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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1979 The New Mass and the Pope |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:41 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The New Mass and the Pope
How often during these last ten years have I not had occasion to respond to questions concerning the weighty problems of the New Mass and the Pope. In answering them I have ever been careful to breathe with the spirit of the Church, conforming myself to her Faith as expressed in her theological principles, and to her pastoral prudence as expressed in moral theology and in the long experiences of her history.
I think I can say that my own views have not changed over the years and that they are, happily, those of the great majority of priests and faithful attached to the indefectible Tradition of the Church. It should be clear that the few lines which follow are not an exhaustive study of these problems, The purpose, rather is to clarify our conclusions to such an extent that no one may be mistaken regarding the official position of the Society of St, Pius X.
It must be understood immediately that we do not hold to the absurd idea that if the New Mass is valid, we are then free to assist at it. The Church has always forbidden the faithful to assist at the Masses of heretics and schismatics, even when they are valid. It is clear that no one can assist at sacrilegious Masses or at Masses which endanger our faith.
Now, it is easy to show that the New Mass, as it was formulated by the officially authorized Conciliar Liturgical Commission considered together with the accompanying explanation of Mgr. Bugnini, manifests an inexplicable rapprochement with the theology and liturgy of the Protestants. The following fundamental dogmas of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are not clearly represented and are even contradicted:
- that the priest is the essential minister of the Rite;
- that in the Mass there is a true sacrifice, a sacrificial action;
- that the Victim or Host is Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, present under the species of bread and wine, with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity;
- that this Sacrifice is a propitiatory one;
- that the Sacrifice and the Sacrament are effected by the words of the Consecration alone, and not also by those which either precede or follow them.
It is sufficient to enumerate a few of the novelties in the New Mass to be convinced of the rapprochement with the Protestants;
- the altar replaced by a table without an altar stone;
- Mass celebrated facing the people, concelebrated, in a loud voice, and in the vernacular;
- the Mass divided into two distinct parts: Liturgy of the Word, and Liturgy of the Eucharist;
- the cheapening of the sacred vessels, the use of leavened bread, distribution of Holy Communion in the hand, and by the laity, and even by women;
- the Blessed Sacrament hidden in corners;
- the Epistle read by women;
- Holy Communion brought to the sick by laity.
All these innovations are authorized. One can fairly say without exaggeration that most of these Masses are sacrilegious acts which pervert the Faith by diminishing it. The de-sacralization is such that these Masses risk the loss of their supernatural character, their mysterium fidei; they would then be no more than acts of natural religion. These New Masses are not only incapable of fulfilling our Sunday obligation, but are such that we must apply to them the canonical rules which the Church customarily applies to communicatio in sacris with Orthodox Churches and Protestant sects.
Must one conclude further that all these Masses are invalid? As long as the essential conditions for validity are present (matter, form, intention, and a validly ordained priest), I do not see how one can affirm this.
The prayers at the Offertory, the Canon, and the Priest’s Communion which surround the words of Consecration are necessary, not to the validity of the Sacrifice and the Sacrament, but rather to their integrity. When the imprisoned Cardinal Mindszenty, desiring to nourish himself with the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and to escape the gaze of his captors, pronounced solely the words of Consecration over a little bread and wine, he most certainly accomplished the Sacrifice and the Sacrament.
It is clear, however, that fewer and fewer Masses are valid these days, as the faith of priests is destroyed and they possess no longer the intention to do what the Church does – an intention which the Church cannot change. The current formation of those who are called seminarians today does not prepare them to celebrate Mass validly. The propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass is no longer considered the essential work of the priest. Nothing is sadder or more disappointing than to read the sermons or teachings of the Conciliar bishops on the subject of vocations, or on the occasion of a priestly ordination. They no longer know what a priest is.
Nevertheless, in order to judge the subjective fault of those who celebrate the New Mass as of those who attend it, we must apply the roles of the discernment of spirits given us in moral and pastoral theology. We (the priests of the Society) must always act as doctors of the soul and not as judge and hangmen. Those who are tempted by this latter course are animated by a bitter spirit and not true zeal for souls. I hope that our young priests will be inspired by the words of St. Pius X in his first encyclical, and by the numerous texts on this subject to be found in such works as The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Chautard, Christian Perfection and Contemplation by Garrigou-Lagrange, and Christ the Ideal of the Monk by Dom Marmion.
Let us now pass to a second but no less important subject: does the Church have a true Pope or an impostor on the Throne of St. Peter? Happy are those who have lived and died without having to pose such a question! One must indeed recognize that the pontificate of Paul VI posed, and continues to pose, a serious problem of conscience for the faithful. Without reference to his culpability for the terrible demolition of the Church which took place under his pontificate, one cannot but realize that he hastened the causes of that decline in every domain. One can fairly ask oneself how it was possible that a successor of Peter can, in so little time, have caused more damage to the Church than the French Revolution.
Some precise facts, such as the signatures which he gave to Article VII in the Instruction concerning the New Mass, and to the Declaration on Religious Liberty, are indeed scandalous and have led certain traditionalists to affirm that Paul VI was heretical and thus no longer Pope. They argue further that, chosen by a heretical Pope, the great majority of the cardinals are not cardinals at all and thus lacked the authority to elect another Pope. Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II were thus, they say, illegitimately elected. They continue that it is inadmissible to pray for a pope who is not Pope or to have any "conversations" (like mine of November 1978) with one who has no right to the Chair of Peter.
As with the question of the invalidity of the Novus Ordo, those who affirm that there is no Pope over-simplify the problem. The reality is more complex. If one begins to study the question of whether or not a Pope can be heretical, one quickly discovers that the problem is not as simple as one might have thought. The very objective study of Xaverio de Silverira on this subject demonstrates that a good number of theologians teach that the Pope can be heretical as a private doctor or theologian but not as a teacher of the Universal Church. One must then examine in what measure Pope Paul VI willed to engage in infallibility in the diverse cases where he signed texts close to heresy if not formally heretical.
But we can say that in the two cases cited above, as in many another, Paul VI acted much more the Liberal than as a man attached to heresy. For when one informed him of the danger that he ran in approving certain conciliar texts, he would proceed to render the text contradictory by adding a formula contrary in meaning to affirmations already in the text, or by drafting an equivocal formula. Now, equivocation is the very mark of the Liberal, who is inconsistent by nature.
The Liberalism of Paul VI, recognized by his friend, Cardinal Daniélou, is thus sufficient to explain the disasters of his pontificate. Pope Pius IX, in particular, spoke often of the Liberal Catholic, whom he considered a destroyer of the Church. The Liberal Catholic is a two-sided being, living in a world of continual self-contradiction. While he would like to remain Catholic, he is possessed by a thirst to appease the world. He affirms his faith weakly, fearing to appear too dogmatic, and as a result, his actions are similar to those of the enemies of the Catholic Faith.
Can a Pope be Liberal and remain Pope? The Church has always severely reprimanded Liberal Catholics, but she has not always excommunicated them. Here, too, we must continue in the spirit of the Church. We must refuse Liberalism from whatever source it comes because the Church has aways condemned it. She has done so because it is contrary, in the social realm especially, to the Kingship of Our Lord.
Does not the exclusion of the cardinals of over eighty years of ages, and the secret meetings which preceded and prepared the last two Conclaves, render them invalid? Invalid: no, that is saying too much. Doubtful at the time: perhaps. But in any case, the subsequent unanimous acceptance of the election by the Cardinals and the Roman clergy suffices to validate it. That is the teaching of the theologians.
The visibility of the Church is too necessary to its existence for it to be possible that God would allow that visibility to disappear for decades. The reasoning of those who deny that we have a Pope puts the Church in an inextricable situation. Who will tell us who the future Pope is to be? How, as there are no Cardinals, is he to be chosen? This spirit is a schismatical one for at least the majority of those who attach themselves to certainly schismatical sects like Palmar de Troya, the Eglise Latine de Toulouse, and others.
Our Fraternity absolutely refuses to enter into such reasonings.
We wish to remain attached to Rome and to the Successor of Peter, while refusing his Liberalism through fidelity to his predecessors. We are not afraid to speak to him, respectfully but firmly, as did St. Paul with St. Peter.
And so, far from refusing to pray for the Pope, we redouble our prayers and supplications that the Holy Ghost will grant him light and strength in his affirmations and defense of the Faith.
Thus, I have never refused to go to Rome at his request or that of his representatives. The Truth must be affirmed at Rome above all other places. It is of God, and He will assure its ultimate triumph.
Consequently, the Society of St. Pius X, its priests, brothers, sisters, and oblates, cannot tolerate among its members those who refuse to pray for the Pope or affirm that the Novus Ordo Missae is per se invalid. Certainly, we suffer from this continual incoherence which consists in praising all the Liberal orientations of Vatican II and at the same time straining to mitigate its effects. But all of this must incite us to prayer and to the firm maintenance of Tradition rather than to the affirmation that the Pope is not the Pope.
In conclusion, we must have that missionary spirit which is the true spirit of the Church. We must do everything to bring about the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the words of our Holy Patron, St. Pius X: Instaurare omnia in Christo. We must restore all things in Christ, and we must submit to all, as did Our Lord in His Passion for the salvation of souls and the triumph of Truth. "In hoc natus sum," said Our Lord to Pilate, "ut testimonium perhibeam veritati." : “I was born to give witness to the Truth."
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1975 Address - The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:37 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - An Address Given by His Grace: Ottawa, Canada November 1975
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have come among you to primarily speak of the most pressing problem of our time, which is the preservation of our Catholic Faith. I am not referring simply to certain liturgical modifications, nor to certain aspects of renewal, which result from the Second Vatican Council. These details, of course, do have their importance. I am here rather to offer encouragement in the struggle to preserve the essentials of our Faith, for our Faith is vital, and before going on, I would like to bring your attention to what precisely constitutes the essentials of our Faith.
Our Lord Jesus Christ came down to earth to redeem mankind, and it was by means of the Cross-that He achieved this. The central point of Christ's life on earth, the purpose for which the Son of God became man was to die on the Cross for the salvation of all men, not only the faithful, not only Catholics, but all men. Unfortunately, not all men have accepted Christ's message but be they Buddhists, Moslems or Protestants, all - at least all who wished to be saved - are bound to achieve their salvation through the bloodshed for them by Jesus Christ.
This, of course, is very simple for us who are Catholics. This is our Faith, the Faith we have always been taught, and yet, in our own time, how many Catholics still do accept this truth, that salvation comes to all men through Jesus Christ, that outside of Christ there is no salvation? I find it extraordinary that Catholics will questions the age-old adage, "no salvation outside the Church." This is precisely the most important question facing mankind today, just as it was in all ages. Indeed, there is nothing more vital to man than for him to know how he is to be saved, by whom he is to be saved, and in what manner he is to be saved. Can there possibly be a question of greater moment for those who inhabit the earth?
Now, it is quite certain that when we proclaim today that there is "no salvation outside the Church," many Catholics rise up incredulously and affirm that this is nonsense, that otherwise those not in the Church must be condemned to hell. The fact is, however, that this remains a crucial tenet of interest to all mankind. As Catholics we are bound to affirm what the Church has always affirmed, because the Church is the repository of all truth: God made man and the Son of God was made man to be crucified for the salvation of all men. Can there possibly be any other source of salvation outside of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ? Can we as Catholics accept that Luther, Buddha or Mohammed are also means of eternal salvation? Are they also in heaven seated at the right hand of God? Yet today, despite the absurdity, many Catholics no longer accept that there is "no salvation outside the Church."
Protestants or Buddhists who achieve their salvation through an act of love for God - in effect, implicitly a baptism of desire - do so through Christ and His Church. The Church teaches that no man is saved except through Our Lord Jesus Christ. This, as Catholics, is what we must believe, for it is what the Church has always taught. There is no other God, no other truth, no other salvation but Christ Jesus. This is the center, the foundation, the goal of our Christian life, and it will one day be the crowning glory of our Christian life. There is nothing, in a word, outside of Christ Jesus who is our only joy on earth and in heaven.
You understand, I am sure, how important it is to affirm these truths. Jesus Himself, and not ourselves, chose the means for us to receive His Grace. The means He chose was the Cross -, and He chose that the Cross - and His Sacrifice upon it be continued on earth upon our altars. There is no other place but upon our altars that Christ's Calvary is continued in this world. Catholics in every age have understood the enormity of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Our ancestors most certainly understood it, our ancestors who built the worthy church buildings, which adorn your country, and the extraordinary cathedrals and basilicas of Europe. Visitors the world over come to these shrines to stand in awe before the splendor of the labor and genius of our ancestors of a thousand years ago. Why did they erect such monuments, expending decade upon decade of their fragile lives to bringing forth these magnificent cathedrals? For the sake of the altar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the sake of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which is celebrated upon it. And it was Christ Himself who wished it.
Jesus Christ instituted the priesthood at the Last Supper on the occasion of the first sacrifice - for the Last Supper was indeed a Sacrifice, as the Council of Trent teaches - when He made priests of His Apostles and enjoined them, "Do this in memory of Me." He did not say, "Tell this story, describe this action of Mine to your children and to future generations." He said rather, "Do this, re-do this, continue to do this which I have done." It is very important that we realize the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is an action and not a narrative, not a story. I am sure you must realize why I am emphasizing: it is precisely because in our time Christ's intentions are being subverted, contradicted and suppressed.
It is vital, therefore, that we insist upon what is essential to our Holy Faith and indeed to the very idea of Christian civilization, in which we have good reason to glory still, and which we hope with all our hearts to regain and to see revitalized as it was in medieval times. The world chuckles today about the Middle Ages. Modem man tells us it was an age of obscurity - the dark ages - but history itself tells us the medieval age was the greatest age in history, and the thirteenth the greatest century that mankind has ever known. Why? Because of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and because of the spirituality generated by the Mass. Today, more than ever before, our civilization needs its altars, needs it priests to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which in fact is a re-enactment of the Sacrifice of the Cross. The whole of our Christian civilization rest upon our altars. But if we destroy our altars and replace them with a table, and upon this table we simply prepare a meal which is but a memorial of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Last Supper, which is but a narrative of what He said and did on that occasion, then we have forfeited the basis upon which Christian civilization rests. The Catholic Church then ceases to exist, for the Church rests upon the dogma, upon the reality of the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, whence comes Holy Communion, which is Our Lord Jesus Christ in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. For Holy Communion - the Eucharist - transforms our very souls, civilizes us, disciplines us and imposes order upon our souls. Without the Eucharist we reek of disorder.
