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| Synod Final Report: Pushes Female Deacons and Lay Governance But Avoids Giving Firm Answers |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-29-2023, 05:43 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Synod on Synodality report pushes female deacons and lay governance but avoids giving firm answers
The much anticipated final report from the Synod on Synodality has been released, avoiding giving direct answers on controversial issues, but pushing a continued ‘synodal’ approach to general Church life.
![[Image: synod-francis.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/synod-francis.jpg)
Pope Francis with Cdl. Grech at the Synod on Synodality
Facebook/Synod.va
Oct 28, 2023
VATICAN CIY (LifeSiteNews - adpated) –– The concluding document from the Synod on Synodality’s October 2023 meeting has been released, with no definitive stance taken in terms of attempts to alter Church teaching on LGBT issues or female ordination, yet containing a host of subtle but significant calls for changes to the manner of the Church’s governance and daily life.
The 41-page report was released late into the night on October 28, as the month-long session of the Synod on Synodality came to an end and participants hastily poured out of the Paul VI Audience Hall. The text’s initial version gave rise to over 1,000 amendments from synod members, according to synod officials, meaning that such amendments had to be acted upon between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon.
The contents of the report, as already noted by synod officials, are not meant to be a final report, nor even the text which will form the basis of the October 2024 synod meeting. Rather, as the synthesis report states, it contains the “main elements that emerged in the dialogue, prayer and discussion that characterized these days.”
“Some fear that they will be forced to change; others fear that nothing will change and that there will be too little courage to move at the pace of living Tradition,” reads Chapter 1, paragraph g. (Passed by 326 – 18)
The synod has been particularly marked by controversy due to its discussion topics. The Instrumentum Laboris formed the basis of the discussions, meaning that the 465 synod participants and over 300 voting synod members were discussing (among other topics) questions on female deacons; “welcoming” LGBT, polygamous, divorced and “re-married” individuals; married priests; lay governance.
Given such topics – on which the Church has already clearly pronounced – numerous Catholics have expressed strong concern about the direction and intent of the Synod on Synodality. However, when questioned by LifeSiteNews during the event, a cardinal member of the synod refused to confirm if members were adhering to Church teaching during the discussions on such issues.
Sections of the synthesis report that saw particularly high levels of opposition were in Chapters 9, 11, 12, 15.
The report presents the discussions on the topic of “synodality” itself, before then dealing with the more hot-button topics. While radical advocates for LGBT issues or for female deacons will not have had their aims fulfilled, the report nevertheless also avoids clearly proclaiming the already defined Church teaching on all such issues.
Indeed, the report is marked more for its generic nature rather than by any particularly notable argumentation made. Paragraphs contain calls for further discussion on a number of topics, rather than presenting concrete demands or formulated decisions.
Each paragraph was voted on in turn, and had to be passed by at least a two-thirds majority: abstentions were not permitted. Although this meeting is unique in that it has for the first time allowed lay voters, the report did not divide the voting results by lay or clerical status. The simple numerical results were presented.
Every paragraph was approved, though no paragraph received a 100 percent approval, as there were always objections registered: only three paragraphs had just one objection.
Each chapter of the report is divided into three sections: summaries of discussions, issues to be addressed, and proposals presented.
READ: Cardinal Müller: Synod is about ‘preparing us to accept homosexuality,’ women’s ordination
Commenting on the surprisingly large numbers of votes approving controversial passages, especially relating to the female diaconate, relator general Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich told journalists that he was surprised and “happy with that result.” He added that the vote on this particular issue “means that the resistance are [sic] not so great as people have thought before.”
The report particularly highlights a continuation of the culture of questioning that has characterized the synod during the past two years. While less explicit on certain topics than in previous documents, the synthesis report lays the groundwork for essentially codifying the “synodal manner” of prolonged discussion on already decided moral or doctrinal questions, and the concept of majority vote approval in the Church with equality of voting power amongst the laity and the clergy.
“To have this freedom and openness will change the Church, and I’m sure the Church will find answers, but perhaps not the exact answer this group or that group wants to have, but answers [with which] most people could feel well and listened to,” said Cardinal Hollerich of the Synod on Synodality’s style and process.
