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| Cardinal Dolan praises priest who presided at ‘trans’ funeral in New York cathedral |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-20-2024, 06:19 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Cardinal Dolan praises priest who presided at ‘trans’ funeral in New York cathedral
The New York archbishop said that Fr. Edward Dougherty 'is a hero' because 'he stopped the (funeral) Mass,' but when questioned that in reality the service was not stopped, Dolan said, 'Then it went on without him,' and he turned around and walked away.
![[Image: Funeral.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Funeral.png)
'Transgender' funeral at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral
X
Feb 19, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York told a Catholic laywoman that Fr. Edward Dougherty, who officiated at the scandalous February 15 funeral service of a transgender activist and atheist in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, “is a hero.”
LifeSite spoke with Wendy Stone Long, who had approached Cardinal Dolan on Saturday, February 17 after his vigil Mass at Blessed Sacrament Parish in New Rochelle, New York. Long told LifeSite that she first asked the cardinal when a Mass of Reparation would take place at the cathedral in order to make reparation for the recent sacrilegious funeral.
Dolan leaned over to Long and whispered into her ear: “You know, I think it’s already happened – they did it on the QT (quiet) so it wouldn’t be disrupted by those protesters.”
When Long insisted that many Catholics would have liked to attend that Mass of Reparation in light of the great scandal of the funeral service, Dolan told her that Fr. Dougherty “is a hero” because “he stopped the (funeral) Mass.” And when Long objected that she herself had watched the entire service and that it was not stopped, Dolan said, “Then it went on without him,” and the cardinal turned around and walked away.
Cardinal Dolan did not use his homily at the Saturday evening vigil Mass in New Rochelle to comment on the scandal that had taken place in his own cathedral some days earlier and since then has not made any public comment on the matter.
Fr. Dougherty officiated the funeral service on February 15. As can be heard on the video of the event, he was told before the service that the originally planned funeral Mass had to be turned into a funeral service. “Funeral service, no Mass,” a clergyman told Dougherty, to which he replied, “OK, OK.” He obviously did not make that decision. He continuously spoke of the trans activist Cecilia Gentili (born a man) as “she” and indicated that Gentili was on the way to heaven. At the beginning of the service, he praised the attendees – hundreds of whom were transgender persons – by stating, “Except on Easter Sunday, we don’t really have a crowd that is so well turned out.” The congregation burst out in prolonged uproarious hoots and yells in response to the priest, who is then laughing.
He also tolerated the innumerable blasphemies and mockeries of the Catholic faith throughout the service, during which the Mother of God was mocked (replacing the words “Ave Maria” with the chant “Ave Cecilia,” as if Gentili was a saint and comparable to Our Lady). With the priest sitting nearby, one homosexual couple exchanged a kiss on the altar. When the “husband” of Gentili called the deceased an “angel,” Fr. Dougherty clapped his hands in approval. Another speaker called Gentili “our saint” who worked so that “sex workers are free.”
At certain points during the service, Fr. Dougherty could be heard laughing at the pranks of the audience. On the high altar of St. Patrick’s, transgenders were hugging and kissing during the remembrance speeches. One friend proclaimed Gentili as “this whore, this great whore” and “Saint Cecilia” to a huge outburst of applause. The crowd and organizers of the funeral event turned it into a political rally complete with cheers, catcalls, and intentions for “gender-affirming health care.” This blasphemous chant filled the entire cathedral as Gentili’s coffin was carried down the aisle, accompanied by Fr. Dougherty, who had stated at the end: “Let us take leave of our sister Cecilia.” He added, “One day we shall joyfully greet her again.”
The sacrilegious event in the most important Catholic cathedral of the United States has led to much criticism. A LifeSite petition requesting that an exorcism of the cathedral be performed has already gained more than 10,000 signatures.
A group of Catholic scholars and authors (among them LifeSite editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen) has urged bishops in the world to recognize the link between this planned provocation in New York City and the weakening stance of the Church toward the LGBT agenda under Pope Francis, especially in light of his approval of blessings for homosexual couples. Should this new move go unhindered, such provocations will soon most likely take place in numerous parishes in the world.
