmas, and which are known in the Liturgy under the name of the Greater Ferias. The ordinary of the Advent Office becomes more solemn; the Antiphons of the Psalms, both for Lauds and the Hours of the day, are proper, and allude expressly to the great Coming. Every day, at Vespers, is sung a solemn Antiphon, which consists of a fervent prayer to the Messias, whom it addresses by one of the titles given him by the sacred Scriptures.
In the Roman Church, there are seven of these Antiphons, one for each of the Greater Ferias, They are commonly called the O’s of Advent, because they all begin with that interjection. In other Churches, during the Middle Ages, two more were added to these seven; one to our Blessed Lady, O Virgo Virginum; and the other to the Angel Gabriel, O Gabriel; or to St. Thomas the Apostle, whose feast comes during the Greater Ferias; it began O Thoma Didyme [It is more modern than the O Gabriel; but dating from the 13th century, it was almost universally used in its stead.] There were even Churches, where twelve Great Antiphons were sung; that is, besides the nine we have just mentioned, there was Rex Pacifice to our Lord, O mundi Domina to our Lady, and O Hierusalem to the city of the people of God.
The canonical Hour of Vespers has been selected as the most appropriate time for this solemn supplication to our Saviour, because, as the Church sings in one of her hymns, it was in the Evening of the world (vergente mundi vespere) that the Messias came amongst us. These Antiphons are sung at the Magnificat, to show us that the Saviour, whom we expect, is to come to us by Mary. They are sung twice; once before and once after the Canticle, as on Double Feasts, and this to show their great solemnity. In some Churches it was formerly the practice to sing them thrice; that is, before the Canticle, before the Gloria Patri, and after the Sicut erat. Lastly, these admirable Antiphons, which contain the whole pith of the Advent Liturgy, are accompanied by a chant replete with melodious gravity, and by ceremonies of great expressiveness, though, in these latter, there is no uniform practice followed. Let us enter into the spirit of the Church; let us reflect on the great Day which is coming; that thus we may take oar share in these the last and most earnest solicitations of the Church imploring her Spouse to come, and to which He at length yields.
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Here are the Prophecies associated with each of these Titles of Our Lord Jesus Christ:
December 17th: Sapientia - Wisdom
Isaias 11:2-3
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord, He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears.
Isaias 28:29
This also is come forth from the Lord God of hosts, to make his counsel wonderful, and magnify justice.
December 18th: Adonai - Lord of Israel
Isaias 11:4-5
But he shall judge the poor with justice, and shall reprove with equity the meek of the earth: and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. And justice shall be the girdle of his loins: and faith the girdle of his reins.
Isaias 33:22
For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king: he will save us.
December 19th: Radix Jesse - Root of Jesse
Isaias 11:1
And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.
Isaias 11:10
In that day the root of Jesse, who standeth for an ensign of the people, him the Gentiles shall beseech, and his sepulchre shall be glorious.
Micheas 5:1
Now shalt thou be laid waste, O daughter of the robber: they have laid siege against us, with a rod shall they strike the cheek of the judge of Israel.
Romans 15:8-13
For I say that Christ Jesus was minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. But that the Gentiles are to glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: Therefore will I confess to thee, O Lord, among the Gentiles, and will sing to thy name. And again he saith: Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people. And again: Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and magnify him, all ye people. And again Isaias saith: There shall be a root of Jesse; and he that shall rise up to rule the Gentiles, in him the Gentiles shall hope. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing; that you may abound in hope, and in the power of the Holy Ghost.
Apocalypse 5:1-5
And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne, a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel, proclaiming with a loud voice: Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man was able, neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth, to open the book, nor to look on it. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open the book, nor to see it. And one of the ancients said to me: Weep not; behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
December 20th: Clavis David - Key of David
Isaias 22:22
And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.
Isaias 9:6
For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace.
December 21st: Oriens - Radiant Dawn, Dayspring
Isaias 9:2
The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen.
