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  Fr. Hewko Sermons: St. Dominic, Champion of the Holy Rosary August 4, 2025
Posted by: Deus Vult - 08-04-2025, 08:24 PM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

St. Dominic, Champion of the Holy Rosary 
August 4, 2025  (Chicago) 

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  Padre Pio: “Nourish Your Soul by Devout Reading”
Posted by: Stone - 08-03-2025, 10:00 AM - Forum: Resources Online - No Replies

Padre Pio insists … “Nourish Your Soul”


fatima.org | [undated]


Padre Pio insists: “Nourish Your Soul by Devout Reading”

Padre Pio is the Catholic priest who bore on his body the five bleeding wounds of Christ for 50 years, from 1918 until his death in 1968. He was deeply devoted to Our Lady of Fatima, Who miraculously cured him of a lingering sickness in 1959. This miraculous intervention of Our Lady took place when the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima came to his monastery at San Giovanni Rotondo.

The following is a letter written by Padre Pio to one of his spiritual children explaining the great importance of spiritual reading:

Quote:As regards your reading, there is very little to be admired and hardly anything by which to be edified. It is absolutely necessary for you to add to such reading that of the holy books so highly recommended by all the Holy Fathers of the Church. I cannot dispense you from such spiritual reading, for I have your perfection too much at heart. If you want to gain the quite unhoped-for fruit from such reading, it will be well to rid yourself of the prejudice you have with regard to the style and form in which these holy books are set forth.

Get to work, then. Make an effort in this respect, and don’t neglect to ask the Divine assistance with all humility. There is a deep deception in this matter and I cannot and do not wish to conceal it from you. I want to tell you, to my great embarrassment, that I too was similarly deceived and if the merciful God in His goodness had not revealed this deception to me in due course, who knows where a headlong fall might not have landed me?

I really owe this testimony to the truth, namely, that I never felt the least attraction for the type of reading that might sully moral innocence and purity, for I held quite naturally in greatest abhorrence even the slightest obscenity. In my readings, which were not improper but were invariably profane, I sought merely scientific satisfaction and the pastime of honest mental recreation. Yet in spite of my innocent intentions, such readings produced deep wounds in my heart and if they did nothing else they kept me at a standstill and never helped me to acquire even a single virtue. The worst aspect of this was that my love for God grew colder and colder.

The grace of our heavenly Father, ever attentive, saved me from many dangers and seemed somehow to be battling with my will so as to prevent me from being entirely lost. It seemed as if the good God, with fatherly solicitude and loving insistence, was seeking an effective means to call me back to Him, while I myself was foolishly fleeing, always fleeing from Him. But in the end I was vanquished by Divine grace. Oh, how happy I was to have been conquered by so dear a Father! Oh, blessed for ever be this most tender Spouse for His exceeding patience and goodness towards such a wretched creature as myself!

I am horrified, my dear sister, at the damage done to souls by their failure to read holy books.

Listen to the way the Holy Fathers express themselves when they exhort us to apply ourselves to this type of reading. St. Bernard, in the scale of values he established for his cloistered monks, recognizes four degrees or means by which to reach God and perfection, namely reading and meditation, prayer and contemplation. As proof of what he says, he quotes the Divine Master’s own words: “Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you” (Mt. 7:7, Lk. 11:9). He goes on to apply these words to the four means to degrees of perfection and says that by reading Sacred Scripture and other holy and pious books we are seeking God; by meditation we find Him, by prayer we knock at the door of His Heart and by contemplation enter the theater of divine delight which has been opened to our mental gaze by reading, meditation and prayer (ST. BERNARD,Scala claustralium sive Tractatus de modo orandi, Chap. 2: PL 184, 476, No.2).

Elsewhere the Saint tells us that reading is, as it were, spiritual food applied to the palate of the soul; meditation chews it by its reasoning, while prayer savors it. Contemplation is then the very sweetness of this spiritual food which restores the soul entirely and comforts it. Reading stops at the bark or outer covering of what is read; meditation penetrates into its core; prayer goes in search of it by its questions, while contemplation enjoys it as something already possessed (ST. BERNARD, ibid., cf Col. 475-476, No. 1).