We frequently wonder why there are so few priests today. It is because there is no longer any preoccupation with the Sacrifice of the Mass. There is no more ideal, no more goal for the priest to pursue, His goal had always been to go unto the Altar of God to offer the Sacrifice of Calvary. That is precisely what made the sublimity of the priest, the ideal of the priestly vocation in a young man. Similarly, for the religious - nuns and brothers - the foundation of their vocation was the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, just as it was for you, the laity.
What, then, precisely is a Christian? Essentially, a Christian is one who offers himself as a victim on the altar with Our Lord. That is what the Sacrament of Marriage is also: a symbol of Christ's union with His Church. Just as Christ offered His life for His Church, so also do the spouses offer their lives for their families and for each other. This union is a vivid symbol of what occurred at Calvary, and thus the spouses derive the strength and courage required for the sacrifice of their union from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass there can be no Catholic spirituality, no Christian life, and all that has been the life of the Church through the ages will simply wither and cease to exist. We, then, do have a vital requirement for the true Sacrifice of the Mass, and this is of fundamental importance to us as Catholics.
I do allow that in recent centuries perhaps our catechetics have placed more emphasis upon the Eucharist as sacrament, than upon the Eucharist as sacrifice. There has been great emphasis placed on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and for good reason, of course. We stage, for example, massive international Eucharistic Congresses throughout the Catholic world to provide the faithful with the opportunity to adore Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. And these Eucharistic Congresses were of unsurpassed splendor, living testimony of the profound belief of the faithful in the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Thus, while the Church has in recent centuries placed much emphasis upon the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist - the Eucharist as Sacrament - at the same time, perhaps unconsciously, the Eucharist as Sacrifice has to some extent been neglected. Let us come back to this idea of the Eucharist as Sacrifice, without losing sight of the Eucharist as Sacrament. I do think that today there ought to be a renewed emphasis on the Eucharist as Sacrifice because, after all, it is the Eucharist as Sacrifice, which is the source of the Eucharist as Sacrament. The Eucharist as Sacrament comes to us from the Sacrifice of the Cross. Without the Cross there would be no Sacrament of the Eucharist because the Sacrament is the Victim, and without the Sacrifice there is no Victim. And without the Victim there is no Real Presence, no participation, no communion by the faithful. In a word, when we receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist - Holy Communion - we are partaking of the Victim Who offered Himself on the Cross, and Who offers Himself in an unbloody manner daily on our altars for the forgiveness of sins. This, then, is the profound meaning of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist: the Blessed Sacrament is the fruit of this extraordinary tree which is the Cross because the Sacrament proceeds from the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
We must therefore come back to this idea of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is essential to our salvation, and see in this Sacrifice precisely that element which has been the splendor of our civilization, and to understand why, today, this civilization - Western civilization, Christian civilization - is shaken to its very foundations, how the decline of our Christian civilization began when we came to express doubts about the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, when we began to attack, abolish and suppress the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This incredible phenomenon traces its origins to Berenger in the fourteenth century. Then in the sixteenth century, Luther boldly declared that the Mass is not a Sacrifice. Luther's attack, therefore, was directed at the very heart of the Church, to its most precious dogma. And in thus undermining the Sacrifice of the Mass, he destroyed the priesthood instituted by Christ, because without the Sacrifice, what need is there for a priesthood, what ideal does the priest strive for? The priest becomes merely a functionary designed from among the members of an assembly to offer worship, to perform a communion, to break bread.
That is what Luther achieved 450 years ago, and, as those familiar with the history of his reformation will recognize, that is precisely what is happening with respect to the transformation of the liturgy in our own time. Many of the elements of change are identical. During Luther's reformation the vernacular, German, was adopted and, needless to say, there was great rejoicing: the youth became enthusiastic, the laity could now understand, they could return now to what appeared to be a more evangelical church, they could worship now more meaningfully. The laity, in a word, had discovered a new relevance in the life of the Church. But the euphoria of juvenile enthusiasm soon gave way to disillusion: the priesthood began to disintegrate, priests and nuns left their monasteries, the convents were emptied and the religious married. How could this be so soon after the fervor and enthusiasm of the early years? The whole phenomenon was but a straw fire because the reformers had attacked the essential elements of Christ's Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
With the Sacrifice attacked, the traditional respect for the Eucharist did not remain long immune. The faithful began to receive Communion standing, then Communion was distributed in the hand, then the reformers began to openly deny the Real Presence, the Supreme Sacrifice, and to deny the priesthood, all that the Church had cherished most dearly.
The Protestant Reformation struck our civilization at its very roots, and it was just a matter of time before the tenets of Liberalism were added to those of the religious reformation. Thus, in the seventeenth century, Descartes brought forward the notion of truth being relative, subjective, within ourselves. That is, truth comes from our consciences, and not from outside of ourselves. Descartes refused the notion of truth, which comes from God and from Christ. And in the eighteenth century, Rousseau, carrying Descartes a step further, directed his attack at the moral law: man is good, his conscience is good. Therefore, it is his conscience, which should guide him, and not the law.
These three - Luther who attacked Church dogma and the Faith, Descartes who attacked the concept of objective truth, and Rousseau who attacked the moral law - were the precursors of the modern society in which we live today. Today, as we all recognize, faith, truth and the law are all relative and subject to the conscience of the individual. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what Liberalism is all about. Man has become free, liberated, adult, guided now exclusively by his own conscience and by his own will.
What in reality has all this liberation meant for society, for our civilization? It has brought about the destruction of the human person whose very being comes from God and from Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose entire spiritual life comes from Christ, from His law of love, from the gift of His grace which transforms and moves him to adhere to His law. If there is no absolute truth, but rather our own which we create for ourselves, there is no more God, no need for God, because we are sufficient unto ourselves. We become in effect our own gods and accordingly refuse a God, which transcends ourselves. It is not long before nature destroys itself in a sense.
In the wake of Rousseau came the subjectivist philosophers of the nineteenth century: Kant, Hegel and the others, all contributing and advancing the destruction of the Christian Faith. Little by little these ideas made their way until the principles of Liberalism virtually destroyed the notion of Christian society. Already by the end of the eighteenth century it had become imperative in France to be liberated from the restrictions of Christian law, of Catholic kings, of Catholic society, in a word, of God. That is why in France, bankrupt of God, the Goddess Reason was formally consecrated by the State.
The Church, of course, resisted these tendencies. For a century and a half - from about 1800 to about 1960 - the Popes spoke out, issued encyclicals, used every conceivable means to prevent the destruction of the social and moral order by these tendencies. But these ideas, which had their origins in the Protestant Reformation and the advent of Liberalism, made their way little by little, and society became contaminated, and the dikes which hitherto had kept men in an ordered state, burst. Finally, like the Jews before Pontius Pilate, the states declared, "We have no king but Caesar," and accordingly effected the separation of Church and State. They drove Jesus Christ from the courts, from the army, from the universities, from the schools. The crucifixes were withdrawn from public buildings, the clergy were relegated to their vestries, society was laicized.
Society had thus become free, free of God. There soon followed freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience. And now, a century and a half later, we find ourselves enslaved by pornography, enslaved by television and the other media of social communications, which have so thoroughly infused into our society the kind of freedom, which destroys morality, the family, and society itself.
For her part, until about 1960, the Church resolutely resisted Liberalism in all these forms. She continued to teach obedience and submission to Jesus Christ, to His Law, to His Sacrifice, to His Sacraments and to His grace. For it is there that we find truth, true freedom, freedom from the slavery of sin. Once free of sin, we become enslaved rather to saintliness.
We see to what brutal depths our society has been reduced. The catechisms, the Canadian catechism, is a perfect example of the process I have tried at some length to describe, to destroy, an entire catechism devoted to destruction. Catechism by its nature suggests a breaking with sin, but modern catechisms are directed towards breaking down tradition and social taboos, breaking the family, destroying the restraints, which have held our civilization together. These are the things your children are taught in catechism today. Do the Gospels teach us that we must destroy? On the contrary, the Gospels teach us rather that we are to forge bonds of charity, of love: love God, love your parents, love your neighbor. These are strong bonds, mandatory bonds. We are not free to love or not to love. We must love God, and our parents and society, to the extent, of course, that society is in accord with God' s law.
This concept to teach our children to destroy, to break is a criminal concept because such notions will accompany them throughout their lives: through their youth and later when, by a sort of dialectic which will continue to gnaw at them and will always oppose them to others and consume them with the imperative to be "free" in order to grow, in order to be "themselves." This is fraught with extremely serious consequences and we wonder now how we could even imagine such a system of catechism. The new catechetics are simply a natural long-term consequence of Liberalism.
And though our Popes opposed Liberalism and recognized it for what it is, today nevertheless one can safely affirm that Liberalism has overwhelmed the Church. It has permeated our culture, our society, our universities and our schools. No area remains immune, not even our families have been spared the poison of Liberalism. Our seminaries have been contaminated by ideas proposed by such men as Teilhard de Chardin, whereby truth is relative, evolving, personal. There is no longer an immutable truth, therefore no fixed dogma. And this, tragically, is what has come out of Vatican II. Gaudium et spes best illustrates this: at least two pages are devoted to, the idea of change, to the evolution of truth. Change is what "updating" is all about. Anyone who is a party to "updating" faces that as a premise: as a result of our new found mastery of nature, we must accept change in philosophy, in modes of expression and action, in the manner in which we conceive our religion, in the realization that the way ideas were understood in the past are no longer applicable today.
Thus, seminaries, for example, are told they must no longer proselytize, evangelize or convert non-Christians. They must, rather, engage in dialogue in order to direct their flocks toward self-discovery and the realization that their faith is, after all, as valid as our own. This, of course, is heresy, pure and simple, and has had the predictable effect of numbing in a very short time the Church's entire missionary spirit. It goes without saying that, having killed the missionary spirit, the priestly spirit itself will cease to exist.
These are the factors, then, which leave Catholics with no incentive for the religious life today. People no longer know what the religious state of life is. Recently the Archbishop of Cincinnati, reporting to the Roman Synod on the crisis of vocations to the priesthood, solemnly declared that the lack of vocations apparent in the Church today stems from the fact that the priest has lost his sense of identity. What do these incredible words mean? Simply that the priest does not know what he is. Since when does the priest not know who or what he is? After 2,000 years of having priests in the Catholic Church we suddenly no longer know what constitutes a priest! Why have we come to this? Because we have destroyed our altars by changing them into "tables," stripped them of their altar stones, which from the fourth century have harbored the relics of the martyrs. A sacrifice is traditionally offered upon a stone, a stone altar, but today there is no sacrifice, no stone, no relics. The Mass has become a meal. Relics signify that the martyrs had offered themselves as a sacrifice in union with Our Lord. You can understand just how grave it is to abolish these magnificent symbolisms, and to what extent all that is most sacred in the holy Catholic religion, is being tampered with. And all of this tampering penetrated the Church at the Second Vatican Council.
I am frequently criticized because I attack the Council. It is true that I am at variance with the Council because I realize that the liberal spirit is destroying the Church, the priesthood, the sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the catechism, Catholic universities and Catholic schools. And you yourselves are as firmly convinced as I am because you have the examples constantly before your eyes. Parents have come to prefer to send their children to non-Catholic schools, even to Protestant schools, because they are less subject there to perversion than in their own Catholic schools.
Is this not an incomprehensible scandal when we reflect on what Canada was twenty years ago at the proud invitation of Msgr. Cabana to visit his new seminary, finished in 1955, full of seminarians. This remained so until 1965. Today the seminary has been sold and there remains nothing of this work. What is happening in the Church the world over when seminaries like the one in Sherbrooke, not twenty years old, are disposed of in this way?
Recently I spoke with an Italian bishop who had just returned from a trip during which he had hoped to come into contact with priests anxious to maintain traditions of the Church to establish a common bond, to perhaps create an association of traditional priests in Italy. He had returned overwhelmed. Having visited nearly every diocese in Italy, he realized that seminaries are being sold everywhere, and that young priests are out and out Marxists. Though Italy has an average three times more priests than France, the seminaries are empty; Turin with a capacity for 300 has 80 seminarians from several neighboring dioceses. The Bishop of Casserta confided to me that his seminarians come back to him Modernists and refuse to obey him. What kind of diocese is he going to have in just a few years from now in the light of the state of the priesthood and the seminaries today?
In France there are approximately 100 new candidates who enter all the seminaries each year, for 100 dioceses. The only notable seminary left is at Issy-les-Moulinaux, near Paris, with 80 seminarians for 25 dioceses and four or five religious communities. And of these, how many will finish? And how many more are living in the hope that between now and their ordination Rome will have authorized a married clergy?
This situation, which took root at the Council, is vitally serious. The enthusiasm for liberation was evident throughout the Council. It expressed itself in the equivocal wording of the various schemas, through the idea of change for the sake of change, through the idea of the primacy of the individual conscience as opposed to established law, through the notion of freedom for all religions. This the Church has always regarded as contrary to her rights because, as she believes, she alone is Truth. And if a Catholic state places no obstacle to the spreading of heresy within its jurisdiction, then the state becomes a Protestant state in effect, with all its attendant errors, on marriage, for example, which leads to tolerance for divorce, contraception and abortion, all of which gently undermines Christian society, Catholic society. We recognize that it is precisely this, which has set the Church upon a course of full-scale self-destruction, which has become more and more obvious.
These, then, are the reasons why we are so attached to our traditions. This is why, in the face of the deluge, this universal destruction of the Holy Catholic Church, we affirm the will to preserve the Catholic Mass, the Catholic Sacraments, the Catholic catechism, our Catholic universities and our Catholic schools. We refuse to maintain liberal schools in which everything and anything goes. We insist upon Catholic schools in order that our children be raised as Catholics. We insist upon Catholic universities in order that our children not be perverted. We no longer dare send a young man or a young lady to a Catholic university.
We prefer to send them to a state university. Seminarians no longer know where to go. In seminaries today, seminarians come and go as they pleased, at any time of the day and night, go to daily Mass or stay away, as they please.
We are thus in a state of decomposition and we cannot accept this situation. This is why our resistance gives the impression that we are attempting to stand in the way of all this change. I have been requested to close my seminary at Econe. Why do I refuse to obey this order? Because I most emphatically do not wish my seminarians to become Protestants, because I do not wish my seminarians to become Modernists, because I do not wish my seminarians to lose their faith and their moral perspective. I am quite certain that were they to be released and sent to other seminaries they would lose their faith and their moral perspective. Accordingly, it appears to me that I have no choice but to resist this order.