Cardinal Dolan will likely also receive more criticism for this response to Long. “Cardinal Dolan is hiding, he is not taking responsibility for this scandal,” children’s advocate Elizabeth Yore told LifeSite. “A public scandal that took place at a Catholic cathedral demands a public act of reparation, a public Mass of Reparation, not a private one in hiding. Dolan is more afraid of the tranny protest than of the scandal that he has caused in the Church.”
LifeSiteNews reached out to Cardinal Dolan for comment. An update will be provided with his response.
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| 80 Per Cent of Americans Consuming Infertility Chemical Via Popular Cereals |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-19-2024, 07:13 AM - Forum: Health
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80 Per Cent of Americans Consuming Infertility Chemical Via Popular Cereals
Biden administration wants to expand use of “highly toxic” chlormequat.
modernity.news [emphasis mine] | 16th February 2024
80 per cent of Americans who consume popular cereals such as Cheerios and Quaker Oats are being exposed to a chemical that delays puberty and causes infertility.
A study by The Environmental Working Group published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology found that four out of five people tested positive for a harmful pesticide called chlormequat.
“Just as troubling, we detected the chemical in 92% of oat-based foods purchased in May 2023, including Quaker Oats and Cheerios,” the group said.
Animal studies have shown that chlormequat disrupts fetal growth, damages reproductive systems and delays puberty.
What’s even more concerning is that exposure to the pesticide appears to be increasing in recent years.
While chlormequat was detected in 69% of study participants in 2017, that figure has now risen to 90% in the 2023 sample.
“Since chlormequat typically leaves the body within 24 hours, such a high concentration of positive tests indicates that Americans are regularly being exposed to the pesticide,” reports the New York Post.
The US federal government allows the “highly toxic agricultural chemical,” which aids the plant’s growth and makes harvesting easier, to be used on on oats and other imported grains.
The EWG noted that under the Biden administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed allowing the use of chlormequat on barley, oat, triticale and wheat grown in the US in response to a request by chlormequat manufacturer Taminco.
Cheerios are made by General Mills while Quaker Oats is owned by PepsiCo. Both companies have so far refused to comment on the issue and neither did the FDA.
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| US Officials Concede No Active Surveillance On Long-Term Effects Of COVID-19 Vaccines |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-19-2024, 07:03 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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US Officials Concede No Active Surveillance On Long-Term Effects Of COVID-19 Vaccines
![[Image: image%281622%29.jpg?itok=ozmUwL5P]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/image%281622%29.jpg?itok=ozmUwL5P)
(Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
ZH | FEB 18, 2024
Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times [slightly adapted] (emphasis ours)
In a Feb. 15 hearing by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, U.S. health officials side-stepped a question when asked whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actively conducting extended safety surveillance on those who received early COVID-19 vaccines.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) asked Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, whether the FDA is conducting active surveillance and if there are any specific health markers they’re studying that may signal trends requiring further inquiry.
“Every time we go through and do the safety surveillance, we start back, and it goes back to 2020. In some cases where we’re looking for certain things, we might use a different window, but indeed, we have to look from the beginning of the period of surveillance. I can turn it over to Dr. Jernigan because he can speak for CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] in that regard,” Dr. Marks said.
“So with regard to myocarditis, we certainly have been monitoring the issue with various different data systems. I think the most recent data really demonstrates that you’re about eight times less likely to get myocarditis if you’re vaccinated compared to those that are unvaccinated,” Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the CDC responded.
Rep. Malliotakis told Jernigan she wanted to know about “everything,” not just myocarditis.
Dr. Jerrigan asked her to repeat the question, and she asked again whether the FDA was conducting extended safety surveillance on early recipients of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Most of the reports that we get of adverse events are in the few weeks following the vaccination,” Jernigan said. In terms of monitoring these over time, Jernigan said the agency has “vaccine effectiveness” systems in place at the CDC.