The esteem which St. Jerome had for the reading of holy books is incredible. He exhorts Salvina to have holy books always at hand, for these are a strong shield to ward off all the evil thoughts which attack people in their youth (ST. JEROME, Epist. ad Salvinam, 79: PL, Vol. 22, Col. 730-731). He teaches the same thing to St. Paulinus: “Always keep the holy book in your hands,” he tells him, “that it may nourish your soul by devout reading.” (ST. JEROME, Letters: PL, Vol. 22, Col. 579). To the widow Furia he suggests frequent reading of Sacred Scripture and the writings of those Doctors whose doctrine is holy and wholesome, in order to avoid the fatigue involved in searching for the gold of holy and healthful teachings in the quagmire of false documents (Ibid.: PL, Vol. 22, Col. 550). To Demetriade he writes: “Love reading Holy Scripture if you want to be loved by Divine Wisdom, if you want Her to guard and possess you. You used to adorn yourself in various ways,” adds the holy Doctor at once, “you wore jewels on your bosom, necklaces at your throat, jeweled earrings. For the future let holy readings be your gems and your jewels by which to adorn your soul with holy thoughts and devout statements.” (Letters, cit.: PL, 22, Col. 1124).

St. Gregory expresses himself in the same way, using the allegory of the mirror: “Spiritual books are like a mirror which God places before us in order that we may see ourselves in them and hence correct our faults and adorn ourselves with every virtue. Just as vain women look at themselves frequently in the mirror and there remove every blemish from their faces, adjust their hair and adorn themselves in a thousand ways in order to appear charming in the eyes of others, so too, the Christian must frequently place the holy books before his eyes in order to perceive the faults he must correct and the virtues by which he must adorn himself so as to be pleasing in the sight of his God.” (ST. GREGORY, Moralia, Lib. 2, c. 1).

I refrain from mentioning other authorities. However, I point out to you the power of holy reading to lead even worldly persons to change their course and enter on the path of perfection. For this purpose it suffices you to consider the conversion of St. Augustine. Who was it that won this great man over to God? His ultimate conqueror was neither his mother by her tears nor the great St. Ambrose by his divine eloquence, but the reading of a book.

Those who read his Confessions cannot keep back their tears. What a desperate battle, what violent conflicts he endured in his poor heart because of his enormous reluctance to give up his lewd sensual pleasures. He says of himself that he was compelled to utter groans and laments while his will was bound as if by a strong chain and that the infernal enemy confined his will in the fetters of a cruel necessity. He goes on to say that he experienced mortal agony in abandoning his loose morals and adds that when his mind was almost made up, his former follies and pleasures pulled him back from his good resolutions and murmured around him: “Are you giving us up then? From this moment on are we never to be with you any more?”

But while the Saint battled with such tumultuous feelings he heard a voice which said to him: take up and read. He at once obeyed this voice and as he read a chapter of St. Paul the thick darkness in his mind was dispelled, all the hardness vanished from his heart and he became perfectly calm and serene. From that moment he made a clean break with the world, the devil and the flesh, devoted himself completely to the service of God and became the great Saint who is honored today on our altars. (ST. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, Bk. 8, Chap. 12).

History also tells us that St. Ignatius of Loyola, as the result of a spiritual reading which he made from no spirit of devotion but with the sole desire to escape from the boredom of a painful infirmity, was transformed from a captain in the army of an earthly king into a captain at the service of the King of Heaven. This change was wrought in St. Ignatius of Loyola after he had read the Life of Christ, by the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony and a Castilian Lives of the Saints. (Cf. Christopher Hollis, St. Ignatius, Sheed and Ward, London 1931).

Again, we read of St. Columban that through reading a holy book (Vita S. Columbani abbatis, auctore Jona: PL, 87, Col. 1016, No. 9) to please his wife rather than from devotion, he found himself completely changed and consecrated his life entirely to God.

Now, if the reading of holy books had the power to convert worldly men into spiritual persons, how very powerful must not such reading be in leading spiritual men and women to greater perfection?

I deal with just one example here, namely, that of St. Jerome. He himself relates how he withdrew from the splendor of Rome and retired to Palestine, where he spent his days and nights in fasts and vigils, in prayer and harsh penances. Even in a life of such severity, he still had a fault which was very detrimental to his spiritual progress. This was his immoderate love for profane books and a certain repugnance for reading holy books because of what he considered to be the uncultured literary style in which they were written. As he himself admits, he saw a defect and a fault in the sun instead of recognizing a defect in his own eyesight.