I am asked how it is that I can refuse orders, which come from Rome. Indeed, these orders to come from Rome, but from which Rome? I believe in Eternal Rome, the Rome of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Rome which dispenses the very life of the Church, the Rome which transmits the true Tradition of the Church. I am considered disobedient, but I am moved to ask why have those who issue orders which in themselves are blameworthy been given their authority. The Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the priests have been given their authority for the purpose of transmitting life, the spiritual life, the supernatural life, eternal life, just as parents and society as a whole have been given their authority to transmit and protect life. The word "authority" means "author," author of life. We are not authorized to transmit death; society is not permitted to pass laws, which authorize abortion, because abortion is death. In like manner, the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops and priests exist as such to transmit and sustain spiritual life. Unfortunately, it is apparent that many of them today no longer transmit or sustain life, but rather authorize spiritual abortion.
These, then, are the reasons why, in the face of an order to close my seminary, I refuse to obey. I believe that we all have a serious requirement for the type of priests who transmit the life of the soul. I am certain you do not wish to have priests who are apt to administer sacraments, which are invalid. From time to time I am asked to administer Confirmation which, of course, is irritating to local bishops who remind me that I have no right to confirm in their dioceses. Naturally, I recognize this, but I remind them in turn that they have no right to administer sacraments of doubtful validity to children whose parents want them to receive the sacramental grace. These parents have the right to be certain that their children are receiving the grace of Confirmation. This is, after all, a grave responsibility for parents. It is grace, which keeps the soul alive, and, to this end, I much prefer to see parents confident that their children have received the sacramental grace of Confirmation even when, by administering the sacrament in someone else's diocese, I am acting illicitly. I may at least rest easy in the knowledge that the children confirmed in the manner prescribed by the Church for centuries truly carry the sacramental grace within them, that the sacrament is truly valid.
With respect to sacraments of doubtful validity, today bishops rarely confirm: they delegate their vicars-general or other priests, and many of these change even the new authorized formulas. Because the particular sacramental grace of each sacrament has to be signified explicitly, and as many of these changes of working do not signify the sacrament in question, it follows that the sacrament is invalid. In other words, it is not permissible to toy with the formula of the sacraments, just as in the Sacrifice of the Mass we many not tamper with the wording of the consecration. It is necessary to perform as the Church has always intended.
All of this, therefore, is of utmost importance and it is also the reason why we must maintain our traditions, and fear neither difficulties nor obstructions. We are living in a time of veritable agony. We must be careful, of course, not to offer violent opposition to our bishops and to our priests who refuse to understand the grave dangers under which the Church labors today. But in following the Church of all time, we must also pray for our pastors. We are not inventing anything new. I have not innovated at my seminary at Econe.
Those who condemn me are condemning their own formation, which is absurd. In the face of these absurdities, I can only close my ears and my eyes, and continue to receive seminarians. In September [1975], I welcomed twenty-five new candidates at Econe, five at my new German-language seminary near Lake Constance in German Switzerland, and twelve at my new house at Armada, Michigan. Vocations are surely not wanting and I am quite certain that were we encouraged instead of harassed and struck down, I would have not three seminaries, but seminaries in every part of the world. Make no mistake: there are sufficient good, young, wiling men - good and holy vocations in every country.
We are bound, therefore, to pray that we recover one day an understanding of the way of the priesthood because Christian society cannot live without its priests. The Church without the priesthood is no longer the Church. It is for this reason essentially that I ask your fervent prayers for young priests. Pray also to the Blessed Virgin Mary, for she is the Mother of priests and the Mother of the priesthood. Pray for the graces of holy vocations, and for assistance with respect to Rome, that one-day Rome itself may be enlightened.
Rome, for me, has become a great mystery. What is happening in Rome? It is surely Rome that constitutes the most serious problem. To say such a thing is neither calumny nor detraction, for if the crisis in the Church has spread to every country in the world, it is only sensible to seek a common cause at its Seat. There is something distinctly abnormal and sinister about Rome today, the workings of grace are being obstructed in Rome, there are men in Rome who are under the ascendancy of Satan. How else could the Church be strangled, as it were, and troubled to such an extent? Though we may not readily understand the problem, one can feel it, sense the atmosphere of today's Rome. I am still frequently in Rome, and I have occasion to chat from time to time to priests of the different sacred congregations, the men who carry out the day-to-day affairs of the Curia. These men confide to me in private that Rome has become stifling, that a veritable terror reigns in the bureaus and the corridors of the Vatican, with always somebody listening, spying, ready to report, to criticize. Even the cardinals are not immune to the terror, to the veritable diabolical influence, which permeates every facet of Vatican life.
What has caused such a deterioration? Who are these sinister people? Are they hidden personalities, or are they clerics in important positions? Nobody seems to know, but what is absolutely certain is that this spirit permeates not only the Seat of the Catholic Church, but every one of us no matter how far we are from Rome.
The present state of Rome is just one more reason why we must not hesitate or fear to regroup.
In closing, I would wish to emphasize especially how important it is to remain united, and to avoid dissension at all costs. We are already so few who wish to hold onto our traditions, who understand, who have received the graces. There can be no question but that it is God's grace, which has allowed us to keep our holy traditions, the very traditions, which have produced the saints. It is vital, therefore, that we proceed as of one mind, that we labor together in order to better insure a strong defense.
You most assuredly have it within your power, through grace, to build up something solid, which will last, which will attract the others, something which will allow you to form your children. You will find it easier to provide catechists to help you in your tasks. You will find it easier to organize your own schools, administered by laymen and fully Catholic, teaching the true catechism, celebrating the traditional liturgy, forming your children as strong and perfect Christians. It is this sort of arrangement to which we must come in order to protect our holy religion and our souls, for, ultimately, to save our souls is all that matters.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1978 'Reign of Scandal' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:36 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre - Given on the Feast of Christ the King - October 29,1978
On the Occasion of the Ordination of 28 Deacons
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dear friends and my dear brethren:
As each year, on this Feast of Christ the King, we have the joy of conferring ordination to the diaconate on some of the seminarians, and this year this joy is particularly great because by the grace of God they are numerous, and in addition there are the subdeacons who have come from Bedoin and also those of the Fraternity of the Transfiguration. We are very happy to see to it that the diaconate, which bears so many graces for those who are going to receive it, may always extend itself for the greater good of souls.
My dear friends: In a few moments you are therefore going to receive Spiritum Sanctum ad robur, the Holy Ghost with the gift of fortitude in particular. You are going to receive the Holy Ghost in order to fulfill your office; that is what the bishop is going to say in the middle of the preface by the sacramental formula. A character more profound and still more significant of Holy Orders is going to mark your souls; before God, before the Church, before all of the holy angels, before the entire celestial court you shall be henceforth deacons for eternity! And if one judges according to the monitions which are give by the bishop to the (sub) deacons before conferring upon them the diaconate, one sees that this function is very important.
The function of the deacon, says the monition, is to serve at the altar, to baptise and to preach: Servire ad altare, baptizare et praedicare.
To serve at the altar; but to serve at the altar in a manner which is closely related to that of the priest. Henceforth, the deacon will be able to carry the sacred vessels which contain the Blessed Sacrament. Henceforth, even though it be only in an extraordinary manner, he will be able to distribute the Holy Eucharist. He approaches therefore in a very close manner these holy mysteries, these great mysteries of our holy religion: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist-the great sacrament in the radiance of which the priest must live and in the radiance of which you, my dear friends, must live in an intensified manner.
To serve at the altar, to baptise and to preach. The Church, in the monition which she demands the bishop to pronounce before the ordination, gives you Saint Stephen as an example, an admirable example. This deacon, it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, had been chosen because he was filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost— plenus gratia et Spiritus Sanctus. And a bit further in these same Acts of the Apostles— Plenus gratia et fortitudine. If there is an example which you must follow, an example and a model, it is certainly this Saint Stephen, since he is given to you particularly by the Church. Indeed, Saint Stephen, filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost, preached. The Acts of the Apostles show in a striking manner, in a manifest manner to what point the listeners of his preaching were stupefied—and they saw him as an angel from heaven. He was radiating the splendor of eternity and in spite of this, his judges did not wish to accept his words and they did not wish to receive his preaching. Thus, in terminating his objurgations, Saint Stephen, with force, made them understand that they were no different from the others who had preceded them and who had killed the prophets. "The prophets who announced the coming of the Just, your fathers have killed; and you are similar to them for you have killed the Just Himself." And upon hearing these words of St. Stephen the Acts of the Apostles say that their rage was at its height and that "they gnashed their teeth"— these are the terms of Sacred Scripture itself—and "they rushed upon Saint Stephen in order to stone him."
Thus, my dear friends, I believe this is an admirable example for you today, in particular, on the Feast of Christ the King. You must have this contemplation, this vision in a certain sense, of the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as St. Stephen saw it in heaven. Our Lord present in heaven, the King of Heaven and not only the King of Heaven but, as well, King of the Earth. This is why St. Stephen did not fear to speak with force of the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the duty to obey Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Scribes and the Pharisees, who had Our Lord put to death, refused and this is why they stoned Saint Stephen, indeed you also with the grace of God are going to become priests and exercise in a manner even more complete during your priesthood, your function of deacon. But already before receiving the priesthood you will be able to preach when the occasion presents itself and you must prepare yourself for this.
In this preaching, you will preach the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is not of other things that the priest has to preach.
You will preach this royalty first of all by prayer, through the example of piety, by the love of the altar, and by the love of the Holy Sacrifice to which you will henceforth be attached forever. You will manifest this attachment to the sacrifice of Our Lord by respect for sacred things, in order to encourage the faithful to respect them also, and to understand that these great mysteries are the source of our sanctification. You will pray therefore for it is through prayer and sacrifice that Our Lord saved the world, and you will not save it other than by prayer and your sacrifice. You will preach Our Lord Jesus Christ and His royalty by the example of your virtue, by your priestly dress, by your attitude, by your goodness, by your charity, by your zeal, in your conversations on all the occasions that you will have to approach the faithful and unbelievers; you will preach Our Lord Jesus Christ. And God knows that today the world has need of this preaching! St. Francis of Assisi in taking Brother Leo with him in the streets of Assisi said to him, "Let us go preach Our Lord Jesus Christ," and Brother Leo accompanied him. After having traversed the streets of Assisi, St. Francis, not having pronounced a word, was asked by Brother Leo, "But how have we preached Our Lord Jesus Christ?" "By our example and by our habit we have preached Our Lord Jesus Christ," and the world has need of this example, and the world has need of this preaching.
You will also preach Our Lord Jesus Christ by your words. We must establish His reign for He has commanded that we do so. Our Lord, in sending the seventy-two disciples to preach the Gospel did not speak of other things. Go! Preach the reign of God! The reign of God — Regnum Dei. This reign of God is HIS reign for He is God. He is Our God. We have no other God but Our Lord Jesus Christ! It is therefore the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ which His disciples preached. It is also the reign of God that Our Lord preached during the forty days which followed His Resurrection before His Ascension; it is the Gospel which says so: "He conversed with the Apostles of the reign of God." It is thus the reign of God which preoccupied Our Lord; definitively His own reign. Thus, as Our Lord was preoccupied with this reign we are also, who are His disciples. We must always be preoccupied with the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ: the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for ourselves, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for individuals, for persons, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for families, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ in societies.
But you will not forget that opposed to the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ there is the reign of Satan. The reign of Satan has never perhaps been more extensive and penetrated everywhere into all domains as it has today. It surrounds us on all sides. What is the reign of Satan? The reign of Satan is the reign of scandal but scandal understood in its true sense understood in the sense of that which leads us to sin and, as a consequence, which leads us to HELL. That is scandal! Scandal is that which leads to sin, that which draws one into sin and indeed the reign of scandal is to be found in this world. Much is scandal around us, much is contrary to the law of God. Henceforth, in society, even the commandments of God are not only ignored but they are publicly and officially attacked. Laws are passed which are contrary to the law of God. All of this is legalized, officialized; the magistrates, the doctors are obliged to do some things which are contrary to the law of God, which are unjust, which are horrible, abominable! All of this in a time when one believes that our civilization has never been as great or as beautiful! On the contrary! This civilization bears the mark of SATAN and it bears the mark of HELL!
You will denounce these scandals in order to prevent them from leading souls to hell. You will not be afraid to denounce all that which drags souk into sin.
In order to have this courage and this force, you will ask these graces particularly of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You know, my dear friends, Mary is our Mediatrix Mother. She is the Mediatrix of all graces. The grace which you are going to receive in just a few moments by the imposition of the hand of the bishop and by the sacramental words which are going to be pronounced over you, this grace of the Holy Ghost is going to be given to you by the intercession of our good mother in heaven. Ask Mary. Ask her—your mother, to give you this grace in abundance that you may truly be deacons according to her heart, that later on you may be priests according to her heart as was her Divine Son. She will aid you to be ape sties of the Kingdom of Our Lord and of the Reign of God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1977 Three Great Gifts of God |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:34 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Archbishop Speaks
Three Great Gifts of God
THE PAPACY
THE BLESSED VIRGIN
THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE
Pronounced at Ecône by His Excellency, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on September 18, 1977
The 30th Anniversary of his Consecration as Bishop
My dear brothers, my dear friends,
It is kind of Providence that this day of return to the Seminary should coincide with the anniversary of my episcopal consecration which took place on September 18, 1947 in my native city. At the request of friends we are celebrating this anniversary in a special way.
In the breviary this morning we read the lesson of Tobias. It was said that the young Tobias, finding himself surrounded by the men of his race, the Jews, adoring a golden calf which had been set up by the King of Israel himself, went faithfully to the temple to offer the sacrifices God had demanded. He was thus faithful to the law of God.
Well, we hope that we too have been faithful to God, faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Later on Tobias was among the prisoners sent to Niniva and there, the Scripture says, while all his compatriots did homage to the pagan cult, he continued to hold to the truth, retinuit omnem veritatem. He held to the whole truth. I believe this is the lesson Holy Scripture has for us and I hope that we, too, remain faithful like Tobias did, both in his youth and in his captivity. Is it not true that we today are in a certain sense in captivity, restraint surrounding us on all sides, imposed on us by those who bow to error both in the world and inside the Church itself? By those who juggle with the truth and who keep truth hidden instead of proclaiming it; We are in a world enslaved by the Devil, enslaved by error.
But it is our wish to hold to truth. We want to continue to proclaim it. What then, is this truth? Do we have a monopoly on it? Are we so presumptuous as to say we have the truth, others do not? No, truth does not belong to us. It does not come from us, it was not invented by us. This truth was transmitted to us, it was given us. It is written. It is living in the Church and in the whole history of the Church. This truth is known. It is in the books, in the catechisms, in all the acts of the councils, in all the acts of the sovereign pontiffs. It is in our Creed, in our Ten Commandments, in the gifts that God has made to us, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments. It is not we who invented this truth. We have only to persevere in it.