Malachias 4:1-3
For behold the day shall come kindled as a furnace: and all the proud, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall set them on fire, saith the Lord of hosts, it shall not leave them root, nor branch. But unto you that fear my name, the Sun of justice shall arise, and health in his wings: and you shall go forth, and shall leap like calves of the herd. And you shall tread down the wicked when they shall be ashes under the sole of your feet in the day that I do this, saith the Lord of hosts.
December 22nd: Rex Gentium - King of all Nations, King of the Gentiles
Isaias 9:7
His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace: he shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and for ever: the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Isaias 2:4
And he shall judge the Gentiles, and rebuke many people: and they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war.
December 23rd: Emmanuel - God with us
Isaias 7:14
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel.
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| January 14th - St. Hilary of Poitiers |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-17-2020, 01:37 AM - Forum: January
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Saint Hilary of Poitiers
Doctor of the Church
(301-368)
Saint Hilary was a native of Poitiers in Aquitaine. Born and educated a pagan, it was not until near middle age that he embraced Christianity, moved to that step primarily by the idea of God presented to him in the Holy Scriptures. He soon converted his wife and daughter, and separated himself rigidly from all non-Catholic company, fearing the influence of error, rampant in a number of false philosophies and heresies, for himself and his family.
He entered Holy Orders with the consent of his very virtuous wife, and separated from his family as was required of the clergy. He later wrote a very famous letter to his dearly-loved daughter, encouraging her to adopt a consecrated life. She followed this counsel and died, still young, a holy death.
In 353 Saint Hilary was chosen bishop of his native city. Arianism, under the protection of the Emperor Constantius, was then at the heights of its exaltation, and Saint Hilary found himself called upon to support the orthodox cause in several Gallic councils, in which Arian bishops formed an overwhelming majority. He was in consequence accused to the emperor, who banished him to Phrygia. He spent his more than three years of exile in composing his great works on the Trinity.
In 359 he attended the Council of Seleucia, in which Arians, semi-Arians, and Catholics contended for the mastery. He never ceased his combat against the errors of the enemies of the Divinity of Christ. With the deputies of the council he went to Constantinople, and there so dismayed the heads of the Arian party that they prevailed upon the emperor to let him return to Gaul. He traversed Gaul, Italy and Illyria, preaching wherever he went, disconcerting the heretics and procuring the triumph of orthodoxy. He wrote a famous treatise on the Synods. After some eight years of missionary travel he returned to Poitiers, where he died in peace in 368.
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| January 13th - The Baptism of Our Lord and St. Veronica of Milan |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-17-2020, 01:36 AM - Forum: January
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The Baptism of Our Lord
In the life of Christ, His baptism in the Jordan is an event of the highest importance, because it represents a significant phase in the work of redemption. We know that the liturgy of the ecclesiastical year commemorates all the phases of Christ's redemptive work; and recently, during the season of the Nativity, we have reflected on His coming into the world, poor and solitary in a grotto at Bethlehem, and on His circumcision. Now His baptism in the Jordan marks the divinely inaugurated beginning of Our Lord's public life. Indeed, Saint Peter states that at His baptism, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Christ, the Messiah, which means the Anointed One: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and He went about doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil, for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38) An anointing has always been the symbolic, visible representation of an intimately established union, a specific, defined alliance or covenant between God and one of His servants. God the Father speaks at this moment, to make clear who this Person is. The foretold Saviour is His Divine Son, begotten from all eternity: This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
In the symbolism of His baptism, Christ, Himself immaculate, assumes the sins of the world, descends into the purifying waters, and raises mankind to divine sonship. His baptism was vicarious in nature; He stands in the Jordan in our stead. Consequently, this act must find its complement in our personal redemption. Our lives are profoundly altered through Christ's redemptive sacrifice, on at least three such occasions: our Baptism, our attendance at Holy Mass, and our death in Christ.
At our Baptism we were immersed with Jesus, with Him we died and were buried. Then we emerged, and for the first time heaven opened to us, as the Holy Spirit made His advent into our soul, and our Father in heaven looked down upon us, now His sons, His children.