A severe remedy was required to make him come to his senses. The Lord sent him an infirmity which reduced him to the point of death. When he was about to die, the Lord carried him in spirit up to the Judgment Seat, where he was asked who he was. The saint replied: “I am a Christian and I profess no other faith than Yours, O my Lord.” “You are lying,” replied the Divine Judge, “you are a Ciceronian (the saint was very fond of Cicero’s writings) for where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” Then the Divine Judge ordered him to be scourged. The pain of the blows caused the saint to weep and ask for mercy, crying out in a loud voice: “Have mercy on me, O Lord.”

The Angels who stood before the Judgment Seat began to implore mercy for him, promising the Divine Judge on his behalf that he would make amends for his fault. Then St. Jerome swore and promised with all the ardor of his soul that never again would he read secular and profane writings, but only holy books. At this point he returned to consciousness, to the astonishment of those present who had believed him dead.

The Saint goes on to tell us that this was no vision or illusion, for when he came to himself his eyes were full of tears, his shoulders bruised and his flesh wounded from the severe blows he had received. After this event the Saint gave himself up with great fervor to the reading of holy books which were of very great benefit to him …

Your Servant Padre Pio

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  The Catholic Trumpet [Video] - For the Man in the Pew: He Will Not Kneel to Error
Posted by: Stone - 08-03-2025, 07:08 AM - Forum: The Catholic Trumpet - No Replies

For the Man in the Pew: He Will Not Kneel to Error
Taken from here


On July 23, we published the article “He Will Not Kneel to Error” as the first entry in our new series For the Man in the Pew. That article has now been recorded and released as a voiceover video.

The video begins with a brief reflection written the morning of publication, then continues with the article as it appeared on the website. It is not casual commentary. It is a spoken declaration of the same truths, now made available for those who prefer to listen and watch.

We encourage all readers to share it with anyone who still asks questions, who still remembers what the Church once taught, and who still refuses to kneel to error.

Watch the video here:

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: “We Cry, ‘Abba’ Father!” Eighth Sunday After Pentecost 8/3/25
Posted by: Deus Vult - 08-02-2025, 03:38 PM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

[1st Mass]  Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
"The Power of Prayer to Save Souls!"
August 3, 2025  (WI)


Quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre on the Doubtfullness of the Conciliar Sacraments: Link




 [2nd Mass]  Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
“We Cry, ‘Abba’ Father!” 

August 3, 2025  (Chicago)




Audio

 

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: [1st Saturday] Wedding Mass for Patrick & Jamie Loew 8/2/25
Posted by: Deus Vult - 08-02-2025, 03:30 PM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

Wedding Mass for Patrick & Jamie Loew [1st Saturday]
August 2, 2025  (WI) 

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons : St. Peter in Chains (1st Friday of August) 8/1/25
Posted by: Deus Vult - 07-31-2025, 09:36 PM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

St. Peter in Chains (1st Friday of August) 
August 1, 2025  (NH)

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  Leo XIV Relativizes Miracle: Christ Invited Deaf-Mute to "Choose" to Speak Again
Posted by: Stone - 07-31-2025, 08:15 AM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV - No Replies

Leo XIV Relativizes Miracle: Christ Invited Deaf-Mute to "Choose" to Speak Again

[Image: m8acm8dwo5hdlo36265t602520w8gs346zc0jql....1754029533]


gloria.tv | July 31, 2025

Pope Leo XIV spoke at yesterday’s general audience about the man in Mark 7 who cannot speak or hear: "Just as it can sometimes happen to us, perhaps this man chose not to speak anymore because he did not feel understood; he chose to shut off every voice because he had been disappointed and wounded by what he had heard," Leo XIV said.

He sounded literally like Francis: "Before anything else, Jesus offers him silent closeness, through gestures that speak of a profound encounter: He touches this man’s ears and tongue."

Jesus "invited" the man who had stopped listening and speaking: "It is as if Jesus were saying to him: 'Be opened to this world that frightens you! Be opened to the relationships that have disappointed you! Be opened to the life you have given up facing!'."

After the encounter with Jesus, that person not only begins to speak again and does so plainly.

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  Pediatricians call for ‘elimination of nonmedical exemptions’ from childhood vaccines
Posted by: Stone - 07-31-2025, 08:14 AM - Forum: Health - No Replies

Pediatricians call for ‘elimination of nonmedical exemptions’ from childhood vaccines
The vaccine cabal realizes that the public is now aware of the serious and irreversible neurological, developmental,
 and immune-related risks associated with childhood hyper-vaccination.