Because truth has an eternal character. The truth we profess is God, Our Lord Jesus Christ who is God and God does not change. God remains immutable. It was St. Paul who said, vicissitudinis obumbratio. There is not a shadow of vicissitude in Him, not the shadow of changeability. God is unalterable, semper idem, always the same. Certainly He is the source of everything that changes but He, Himself, is unalterable, unchangeable. And by the fact that we profess God as truth we will enter in some way into eternity through truth. We have no right to change that truth. Indeed it cannot be changed. It will never change.
Men have been put on earth to receive a little of that light of eternity as it descends on them. They become in some way eternal, they too, immortal, according to the extent to which they attached themselves to the things that change, to moving things, they move away from God. And here it is that we feel a need. All men feel this need. They have in them an immortal soul which is already now in eternity, a soul which will be happy or unhappy, but it is a soul that exists. It will not die.
Every man who is born, who has a soul has entered into eternity. That is why we have need of eternal things, of the true eternity which is God. We cannot do without it. It is part of our lives. It is what is most essential to us. That is why men seek the truth, seek the eternal, because they have an essential need of eternity.
And what are the means by which Our Lord has given us eternity, communicated it to us, made eternity enter into our lives even here below? Often when I was going through the African countries on my diocesan visits I chose a them that was dear to me and very simple, too. You have heard it many times but for the simple people I spoke to it summed up the truth. Asking what are the gifts the Good God has given us which make us participants of the divine life, life eternal, I would answer: there are three great gifts which God has made us and they are the Pope, the Blessed Virgin and the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
THE PAPACY
IN reality it is an extraordinary gift that God has made us in giving us the Pope, in giving us the successors of Peter, giving us precisely this perpetuity in truth communicated to us through the successors of Peter, that must be communicated to us through them. And it seems inconceivable that a successor of Peter could fail in any way to transmit the truth that he is obliged to transmit. Indeed, without virtually disappearing from the line of succession he cannot fail to communicate that which the popes have always communicated, the Deposit of Faith which does not belong to him alone.
The Deposit of Faith does not belong to the Pope. It is the treasure of truth which has been taught during twenty centuries. He must transmit it faithfully and exactly to all those under him who are charged in turn to communicate the truth of the Gospel. He is not free.
But should it happen because of mysterious circumstances which we cannot understand, which baffle our imagination, which go beyond our conception, if it should happen that a pope, he who is seated on the throne of Peter, comes to obscure in some way the truth which it is his duty to transmit or if he does not transmit it faithfully or allows error to darken truth or hide it in any way, then we must pray to God with all our hearts, with all our soul, that light continues to be thrown on that which he is charged to transmit.
NEVER CAN THE TRINITY BE CHANGED.
NEVER CAN THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST THROUGH THE CROSS AND THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS BE CHANGED!
THESE THINGS ARE ETERNAL.
THEY BELONG TO GOD.
And we cannot follow error, change truth, just because the one who is charged with transmitting it is weak and allows error to spread around him. We don’t want the darkness to encroach on us. We want to live in the light of truth. We remain faithful to that which has been taught for two thousand years. That what has been taught for 2,000 years and which is part of eternity could change is inconceivable.
Because it is eternity which has been taught to us. It is the eternal God, Jesus Christ eternal God, and everything which is centered on God is centered on eternity. Never can the Trinity be changed. Never can the redemptive work of Christ through the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Mass be changed. These things are eternal. They belong to God. How can someone here below change those things? Who is the priest who feels he has the right to change those things, to modify them? Impossible!
When we possess the past we possess the present and we possess the future. Because it is impossible, I say metaphysically impossible, to separate the past from the present and future. Impossible! Then God would no longer be God! God would no longer be eternal! God would no longer be immutable. And there would be nothing more to believe in. We would be completely in error.
This is why, without worrying about all that is happening around us in these times we ought to close our eyes to the horror of this drama we are living through, close our eyes and affirm our Creed, our Ten Commandments, meditate on the Sermon on the Mount which is also our law. We must attach ourselves to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the Sacraments awaiting the light that will shine around us again. That is all. We must do this without becoming bitter or violent in a spirit that is unfaithful to Our Lord. Let us stay charitable. Let us pray, suffer, accept all the trials, everything that happens, everything that God sends us. Let us do as Tobias did. Abandoned by everyone as they went to adore the golden calf of the gods of the pagans, he remained faithful. Still, he too could have thought that, since only he remained faithful it might be that he was mistaken. But no, he knew that whatever God had taught to his forebears could not change. The truth of God existed and could not change. And so it is with us. We too have to rely upon the truth that is God yesterday, today and tomorrow. Jesus Christus heri, hodie et in secula.
And that is why I say we must retain our confidence in the papacy. We must retain confidence in the successor of Peter in so far as he is the successor of Peter. But if it should happen that he were not perfectly faithful in his duties, then we must remain faithful to those who were the successors of Peter and not to him who is not the successor of Peter. That is all. His duty is to transmit the Deposit of the Faith.
THE BLESSED VIRGIN
The second gift is that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She has never changed. Is it possible to imagine that the Blessed Virgin Mary could change in her attitude to the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, her divine Son, toward the Sacrifice of the Cross, toward the work of redemption? Is it possible to imagine that the Blessed Virgin Mary could change one iota of her faith, that she could have had doubts at some period of her life, that she could have thought herself mistaken? That she could have doubted the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, doubted the Blessed Trinity, she who was filled with the Holy Ghost? Impossible! Inconceivable!
Here below she was already in eternity. The Blessed Virgin Mary, through her faith, an unchangeable, profound faith, could not be disturbed in any way. That is evident. Do not let us be disturbed by the noises around us but keep faithful, faithful like the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I want to add to this subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary something which seems to me to be important for us at this time in which we live. Continuously we are told the Virgin says this or says that. The Virgin has appeared here, the Virgin has communicated this message to that person. Of course, we do not rule out the possibility that a word of the Blessed Virgin could be addressed to persons of her choice. That is evident. But considering the kind of period we are living through we must be suspicious. We must mistrust.
SHE IS PRESENT AT EVERY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.
SHE CANNOT SEPARATE HERSELF FROM THE CROSS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
OUR DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN OUGHT TO BE PROFOUND, PERFECT.
The place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the theology of the Church is, in my estimation, infinitely sufficient to make us love her above everyone after Our Lord Jesus Christ and that we should have toward her a devotion which is profound and continuous day after day. It is not necessary that we have constant recourse to messages about which we cannot be absolutely certain whether they come from the Blessed Virgin or not. I am not speaking of the apparitions which have been recognized by the Church. But we must be very careful when it comes to rumors that circulate everywhere today. All the time I am receiving people or communications which are said to be addressed to me from the Blessed Virgin or from Our Lord ‑ a message to be addressed to me from the Blessed Virgin or from Our Lord ‑ a message received here, another there. Whereas in fact we should hope the Blessed Virgin is with us every day.
And she is. We know that. She is with us. She is present at every Sacrifice of the Mass. She cannot separate herself from the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our devotion to the Blessed Virgin ought to be profound, perfect. But it ought not have to depend on private messages.
THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE
GOD, Jesus Christ, has given us Himself in the Eucharist. What more beautiful thing could He do? I often say to the seminarians: if the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X has a particular spirituality - and I do not really want it to have one although I do not criticize the founders of Orders like St. Ignatius, Sts. Dominic and Vincent de Paul whom I know wanted to give particular characters to their societies, characters without doubt willed by Providence at the moment they were founded ‑ I think that if there is a particular mark to our Society it is devotion to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
How our spirits, our hearts, our bodies are as if captivated by the great mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! And it is in proportion to how we deepen our understanding of the great mystery of the Sacrifice of the Mass that we understand the priesthood, the grandeur of the priesthood. Because it is intimately, I say metaphysically, bound up with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And this is of the greatest importance in these times.
We have need of this, my dear friends. You have need of being captured by this spirituality of the Mass. Not only the priests but also our religious, our brothers, our nuns, and all of the laity, all of you faithful here present. We must have for the Sacrifice of the Mass a devotion greater than ever before because it is the very foundation stone of our faith.
THE SEMINARY REMAINS A CATHOLIC SEMINARY. AND IF GOD GIVES ME LIFE THE SEMINARY WILL NOT CHANGE!
I WOULD DIE RATHER THAN CHANGE ANY PART OF THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE WHICH MUST BE TAUGHT IN THE SEMINARY.
I hardly dare cite for you an example, something that happened in Chile during the three days I spent there. Still, because the idea occurs to me, I will indeed tell you if only to show the point of degradation the concept of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has reached in the minds of some of the highest members of the hierarchy. During my stay in Chile a concelebration was televised. It was presided over by the Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago. I myself did not see the screening but it was described to me by many people who saw it. There were some 15 or 20 priests concelebrating with him. During the ceremony the Auxiliary Bishop explained to the faithful, that is, everyone who was looking at the television, that this was a meal and he saw no reason why one should not smoke during a meal. And he himself smoked during that concelebration!
That is how far things have reached! This is the sad state of degradation, of sacrilege a bishop can attain. It is unheard of, inconceivable! Penance must be done for years in reparation for such offenses, for such unimaginable scandal! It serves to show how far one can go when one no longer believes.
We must be attached to the Sacrifice of the Mass as to the apple of our eye; as we are attached to that which is dearest to us, that which is the most respected, the most holy, the most sacred, the most divine. That is the meaning of this Seminary.
They may criticize the Seminary in any way they like. And they do. The Seminary is this way, that way. They have decided this about it, that about it. But in fact they decide nothing, change nothing. The Seminary stays as it is. It continues to be what it is because that was why it was founded. The Seminary remains a Catholic seminary. And if God gives me life the Seminary will not change. I would die rather than change any part of the Catholic doctrine which must be taught in the Seminary. With the grace of God, come what may, we will not change. So let them say what they will. Let them say that the Seminary has a new direction, the Seminary is this way or that. It is the Devil who says such things in order to destroy the Seminary. Obviously he cannot tolerate Catholic priests who have the faith.
And then, one cannot avoid speaking about it, all around us here and there in every country but particularly in France, there are divisions among those who are trying to hold to the faith, a mixture of calumny, slander, exaggerated words, foolish expressions, unjustified suppositions. Let us ignore it all. Let us instead work well, doing the will of God according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, continuing like our predecessors and our ancestors, doing what the Council of Trent asked of us, bishops, who must continue the formation which has always been given to priests. If we do this we will be certain we are remaining faithful.
That is enough. Let us remain calm. Let us remain faithful. And if it should ever come to be that the faith is not taught here, then leave me. If, my dear seminarians, I do not teach you Catholic truth, then leave! Do not stay here. That is your duty. But if I teach the Catholic Faith ‑ and you have the whole library at your disposal to find out whether or not what was handed to us is being handed down to you ‑ then, be confident. And we will do everything so that the Catholic Faith continues to be taught here, taught in its entirety so that you can, you too, carry on that truth that is so full of grace and life. Truth is the source of life. We have need of that life. The faithful are hungry for it. Why is it we have requests for priests from all sides? Because the faithful are thirsty for truth, thirsty for the grace of God, for the supernatural life, thirsty for that eternity toward which we are heading.
Therefore, have confidence in doing what the Church has always done - not confidence in Msgr. Lefebvre. I am a poor man like the others. I have no pretention to be better than others. On the contrary, I do not know why God has permitted me to have 30 years in the episcopate. I think that if I were to judge things on the human plane I would have preferred to remain a missionary in the jungles of Gabon; in isolation I would not have had all the problems I have had in my 30 years in the episcopate. But God has wanted it this way. He continues to try us. Very well, if that is His will so it must be and we must continue to carry the cross. It is not because He imposes crosses that we may abandon Him. On the contrary, we may not abandon Our Lord. We must follow Him.
And so, my dear friends, be faithful ‑ faithful to the Pope, successor of Peter when he shows himself to be truly the successor of Peter. Because that is what a pope is and it is in this sense we have need of him. We are not the people who want to break with the authority of the Church, with the successor of Peter. But neither are we people who want to break with twenty centuries of tradition in the Church, with twenty centuries of successors of Peter!
We have made our choice. We have chosen to be obedient in the real sense, obedient to what all the Popes have taught for 20 centuries and we cannot imagine that he who sits on Peter’s throne does not want to teach these things. Well, if that is the case then God will judge him. But we cannot go into error because there is a kind of rupture in the chain of the successors of Peter. We want to remain faithful to the successors of Peter who transmitted to us the Deposit of the Faith. It is in this sense that we are faithful to the Catholic Church, that we remain within it and can never go into schism. Since we are attached to twenty centuries of Faith we cannot make a schism. That is what guarantees for us the past, the present and the future. It is impossible to separate the past from the present and the future. Sustaining ourselves with the past we are sure of the present and the future.
So have confidence! Ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us under all circumstances. She is as strong as an army arrayed for battle. She who suffered as Queen of Martyrs at the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And will we not follow Our Blessed Mother and with her be ready to suffer martyrdom so that the work of redemption can continue?
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| Article by Archbishop Lefebvre in II Gionale di Bergamo in 1978 |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:31 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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This article, signed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, appeared in II Gionale di Bergamo on the day of the ordinations at Ecône
29 June 1978
On this Feastday of the holy Saints Peter and Paul we are going to ordain sixteen seminarians of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X and confer the major orders of the subdiaconate on another twenty-one seminarians whose formation we are constantly following at the Seminary of Ecône. The ceremony will not be postponed although we were asked to do so in a letter given us by the Nuncio in Berne in the name of Cardinal Seper.
In conferring Holy Orders we are reminded of the last exhortation of the risen Christ to the Apostles about the Kingdom of God. Peter himself, shortly after Pentecost, was warned by Caiphas not to act in the name of Jesus but he disregarded the ban expressed by the highest religious authority of the time and he told the first three thousand baptized that the Kingdom of God is kept by “persevering in the doctrine, in the fractione panis (the Mass) and in prayer.”
All the activity of the International Seminary of Ecône is contained in these three exhortations. The doctrine is not considered a philosophy resulting from studies which must be perfected, as some would have it nowadays, but a deposit given by Christ to the Church which must be faithfully preserved and whose sense may not be modified by human intelligence. The Holy Mass, the center of all the spirituality of the Ecône seminarians, is the daily renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross in a real way. It is the indispensable means for obtaining the spiritual strength which must be expressed in the apostolate of each priest with the sole aim of preaching and spreading the Kingdom of God for the eternal salvation of souls.