![[Image: 395111416_122130018566030689_63550144234...e=6542946C]](https://scontent-fco2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/395111416_122130018566030689_6355014423481648428_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=z7bnnOcO054AX-nqc1-&_nc_ht=scontent-fco2-1.xx&oh=00_AfBG4rG6UYpBYqtoTz9HsVrQ3BWRowtysSIWmwROkG88Hw&oe=6542946C)
Cdl. Hollerich at the synod Credit: Facebook
Synodality: a definition and a future
Describing even the arrangement of the synod – which was held in the Paul VI Audience Hall, rather than the customary synod hall, to accommodate the round table arrangement – the report stated that this physical arrangement was highly significant. The passage is particularly key for understanding the concept of the new, democratic style of life proposed by the Synod on Synodality:
Quote:“The very way the Assembly was conducted, starting with the arrangement of people seated in small groups around round tables in the Paul VI Hall, comparable to the biblical image of the wedding banquet (Rev. 19:9), is emblematic of a synodal Church and an image of the Eucharist, the source and summit of synodality, with the Word of God at its center. Within it, different cultures, languages, rites, ways of thinking and realities can engage together and fruitfully in a sincere search under the guidance of the Spirit. (Passed by 339 – 5)
“The entire journey, rooted in the Tradition of the Church, is taking place in the light of the conciliar magisterium,” noted the opening message at the start of the report.
READ: Cardinal Müller criticizes ‘heretics and globalists’ at Synod, reaffirms ‘God never blesses sin’
Somewhat of a definition of synodality was offered, being presented as an inherently ecumenical event which was to be “understood as the walk of Christians with Christ and toward the Kingdom, together with all humanity.” The definition continued that “synodality” was to be:
Quote:… mission-oriented, it involves coming together in assembly at the different levels of ecclesial life, listening to one another, dialogue, communal discernment, consensus-building as an expression of Christ’s making himself present alive in the Spirit, and decision-making in differentiated co-responsibility. (Passed 340 – 4)
However, the text added that there was a “need to clarify the meaning of synodality at different levels, from pastoral use to theological and canonical use, averting the risk that it sounds too vague or generic, or appearing as a passing fad.” (Passed 341 – 3)
A call was made to “experiment with and adapt conversation in the Spirit” – which has been the modus operandi of the Synod on Synodality – along with “other forms of discernment” into the wider life of the church, “valuing according to cultures and contexts the richness of different spiritual traditions.” (Paragraph passed by 332 – 12)
![[Image: DSC05278-scaled.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/DSC05278-scaled.jpeg)
The Paul VI Audience Hall
![[Image: 391712991_122126643128030689_17380145174...e=6542CE23]](https://scontent-fco2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/391712991_122126643128030689_1738014517468227382_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=bXcDrUNBIFUAX-pKbvE&_nc_ht=scontent-fco2-1.xx&oh=00_AfBNnAVQZReCmAdBYF-lO0Z8tWOIH0safmq7wnxNoJtgtg&oe=6542CE23)
Credit: Synod.va/Facebook
Equality of dignity, governance and liturgical themes
Consistent with the themes of ecumenical and hierarchical equality which have emerged from the process, the report argued that all baptized individuals are completely equal in dignity, avoiding the discussion of differing kinds and ways to lose dignity: “among all the baptized there is a genuine equality of dignity and a common responsibility for mission, according to each person’s vocation.” (Passed by 318 – 26)
The sacrament of baptism appeared as a new tool to aid “synodality” with the report stating how it “cannot be understood in an individualistic way” and that “the contribution to the understanding of synodality that can come from a more unified vision of Christian initiation.” (Passed by 337 – 7)
Consistent themes of “synodal” styles of governance and regular activity within the Church’s daily life are also contained in the report, highlighting the regime change which is promoted by the Synod on Synodality.
This is particularly highlighted with regard to the role of women, with the report even expressing an “urgent” call for Canon Law to be changed in order to allow more female governance roles:
Quote:There is an urgent need to ensure that women can participate in decision-making processes and assume roles of responsibility in pastoral care and ministry. The Holy Father has significantly increased the number of women in positions of responsibility in the Roman Curia. The same should happen at other levels of Church life. Canon law should be adapted accordingly. (Passed by 319 – 27)
An insight into the potential new form of the diaconal understanding was given in section 4, which argued that “as part of the rethinking of diaconal ministry, let it be promoted to be more strongly oriented toward service to the poor.” (Passed by 337 – 7)
Another section noted the “widely reported need to make liturgical language more accessible to the faithful and more embodied in the diversity of cultures.” (Passed by 322 – 22)
The current Vatican concentration on climate change issues was also represented, with a call being made for “the biblical and theological foundations of integral ecology [to] be more explicitly and carefully integrated into the teaching, liturgy and practices of the Church.” (Passed by 328 – 16)
![[Image: DSC05236-scaled.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/DSC05236-scaled.jpeg)
Synod members during the October 2023 meetings.