Neither Jernigan nor Marks referenced any active surveillance initiatives being undertaken by their agencies to monitor people who received the original COVID-19 vaccines for long-term health effects.
“There is no system in place for long-term vaccine safety surveillance in this country,” Ms. Liz Willner, founder of OpenVAERS, told The Epoch Times.
“The FDA and CDC do not actively search for safety signals. They did not find the myocarditis or the thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome that led to the withdrawal of the J&J COVID vaccine—those signals were discovered by the European Medicines Agency. The Vaccine Safety Datalink has never corroborated any vaccine safety signals, including myocarditis, because you cannot find what you are not looking for,” she added.
According to the CDC, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a passive reporting system co-managed by the FDA and CDC that relies on individuals to send reports of their experiences to the agencies. It is not designed to determine whether a vaccine caused a health condition. The Vaccine Safety Datalink uses electronic health data from participating sites to monitor and assess the safety of vaccines and is not available to the public.
At one point during the hearing, Dr. Marks was asked whether COVID-19 vaccines have resulted in an increase in cancers and whether “turbo cancers” are real.
“I’m a hematologist oncologist that’s board certified. I don’t know what a turbo cancer is. It was a term that was used first in a paper in mouse experiments describing an inflammatory response,” Dr. Marks said. “We have not detected any increase in cancers with the COVID-19 vaccines.”
The inquiry was part of a long line of questioning to examine the government’s post-marketing surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety and the process for adjudication claims for compensation.
FDA Director Dr. Peter Marks said they tried to be prepared for reports that may come into VAERS but received a “tremendous” avalanche of adverse event reports after COVID-19 vaccines were released.
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| Archbishop of Milan to Take Part in ‘Historic’ Closed-Door Seminar With Italy’s Freemasons |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-16-2024, 06:14 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Archbishop of Milan to Take Part in ‘Historic’ Closed-Door Seminar With Italy’s Freemasons
For almost 300 years, Catholics have been forbidden from joining the Masons, and the Vatican has issued almost 600 negative pronouncements against the secret society during that time.
![[Image: 2024021518024_5ec97cdfd3760479bc5277e946...ecbb5.webp]](https://publisher-ncreg.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pb-ncregister/swp/hv9hms/media/2024021518024_5ec97cdfd3760479bc5277e94683b1d49a5c51c1cfa6c3858f7d4b5525becbb5.webp)
Archbishop of Milan Mario Delpini preaches at Mass June 10, 2023, at the Duomo in Milan. (photo: Gabriel Bouys / AFP via Getty Images)
Edward Pentin/ NCR
February 15, 2024
MILAN — The Archbishop of Milan has surprised many Catholics with the news that he plans to take part in a seminar in the northern Italian city on Friday with the grand masters of Italy’s three Freemasonic lodges, despite the Church’s longstanding censure of Freemasonry.
Archbishop Mario Delpini, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president emeritus of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, and Bishop Antonio Staglianò, president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, will be among Church representatives attending the closed-door event to discuss The Catholic Church and Freemasonry.
The Freemasons will be represented by Stefano Bisi, grand master of the Grand Orient of Italy, the country’s largest Freemasonic lodge, and leaders of two other national lodges: the Grand Lodge of Italy and the Grand Regular Lodge of Italy.
Bisi has called the meeting “historic.”
Cardinal Coccopalmerio’s participation is of interest as he was an auxiliary bishop of Milan when Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was archbishop of the diocese. The late Jesuit cardinal was known to be close to the Freemasons, who paid a warm tribute to him as a “man of dialogue” when he died in 2012.
Writing in the Italian Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, editor-in-chief Riccardo Cascioli noted that since Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi wrote a conciliatory letter to Freemasons in 2016, “opportunities for meetings, promoted by Freemasonry or by some dioceses, have multiplied, and are continually growing in stature, as the Milan initiative testifies.”
Since Clement XII’s papal bull In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula of 1738, Catholics have been forbidden from joining the Masons, and the Vatican has issued many negative pronouncements against the secret society — almost 600 magisterial documents in total.