Like the great majority of present day Bishops we have had this very same formation which was decreed by the Popes ever since the Council of Trent. In 1974 the report of the Apostolic Visitors made after they had been to Ecône was very positive. Rome knows that we train priests the way the Church has trained them for over four centuries. It is well know there, too, that the opening of seminaries and the doctrinal formation relating to them is one of the principal duties of bishops, after that of defending faith and truth. Why then, do they wish to suppress Ecône? Why, eight days ago were they asking us to suspend the ordinations - to not make good priests? Is it the Holy Ghost who wishes this or is it the Devil?
Very grave reasons compel us to take the decision to continue our activity and to carry out the ordinations on the 29th of June. First of all, the present situation of the Church. In the face of general apostasy and the destruction of the Church from inside, provoked especially by the post-Conciliar reforms and the “open” spirit which dominated the Council, we think that for the good of the Church and for its very survival the ordination of good priests is absolutely indispensable. We read again with anguish the statement on the "auto-destruction" of the Church made by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI.
Secondly, there is the legal correctness of our situation. In November 1970 we obtained the authorization of the Bishop of Fribourg to form a fraternity in his diocese and to open seminaries according to a statute which was subsequently approved by Cardinal Wright, Prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy. It is difficult to understand how after five years suddenly there was the wish to suppress the seminary when we had changed nothing and done absolutely nothing to deserve the suppression.
Besides, the suppression in 1975 was carried out without any trial or any regular interrogation. We retain in conscience that we are not obliged to accept such an arbitrary decision because behind it we see a hand which is not that of the Church, an attitude and a lack of respect for Canon Law which is not that of the Church. These things force us to believe than an enemy has penetrated the Church and that it is he who orders us to close our seminary and to destroy our Society.
This enemy is Freemasonry. The constant advance of heresies and of apostasies obliges us to think of Masonic influence in the Curia - worse, of a Masonic Lodge inside the Vatican itself. Cardinals and Secretaries hold the offices of their predecessors who were virtuous, often saintly men, but they do not teach anymore the faith of their predecessors, preferring to support the spread of ideas contrary to Catholic doctrine and to preach ecumenism.
A decade of silence on the anathemata of the Council of Trent and of Pius VI against the Council of Pistoia; silence on the documents of the Church's social teaching – the Syllabus of Pius IX, Libertas and Immortalis Dei of Leo XIII, Pascendi Dorminici Gregis and the condemnation of the Sillon made by Saint Pius X, Quas Primas and Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI – to quote a few of the documents which treat of the authority of the Popes, this silence increases the suspicion that the Church is occupied by a “counter-Church” of protestant origin and committed to spreading all the errors which the Popes have condemned for more than four centuries.
What faith do they ask us to profess? That of all time with all the graces deriving from the Mass and from the Sacraments and with the devotion to Jesus Christ, to the Blessed Virgin and to the Saints? Or rather the faith of ecumenism which has produced the Catholic-Protestant Mass and the proliferation of every sort of unworthy cult, which denies the divinity of Jesus Christ and puts all religions on the same level?
They talk to us of obedience. We wish to and we try to obey more and more every day the Church of all time founded by Jesus Christ, Son of God and Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity but we refuse to obey Masonry with its promotion of liturgical reform resulting in the “naturalization of the Incarnation.” The effects of the liturgical reforms are every day more clear and obvious to all. The ecumenical Mass leads logically to apostasy. One cannot serve two masters. One cannot nourish oneself indifferently with truth and error because error with its evil tendencies will triumph over the more austere and demanding truth.
Another consequence one is apt to forget is the destruction of Catholic States. This is being done with the active collaboration of the Vatican. The Mass no longer represents the source of political unity based on the unity of the Catholic Faith. Thus, the Catholic State becomes an ecumenical and pluralistic State, then it soon becomes a neutral if not atheistic State in accordance with the Conciliar document on Religious Freedom.
Ecumenical liturgy, ecumenical Bibles, ecumenical catechisms are indeed a device of the Devil because they cover error with a certain amount of truth.
Ecône is an obstacle to those who wish to destroy the Mass and the Catholic priesthood. We are convinced insofar as we ordain priests whose spiritual life is modeled on that of Our Lord Jesus Christ that we are serving the Church and acting for the glory of God. We remind those that maintain that we are distancing ourselves from the Church that each of the faithful has the duty of not obeying orders contrary to the Faith. The obedience to ecclesiastical superiors finds a limit, in fact, when something harmful or clearly damaging is proposed or ordered in the name of obedience. He who remains faithful to the Catholic dispositions and institutions tested by centuries renders himself supremely worthy of the Church.
The accusation of separation and of schism made against us because we refuse to participate in the protestantization of the Church is ridiculous! It is, however, deserved by those who foment that same protestantization. Among them are those who have for a long time fallen away from the Catholic Faith and yet, in common with all the heretics of history, work to try to make the Church become like them and conform to their ideas. We cannot understand how intelligent people can state that they “prefer to err with the Pope rather than to be with truth against the Pope.”
If one day they shall excommunicate us because we remain faithful to these theses we shall consider ourselves excommunicated by Freemasonry. Our consolation will be that we remain in the company of God and of all the martyrs who have given their lives to keep the Faith.
The priests we ordain today and all their brothers of the Society of Saint Pius X are at the disposal of the Pope and of the Church at any moment to collaborate in the work of restoring omnia in Christo, that is, of bringing back Christ to the center of family and social life, of education and every juridical order.
In the meantime we shall continue in our attachment to the Mass of all time which is the expression of the Ten Commandments. What are the Ten Commandments except the love for God and for our fellow men? What renders better this love than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? God is glorified by Our Lord Jesus Christ through His sacrifice. There can be no greater act of charity for men than the sacrifice of Jesus who continues to offer His life for us.
This is our Faith. In this we believe and for this we pray. We trust in the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin that she may illuminate and strengthen Catholics of all the world and that the preaching of Christ crucified and of his social kingdom may increase.
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| Testimony concerning Archbishop Lefebvre by his private theologian at Vatican II |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:21 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Testimony of Fr. Victor-Alain Berto, the private theologian of Archbishop Lefebvre at the Second Vatican Council:
Quote:I say this in the presence of God: I had the very great and undeserved honor of being his theologian. Sworn confidentiality prevents me from speaking about the work that I did under him, but I betray no secret by telling you that Archbishop Lefebvre is a theologian, and by far superior to his own theologian, and God grant that all the [Council] Fathers might be theologians to the same degree as he is! He has a perfectly sure and refined theological habitus, to which his very great devotion to the Holy See adds that connaturality that allows him, even before discursive thinking intervenes, to discern intuitively what is and what is not compatible with the prerogatives of the Rock of the Church.
He in no way resembles those [Council] Fathers who, as one of them had the gall to boast publicly, used to take from the hands of a peritus [expert], in the car that was bringing them to St. Peter’s, the ‘ready-made’ text of their intervention in aula [in the Council Hall]. Not once did I submit to him a memorandum, a note, or an outline, without him reviewing, recasting, rethinking and sometimes rewriting them from start to finish, by his own personal, diligent work. I did not ‘collaborate’ with him; if the word were English I would say that I really ‘sublaborated' with him [i.e., worked under his supervision], in keeping with my status as a private theologian and his honor and dignity as a Father of an Ecumenical Council, a Judge and Doctor of the Faith together with the Roman Pontiff.” (January 3, 1964) Source
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As a complement to what Fr. Berto speaks of [above] in reference to the extensive knowledge of theology of Archbishop Lefebvre, it is interesting to note that the Archbishop held two doctorate degrees:
Quote:"Le 21 septembre 1929, Marcel Lefebvre est ordonné prêtre par Mgr Liénart en la chapelle Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur à Lille. Il revient ensuite à Rome pour préparer son doctorat en théologie, tout en faisant office de grand cérémoniaire au séminaire.Déjà titulaire d'un doctorat en philosophie, il obtient le doctorat de théologie le 2 juillet 1930."
"On September 21, 1929, Marcel Lefebvre was ordained a priest by Mgr. Liénart in the chapel of Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur in Lille. He then returned to Rome to prepare his doctorate in theology, while serving as master of ceremonies at the seminary. Already holding a doctorate in philosophy, he obtained his doctorate in theology on July 2, 1930."
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Archbishop Lefebvre had:
- a pre-Vatican II Catholic formation
- two doctorate degrees – one in philosophy and one in theology
- an anti-modernist, anti-liberal, anti-revolutionary formation by the great Fr. Le Floch*
He truly is the best guide and source to go to in this crisis in the Church!
*About Fr. Le Floch:
“Fr. Henri Le Floch was a teacher under whom one would give his eye-teeth to be formed. Thoroughly Catholic, thoroughly committed to the scholasticism of St. Thomas, thoroughly anti-liberal and anti-Modernist, thoroughly imbued with the Roman school of theology, and with the competence to convey these truths so they be central to one's life, Fr. Le Floch trained his men. Archbishop Lefebvre readily admitted that were it not for the solid formation he received from Fr. Le Floch, he too might have succumbed to the creeping liberalism of the age.” (John Vennari, article in The Angelus called,“Marcel Lefebvre, The Biography,” August 2005)
Archbishop Lefebvre in his own words:
- “He [Fr. Le Floch] was the one who taught us what the popes were to the world and the Church, what they had taught for a century and a half - against liberalism, modernism and Communism, and the whole doctrine of the Church on these topics. He really made us understand and share in this battle of the popes to preserve the world and the Church from these scourges which plague us today. That was a revelation to me.” (Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, The Biography p. 36)
- “Fr. Le Floch made us enter into and live the history of the Church, this fight that the perverse powers take to our Lord. We were mobilized against this dreadful liberalism, against the Revolution and the forces of evil which were trying to overcome the Church, the reign of our Lord, the Catholic States, and the whole of Christianity.” (Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, pp. 36-37)
- "I will never thank God enough for allowing me to know that truly extraordinary man." (Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, p. 35)
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1986 Conference 'Times of St. Athanasius' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:19 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Mesdames, Messieurs,
I thank Father Finnegan for having prepared on the occasion of my stop‑over this conference and the ceremony which is going to follow. Indeed I did not actually have any intention to give a special conference here on my way back from the trip which I did with Father Black. But it comes out to be a very propitious occasion.
This will allow me to give you, during the few moments of this conference, some more precise information on the present situation of the Church. Because it is my impression that many Catholics do not understand, cannot understand the real situation of the Church today. Now, in order to take the decision to continue faithfully the Catholic Church, to maintain our Catholic Faith, we must realize that the Catholic Faith is in danger. Unless we reflect carefully on the present situation, we may be led little by little to the complete loss of the Catholic Faith! This is unfortunately the case of many Catholics who are losing the Faith nowadays. And so I hope the short moments of this conference will be helpful to you and that you may draw out of it some personal fruits.
IN YOUR PARISH
Remember your reactions after the Council, and even during the Council, when you saw that your priests had a sudden change of attitude, even of exterior aspect. You saw your priests suddenly giving up their priestly garments. You heard them saying: “after all, we are men like everyone else, we need not to distinguish ourselves from other Catholics.” Then they had more familiar attitudes with you, with the population of their parishes; they were seen in cafes (or bars), in cinemas, without any sign of their priesthood, and you were surprised; you said, “But why? What is happening? Why do our priests change their attitude in such a way?”
And it is not only the priest’s attitude which surprised you, but when you went into your parish church, you noticed that the priest had no longer the soutane, he was putting the alb upon his civil garment, or he did not put on sacred vestments; that the priest no longer did any genuflections before our Blessed Lord. And suddenly you noticed that the tabernacle disappeared from the high altar; you knew no longer where the Blessed Sacrament was; then a table replaced the altar, the statues of the saints were disappearing. And you wondered “What on earth is happening? Why all these changes? We did not ask for all this! What is happening to these priests, for they are changing out most holy religion?” And you were right to be puzzled; all these rapid changes at the end of the Council and in the few years after were truly astonishing and bewildering. And you wondered: “But how all this could have happened?”
And then you saw little by little lay people taking practically the place of the priest; men and even women reading the Epistle, the Gospel and even distributing the Holy Communion. And the priest was sitting while lay persons were giving Communion, and were giving the Most Blessed Sacrament in the hands! Maybe you knelt down to receive your Lord, and the priest gave you a sign to stand up, that now you should receive Communion in the hands. And you wondered: “but does the priest still believe in the real presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist?”
And even worse, one day you noticed that your priest was…gone! He had left the parish and got married! And you learned that there were not only one, not only two, but thousands of priests who were gone and had married! Recently a meeting took place near Castel Gandolfo, about three months ago, a meeting of representatives of married priests. At this meeting they claimed they were 70,000! Seventy thousand married priests! That is one priest out of five who had married, abandoned his priesthood. And you even learned that this one or that married a nun! You learned that thousands of nuns were leaving their convents and getting married. “What is happening in the Church?”
YOUR BISHOP
And so you decided to write to your bishops. You told them: “We cannot continue like that, it is not lawful, these changes are not normal, not Catholic.” You decided to write to your bishop to ask for some explanations, to ask: “how can it happen that our priests are forsaking their priesthood? How can it happen that our priests do not believe any longer in their priesthood and are replaced by laymen?” And you did well.
But you were surprised by the reaction of your bishop. Your bishop answered you: “But now one must follow the spirit of the Council. There has been the Second Vatican Council, you must not forget this, so you must not wonder if there are now some changes in the Church.” Moreover, you learned that the one who presided at the marriage of this or that priest in the diocese was the bishop himself! The bishop himself marrying his priests in his private chapel! And he was explaining to his faithful that from now on this priest had found “another way” to realize his Christian life, and thus he did not find any difficulty to be present at this marriage.
And then you learned that the little seminary was sold. They had sold the little seminary because “now there was no need for a little seminary; seminarians must go in colleges like any other child, no need for a little seminary.” And even one day you learned that there was no longer a major seminary of the diocese! The major seminary was sold; the government or the town had bought it to make of it a house for students. “But where are our seminarians? Shall we still have some priests?” “Well, now, our seminarians, they live in flats and they follow the courses at the university because they must keep in touch with the world. Priests ought to be in contact with the world. So in flats, they can invite other young men, young girls, they can have contacts, live as the other men. There is no need to make distinctions between clerics and faithful.” And then you learned that there were almost no seminarians, that the bishop was ordaining only one or two priests per year in the diocese while in the past it was usual to have fifteen, twenty or thirty priests ordained.
And so you were even more bewildered and said: “So it is not only my parish, it is now the diocese, the diocese is now contaminated!” And one day you decided to pay a visit to your bishop and you found him in civil clothes, no more sign of his episcopate, no pectoral cross, no episcopal ring, nothing, like a manager, a businessman.