Catholic identity
The text’s dealing with the issue of migration highlighted calls for “respect for the liturgical traditions and religious practices of migrants” as part of an “authentic welcome,” while avoiding urging the promotion of Catholicism. In a paragraph with a relatively large amount of objection, mention was made of “sensitivity” needed in places where “the proclamation of the Gospel has been associated with colonization and even genocide.” (Passed by 312 – 32)
Mention was further made of calls for increased dialogue and unity between the East and the West, along with a focus on ecumenism. For this end, Baptism was once again placed at the service of “synodality,” with the text stating: “through it, [Baptism] all Christians participate in the sensus fidei and for this reason they should be listened to carefully, regardless of their tradition, as the Synodal Assembly did in its discernment process. There can be no synodality without the ecumenical dimension.” (Passed by 316 – 28)
So also was the Holy Eucharist seen and used as an aid for “synodality,” with calls made for Communion to be given to non-Catholics. So-called “Eucharistic hospitality” was highlighted as being an issue “particularly felt by interfaith couples.”
Quote:The issue of Eucharistic hospitality (communicatio in sacris) should be further examined from the theological, canonical and pastoral perspectives in light of the link between sacramental and ecclesial communion. This issue is particularly felt by interfaith couples. It also points to a broader reflection on mixed marriages.(Passed by 321 – 23)
![[Image: P1120460-scaled.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/P1120460-scaled.jpeg)
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe and Sr. Nathalie Becquart arrive to the synod, October 12, 2023.
Ministry, deacons and clergy
The much anticipated demand for female-deacons – which would be in opposition to Church teaching – was not made in the synthesis report. However, the relevant chapter (9) saw some of the highest level of objections during the vote.
The discussions on female deacons were summarized as being welcomed by some as return to “a practice of the early church” or a “necessary response to the signs of the times, faithful to Tradition.” The report did note the objections of those Catholics who echoed Church teaching that such a move would be “in discontinuity with Tradition.” (Passed 277 – 69)
![[Image: Screenshot-2023-10-28-at-23.36.14.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-28-at-23.36.14.png)
Screenshot of Synod synthesis report’s section on female deacons.
The text also called for “theological and pastoral research” on the female diaconate to continue, and requested that the results of the 2016 and 2020 commissions on the topic be presented at the October 2024 meeting. (Passed 279 – 67) Therefore while any definite statements supporting the female diaconate were not made in the report, the Church’s condemnation of the female diaconate as impossible was seemingly ignored, with calls for further discussion on the topic thus promoted.
Calls were also made for new ministries for laity, particularly for “establishing a ministry” for married couples. (Passed by 308 – 38)
Priestly celibacy, as noted on these pages, was discussed alongside the female diaconate. In this light, a call for a “deeper reflection” on the diaconate itself was raised, with the note that this could “illuminate the issue of women’s access to the diaconate.” (Passed by 285 – 61) Such a comment has been made in passing by synod members to journalists, suggesting that an attempt to change the understanding of the diaconate is underway, rather than immediately pushing to institute women as deacons. Should such a move take effect – effectively instituting a lay version of the diaconate – it could be an attempt by advocates of female ordination to achieve their goal of a form of “parity” with priests, whilst also looking to avoid a clear condemnation of being heretical.
LGBT issues
Father James Martin, S.J., told the dissident National Catholic Reporter that he was “‘disappointed but not surprised’ by the result for LGBTQ Catholics.” Indeed, the synod had been discussing a perceived need to “welcome” the “remarried divorcees, people in polygamous marriages, LGBTQ+ [sic] people.”
“There were widely diverging views on the topic. I wish, however, that some of those discussions, which were frank and open, had been captured in the final synthesis,” Martin stated.
While the text does not defend same-sex blessings, it does argue that the Church has an out-dated mode of understanding LGBT questions. It states:
Quote:Sometimes the anthropological categories we have developed are not sufficient to grasp the complexity of the elements emerging from experience or knowledge in the sciences and require refinement and further study. It is important to take the necessary time for this reflection and invest our best energies in it, without giving in to simplifying judgments that hurt people and the Body of the Church. (Passed 307 – 39)
The terminology “LGBTQ” did not appear in the synthesis report, unlike in the Instrumentum Laboris which guided proceedings. This is a particularly notable absence, especially given the concentration of questions on the topic of homosexuality during the near-daily press briefings.