In each Holy Mass, Christ's baptismal offering is again operative. Through the Holy Sacrifice we are immersed in His sacrificial death; heaven then opens and the Holy Spirit descends through Holy Communion. Through the pledge of the sacrificial Banquet the Father assures us of renewed and enriched sonship in Christ.
The baptism of Christ is accomplished within us a third time at our death, if we are united with Him, for death is indeed a sort of baptism. Death is like immersion into the dark depths, but when we receive the Last Sacraments, on emerging, it is to a different life — it is our hope and our confidence, if we have been faithful to God's grace, that it will be the life of glory, the beatific vision. Then we will see the Blessed Trinity, no longer through the darkened sun-glass of faith, but in immediate vision, face to face.
To sum up, today's liturgy helps us to understand more clearly the basic structure of spiritual life, the redemptive acts of Christ. Upon that foundation the edifice rises through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, while the Lord's return, at our death, brings completion to the work.
Saint Veronica of Milan
Virgin
(1445-1497)
Saint Veronica's parents were peasants of a village near Milan. From her childhood she toiled hard in the house and the field, and accomplished cheerfully every menial task. Gradually the desire for perfection grew within her; she became deaf to the jokes and songs of her companions, and sometimes, when reaping and hoeing, would hide her face and weep. Untaught, she began to be anxious about her lack of instruction, and rose secretly at night to try to learn to read. Our Lady told her that other things were necessary, but not this: My daughter, do not be anxious, it will be sufficient for you to know the three letters that I bring you from heaven. The first is purity of heart, which makes us love God above all things; you must have only one love, that of My Son. The second is not to murmur against the faults of your neighbor, but to support them with patience and pray for the one in question. The third is to meditate every day on the Passion of Jesus Christ, who accepts you for His spouse.
After three years' patient waiting she was received as a lay-sister in the convent of Saint Martha at Milan. The community was extremely poor, and Veronica's duty was to beg throughout the city for their daily food. Three years after receiving the religious habit she was afflicted with constant bodily pains, yet never would consent to be relieved of any of her labors, or to omit one of her prayers. By exact obedience she became a living copy of her rule, and obeyed with a smile the slightest wish of her Superior. She sought until the last the hardest and most humble occupations, and in their performance enjoyed some of the highest favors ever granted to Saints.
By the first letter taught her by Our Lady, Saint Veronica learned to begin her daily duties for no human motive, but for God alone; by the second, to carry out what she had thus begun by attending to her own affairs, never judging her neighbor, but praying for those who manifestly lacked virtue; by the third she was enabled to forget her own pains and sorrows in those of her Lord, and to weep hourly, but silently, over the memory of the wrongs He suffered. She had constant ecstasies, and saw in successive visions the whole life of Jesus, and many other mysteries. Yet, by a special grace, neither her raptures nor her tears ever interrupted her labors, which ended only with death. She died in 1497, on the day she had foretold, after a six months' illness, in the thirtieth year of her religious profession.
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| December 17th - St. Olympia of Constantinople |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-17-2020, 01:32 AM - Forum: December
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Saint Olympia of Constantinople
Widow and Deaconess
(† 440)
Saint Olympia, the glory of the widows in the Eastern Church, was born of a noble and illustrious family. Left an orphan at a tender age, she was brought up by Theodosia, sister of Saint Amphilochius, a virtuous and prudent woman. At the age of eighteen, Olympias was regarded as a model of Christian virtues. It was then that she was married to Nebridius, a young man worthy of her; the new spouses promised one another to live in perfect continence. After less than two years of this angelic union, Nebridius went to receive in heaven the reward of his virtues.
The Emperor would have engaged her in a second marriage, but she replied: If God had destined me to live in the married state, He would not have taken my first spouse. The event which has broken my bonds shows me the way Providence has traced for me. She had resolved to consecrate her life to prayer and penance, and to devote her fortune to the poor. She liberated all her slaves, who nonetheless wished to continue to serve her, and she administered her fortune as a trustee for the poor. The farthest cities, islands, deserts and poor churches found themselves blessed through her liberality.