And not only this, but one day you learned through your children that the catechism in schools was changed, that the Old Catechism was no longer taught, that the bishop had now decided that the catechism had to be changed. And so you took your children’s catechism, you looked into it and exclaimed: “but what is this? In this catechism they do not speak of purgatory, they do not speak of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they do not speak of angels, they do not speak of original sin! But the Faith, is the Faith changed? Shall our children learn the Faith as we were taught it? What is this? Why?”
ROME
So you decided to write to Rome. And many did write to Rome to complain about their bishops. They said: “Do our bishops have the right to change the Catechism? And in a little while we shall have no more priests, because there is no longer any seminary! What shall the Catholic Church become? Our children do not want to enter the seminary any more, do not want to become priests, because why become a priest if these priests marry and say they are men like others. So vocations have disappeared.” So you wrote to Rome and you did well.
You wrote to Rome. Very often you do not receive any answer at all. So many letters of complaints, of despair, reach Rome that they are not answered. Or if they are answered, it is a very short answer: “You must have confidence in your bishop; you must have confidence in the episcopal conference of your country . You must know from now on that there has been the Second Vatican Council and so you must adapt to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.”
And then you learn that in Rome also there are unbelievable ceremonies. One day charismatic groups were received in St. Peter’s basilica, and thus in St. Peter’s truly scandalous manifestations happened: all these charismatics lifting their arms in the air, shouting, screaming, falling down, embracing each other in a shameful way, scandalous way, in St. Peter’s basilica itself! And even recently in St. Mary Major’s basilica, the great and beautiful church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in Rome, we were told that the same charismatics sang their songs as usual and did the same scandalous exterior corporal manifestations.
And if you tried to go during the week at Mass at St. Peter’s, you could see that in St. Peter’s also the Cardinal in charge of the Vatican basilica says Mass on a table, a marble table but still a table; it is no longer the beautiful Altar of the Blessed Sacrament or the beautiful Papal Altar or the beautiful Altar of the Four Doctors of the Church in the back of the sanctuary of St. Peter’s basilica, no, it is on a table facing the people, without consecrated stone for the Sacrifice, with little respect for the Blessed Sacrament.
And one must say it, it was in the newspapers, I do not invent it. We have all learned that the Pope went for a ceremony, participated in a ceremony with the Lutherans in Rome, in the Lutheran temple of Rome! And we recently learned that the Pope had sent some delegates for the laying down of the first stone of the Mosque in Rome!
And we learned recently that with the change of concordate in Italy, Rome was no longer a holy city. Up until now, Rome was considered as a sacred city, a holy city by the Italian government. From now on, Rome is not a holy city; therefore, anything can be done in it, the most scandalous things from the government, from the mayor of Rome, the Pope can no longer say anything while before he could intervene in order, for example, to forbid precisely the building of a mosque or the building of a temple; he could forbid this because Rome was considered as the Holy City of Catholicism.
And we understand that, in his travels, the Pope accepts practically all that he is asked to do. Some ceremonies have truly no longer the Catholic character: the way Holy Communion is sometimes distributed is painful; the Blessed Sacrament is put into plastic bags and those who distribute the Holy Eucharist take them under their arms, as it happened in Paris, as it happened in Canada, they put the plastic bags under their arms and then distribute the Sacred Hosts as one distributes ordinary pieces of bread or any kind of food! So these kinds of things are truly unheard of and we ask ourselves, “But what on earth happened to Holy Mother Church? Because we can see considerable changes even in the highest places, even in Rome.”
THE PERSECUTION
So if you know someone in Rome, as I personally know some cardinals who are traditional, who have the traditional spirit, you go and see them; Cardinal Pallazini, for instance, Cardinal Oddi. What do these cardinals say about the situation of Rome? What do these cardinals say about the situation of the whole world, of the whole Catholic world? They also are frightened, in desolation. “But what can we do?” and they say: “If we speak, if we raise our voices we shall be eliminated, we shall be expelled from our places!” Indeed, there is a persecution of the Traditionalists, a persecution of all those who want to keep the Tradition, from the cardinals even to the bishops, to the priests, to the faithful. ALL those who are traditionalist are persecuted. The poor Cardinal Ottaviani passed years after the Council in true sorrow, feeling that he was despised, he who was a man of such wonderful rectitude, of such a wonderful firmity in the Doctrine; even during the Council he was despised in a shameful way. And all the other traditional cardinals have been eliminated. And progressive, modernist cardinals were put in their stead; they are for the changes, for the novelties in the Church. Thus now in Rome you have these cardinals: Cardinal Casaroli, Cardinal Baggio and Cardinal Polletti, the Cardinal Vicar, and you have as Secretary to the Congregatio to the Divine Worship Virgilio Noe, people who are entirely against Tradition; they do not want to see it at all, they are against, absolutely against. As soon as someone is attached to the Tradition, he must be eliminated, he must be pushed outside of the services of the Church.
Thus many traditional bishops gave their resignations. I know many bishops; I would take the example of Bishop MacQuett, Archbishop of Dublin who felt despised after the Council because he was attached to Tradition. He gave his resignation and six weeks later he died. I am sure he died out of sorrow, sorrow for what was happening in the Church, sorrow to feel that he, a man so dedicated to the Pope, dedicated to the Church for all his life, was despised in such a way by Rome itself. This had bewildered him and practically killed him. Also here (in California) I think of Cardinal McIntyre, who was also very attached to the Tradition. He also was put aside. Cardinal Siri, who is still the Cardinal of Genoa, was president of the episcopal conference in Italy before the arrival of Pope Paul VI. When Pope Paul VI arrived, he took him off the presidency of the Italian Episcopal Conference because he was attached to the Tradition. One could quote similar cases everywhere, in every country. Priests - and you certainly know some priests and you have some of them here among the older priests, you know some of them - were persecuted by their bishops because they were keeping the Tradition.
And if I, myself, am persecuted, and I have been and still am persecuted in my seminaries, in my Society, if I am persecuted it is because I am attached to Tradition, and they hate me because I keep Tradition in my seminaries. And all the lay faithful have a similar case: lay people attached to Tradition are thrown out of their parishes. You have there, my dear brethren, a very tragic situation in the Church.
As I see that the time now is getting long, I will conclude the conference. I feel it necessary to say that all of these changes which we have considered this morning have been the result not of hazard or just pure accident, but they are the result of the application of a doctrine, the doctrines of modernism and of liberalism which have been introduced into the Church. And Pope Saint Pius X had predicted it. Pope Saint Pius X said: “Now the enemy is within the Church, the enemy is in the seminaries.” He said that himself. So from these seminaries came forth some priests; from these priests came forth bishops and even a Pope, with these liberal ideas, with the modernist ideas.
WHAT IS MODERNISM
If one tries to give a definition, or at least a clear idea of these modernist and liberal ideas, of what do they consist? “The Church is no longer the only true religion.” Here you have one of the truths denied by all these modernists and liberals now. “The Church is no longer the only way of salvation.” This is very grievous, because for twenty centuries the Church has affirmed this: “I am the only way of salvation.” The Church was saying: “Our Lord Jesus Christ gave me all means of salvation; He did not give them to any other group. He gave His Sacrifice of the Mass, His Sacraments, His teaching and all the care of the salvation of souls to His Apostles, to the Church, and to no other group. Therefore, one cannot be saved outside the Church, at least through Baptism of Desire; one must be baptized, baptized by water or at least by desire; this is necessary to go to Heaven.” This is what the Church has always preached. Why did She send missionaries throughout the world? To preach: “you must be converted to our Lord Jesus Christ, you must become Christian, you must be baptized and become Catholic if you want to be baptized!” Many missionaries have been killed, slaughtered, all the Apostles have been martyred because they have preached this Gospel, because they have preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. But now they say: “No! All religions are ways of salvation.” My dear brethren, this is false, absolutely false! And it is precisely this which changes everything inside the Church. This influence comes from Protestantism and from Freemasonry; one must say it, these are Masonic ideas that the Church must not claim to be the only way of salvation. If the Church wants to be friend with Protestants and Freemasons, She must give up saying that She is the only way of salvation. She must accept to say that all religions are ways of salvation. But this is contrary to what our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said! Our Lord said: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; he who shall believe shall be saved, he who shall not believe shall be condemned.” No other choice!
Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. Now if there is an example which is given to us today and which contradicts the errors which are spreading in the Church, it is in this feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. St. Peter said at the very beginning of his apostolate: “there is no other name given to men on earth by which men ought to be saved than the Name of Jesus.” Thus there is no other name by which we can go to Heaven than the Name of Jesus! And the Church is the Mystical spouse of our Lord. There is only ONE Mystical Spouse of our Lord; it is through Her that we may be saved. This is what has always been the Catholic Faith.
So now we are in a very grievous situation in the Church, because everywhere within the Church is spread the idea that all religions are ways of salvation and that the Holy Ghost is working in all of them. Now I do not know how the Good Lord will solve Himself this grievous problem, but for us the conclusion which we ought to draw from all the facts which I quoted, from the present situation, is that we must remain Catholics, we must believe in the Catholic Church. We say it in our Creed: “Unam Sanctam Catholicam Apostolicam Ecclesiam." Unam: One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. ONE, there are not two, but ONE! We must believe this, and absolutely refuse to follow these false ideas which are spreading everywhere in the Church, that one may be saved in any religion; this would be to ruin the Church. The Church would no longer have Her “raison d’ê‑tre”, reason for being. If one may be saved in any religion, why the Church? Why? She has no longer any reason for being. This was the very “raison d’être” of the Church - to be the Way of Salvation and to work with all Her strength to convert souls so that they may become Catholic in order to go to Heaven, to be saved.
So in this feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, let all of us here present take the resolution to keep the Faith as the Tradition kept it, the traditional Faith as the Church has always given it to us, to keep Her teaching, to keep Her Catechism of the Council of Trent in which are summed up all the truths of our Faith, to keep the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to keep the Sacraments as before for you, for your children, and above all, gather yourselves around priests who are keeping the Faith. Do not hesitate, do not listen to criticism neither from modernist bishops nor from modernist priests in your parishes. Do not listen; follow the Catholic priests, those who are keeping the Catechism, those who are keeping the Faith. These are in the Truth, these shall save your souls. Do not be afraid, otherwise you will do as, for instance, the Catholics in England did when they passed to Anglicanism. They followed their priests, they followed their bishops, and they became Anglicans, they became heretics, they went out of the Catholic Church. If you also follow your progressive priests, if you follow your progressive bishops, you shall become progressive and that is no longer Catholic. This is a new error, a new heresy. Let us remain Catholic! In order to know what is Catholic, let us look at what the Church has done for twenty centuries, had taught; let us keep what the Church has done for twenty centuries. It is not possible that the Church would have been wrong for twenty centuries. So let us attach ourselves to twenty centuries of Tradition and we continue to do the same.
I ask you to pray during this ceremony asking for the grace of remaining Catholic and that we may continue our work in our seminaries for our priests, to make Catholic priests, to continue the work and encourage religious Monks and Nuns to remain true Monks, true Nuns. Here in America you have the priory at Campbell with your priests, you have the Seminary at Ridgefield; some seminarians from around here are in Ridgefield. You have the Carmel recently opened at Philadelphia with American Sisters, you have the College of St. Mary’s in Kansas, where a group of priests and nuns are keeping the Tradition. The College is wonderful and is working very well; I wish that you support it. And there will soon be at Armada, Michigan, near Detroit, a novitiate of the Sisters who are now at St. Mary’s; they will have a Novitiate for the Sisters of the Society. This is encouraging news, this shows that there are still vocations, there are good vocations, but they must be led according to Tradition.
So let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the end, let us ask her to help us to remain Catholic, to love her Divine Son. She is not ecumenical; the Virgin Mary believes that there is only one Savior, her Son Jesus, Whose Mother she is. She knows that it is by Him that every soul may be saved. If one asks the Blessed Virgin Mary whether there is another name by which one may be saved than the Name of her Divine Son, she would answer: “No! This is impossible!” Every time she came on earth, that she appeared, she appeared either with her Divine Son, or she encouraged souls to come to her Divine Son in order to be saved. So we ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to make the Church remain Catholic and during this Mass I promise you to pray for you, for your families, for all those who are in hesitation that they may come to the Truth, that they may return to the Truth, that they remain attached to the Tradition.
My dear brethren, I thank you for your attention..
Someone asked that I give in a few words what is my situation, the situation in which I find myself in the Church, in which you find yourselves also. Well, I think that the shortest answer, the simplest answer, is this: we are in the situation in which St. Athanasius found himself. I am not St. Athanasius, I am not a saint, but he found himself in the same situation. All the Church had passed to Arianism; the great majority of bishops, the Pope himself was favorable to a certain kind of “semi‑Arianism.” Well, St. Athanasius was excommunicated by the Pope! And Athanasius became a saint. He was visiting everywhere, he was going everywhere. He was saying Mass in chapels everywhere in order to maintain the Catholic Faith against Arianism. We are in a situation fairly similar. It is not Arianism but modernism; modernism which is, as Pope Pius X himself said, the synthesis collecting all heresies. Now this modernism is underneath everywhere, is spreading everywhere in the Church, even in Rome. Well, we defend our Faith, we defend the Catholic Faith. As St. Athanasius was saying to those who attacked him, “you have kept the churches, you have kept the monuments, we have kept the Faith! Faith is more important than monuments!” Well, we are in the same situation. So let us pray to St. Athanasius that he may give us the courage to follow him so that one day Holy Mother Church may find again Her good Tradition.
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| December 6th - St. Nicholas |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-06-2020, 01:12 AM - Forum: December
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Saint Nicholas
Archbishop of Myra in Lycia
(† 342)
Saint Nicholas, the patron Saint of Russia, has won the warmest of praises from other Saints such as Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Peter Damian, who called him the glory of young men, the honor of the elderly, the splendor of priests and the light of Pontiffs. All the world was filled with his praises, Saint Peter added. The universal Church, in the Collect of his office, claims that God made known his nobility by an infinite number of miracles.
He was born during the third century, nephew of the Archbishop of Myra. He had lost his parents while still very young, and he desired not to conserve his rich heritage. Gradually he gave away everything of which he could dispose, establishing dowries for poor maidens and seeking out the needy wherever they could be found. The Archbishop, his uncle, already aware of his vocation to sanctity, ordained Saint Nicholas priest and appointed him Abbot of the monastery of Holy Sion near Myra. He undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, resurrecting a sailor who fell from a mast during the voyage; he prayed for the frightened passengers in a near-fatal tempest and calmed it. He visited Saint Anthony of the Desert and healed many sick persons in Alexandria during a stopover in Egypt.
On the death of the Archbishop of Myra, he was elected to the vacant see. Immediately after the pontifical Mass, he resurrected an infant who had fallen into a fire.