When asked by LifeSiteNews during the synod about homosexual topics in the synod discussions, voting member Cardinal Leonardo Steiner argued there was a mixed view on the topic of same-sex blessings, adding that Pope Francis has planned for next year’s synod meetings to address the topic specifically.
READ: Pope Francis reportedly tasked next year’s Synod with addressing same-sex ‘blessings’
But as time progressed, the message from the press office briefing table was more succinct: officials moved towards a more unified line, stating that the topic of the event was “synodality” and not same-sex blessings, or female deacons, even though the same officials would state how such items had in fact been discussed that same day.
As for the Instrumentum Laboris calls for a “welcome” for those in “polygamous” relationships, the synthesis report also states:
Quote:In different ways, people who feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage situation, identity, and sexuality also ask to be heard and accompanied, and that their dignity be defended. A deep sense of love, mercy and compassion for people who are or feel hurt or neglected by the Church, who desire a place to come ‘home’ and to feel safe, to be listened to and respected, without fear of feeling judged. Listening is a prerequisite for walking together in search of God’s will. The Assembly reaffirms that Christians cannot disrespect the dignity of any person. (Passed by 326 – 20)
A much more concrete defense of the polygamous came from the bishops of Africa and Madagascar, however, whose bishops’ conference stated they were encouraged “to promote theological and pastoral discernment on the issue of polygamy and the accompaniment of people in polygamous unions coming to faith.” (Passed by 303 – 43)
Some disgruntlement was raised in the Holy See Press Office by journalists looking for more radical texts supporting LGBT issues. But Cardinal Mario Grech – secretary general of the General Secretariat of the Synod – defended the text, saying that all the paragraphs had received the two-thirds majority needed.
![[Image: F9Jmn0CWIAAp3Gl?format=jpg&name=large]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Jmn0CWIAAp3Gl?format=jpg&name=large)
Synod on Synodality members. Credit: X screenshot
Synodality for the future
While the Synod on Synodality is due to end in October 2024, Cardinal Hollerich gave yet another hint that the process was not likely to actually end there. “The process really starts at the end of the process” he told journalists, when presenting the synthesis report.
He welcomed the fact that a “synodal church will more easily try to speak about these topics [controversial topics] than in the past.”
The synthesis report is now entrusted to the bishops’ conferences around the world, who are tasked with promoting it to the congregations under their charge. The participants of this October’s meeting will reconvene in the Vatican next October for the second session of the Synod on Synodality. Leading cardinals and synod officials have suggested that more concrete decisions and proposals are likely to emerge from the 2024 session.
For those looking for definitive statements approving same-sex blessings or female ordination – which would both violate Catholic doctrine – then such hopes will have been dashed. Yet, in a less immediately visible manner, the synod’s synthesis report presents a blueprint for a radical alteration of the Church’s daily life, in that it refuses to present Church teaching on the controversial moral issues and argues for a parliamentary style democracy of equality between laity and clergy, and continues the process of undermining the authority of bishops.
The Synod on Synodality now proceeds at the local level once more, with concerns of faithful Catholics remaining unabated.
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| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Twenty-second Week after Pentecost |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-29-2023, 05:25 AM - Forum: Pentecost
- Replies (7)
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By our sins long ago committed, and often since, we have deserved hell. And do we understand what hell means? One moment in hell is more dreadful than a hundred years of most frightful torments. And yet we complain if God sends us sufferings. O Lord, Thou art just! Give us grace to suffer with patience.
I.
Are we to look upon God as a tyrant who takes pleasure in our suffering? He does take pleasure in punishing us, but exactly the same pleasure a father takes in correcting his son: He does not take pleasure in the pain which He inflicts, but in the amendment it will work. My son, reject not the correction of the Lord; and do not faint when thou art chastised by him, for whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and as a father in the son, he pleaseth himself (Prov. iii. 11). He chastises you because He loves you; it is not that He wishes to see you afflicted, but converted; and if He takes pleasure in your suffering, He does so inasmuch as it is a means of conversion -- just as a father who chastises his son derives pleasure, not from the affliction of his son, but from the amendment which he hopes to see in him, and which will prevent him from working his own ruin. Chastisement makes us return to God, says St. John Chrysostom; and it is to this end God inflicts it, in order that we may not stay away from Him.