The Catholic Church considers Freemasonry to be, among other grave problems, a corruption of Christianity, that it practices rituals that are inimical to Catholicism, that its principles are irreconcilable with the Catholic faith and that it contains a strong inclination toward anti-Catholicism.
In a 1983 declaration approved by Pope St. John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reasserted that the Church’s “negative judgment” on Masonry remained “unchanged” since Masonic principles “have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden.”
“The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion,” Cardinal Ratzinger added. However, neither that declaration nor the 1983 Code of Canon Law imposed the penalty of excommunication on Catholics belonging to the Masons — something that had been in force since Clement XII’s papal bull.
Still, joining a lodge continues to be officially banned in the Catholic Church and in November the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document reaffirming that Catholics are forbidden from becoming members.
The document, signed by Pope Francis and DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, was written in response to a bishop from the Philippines who had expressed concern at the growing number of Catholics in his diocese who have been taking part in Freemasonry and asked for suggestions for how to respond pastorally.
The dicastery’s response called on the bishops to devise “a coordinated strategy” to promote catechesis “in all parishes regarding the reasons for the irreconcilability between the Catholic faith and Freemasonry,” according to CNA.
Pope Francis has occasionally been vocally critical of the secret society. Speaking in 2015 on a visit to Turin, a city well known for its ties to Freemasonry, he recalled that at the end of the 19th century “Freemasonry was in full swing,” helping to make it “one of the ugliest times and the ugliest places in the history of Italy.” In 2013, he criticized the presence of “Masonic lobbies” within the Church.
Masonry-Friendly Pontificate?
But this pontificate has also drawn noticeable approval from Italian lodges. This became especially apparent in 2020 when Francis’s Human Fraternity document, co-signed with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, received a ringing endorsement from Bisi’s Grand Orient Lodge. The document, read an article in its quarterly magazine, was “innovative” and a “slow-release drug” that could herald a “new era” and represent a “turning point for a new civilization.”
Freemasons in other parts of the world have also welcomed other initiatives of this pontificate, such as when Spanish Freemasons congratulated the Pope on his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), saying the Church had finally embraced “universal fraternity, the great principle of modern Freemasonry.” By 2017, this pontificate had reportedly already received some 62 messages of public support from various Freemasonic figures and lodges.
In a Feb. 14 statement posted on the Grand Orient Lodge website, Bisi noted “various ups and downs” in relations with the Catholic Church over the past 50 years. “Tenuous openings were followed by rigid closures,” he said.
Significantly, Bisi said a dialogue between Freemasonry and the Church began in the 1960s, when the then-grand master of his lodge, Giordano Gamberini and his successor Lino Salvini, had exchanges with Pauline Father Rosario Esposito.
“Meetings, discussions ... then stopped,” Bisi said, but now “they can start again,” and he recalled an open letter, penned by Cardinal Ravasi and addressed to “Dear Brother Masons” published on Feb. 14, 2016.
The then-president of the Pontifical Council for Culture said the Church’s declarations underlining Freemasonry’s incompatibility with the faith “do not impede dialogue” with Masonry on areas such as “works of charity, the fight against materialism, human dignity, and knowledge of each other.”
Quoting documents including one from the German bishops’ conference issued in 1980, the cardinal recommended “going beyond reciprocal ‘hostility, insults and prejudices.”
Referring to that letter and dialogue that proceeded since then, Bisi said in his Feb. 14 statement that from a “varied Masonic panorama,” it is possible to “find common values with those of the Catholic world.
“It would be good to start from there,” he said, “from what unites.”
Despite obvious press interest, media will not be allowed at the event which will take place at the Ambrosianeum Cultural Foundation, and attendance will be restricted.
Those invited to attend will be members of the respective lodges and the organizers, the Socio-Religious Research and Information Group (GRIS), a private association of Italian Catholics approved by Italy’s bishops’ conference that conducts research into religions, sects and phenomenology.
The organization has “long been involved with Freemasonry,” wrote Cascioli, adding that it has “already organized several meetings in various parts of Italy with the stated goal of getting to know one another, well before Cardinal Ravasi’s intervention.”