A persecution broke out under the emperor Licinius; Saint Nicholas was banished and kept in chains. He suffered from severe mistreatment but returned to his church when Constantine the Great defeated Licinius, and in 313 then put a definitive end to the persecutions. Saint Nicholas labored in his domains to stop the worship of false gods, still practiced there as elsewhere. With his own hands he cut down a huge tree, site of a sacrilegious cult of the goddess Diana. During a famine his prayers multiplied the provisions of wheat which he had ordered for the port of Myra, to such an extent that what would have sufficed for his people for only a few days, was found to be sufficient for more than two years. He rescued from death, just before they were hanged, three innocents condemned by a judge who had been corrupted by money, reprehended the latter for his crime and sent these liberated ones home, entirely exonerated.
Throughout his life he retained the bright and simple manners of his early years; no one could converse with him without finding himself spiritually renewed. Saint Nicholas was the special protector of the innocent and the wronged. He is usually represented at the side of a container in which a cruel butcher had concealed the bodies of three young persons, whom he had killed and was intending to use in his commerce, but who were restored to life by the Saint. This miracle was reported by Saint Bonaventure in a sermon.
Saint Nicholas rejoiced when God made known to him that the end of his pilgrimage was near. He retired to his Monastery of Holy Sion, and after a short but intense episode of fever, died in the year 342. He is the patron of schoolchildren, sailors, travelers and pilgrims, prisoners and many others. His relics were translated in 1087 to Bari, Italy, where a church was built in their honor. And there, after fifteen centuries, the manna of Saint Nicholas still flows from his bones and heals all kinds of illnesses.
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| December 5th - St. Sabas |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-05-2020, 12:32 AM - Forum: December
- Replies (2)
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Saint Sabas
Patriarchal Abbot in Palestine
(439-531)
Saint Sabas, one of the most renowned patriarchs of the monks of Palestine, was born in the year 439, near Caesarea. At the age of fifteen, in the absence of his parents, he suffered under the conduct of an uncle, and weary of the world's problems decided to forsake the world and enter a monastery not far from his family home. After he had spent ten years in religious life, his two uncles and his parents attempted to persuade him to leave the monastery to which he had migrated in Palestine. He replied: Do you want me to be a deserter, leaving God after placing myself in His service? If those who abandon the militia of earthly kings are severely punished, what chastisement would I not deserve if I abandoned that of the King of heaven?
When he was thirty years old, desiring greater solitude, he began to live an angelic life so far above nature that he seemed no longer to have a body. The young sage, as he was called by Saint Euthymius, Abbot of a nearby monastery, dwelt in a cavern on a mountain near Jerusalem, where he prayed, sang Psalms and wove baskets of palm branches. He was forty-five years old when he began to direct those who came to live as hermits, as he did, and he gave each of them a place to build a cell; soon this was the largest monastery of Palestine. He left the region when certain agitators complained of him, for he considered himself incapable of maintaining good discipline. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sallustus, did not easily credit the complaints, and instead ordained Sabas a priest, that he might say Mass for his disciples — for they had been displeased by his lack of desire for that honor. He was at that time fifty-three years old. The Patriarch presented him to them as their father, whom they should obey and honor, and made him Superior of all the Palestine monasteries. But several monks remained obstinate, and Saint Sabas again went elsewhere, to a cavern near Scythopolis.
As the years passed, he was in charge of seven monasteries; but his influence was not limited to Palestine. The heresies afflicting religion were being sustained by the emperor of Constantinople, who had exiled the Catholic Patriarch of that city, Elias. Saint Sabas converted the one who had replaced Elias, and wrote to the emperor that he should cease to persecute the Church of Jerusalem, and to impose taxes on the cities of Palestine which they were unable to pay. In effect, the people were reduced to extreme misery. The emperor died soon afterwards, and the pious Justin replaced him. Justin restored the true faith by an edict and recalled the exiles, re-establishing the exiled prelates in their sees.
When Saint Sabas was ninety-one years old, he made the long journey to Constantinople to ask Justinian, successor to Justin, not to act with severity against the province of Palestine, where a revolt had occurred by the non-submission of a group of Samaritans. The emperor honored him highly and wished to endow his monasteries with wealth, but the holy Patriarch asked him to use the riches he was offering to build a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem, to decorate the unfinished Church of the Blessed Virgin, to build a fortress where the monks could take refuge when barbarians invaded the land, and finally, to re-establish preaching of the true Faith, by edicts proscribing the various errors being propagated. The holy Abbot lived to be ninety-two years old, and died in 531, in the arms of the monks of his first monastery.
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| Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:41 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’
‘I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking,’ the Pope said.
VATICAN CITY, December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The leader of the Catholic Church quoted today in a tweet words that are central to Joe Biden’s plan to remake America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To help our society to ‘build back better’, inclusion of the vulnerable must also entail efforts to promote their active participation,” tweeted the Pope on Dec. 3, linking to a message he gave for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual observance instituted by the United Nations several decades ago.
In his Dec. 3 message, Pope Francis said he finds the expression “building back better” quite striking, noting that the theme for this year’s celebration is “Building Back Better: Toward a Disability-inclusive, Accessible and Sustainable post-COVID-19 World.”
“I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking. It makes me think of the Gospel parable of the house built on rock or sand (cf. Mt 7:24-27; Lk 6:46-49),” said the Pope.
While the theme of the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities” is “Building Back Better,” the Pope’s tweet of the theme dropped the gerund on “building,” making the quote in the tweet identical to the slogan of Biden’s campaign platform.
Last week, Biden launched his BuildBackBetter.gov website hosted on a U.S. government server. Previously, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) had formally notified Biden that he would now be receiving transition funds. Part of the package includes receiving a government domain for a transition website. Biden pointed his followers to it with a simple tweet on Nov. 23.
“The website lists Biden’s priorities as curbing COVID-19 (including urging state and local authorities to force mask-wearing in their jurisdictions), economic recovery (with little in the way of specifics), racial equality (including the creation of a “national police oversight commission”), and climate change (primarily via a dramatic increase in government spending),” LifeSite’s Calvin Freiburger reported.
LifeSite’s Patrick Delaney has noted in a Nov. 2 report how Biden’s campaign plans align with a radical international socialist plan called “The Great Reset.” Globalist elites have characterized the “Great Reset” as a plan to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate [in the Great Reset], and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a June 3, 2020 article published on WEF’s website.
Such a “reset means a revolution: a deep transformation of all that is done, thought, or believed — making a clean break with the past,” wrote LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits.
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute recently observed that Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan “comes straight from the Great Reset’s playbook,” and will even use the same terminology.
“It can’t be a coincidence that Biden is now using that exact language while calling for nearly identical policies. Biden is clearly taking his cues from the World Economic Forum and other supporters of the Great Reset,” he wrote in a July 23 article published on Fox Business.
LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen noted that Pope Francis’s opinion piece published in the New York Times on Thanksgiving Day “echoed the sentiments of Joe Biden and other pushers of the so-called Great Reset, calling for the world to ‘build a better, different, human future.’”
The Pope’s piece “reads like a page from Biden’s Build Back Better campaign,” commented Westen. He pointed out that the name of “Jesus” or “Christ” never appears in the piece, and “God” is mentioned only once, assisting in the push for the new agenda.
Earlier this month, Biden related how he and the Pope had talked on the phone after the presidential election and how the Holy Father had extended “blessings and congratulations.”
In a short press statement released on the Biden-Harris transition website, Biden “thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness’ leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.”
In his address to persons with disabilities today, the Pope reaffirmed the “right of persons with disabilities to receive the sacraments” but failed to mention the right of such persons to be born. In Iceland, every baby diagnosed with the disability of Down syndrome is aborted, and the majority of unborn babies with Down syndrome are targeted for abortion in various other parts of the world.
“Iceland is not alone in its aspirations to create a “Down syndrome-free” world,” wrote Lauren Bell in a 2017 report. “The holocaust of Down syndrome babies is a global epidemic, taking the lives of human beings created in the image of God on the basis of a prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome,” she added.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:41 AM - Forum: Great Reset
- No Replies
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Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’
‘I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking,’ the Pope said.
VATICAN CITY, December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The leader of the Catholic Church quoted today in a tweet words that are central to Joe Biden’s plan to remake America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To help our society to ‘build back better’, inclusion of the vulnerable must also entail efforts to promote their active participation,” tweeted the Pope on Dec. 3, linking to a message he gave for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual observance instituted by the United Nations several decades ago.
In his Dec. 3 message, Pope Francis said he finds the expression “building back better” quite striking, noting that the theme for this year’s celebration is “Building Back Better: Toward a Disability-inclusive, Accessible and Sustainable post-COVID-19 World.”
“I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking. It makes me think of the Gospel parable of the house built on rock or sand (cf. Mt 7:24-27; Lk 6:46-49),” said the Pope.
While the theme of the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities” is “Building Back Better,” the Pope’s tweet of the theme dropped the gerund on “building,” making the quote in the tweet identical to the slogan of Biden’s campaign platform.
Last week, Biden launched his BuildBackBetter.gov website hosted on a U.S. government server. Previously, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) had formally notified Biden that he would now be receiving transition funds. Part of the package includes receiving a government domain for a transition website. Biden pointed his followers to it with a simple tweet on Nov. 23.
“The website lists Biden’s priorities as curbing COVID-19 (including urging state and local authorities to force mask-wearing in their jurisdictions), economic recovery (with little in the way of specifics), racial equality (including the creation of a “national police oversight commission”), and climate change (primarily via a dramatic increase in government spending),” LifeSite’s Calvin Freiburger reported.
LifeSite’s Patrick Delaney has noted in a Nov. 2 report how Biden’s campaign plans align with a radical international socialist plan called “The Great Reset.” Globalist elites have characterized the “Great Reset” as a plan to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate [in the Great Reset], and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a June 3, 2020 article published on WEF’s website.
Such a “reset means a revolution: a deep transformation of all that is done, thought, or believed — making a clean break with the past,” wrote LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits.
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute recently observed that Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan “comes straight from the Great Reset’s playbook,” and will even use the same terminology.
“It can’t be a coincidence that Biden is now using that exact language while calling for nearly identical policies. Biden is clearly taking his cues from the World Economic Forum and other supporters of the Great Reset,” he wrote in a July 23 article published on Fox Business.
LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen noted that Pope Francis’s opinion piece published in the New York Times on Thanksgiving Day “echoed the sentiments of Joe Biden and other pushers of the so-called Great Reset, calling for the world to ‘build a better, different, human future.’”
The Pope’s piece “reads like a page from Biden’s Build Back Better campaign,” commented Westen. He pointed out that the name of “Jesus” or “Christ” never appears in the piece, and “God” is mentioned only once, assisting in the push for the new agenda.
Earlier this month, Biden related how he and the Pope had talked on the phone after the presidential election and how the Holy Father had extended “blessings and congratulations.”
In a short press statement released on the Biden-Harris transition website, Biden “thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness’ leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.”
In his address to persons with disabilities today, the Pope reaffirmed the “right of persons with disabilities to receive the sacraments” but failed to mention the right of such persons to be born. In Iceland, every baby diagnosed with the disability of Down syndrome is aborted, and the majority of unborn babies with Down syndrome are targeted for abortion in various other parts of the world.
“Iceland is not alone in its aspirations to create a “Down syndrome-free” world,” wrote Lauren Bell in a 2017 report. “The holocaust of Down syndrome babies is a global epidemic, taking the lives of human beings created in the image of God on the basis of a prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome,” she added.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| US govt to issue wallet-sized COVID-19 proof of vaccination cards |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:03 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
- No Replies
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US govt to issue wallet-sized COVID-19 proof of vaccination cards
Releasing the image on the Department of Defense (DOD) website, the description says that they 'will be sent out as part of vaccination kits from Operation Warp Speed.'
WASHINGTON D.C., December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – As COVID-19 vaccines prepare to be rolled out, the Department of Defense has released an image of a wallet-sized vaccination record card, which will be given to everyone who receives a COVID-19 vaccine.
Releasing the image on the Department of Defense (DOD) website, the description says that they “will be sent out as part of vaccination kits from Operation Warp Speed.”
The kit will further include “a card, a needle and syringe, alcohol wipes and a mask.”
Reporting on the news of the card, Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition which is involved in distributing the vaccine, said “Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due. Let’s do the simple, easy thing first. Everyone’s going to get that.”
Moore also stated that people would be widely asked to volunteer their cell number, in order to “get a text message telling them when and where their next dose is scheduled to be administered.”
CNN added that “Vaccination clinics will also be reporting to their state immunization registries what vaccine was given, so that, for example, an entity could run a query if it didn't know where a patient got a first dose.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services, in an updated instruction on their website, includes mention of the vaccine record card. Providers of the vaccine “must provide a completed COVID-19 vaccination record card to every COVID-19 Vaccine recipient.” The card will be included in the vaccine shipment.
Similar information regarding the use of the vaccine record card is contained on the Department of Health for Minnesota’s website.
A document detailing the vaccination program, compiled by the CDC, consistently refers to the vaccination card. “Provide a completed COVID-19 vaccination record card to every vaccine recipient/parent/legal representative,” the document states, when listing the duties of a vaccine provider.
In an October article Dr. Michael Yeadon,who “spent over 30 years leading new [allergy and respiratory] medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies,” and retired from the COVID-19 vaccine developer, Pfizer, with “the most senior research position in this field,” dismissed the need for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Yeadon stated: “There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.”
The technology involved in administering the vaccine, as used by Pfizer and Moderna, is so novel that it has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, as admitted by Pfizer itself.
It also avails of “messenger RNA,” which directly affects a person’s cells, and is “a vaccine technology that’s so new, no mRNA vaccines have ever been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”
Doctors from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), advising the CDC, warned that patients needed to be informed about the side-effects of COVID-19 vaccines. According to a report from CNBC, Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association stressed, “We really need to make patients aware that this is not going to be a walk in the park,” she said. “They are going to know they had a vaccine. They are probably not going to feel wonderful. But they’ve got to come back for that second dose.”
Some of the immediate results from some of the vaccine trials have included “severe” complications, involving headaches, fever, body aches and symptoms similar to a “severe hangover.
Contact
To register complaints and concerns about the vaccination card, visit the U.S Department of Health and Human Services page or the Centers for Disease Control here and here.
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| ‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 06:44 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
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‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’
The exiled archbishop had harsh words for the 'Great Reset' and those seeking to implement it
.
December 3, 2020 (Inside the Vatican) — “O God, you are awesome from your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives strength and power to his people.” —Psalm 68:35
On November 19, 2020, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, declared that “Covid is an opportunity for a global reset.”