Why then do you complain of God when in tribulation? You ought to thank Him prostrate on the earth. If a man condemned to die were to have his sentence changed by the prince from death into one hour's imprisonment, and if he were to complain of that one hour, would his complaint be just? Would he not rather deserve that the prince should reverse the last sentence, and condemn him a second time to death? You have long and often deserved hell by your sins. And do you know all that the word hell means? Know that it is more dreadful to suffer for one moment in hell than to suffer for a hundred years the most frightful torments which the Martyrs suffered on earth; and in this hell you should have had to suffer not for a moment, but during all eternity. And yet you complain if God send you some tribulation, some infirmity, some loss! Thank God, and say: Lord, this chastisement is trifling compared with my sins. I should have been in hell burning, deserted by all, and in despair; I thank Thee for having called me to Thyself by this tribulation which Thou hast sent me. God, says Oleaster, often calls sinners to repentance by temporal chastisements. By earthly chastisements the Lord shows us the immense punishment our sins deserve; and therefore afflicts us on this earth, that we may be converted and escape eternal flames.
II.
Wretched, then, should we poor sinners be if left unpunished; but still more wretched is the sinner who, admonished by affliction, does not amend. It is not a grievous thing to be afflicted by God on this earth after one has sinned; but it is very grievous not to be converted by the affliction sent, and to be like those of whom David speaks, who, although visited by Divine chastisement, still sleep on in their sins. At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, they have all slumbered (Ps. lxxv. 7). As if the sound of the scourges and the thunders of God, instead of rousing them from their lethargy, served only to make them sleep more soundly. I struck you, yet you returned not to me (Amos iv. 9). I have scourged you, says God, in order that you might return to Me; but ye, ungrateful that you are, have been deaf to My calls. Unhappy the sinner who acts like him of whom the Lord says, He shall send lightnings against him; ... his heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil (Job xli. 14, 15). God visits him with chastisement, and he, instead of being softened and returning to the Lord by penance, shall be as firm as a smith's anvil; he shall grow more hardened under the blows of God, as the anvil grows harder under the hammer, like the impious Achaz, of whom the Scripture says: In the time of his distress he increased contempt against the Lord (2 Par. xxviii. 22). Unhappy man, instead of humbling himself, he all the more despised God. He deserves all chastisement who, being afflicted by the Lord for his conversion, continues to provoke the Lord to greater wrath. What can I do, O sinner, to bring about your conversion? The Lord will say: I have called you by sermons and inspirations, and you have despised them; I have called you by favours, and you have grown more insolent; I have called you by scourges, and you continue to offend Me. For what shall I strike you any more, you that increase transgression ... and the daughter of Sion shall be left ... as a city that is laid waste (Is. i. 5-8). Do you not wish to hearken even to My chastisements? Do you wish that I should abandon you?
Let us no longer abuse the mercy which God uses towards us. Let us not be like the nettle, which stings him who strikes it. God afflicts us, because He loves us, and wishes to see us reformed. When we feel the chastisement, we should remember our sins, and say with the brethren of Joseph: We deserve to suffer these things, because we have sinned against our brother (Gen. xlii. 21). Lord, Thou punishest us justly, because we have offended Thee, our Father and God. Thou art just, O God, and thy judgment is right (Ps. cxviii. 137). Everything thou hast done to us, thou hast done in true judgment (Dan. iii. 31). Lord, Thou art just, and dost with justice punish us; we accept this tribulation which Thou sendest us; give us strength to suffer it with patience.
Spiritual Reading
HOLY HUMILITY
V. HUMILITY OF THE INTELLECT OR JUDGMENT
Since without the Divine aid you can do nothing, be careful never to confide in your own strength; but after the example of St. Philip Neri, endeavour to live in continual and utter distrust of yourself. Like St. Peter, who protested that not even death would induce him to deny his Master, the proud man trusts in his own courage, and therefore yields to temptation. Because he confided in himself, the Apostle had no sooner entered the house of the high-priest than he denied Jesus Christ. Be careful never to place confidence in your own resolutions or in your present good dispositions; but put your whole trust in God, saying with St. Paul: I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me (Phil. iv. 13). If you cast away all self-confidence, and place all your hopes in the Lord, you may then expect to do great things for God. They that hope in the Lord, says the Prophet Isaias, shall renew their strength (Is. xl. 31). Yes, the humble, who trust in the Lord, shall renew their strength; distrusting themselves, they shall lay aside their own weakness and put on the strength of God. Hence, St. Joseph Calasanctius used to say, that "whoever desires to be the instrument of God in great undertakings, should seek to be the lowest of all." Strive to imitate the conduct of St. Catharine of Sienna, who, when tempted to vainglory, would make an act of humility, and when tempted to despair, would make an act of confidence in God. Enraged at her conduct, the devil began one day to curse her and the person who taught her this mode of resisting his temptations; and added, that he "knew not how to attack her." When, therefore, Satan tells you that you are in no danger of falling, tremble; and reflect that, should God abandon you for a moment, you are lost. When he tempts you to despair, exclaim in the loving words of David: In thee, O Lord, have I hoped: let me never be confounded (Ps. xxx. 2). In Thee, O Lord, I have placed all my hopes; I trust that I shall not be confounded, deprived of Thy grace, and made the slave of hell.