‘They Have Everything to Gain’
GRIS’ national secretary, Giuseppe Ferrari, said he believed Freemasonry’s “rites and rituals” are likely to again emerge as a chief impediment to a “softer relationship” and the lodges will either have to “eliminate these rites or nothing will change.”
But Cascioli said this was already obvious and so he questioned the need to “multiply meetings in which to tell each other how incompatible we are.”
“The truth is,” Cascioli continued, “gestures are worth much more than words, and that is why Masonic lodges, with the Grand Orient Italy in the lead, are very interested in this dialogue: they have everything to gain because the impression given to the public is that after centuries of condemnation, there is not only the possibility of dialogue but also the possibility of sharing some values.” Being invited to such public events, Cascioli added, also serves to “clean up” Freemasonry’s image as a “secret sect.”
As for the Church, he said it has always been open to encounter anyone, but it is Freemasonry that has “always regarded the Church with hostility,” and views any form of dialogue “as an attempt to neutralize that claim to Truth that the Church proclaims.”
“It is therefore not surprising that these possibilities for dialogue are multiplying at a time when relativism has taken root even among many pastors of the Church,” Cascioli concluded. “And it will not be enough to leave journalists outside the door to hide this reality.”
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| Archbishop Viganò: Homily for Ash Wednesday |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-15-2024, 07:10 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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ET NON DABO VOS ULTRA OPPROBRIUM IN GENTIBUS
Homily for Ash Wednesday
Taken from here.
Immutemur habitu, in cinere et cilicio:
jejunemus, et ploremus ante Dominum:
quia multum misericors est dimittere peccata nostra
Deus noster. Joel 2:13
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. We heard these words spoken a few moments ago, during the rite of the imposition of ashes: Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. As we prepare to enter the sacred penitential season of Lent in preparation for Passiontide and Most Holy Easter, it is certainly salutary to remind ourselves of where we have come from and what awaits us.
We come from the dust, with which the Creator deigned to shape our bodies in which to infuse an immortal soul, making us in His image and likeness. Destined for eternal bliss, with sin we returned to the dust of exile. Condemned to the loss of immortality, we mixed the sweat of our brow with the dust of the clod. Called in Abraham to the promised land, we crossed the desert in the dust. It was in the dust tha the Forerunner preached, and in the dust of the rocks the Lord was tempted by Satan. Our innumerable sins humbled Our Saviour Jesus Christ amid the dust of Golgotha. Our mortal body will dissolve into dust after burial, awaiting the resurrection of the flesh at the end of time. The world will be consumed in dust, when the eternal Judge will come judicare sæculum per ignem. The ancient monuments are dust, the documents of the sages are dust, and all their precious fabrics are dust.
And for our consolation, the dwellings of the wicked shall one day crumble to dust, and their possessions, their money, and their idols shall be scattered to dust. Like hay they will soon wither, they will fall like grass in the meadow (Ps 36:2); for the wicked shall be cut off, but he that hopeth in the Lord shall possess the earth. A little while longer, and the wicked shall disappear, you shall seek his place and no longer find him (Ps 36:9-10). Their infernal plans, their plans for domination, their agendas, and their “great reset” will dissolve into dust. They too will die, while their dream of immortality and open defiance of Christ will crash before that capital punishment which no child of Adam can escape. The tomb will also open for them, and with it their particular Judgment and their just condemnation.
In the face of this destiny of dust that inexorably awaits everyone, we must carry imprinted in our minds that Cross which for a few hours we will have marked on our foreheads with ashes, causa proferendæ humilitatis (Bened. Cinerum, 2a Oratio); because the Cross alone is our only hope – spes unica – in the dissolution of ephemeral things. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis. But in order to love the Cross, in order to understand its inevitability and necessity if we want to be saved, it is necessary to understand – within the limits of our human frailty – what an ineffable miracle of Charity moved the Most Holy Trinity – the Triune Supreme God – to decree that the eternal Word of the Father should become incarnate, suffer and die in order to redeem sinful humanity in Adam. Deus caritas est (1 Jn 4:8). The miracle of divine Charity that consumes the sins of men in the flames of the most pure love of the immolated Son, and makes reparation for their infinite offense by sacrificing God to God, sacrificing the Son for the sins of the servant, and even goes so far as to make Himself truly present in the Most August Sacrament of the Altar until the end of time so that the creature may be nourished by the Creator, so that the slave may feed on his own Deliverer. Caritas ejus in nobis consummata est (1 Jn 4:12).