In reality, Schwab was slavishly repeating what Jacques Attali said in the French weekly L’Express on May 3, 2009 [so, 11 years ago]: “History teaches us that humanity evolves significantly only when it is really afraid: then it initially develops defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes useless (distractions); sometimes effective (therapies, which, if necessary, may depart from all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis is over, fear transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and inscribe them as policies of a healthy democracy.”
Back then it was the swine flu which, according to the media, was expected to cause millions of deaths and for which nations bought millions of doses of vaccines never used, because they proved useless, from “Big Pharma.” Useless for all — except for those who sold them, making huge profits.
One might wonder why a flu virus that according to recent WHO data has a mortality (0.13%) slightly higher than that of a normal seasonal flu syndrome (0.10%) could have led to the declaration of the pandemic and to a series of practically identical countermeasures in almost all European nations and the American continent.
One might also wonder why Covid-19 treatments are generally discredited, minimized or prohibited, while the vaccine is considered the most effective solution.
And it needs to be explained how it is possible to create a vaccine, since — according to the statements of the US CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — the virus has not yet been isolated.
What antigen may be used, if the virus SARS-CoV-2 cannot be isolated and replicated?
And what reliability can the virus tests have, since the tests are calibrated to detect only on the generic “Coronavirus” in general? And if on October 19 the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome announced the develop of a test that distinguishes between normal flu and Covid-19, may we know what so far have patients who undergo the new test been found positive for?
Perhaps this lack of clarity is why some members of the Moderna and Pfizer boards of directors have sold part of their company shares. So let’s go back to the questions that many posed to themselves months ago, and to the never-contradicted contents of my two Open Letters to President Trump: a world plan appears in its disconcerting reality. The architects of the plan, creating an unjustified social alarm about an alleged pandemic — that today we see is no more serious than a normal flu, as confirmed by official data from all over the world — has been used to create a tremendous global social and economic crisis and so to legitimize the drastic reduction of the basic rights of the population. It is what its authors themselves call the Great Reset: the global reset of the economy, of society and of masses of people.
In this project, the Covid virus plays a fundamental role, as an alibi that justifies — in the face of the “totem” of a science that has prostituted itself to the interests of an elite after having abdicated its mission to save human lives — the deprivation of freedom, the interference of governments in the private life of its citizens, the establishment of a pseudo-health regime in which, against all objective scientific evidence, the number of diners, the distance between people, the possibility of buying, selling, breathing and even praying, is decided from above.
Someone, in the deafening silence of the Catholic Hierarchy, has imposed the closure of churches or the limitation of religious celebrations, considering the House of God as a cinema or a museum, but at the same time declaring abortion clinics “essential services.”
These are the paradoxes of a misguided power, managed by people corrupt in the soul and sold out to Satan, a power which, after obsessively repeating the mantras of “democracy” and “power belongs to the people” is now forced to impose a dictatorship on the people themselves, in the name of the achievement of objectives aimed at protecting the political and financial interests of the elite.
The rich are getting richer and richer, while the middle classes that constitute the social fabric and the very soul of nations is being cut down.
The French Revolution wiped out the Western aristocracy.
The Industrial Revolution obliterated the peasants and spread the proletarianization which led to the disaster of Socialism and Communism.
The Revolution of ’68 demolished the family and the school.
This Great Reset, desired by the globalist elite, represents the final revolution with which to create a shapeless and anonymous mass of slaves connected to the internet, confined to the house, threatened by an endless series of pandemics designed by those who already have the miraculous vaccine ready.
Precisely in these days, with the harmony of a plan that seems orchestrated in every detail under a single leadership, the imposition of a vaccine is being theorized by many parties, even before the vaccine’s actual effectiveness is fully known, and even before the vaccine’s possible side-effects may be fully ascertained.
This obligation to receive a vaccine is projected by many to occur alongside the issuance by a “health passport,” so that those who have such a passport may move without limitations, while those who refuse a vaccine would not be able to use means of transport, attend restaurants and visit public places, schools and offices.
That this represents an intolerable violation of the individual’s freedoms does not seem to be a problem: law-makers do not hesitate to sack parliaments to impose their tyrannical norms, knowing that their power exists as long as they obey the Great Reset agenda, endorsed by the international institutions such as the European Union and the UN.
Faced with such a massive and coordinated deployment of forces we remain astonished, bewildered by the impudence of those who are telling us, in essence, that we must silently accept the dictatorship of a faceless power group, because that is how the group has decided.
We are disconcerted by the enslavement of the world Left — and of the Democrats in the United States — to this agenda, which knows no limits, no restraints on its execution, to the point of organizing an electoral coup of such magnitude and gravity as to be horrified.
The manual fraud of duplicate ballots, the votes of deceased people, citizens who discover they have voted a thousand times and employees who tamper with the results by obscuring the windows of the polling stations with cardboard panels, is accompanied by the use of a vote-counting apparatus which is proving not only to be open to fraudulent use, but even to have been designed at the software level to allow the shifting of votes from one candidate to another, based on a complex algorithm.
We discover that the people behind this macroscopic fraud are always the same, always of the same political party, always subservient to the same ideology. People corrupt in intellect and will, because they made themselves the slaves of a ruthless tyrant, after refusing to obey a good, just and merciful Lord.
Thus, as these have accepted the slavery of sin and rebellion against God, today they would like to drag the whole of humanity into an abyss of death and despair: it is the miserable revenge of Satan, who, not being able to defeat the One who cast him into hell, tries to drag with him as many souls as possible, in an attempt to frustrate the work of Redemption.
We, believers in Christ Our Only Lord, have no reason to fear, even against all human reason: we know that, reborn in Baptism, we are no longer servants but children of God, and that by preserving the friendship of our Lord with Grace we can trust in Him, in His provident help, in His powerful protection.
Ultimately, this is true freedom: the freedom of the children of God, who obey His law not out of fear but out of love, not out of compulsion but because in adhering to the divine will they will find their own perfect fulfillment and their complete realization. For every soul is created for the greater glory of God, for eternal bliss as a reward of fidelity to the Savior.
Don’t let our hearts be troubled!
The maneuvers of those who work in darkness are coming to light, showing themselves in all their horror and revealing their perverse and infernal matrix. Lies, deceptions, violence, death: this is the harsh reality of evil before which people of good will can only be horrified. If Our Lord deigns to listen to the prayers of His children, this castle of lies and fraud will collapse miserably, and its architects will have to go back into hiding to escape the rigors of justice and the execration of peoples.
These are decisive hours: we continue to pray, to recite the Holy Rosary, to nourish ourselves with the Most Holy Eucharist, to do penance. The choral voice that rises up to the throne of the divine Majesty will not remain unheard.
Let us not be discouraged, because it is in the moment of trial that the Lord gives us the opportunity to show our trust in Him and to see the greatness of His mercy. “Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14, 13). Our Lord told us clearly: anything.
We therefore ask the Father, in the name of the Son our Lord and Redeemer, through the intercession of His most holy Mother our powerful mediator, to show His glory, to grant the exaltation of Holy Church, peace and prosperity to the Christian peoples, the conversion of sinners, the defeat of His enemies.
“God arises, and his enemies will be scattered, and those who hate him will flee before him” (Psalm 68:1).
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
25 November 2020
St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr
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| ‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 06:44 AM - Forum: Great Reset
- No Replies
|
|
‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’
The exiled archbishop had harsh words for the 'Great Reset' and those seeking to implement it
.
December 3, 2020 (Inside the Vatican) — “O God, you are awesome from your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives strength and power to his people.” —Psalm 68:35
On November 19, 2020, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, declared that “Covid is an opportunity for a global reset.”
In reality, Schwab was slavishly repeating what Jacques Attali said in the French weekly L’Express on May 3, 2009 [so, 11 years ago]: “History teaches us that humanity evolves significantly only when it is really afraid: then it initially develops defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes useless (distractions); sometimes effective (therapies, which, if necessary, may depart from all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis is over, fear transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and inscribe them as policies of a healthy democracy.”
Back then it was the swine flu which, according to the media, was expected to cause millions of deaths and for which nations bought millions of doses of vaccines never used, because they proved useless, from “Big Pharma.” Useless for all — except for those who sold them, making huge profits.
One might wonder why a flu virus that according to recent WHO data has a mortality (0.13%) slightly higher than that of a normal seasonal flu syndrome (0.10%) could have led to the declaration of the pandemic and to a series of practically identical countermeasures in almost all European nations and the American continent.
One might also wonder why Covid-19 treatments are generally discredited, minimized or prohibited, while the vaccine is considered the most effective solution.
And it needs to be explained how it is possible to create a vaccine, since — according to the statements of the US CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — the virus has not yet been isolated.
What antigen may be used, if the virus SARS-CoV-2 cannot be isolated and replicated?
And what reliability can the virus tests have, since the tests are calibrated to detect only on the generic “Coronavirus” in general? And if on October 19 the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome announced the develop of a test that distinguishes between normal flu and Covid-19, may we know what so far have patients who undergo the new test been found positive for?
Perhaps this lack of clarity is why some members of the Moderna and Pfizer boards of directors have sold part of their company shares. So let’s go back to the questions that many posed to themselves months ago, and to the never-contradicted contents of my two Open Letters to President Trump: a world plan appears in its disconcerting reality. The architects of the plan, creating an unjustified social alarm about an alleged pandemic — that today we see is no more serious than a normal flu, as confirmed by official data from all over the world — has been used to create a tremendous global social and economic crisis and so to legitimize the drastic reduction of the basic rights of the population. It is what its authors themselves call the Great Reset: the global reset of the economy, of society and of masses of people.
In this project, the Covid virus plays a fundamental role, as an alibi that justifies — in the face of the “totem” of a science that has prostituted itself to the interests of an elite after having abdicated its mission to save human lives — the deprivation of freedom, the interference of governments in the private life of its citizens, the establishment of a pseudo-health regime in which, against all objective scientific evidence, the number of diners, the distance between people, the possibility of buying, selling, breathing and even praying, is decided from above.
Someone, in the deafening silence of the Catholic Hierarchy, has imposed the closure of churches or the limitation of religious celebrations, considering the House of God as a cinema or a museum, but at the same time declaring abortion clinics “essential services.”
These are the paradoxes of a misguided power, managed by people corrupt in the soul and sold out to Satan, a power which, after obsessively repeating the mantras of “democracy” and “power belongs to the people” is now forced to impose a dictatorship on the people themselves, in the name of the achievement of objectives aimed at protecting the political and financial interests of the elite.
The rich are getting richer and richer, while the middle classes that constitute the social fabric and the very soul of nations is being cut down.
The French Revolution wiped out the Western aristocracy.
The Industrial Revolution obliterated the peasants and spread the proletarianization which led to the disaster of Socialism and Communism.
The Revolution of ’68 demolished the family and the school.
This Great Reset, desired by the globalist elite, represents the final revolution with which to create a shapeless and anonymous mass of slaves connected to the internet, confined to the house, threatened by an endless series of pandemics designed by those who already have the miraculous vaccine ready.
Precisely in these days, with the harmony of a plan that seems orchestrated in every detail under a single leadership, the imposition of a vaccine is being theorized by many parties, even before the vaccine’s actual effectiveness is fully known, and even before the vaccine’s possible side-effects may be fully ascertained.
This obligation to receive a vaccine is projected by many to occur alongside the issuance by a “health passport,” so that those who have such a passport may move without limitations, while those who refuse a vaccine would not be able to use means of transport, attend restaurants and visit public places, schools and offices.
That this represents an intolerable violation of the individual’s freedoms does not seem to be a problem: law-makers do not hesitate to sack parliaments to impose their tyrannical norms, knowing that their power exists as long as they obey the Great Reset agenda, endorsed by the international institutions such as the European Union and the UN.
Faced with such a massive and coordinated deployment of forces we remain astonished, bewildered by the impudence of those who are telling us, in essence, that we must silently accept the dictatorship of a faceless power group, because that is how the group has decided.
We are disconcerted by the enslavement of the world Left — and of the Democrats in the United States — to this agenda, which knows no limits, no restraints on its execution, to the point of organizing an electoral coup of such magnitude and gravity as to be horrified.
The manual fraud of duplicate ballots, the votes of deceased people, citizens who discover they have voted a thousand times and employees who tamper with the results by obscuring the windows of the polling stations with cardboard panels, is accompanied by the use of a vote-counting apparatus which is proving not only to be open to fraudulent use, but even to have been designed at the software level to allow the shifting of votes from one candidate to another, based on a complex algorithm.
We discover that the people behind this macroscopic fraud are always the same, always of the same political party, always subservient to the same ideology. People corrupt in intellect and will, because they made themselves the slaves of a ruthless tyrant, after refusing to obey a good, just and merciful Lord.
Thus, as these have accepted the slavery of sin and rebellion against God, today they would like to drag the whole of humanity into an abyss of death and despair: it is the miserable revenge of Satan, who, not being able to defeat the One who cast him into hell, tries to drag with him as many souls as possible, in an attempt to frustrate the work of Redemption.
We, believers in Christ Our Only Lord, have no reason to fear, even against all human reason: we know that, reborn in Baptism, we are no longer servants but children of God, and that by preserving the friendship of our Lord with Grace we can trust in Him, in His provident help, in His powerful protection.
Ultimately, this is true freedom: the freedom of the children of God, who obey His law not out of fear but out of love, not out of compulsion but because in adhering to the divine will they will find their own perfect fulfillment and their complete realization. For every soul is created for the greater glory of God, for eternal bliss as a reward of fidelity to the Savior.
Don’t let our hearts be troubled!
The maneuvers of those who work in darkness are coming to light, showing themselves in all their horror and revealing their perverse and infernal matrix. Lies, deceptions, violence, death: this is the harsh reality of evil before which people of good will can only be horrified. If Our Lord deigns to listen to the prayers of His children, this castle of lies and fraud will collapse miserably, and its architects will have to go back into hiding to escape the rigors of justice and the execration of peoples.
These are decisive hours: we continue to pray, to recite the Holy Rosary, to nourish ourselves with the Most Holy Eucharist, to do penance. The choral voice that rises up to the throne of the divine Majesty will not remain unheard.
Let us not be discouraged, because it is in the moment of trial that the Lord gives us the opportunity to show our trust in Him and to see the greatness of His mercy. “Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14, 13). Our Lord told us clearly: anything.
We therefore ask the Father, in the name of the Son our Lord and Redeemer, through the intercession of His most holy Mother our powerful mediator, to show His glory, to grant the exaltation of Holy Church, peace and prosperity to the Christian peoples, the conversion of sinners, the defeat of His enemies.
“God arises, and his enemies will be scattered, and those who hate him will flee before him” (Psalm 68:1).
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
25 November 2020
St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr
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