[Image: shutterstock_1870665286-1.jpg]

Pediatrician or nurse giving an intramuscular injection of a vaccine to arm of a baby girl during coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak
Shutterstock

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
Jul 31, 2025
(Focal Points) — The Bio‑Pharmaceutical Complex is in panic mode.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued a new policy statement calling for the complete elimination of all nonmedical vaccine exemptions for child care and school attendance. That means no religious exemptions, no philosophical exemptions — only medical exemptions granted under tightly controlled conditions.

[Image: 45317d55-0931-4860-8d12-ea686380edca_1366x1383.webp]

Why now? Because the vaccine cabal has realized that the public is now aware of the serious and irreversible neurological, developmental, and immune-related health risks associated with childhood hyper-vaccination of inadequately tested products.

READ: Massachusetts bill would eliminate religious exemptions for childhood vaccines

A new CDC‑funded national survey by Vasudevan et al has exposed a collapse in parental confidence in the childhood vaccine schedule:

[Image: fcbeca0f-2549-4ba5-8b9b-c5f1f604aee7_1456x915.webp]
  • Only ~40% of pregnant participants and parents of young children said they would accept all recommended vaccines on schedule.
  • About 60% planned to delay, refuse, or were undecided about one or more routine childhood vaccines.
  • One‑third (33%) of parents of young children already refuse some or all vaccines outright.
  • Nearly half (48%) of first‑time pregnant women are undecided about vaccinating their baby at all.
This is why the vaccine cabal is scrambling to slam the door shut on choice — they know if freedom remains, vaccine uptake will continue to crater. Instead of asking why so many parents are rejecting their products, they are doubling down on coercion and mandates.

The public is awake now. The more they push, the more families will resist.

Reprinted with permission from Focal Points.

For respectful communications only: contact the American Academy of Pediatrics here.

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  Video: Rosary & Work of St. Joseph Wednesday July 30, 20255
Posted by: Deus Vult - 07-30-2025, 06:40 PM - Forum: July 2025 - No Replies

Rosary & Work of St. Joseph 
Wednesday  July 30, 2025


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  Holy Mass in Illinois [Chicago area] - August 4, 2025
Posted by: Stone - 07-30-2025, 09:43 AM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Feast of St. Dominic


[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.op.org%2Fwp-content...9817a8ec3a]


Date: Monday, August 4, 2025


Time: Confessions - TBA [in the AM]
             Holy Mass - TBA [in the AM]


Location: Chicago area - contact coordinator below for details


Contact: Bev 630-257-1995

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  Holy Mass in Illinois [Chicago area] - August 3, 2025
Posted by: Stone - 07-30-2025, 09:40 AM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost


[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fst-takla.org%2FGallery%...923280ae33]


Date: Sunday, August 3, 2025


Time: Confessions - 3:30 PM
             Holy Mass - 4:15 PM


Location: Chicago area - contact coordinator below for details


Contact: Bev 630-257-1995

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  Holy Mass in Wisconsin [Green Bay area] - August 3, 2025
Posted by: Stone - 07-30-2025, 09:36 AM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

[Image: ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbibleencyclopedia.com%2F...2ccd498dea]


Date: Sunday, August 3, 2025


Time: Confessions - 7:30 AM
             Holy Mass - 8:00 AM


Location: TBD


Contact: Lisa 920-680-0077
                   lstachura71@gmail.com

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  Holy Mass in Minnesota [St. Paul area] - August 1, 2025
Posted by: Stone - 07-30-2025, 09:33 AM - Forum: August 2025 - No Replies

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Feast of St. Peter's Chains [First Friday]

[Image: ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcatholicharboroffaithand...33b4ad3399]


Date: Friday, August 1, 2025


Time: Confessions - 5:45 PM
             Holy Mass - 6:15 PM


Location: Contact coordinator below for location details


Contactolgs.twincities@outlook.com

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  New secular study finds Vatican II triggered a decline in Catholic Mass attendance worldwide
Posted by: Stone - 07-30-2025, 09:16 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism - Replies (2)

New secular study finds Vatican II triggered a decline in Catholic Mass attendance worldwide
Economic research found that religious service attendance in Catholic nations significantly decreased compared with all other countries beginning in 1965, the final year of Vatican II.