The magnificence of God shines forth in the creative work of the Father, who calls us into existence out of nothing; in the redemptive work of the Son, who restores on the Cross the divine order broken by sin; and in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who pours into souls the infinite merits of Redemption through Grace. And in this divine splendor, every creature is created in a unique and unrepeatable way: there is no vein of a single leaf that is the same as another, and no two human beings are identical. Similarly, each soul is redeemed in an entirely unique way, and in a completely unique way is touched by Grace. The Most Holy Trinity – precisely because Almighty God – has a personal relationship with every soul, from the moment it is thought of and willed and loved. The Father does not create series of things. The Son does not redeem indistinct masses. The Paraclete does not sanctify by chance. It is always a personal, individual relationship, unique for the thousand ways that the Lord chooses to accompany us, admonish us, encourage us, and reward us, or – God forbid! – punish us. Each of us knows well how many infidelities we have to reproach ourselves with, and how many times God’s mercy has lifted us up de stercore and helped us to progress in His love.
But just as the creative, redemptive, and sanctifying action of the Most Holy Trinity is manifested in a different and unique way for each one of us, so also our relationship with God is personal and unique – which obviously does not exclude the mediation of the Church – in responding and corresponding to the Lord’s will.
This means that the good deeds we perform, the sacrifices we accept, the penances and fasts we undertake, and the prayers we recite rise before the Divine Majesty with our name written on them, so to speak. Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo; elevatio manuum mearum sacrificium vespertinum (Ps 140:2). And that name, known only to the Omniscience of God, remains there even when those good works are placed in the Treasury of Graces together with the infinite merits of Our Lord and those of all the Saints from which Providence draws. This is a great consolation, because it makes each of us truly unique in God’s plan. But for the same reason, our faults, our sins, are also individual and unique: “Play the prophet, Christ! Who is it who struck you?” (Mt 26:68). Each one of our sins – let us meditate on it often, especially during this season of Lent – is a spit in the Face of Christ, a blow of a reed that plunges the thorns of the crown into His Head. Each of our sins is a whip that tears His flesh, a blow of the scourge that rips it open, a blow of a hammer in the palms of His hands, a spear that wounds His side. And those blows, those slaps, those spittings have our name written on them, as do the sharp arrows with which we pierce the Immaculate Heart of His Most Holy Mother, mystically united to the Passion of the Son.
But if present events and the infernal attack of the Enemy see us engaged in an exhausting war that too often distracts us from prayer, recollection, and penance, during this sacred season of Lent we are called to exercise the spirit – as in a training of the soul – to strengthen it in the love of God, in union with His Passion and in flight from sin.
Thus, just as a soldier engages in those disciplines in which he will later find himself fighting, so the faithful, who are soldiers of Christ, cannot effectively face the spiritual combat without first having trained themselves in the struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The prayer placed at the end of the imposition of ashes uses a clearly military terminology: Concede nobis, Domine, præsidia militiæ christianæ sanctis inchoare jejuniis: ut, contra spiritales nequitias pugnaturi, continentiæ muniamur auxilio. And if in the daily battle we have to take sides mainly against external enemies, during Lent our first enemy is ourselves, starting with our dominant defect: because the weapons that the Lord puts at our disposal must find us capable of wielding them, while too often we believe that we can enter the battlefield relying on our own strength.