Nectarius, Archbishop of Constantinople, had a high esteem for the saintly widow and made her a deaconess of his church. The duties of deaconesses were to prepare the altar linens and instruct the catechumens of their sex; they aided the priests in works of charity, and they made a vow of perpetual chastity. When Saint John Chrysostom succeeded Nectarius, he had for Olympias no less respect than his predecessor, and through her aid he built a hospital for the sick and refuges for the elderly and orphans. When he was exiled in the year 404, he continued to encourage her in her good works by his letters, and she assisted him to ransom some of his fellow captives.
Saint Olympia, as one of his supporters, was persecuted. When she refused to deal with the usurper of the episcopal see, she was mistreated and calumniated, and her goods were sold at a public auction. Finally she, too, was banished with the entire community of nuns which she governed in Constantinople. Her illnesses added to her sufferings, but she never ceased her good works until her death in the year 410. She outlived the exiled Patriarch by about two or three years.
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| The Communist Infiltration of the Catholic Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 12:54 PM - Forum: Resources Online
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THE GREATEST CONSPIRACY (Communist infiltration of the Church)
Christian Order| November 2000
A few months back, during social chit-chat which turned with predictable concern to the modern plague of clerical apostasy, a venerable member of the Society of Jesus recounted various word of mouth histories of Communist infiltration of the Jesuits. These included two men sent to join the Society in Italy and Spain by their respective national Communist Parties - the former having left to return to the Party in the early 1950s after more than a dozen years of study and actual ordination; the latter leaving the Society before ordination a decade ago. More disturbing still was the case of a prominent Jesuit seminary rector in Rome who, after being run over and killed, was allegedly found to be a member of the KGB. We pondered briefly all the imponderables of such infiltration as well as the domino effect it might have set in train, like: how many students were deformed by the seminary professor down the years; how many others, clerical and lay, they in turn, as priests, had corrupted; how many other seminaries and Orders were similarly infiltrated; and, above all, how many of the infiltrators and their warped progeny had risen to the episcopate.
In recent years this latter quandary in particular has emerged from the realms of much derided "conspiracy theory" to become a plausible contributory explanation for the otherwise inexplicable levels of corruption, negligence and indifference within Western episcopates. The fact that we will never precisely quantify the degree of infiltration and only rarely identify "plants" beyond all doubt, is no reason to ignore the reality. Besides, it's not as if we hadn't been warned. Ex-Communist and celebrated convert Douglas Hyde revealed long ago that in the 1930s the Communist leadership issued a worldwide directive about infiltrating the Catholic Church. While in the early 1950s, Mrs Bella Dodd was also providing detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church. Speaking as a former high ranking official of the American Communist Party, Mrs Dodd said:
"In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within."
The idea was for these men to be ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops. A dozen years before Vatican II she stated that: "Right now they are in the highest places in the Church" - where they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church's effectiveness against Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that "you will not recognise the Catholic Church."
Mrs Dodd, who converted to the Faith at the end of her life, was personally acquainted with this diabolic project since, as a Communist agent, part of her brief was to encourage young radicals (not always card-carrying Communists) to enter Catholic seminaries. She alone had encouraged nearly 1,000 such youngsters to infiltrate the seminaries and religious orders! One monk who attended a Bella Dodd lecture in the early 1950s recalled:
Quote:"I listened to that woman for four hours and she had my hair standing on end. Everything she said has been fulfilled to the letter. You would think she was the world's greatest prophet, but she was no prophet. She was merely exposing the step-by-step battle plan of Communist subversion of the Catholic Church. She explained that of all the world's religions, the Catholic Church was the only one feared by the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent. The whole idea was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the Faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion: something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing. Once the Faith was destroyed, she explained that there would be a guilt complex introduced into the Church…. to label the 'Church of the past' as being oppressive, authoritarian, full of prejudices, arrogant in claiming to be the sole possessor of truth, and responsible for the divisions of religious bodies throughout the centuries. This would be necessary in order to shame Church leaders into an 'openness to the world,' and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church."