Should you be so unfortunate as to commit a fault, take care not to give way to diffidence, but humble your soul; repent, and with a stronger sense of your own weakness, throw yourself into the arms of the Lord. To be angry with ourselves after having committed a fault, is not an act of humility, but of pride, which makes us wonder how we could have fallen into such a fault. Yes, it is pride and a delusion of the devil, who seeks to draw us away from the path of perfection, to cast us into despair of advancing in virtue, and thus precipitate us into more grievous sins. After a fault we should redouble our confidence in God, and thus take occasion from our infidelity to place still greater hopes in His mercy. To them that love God, says St. Paul, all things work together unto good (Rom. viii. 28). "Yes," adds the Gloss, "even sins." The Lord once said to St. Gertrude: "When a person's hands are stained he washes them, and they become cleaner than before they were soiled." So the soul that commits a fault, being purified by repentance, is made more pleasing in the eyes of God than she was before her transgression. To teach them to distrust themselves, and to confide only in Him, God sometimes permits His servants, and particularly those who are not well grounded in humility, to fall into some sin. If, then, you commit a fault, endeavour to repair it immediately by an act of love and of sorrow; resolve to amend, and redouble your confidence in God; say with St. Catharine of Genoa: "Lord, this is the fruit of my garden. If Thou dost not protect me I shall be guilty of still more grievous offences; but I purpose to avoid this fault for the future, and with the aid of Thy grace, I hope to keep this resolution." Should you ever relapse, act always in the same manner, and never abandon the resolution of becoming a saint.
Should you ever see another commit some grievous sin, take care not to indulge in pride, nor to be surprised at his fall; but pity his misfortune, and trembling for yourself, say with holy David: Unless the Lord had been my helper, my soul had almost dwelt in hell (Ps. xciii. 17). If the Almighty had not been my Protector, I should at this moment be buried in hell. Beware of even taking vain complacency in being exempt from faults you perceive in others, or else, in chastisement of your pride the Lord will permit you to fall into the sins they have committed. Cassian relates that a certain young monk, being for a long time molested by a violent temptation to impurity, sought advice and consolation from an aged Father. Instead of receiving encouragement and comfort, he was loaded with reproaches. "What!" said the old man, "is it possible that a monk should be subject to such abominable thoughts?" In punishment of his pride the Almighty permitted the Father to be assailed by the spirit of impurity to such a degree that he ran about like a madman. Hearing of his miserable condition, the Abbot Apollo told him that God had permitted this temptation to punish his conduct towards the young monk, and also to teach him compassion for others in similar circumstances. The Apostle tells us that in correcting sinners we should not treat them with contempt, lest God should permit us to be assailed by the temptation to which they yielded, and perhaps to fall into the very sin which we were surprised to see them commit. We should, before we reprove others, consider that we are as miserable and as liable to sin as our fallen brethren. Brethren, if any man be overtaken in a fault ... instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted (Gal. vi. 1). The same Cassian relates that a certain Abbot called Machete confessed that he himself had miserably fallen into three faults, of which he had rashly judged his brethren to be guilty.
Evening Meditation
INTERIOR TRIALS
We are to have this certain confidence that in obeying our Spiritual Father, we are sure of not sinning. "The sovereign remedy for the scrupulous," says St. Bernard, "is a blind obedience to their confessor." John Gerson relates, that the same Saint told one of his disciples, who was scrupulous, to go and celebrate, and take his word for it. He went, and was cured of his scruples. "But a person may answer," says Gerson, "Would to God I had a St. Bernard for my director! Mine is one of indifferent wisdom." And he answers, "Thou dost err, whoever thou art that so speakest; for thou hast not given thyself into the hands of the man because he is well read, etc., but because he is placed over thee; wherefore obey him not as man, but as God." Hence St. Teresa has well said: "Let the soul accept the confessor with a determination to think no more of personal excuses, but to trust in the words of the Lord: He that heareth you heareth me.