Immutemur habitu, in cinere et cilicio. Let us change our behavior; let us reform our conduct in sackcloth and ashes, that is, keeping our eternal destiny firmly in mind, and with it the transience of the things of this world. Let us change the perspective from which we observe events, considering that all our actions, good and bad, do not remain nameless, nor without reward or punishment. We cannot take society, the Hierarchy, our rulers, the subversives of the New World Order, the traitors, the wicked, or the lukewarm as pretexts for our own indolence, trying to justify our conduct or to escape from the ashes and sackcloth, that is, from the spirit of penance and renunciation of the things of this world which is the only place we can be trained for humility and holiness. Non declines cor meum in verba malitiæ, ad excusandas excusationes in peccatis (Ps 140:4).
Because God’s Judgment is personal, and the merit of our actions is individual: may the iniquities of others therefore spur us on to remedy, repair, and expiate, rather than becoming an alibi we hide behind. Emendemus in melius: let us make reparation for the evil committed in our ignorance so that, when we are suddenly seized by the day of death, we do not look in vain for time to repent when it will not be possible for us to find it. (Impositio Cinerum, Responsorium).
Let us look to the Most Blessed Virgin, chosen by the Most Holy Trinity to be the living tabernacle of God Incarnate: Her blessed Fiat – personal and formulated in the silence of interiority – made our Redemption possible. May it be our daily model of obedience to the Lord’s will – and especially in this propitious time of fasting and penance. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria, Archbishop
February 14, 2024
Feria IV Cinerum
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| SSPX-MC YouTube Shorts now available |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-15-2024, 06:37 AM - Forum: The Catacombs: News
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YouTube Shorts are just that, videos that last 60 seconds or less.
SSPX-MC has started providing Shorts of various videos, mostly excerpts from Fr. Hewko's Sermons but also covering other topics as well.
These can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jGH37wA2c6E
These are a great collections of the many little pearls of wisdom of either the saints or from sermons.
A big thank you to the good folks running the SSPX-MC YouTube Channel!
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: On Fasting and Abstinence [1982] |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-14-2024, 06:44 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Archbishop Lefebvre: On Fasting and Abstinence
Taken from here.
My dear brethren,
According to an ancient and salutary tradition in the Church, on the occasion of the beginning of Lent, I address these words to you in order to encourage you to enter into this penitential season wholeheartedly, with the dispositions willed by the Church and to accomplish the purpose for which the Church prescribes it.
If I look in books from the early part of this century, I find that they indicate three purposes for which the Church has prescribed this penitential time:
First - in order to curb the concupiscence of the flesh; Then - to facilitate the elevation of our souls toward divine realities; Finally - to make satisfaction for our sins.
Our Lord gave us the example during His life, here on earth: pray and do penance. However, Our Lord, being free from concupiscence and sin, did penance and made satisfaction for our sins, thus showing us that our penance may be beneficial not only for ourselves but also for others.
Pray and do penance
Do penance in order to pray better, in order to draw closer to Almighty God. This is what all the saints have done, and this is that of which all the messages of the Blessed Virgin remind us.
Would we dare to say that this necessity is less important in our day and age than in former times? On the contrary, we can and we must affirm that today, more than ever before, prayer and penance are necessary because everything possible has been done to diminish and denigrate these two fundamental elements of Christian life.
Never before has the world sought to satisfy, without any limit, the disordered instincts of the flesh, even to the point of the murder of millions of innocent, unborn children. One would come to believe that society has no other reason for existence except to give the greatest material standard of living to all men in order that they should not be deprived of material goods.
Thus we can see that such a society would be opposed to what the Church prescribes. In these times, when even Churchmen align themselves with the spirit of this world, we witness the disappearance of prayer and penance, particularly in their character of reparation for sins and obtaining pardon for faults.
Few there are today who love to recite Psalm 50, the Miserere, and who say with the psalmist, Peccatum meum contra me est simper: "My sin is always before me." How can a Christian remove the thought of sin if the image of the crucifix is always before his eyes?