[Image: Shutterstock_2640268361.jpg]

Shutterstock

Jul 29, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — A newly published secular study found that Vatican II “triggered a decline” in worldwide Catholic Mass attendance relative to religious service attendance of other religions, including Protestant Christianity.

By examining the religious service attendance rates for 66 countries as far back as 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that “compared to other countries, Catholic countries experienced a steady decline in the monthly adult religious service attendance rate starting immediately after Vatican II” in 1965, the final year of the council.

[Image: Vatican-II-effect-on-Mass-attendance.png]

Catholic countries were defined as those with a Catholic population of 50% or greater and included nations such as Ireland, Italy, Austria, France, Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico.

A graph representing the researchers’ data shows that monthly religious service attendance in Catholic countries decreased by at least 20 percentage points relative to that of all other countries as well as relative to “Christian” countries, with a significant decline seen first in the period from 1965 to 1974. Mass attendance in Catholic countries fell on average by four percentage points per decade from 1965 to 2015.

These findings accord with those of French historian Guillaume Cuchet, who in 2022 published an analysis that found 1965, the year the Second Vatican Council ended, marked the beginning of the “collapse” of the practice of Catholicism in France.

As Phil Lawler has noted, the findings of NBER regarding Vatican II’s effects on Mass attendance are noteworthy because NBER is a “heavyweight” economic research institution with “no dog in the fight” of Catholicism’s internal debates.

While NBER has not investigated what it was specifically about Vatican II that precipitated the steep worldwide drop in Mass attendance, its researchers have cited several potential factors proposed by author Andrew Greeley, including changes to the Mass itself, a new ecumenical outlook on other religions, and the abolishing the requirement of certain practices such as abstinence from meat on Fridays.

Significant changes to the Mass itself began with the implementation of The First Instruction on the Proper Implementation of the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, Inter oecumenici, on March 7, 1965. While it aimed to make the Mass more “accessible” and palatable, its changes would have come across as foreign and even as a shock to a number of Catholics for whom the Mass had remained virtually unchanged their entire life.

For example, Inter oecumenici stipulated that “the main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people.” This itself is a radical change, since it imposed a literal 180-degree reversal of the very orientation of the Mass.

Already in 1965, Psalm 42 at the beginning of the Mass, and the Last Gospel and Leonine prayers at the end were suppressed; the congregation was to recite the Our Father together with the priest; the lessons, epistle, and gospel were to be read or sung facing the people; in non-solemn Masses, laypeople were to “read the lessons and epistles with the intervening chants” as the priest sat and listened; Mass-goers were to say “Amen” before receiving Holy Communion.

As the French historian Cuchet noted in reference to declining Mass attendance, while these changes in ritual may seem “secondary to intellectuals,” they “are actually psychological and anthropological determinants.”

While liturgical changes would have been the most vivid and palpable of Vatican II’s effects for most Mass-going Catholics, researchers have argued that Vatican II’s apparent doctrinal shift should not be discounted.

“The explicit questioning of centuries-old doctrines, such as the forbidding of birth control, may have shattered the perception of an immovable, truth-holding Church and replaced it with a model whereby individuals had a more direct relationship with God and were, therefore, less dependent on the Church and its formal services,” noted the researchers, echoing Greeley.

While the Church went on to uphold its ban on contraception, it was leaked to the press in 1967 that a significant majority of the members of Pope Paul VI’s commission on birth control, including 60 of 64 theologians and nine of 15 cardinals, supported lifting the ban.

While the Catholic Church cannot change doctrine, Vatican II was unique in Church history for ambiguous statements that gave the widespread impression that the Church had changed its teaching. For example, Unitatis Redintegratio said it is sometimes permissible to hold common worship with non-Catholics, whereas at least three Church councils have explicitly prohibited praying in common with heretics.

For Catholics who may not have been keeping abreast of the changes of the Vatican II documents, the slew of changes in practice, such as the abandonment of certain devotional prayers and the “sudden silence” on the Four Last Things during sermons (Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell) may have similarly given the impression that the Church had undergone a substantial change in teaching. As Dr. John Pepino put it, while summarizing the research of Cuchet, “An institution that admits to having been wrong yesterday may well be wrong today, too.”

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: "Martha, Martha Thou Art Troubled About Many Things" 729/25
Posted by: Deus Vult - 07-30-2025, 07:35 AM - Forum: July 2025 - No Replies

"Martha, Martha Thou Art Troubled About Many Things" 
July 29, 2025  (NH)


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