Hence St. Francis de Sales, speaking of direction from a Spiritual Father in order to walk securely in the way of God, says: "This is the very counsel of all counsels." "Search as much as you will," says the saintly Father John of Avila, "you will in no way discover the will of God so surely as by the path of that humble obedience which is so much recommended and practised by the devout of former times." Thus, too, Father Alvarez said: "Even if the Spiritual Father should err, the obedient soul is secure from error, because it rests on the judgment of him whom God has given it as a superior." And Father Nieremberg writes to the same effect: "Let the soul obey the confessor; and then, although the thing itself were faulty, he does not sin who does it with the intention of obeying him who holds the place of God in his regard, persuading himself, as is, indeed, the case, that he is bound to obey him," who is the interpreter of the Divine will.
II.
St. Francis of Sales gives three maxims which bring great consolation to scrupulous souls.
1. An obedient soul has never been lost; 2. We ought to rest satisfied with knowing from our Spiritual Father that we are going on well, without seeking a personal knowledge of it; 3. The best thing is to walk on blindly through all the darkness and perplexity of this life, under the Providence of God. And therefore all the Doctors of Morals conclude, in general, with St. Antoninus, Navarro, Silvester, etc., that obedience to the confessor is the safest rule for walking securely in the ways of God. F. Tirillo, and F. La Croix say that this is the common doctrine of the holy Fathers and masters of the spiritual life.
The scrupulous should know that not only are they safe in obeying, but that they are bound to obey their director, and to despise the scruple, acting with all freedom in the midst of their doubts. This is the teaching of Natalis Alexander: That scruples ought to be despised when one has the judgment of a prudent, pious, and learned director; and that one ought to act against them. "He who acts against scruples does not sin," says Father Wigandt, "nay, sometimes it is a precept to do so, especially when backed by the judgment of the confessor." So do these authors speak, although they belong to the rigid school; so, too, theologians in general; and the reason is, that if the scrupulous man goes on in his scruples, he is in danger of placing grievous impediments in the way of satisfying his obligations, or, at least, of making spiritual progress; and, moreover, of even losing his mind, losing his health, and destroying his soul by despair or by relaxation. Hence St. Antoninus agrees with Gerson in thus reproving the scrupulous soul who, through a vain fear, is not obedient in overcoming his scruples: "Beware lest, from overmuch desire to walk securely, thou fall and destroy thyself."
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| Students protest drag show planned for Catholic university Notre Dame |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-29-2023, 05:09 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Students protest drag show planned for Catholic university Notre Dame
Notre Dame, one of the most famous Catholic universities in the U.S., has defended the event on the grounds of academic freedom
Fox News [adapted] | October 28, 2023
Students at one of the most popular Catholic universities in the U.S. are protesting a drag event sanctioned by the school administration.
The University of Notre Dame, one of the most well-known Catholic colleges in the country, is hosting and sponsoring a drag queen symposium on November 3 as part of a one-credit course titled "What a Drag: Drag on Screen — Variations and Meanings."
Students who are upset with the event's contradiction to Catholic morality are pushing Vice President of Student Affairs Fr. Gerry Olinger to rescind the religious university's participation in hosting the event.
MASSACHUSETTS MAN ALLEGEDLY BROKE ARMS OFF CRUCIFIX OUTSIDE BOSTON CATHEDRAL AFTER SWINGING FROM IT
"In the weeks following the completion of the regilding of the dome and Our Lady, promotional posters appeared throughout campus advertising a drag show on Nov. 3," students wrote in an editorial for a student publication. "Months were spent regilding Notre Dame’s Virgin Mary statue, accentuating the beauty and truth of her feminine form in imago dei — a feminine form that is warped and mocked in the burlesque-styled form of entertainment that is drag."
The students wrote, "We cannot help but question how witnessing such a performance prepares students to be forces for good and truth in the world."
Posters advertising the event say that anyone at the university can attend — tickets are free.
DODGERS HONOR ANTI-CATHOLIC DRAG 'NUNS' MORE THAN AN HOUR BEFORE FIRST PITCH INSIDE NEARLY EMPTY STADIUM
"University funding will be paying drag artists to come to Notre Dame, dress as women, defile femininity, and most importantly, promote the disordered ideology that gender and sexuality are fluid — in direct contradiction to the Catholic Church’s teaching," student Merlot Fogarty wrote to Olinger in an email.
Olinger defended the university event on the grounds of "academic freedom," according to Catholic News Agency.
"This freedom in academic contexts is critical, and the university protects this freedom even when the content of the presentation is objectionable to some or even many. Because the event you reference is part of a one-credit course in film, television and theater on the history of drag, the principle of academic freedom does apply in this instance," Olinger responded to the email, according to the outlet.