This conspiracy has been confirmed time and again by Soviet defectors. Ex-KGB officer Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected in 1961 and in 1984 forecast with 94% accuracy all the astonishing developments in the Communist Bloc since that time, confirmed several years ago that this "penetration of the Catholic and other churches" is part of the Party's "general line [i.e. unchanged policy] in the struggle against religion." Hundreds of files secreted to the West by former KGB archivist Vassili Mitrokhin and published in 1999 tell a similar tale, about the KGB cultivating the closest possible relationships with 'progressive' Catholics and financing their activities. One of the leftist organs identified was the small Italian Catholic press agency Adista, which for decades has promoted every imaginable postconciliar cause or "reform" and whose Director was named in The Mitrokhin Archive as a paid KGB agent. Interestingly, just prior to the Mitrokhin expose it was little Adista that ultra-Modernist Cardinal Martini utilised to diffuse his dissident rant at the 1999 European Synod, where, among other things, he called for a "new Council".
What is often lost in all of this, however, is that Communism (along with the New Age movement) is simply a chief tool of Freemasonry; it's policy of Church infiltration just an extension of the Masonic plan clearly laid out in the Alta Vendita and other bona fide Masonic documents recognised by the Popes. Even experts like Anatoliy Golitsyn have failed to grasp this point. In The Perestroika Deception (1996), his collection of very accurate analyses and forecasts submitted to the CIA during the period 1985-95, he hints at a controlling force behind Soviet Communism but lacks "the facilities to study how it might be operating" under cover of some "front" organisation. At the same time he complains that despite public plaudits for the accuracy of his forecasts, Western leaders have regularly ignored his warnings. He fails to see that having financed and nurtured Russian Communism from its inception, the elite Freemasons (in symbiotic alliance with transnationalist billionaires who shape world affairs for more prosaic reasons of power and profit) will not always allow a free hand to the likes of Bill Clinton, who himself attributes "a lot of breaks" in his life to his forty year membership of the Masonic Order of De Molay.
There are, of course, logistically implausible and just plain silly conspiracy theories. Yet, as the widespread homosexual infiltration of the postconciliar Church attests, the idea that evil men never seek each other out to work together is sillier still. Moreover, the insistence of liberal propagandists that there is no Masonic conspiracy (aided and abetted by fellow-travellers like themselves) is doubtless the greatest conspiracy of all. As E. Michael Jones explains in his dissection of one such propaganda exercise, by distorting and misrepresenting primary historical sources - like ex-Mason Abbe de Barruel, who wrote in the late eighteenth century that "the object of their [Masonic] conspiracy is to overturn every altar where Christ is adored" - the liberal Establishment seeks to protect and maintain at all costs the nihilistic spirit of the Enlightenment, which Masonic legacy underpins that dissolute and crumbling artifice we call Modernity.
As so many of our Shepherds have themselves bowed to the insidious forces of the Enlightenment and embraced Modernity, it might be said that all these ruminations are now superfluous; that with the secular liberal mindset so entrenched within the Church the whole infiltration/subversion thesis has become purely academic. Nonetheless, Catholics especially should know more about all of this; about how to distinguish Masons-and-Reds-under-the-bed 'conspiracies' from the real thing. And since the bishops are not about to alert them or explain the difference, this edition, though unsettling for some, will fill a gap.
Quote:THE PONTIFFS vs. THE LODGE
"The papal condemnations of Freemasonry are so severe and sweeping in their tenor as to be quite unique in the history of Church legislation. During the last two centuries Freemasonry has been expressly anathematized by at least ten different Popes and condemned directly or indirectly by almost every Pontiff that sat on the Chair of St. Peter."
"The Popes charge the Freemasons with occult criminal activities, with 'shameful deeds', with worshipping satan himself (a charge which is hinted at in some Papal documents), with infamy, blasphemy, sacrilege and the most abominable heresies against the State, with anarchical and revolutionary principles and with favouring and promoting what is now called Bolshevism; with corrupting and perverting the minds of youth; with shameful hypocrisy and lying, by means of which Freemasons strive to hide their wickedness under a cloak of probity and respectability, while in reality they are the very 'synagogue of satan', whose direct aim and object is the complete destruction of Christianity."
Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement (1930), Fr E. Cahill, S.J.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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