At the Council the bishops requested such a diminution of fast and abstinence that the prescriptions have practically disappeared. We must recognize the fact that this disappearance is a consequence of the ecumenical and Protestant spirit which denies the necessity of our participation for the application of the merits of Our Lord to each one of us for the remission of our sins and the restoration of our divine affiliation [i.e., our character as adoptive sons of God].
In the past the commandments of the Church provided for:
+ An obligatory fast on all days of Lent with the exception of Sundays, for the three Ember Days and for many Vigils.
+ Abstinence was for all Fridays of the year, the Saturdays of Lent and, in numerous dioceses, all the Saturdays of the year.
What remains of these prescriptions? The fast for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstinence for Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent. One wonders at the motives for such a drastic diminution.
Who is obliged to observe the fast?
Adults from ages 21 to 60.
And who is obliged to observe abstinence?
All the faithful from the age of 7 years.
What does fasting mean?
To fast means to take only one (full) meal a day to which one may add two collations (or small meals) one in the morning, one in the evening, which, when combined, do not equal a full meal. [Note: The Archbishop is referring to the European order of meals; in the United States, the full meal is usually the evening meal].
What is meant by abstinence?
By abstinence is meant that one abstains from meat.
The faithful who have a true spirit of faith and who profoundly understand the motives of the Church which have been mentioned above, will wholeheartedly accomplish not only the light prescriptions of today but, entering into the spirit of Our Lord and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, will endeavor to make reparation for the sins which they have committed and for the sins of their family, their neighbors, friends and fellow citizens.
It is for this reason that they will add to the actual prescriptions. These additional penances might be to fast for all Fridays of Lent, abstinence from all alcoholic beverages, abstinence from television, or other similar sacrifices.
They will make an effort to pray more, to assist more frequently at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to recite the Rosary, and not to miss evening prayers with the family. They will detach themselves from their superfluous material goods in order to aid the seminaries, help establish schools, help their priests adequately furnish the chapels and to help establish novitiates for nuns and brothers.
The prescriptions of the Church do not concern fast and abstinence alone but also of the obligation of the Paschal Communion (Easter Duty). Here is what the Vicar of the Diocese of Sion, in Switzerland, recommended to the faithful of that diocese on February 20, 1919:
+ During Lent, the pastors will have the Stations of the Cross twice a week; one day for the children of the schools and another day for the other parishioners. After the Stations of the Cross, they will recite the Litany of the Sacred Heart.
+ During Passion Week, which is to say, the week before Palm Sunday, there will be a Triduum in all parish churches, Instruction, Litany of the Sacred Heart in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament, Benediction. In these instructions the pastors will simply and clearly remind their parishioners of the principal conditions to receive the Sacrament of Penance worthily.
+ The time during which one may fulfill the Easter Duty has been set for all parishes from Passion Sunday to the first Sunday after Easter.
Why should these directives no longer be useful today?
Let us profit from this salutary time during the course of which Our Lord is accustomed to dispense grace abundantly. Let us not imitate the foolish virgins who having no oil in their lamps found the door of the bridegroom's house closed and this terrible response: Nescio vos - "I know you not."
Blessed are they who have the spirit of poverty for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The spirit of poverty means the spirit of detachment from things of this world.
Blessed are they who weep for they shall be consoled. Let us think of Jesus in the Garden of Olives who wept for our sins. It is henceforth for us to weep for our sins and for those of our brethren.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness for they shall be satisfied. Holiness - sanctity is attained by means of the Cross, penance and sacrifice. If we truly seek perfection then we must follow the Way of the Cross.
May we, during this Lenten Season, hear the call of Jesus and Mary and engage ourselves to follow them in this crusade of prayer and penance. May our prayers, our supplications, and our sacrifices obtain from heaven the grace that those in places of responsibility in the Church return to her true and holy traditions, which is the only solution to revive and re-flourish the institutions of the Church again.
Let us love to recite the conclusion of the Te Deum:
In te Doming, speravi; non confundar in aeternum.
"In Thee, O Lord, I have hoped. I will not be confounded in eternity."
+ Marcel Lefebvre
Sexagesima Sunday
February 14, 1982
Rickenbach, Switzerland
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