Drag queen performances have become a tense topic in Catholic communities following the celebration of anti-Catholic drag "nuns" by the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this year.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were given a "Community Hero award" by the baseball team ahead of its Pride Night celebrations.
The ceremony was pushed to more than an hour before the game and done with few spectators in their seats after weeks of outrage surrounding the decision.
Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Notre Dame for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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| Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio is attempting to ‘adulterate the deposit of faith’ under false pretense |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-26-2023, 05:12 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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NB: Once again, we see Pope Francis embrace and employ the same tactics that were used at Vatican II to subvert Catholic Teaching, nicely summarized here by Archbishop Viganò.
Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio is attempting to ‘adulterate the deposit of faith’ under false pretenses
Bergoglio’s attacks on the deposit of faith are ‘scandalous and unheard of’ and risk the eternal damnation of souls, Archbishop Viganò writes.
Wed Oct 25, 2023
Editor’s note: The following is a commentary first posted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
(LifeSiteNews (emphasis mine)) — The system of the subverters is always the same: they modify a law by leveraging emotion and not reason, not because they care about the common good, but because they need a (false) pretext with which to legitimize what the law instead condemns. This was also the case for introducing divorce, abortion, and euthanasia.
In the ecclesial sphere, the subverters of doctrine and morality put forward the (false) pretext of understanding the Rites in order to introduce the vernacular language into the Liturgy, or the (false) pretext of ecumenical dialogue to water down Catholic Truths. Bergoglio resorted to the same trick for the death penalty, with the (false) pretext that it is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and today his minions use the (false) pretext of discrimination against adulterers, concubines, and perverts to legitimize adultery, concubinage, and sodomy.
This happens when the vicarious authority of those who govern society or the Church does not limit itself, as it should, to acting in the Name of God, but presumes that it has something to teach even God Himself, Who is said [to] not be able to legislate with justice, and that He imposes precepts that are impossible to observe.
And this is the same accusation with which Satan rebelled against God, and his main argument to convince us to disobey Him. That civil rulers do this is painful and very serious; but that the one who, sitting on the Throne of Peter, dares to make these recriminations his own in order to adulterate the Deposit of Faith and lead souls to eternal damnation is scandalous and unheard of.
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| Archbishop Viganò: Priests and bishops who promoted ‘lethal’ COVID jabs must answer to God |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-25-2023, 05:23 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Archbishop Viganò: Priests and bishops who promoted ‘lethal’ COVID jabs must answer to God
‘Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy,’ Archbishop Viganò writes. ‘And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.’
![[Image: Vigano_foto.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Vigano_foto.jpg)
Mon Oct 23, 2023
Editor’s note: The following is a commentary about the Catholic hierarchy and COVID jabs first posted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
(LifeSiteNews) — Three years ago I was among the first – and certainly the first Bishop – to denounce pandemic and vaccination fraud. Expressed with arguments that today emerge as true and well-founded are the critical issues and immorality of an experimental gene treatment, which aborted fetuses were and are used to produce. I also wrote two open letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which remain unanswered.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
There were those in conservative circles who went so far as to attack me personally and resorted to the unproven and clearly false statements of a doctor who worked with her husband for BigPharma.
I expressed my dismay at the silence of the bishops, priests, and parish pastors, of many religious workers involved in hospitals, and at the servile zeal with which the Catholic Hierarchy conformed to the crazy and criminal health regulations and Bergoglio’s promotion of the serum. I was publicly insulted on television and in the media, while my brother bishops were silent. Faced with a crime against humanity that has continued to take place before our eyes for three years with the approval and encouragement of Bergoglio, I would have thought that many Pastors would have found the courage to raise their voices and join in my denunciation of the plan of world depopulation implemented by the Word Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the UN, while the funds of these criminals were also given to the Vatican, transforming Bergoglio into a vaccine salesman and a supporter of climate fraud, which has now become “magisterium” with Laudate Deum and with the “Amazonian and synodal church.”
READ: New documentary exposes World Health Organization’s vaccine sterilization campaign in Kenya
Nemo propheta in sua patria. But if today some priests surrender to the evidence and ask Catholic journalists to tell the truth about the adverse effects, I wonder with what serenity they have so far silenced their conscience, and if their silence and fearful silence – like that of the doctors, police forces, magistrates, teachers and governors – has not turned into a timid protest today just because they see the showdown approaching and fear for their own reputation more than for the health of the billions of people subjected to the inoculation of a product that was known from the beginning to be dangerous and even lethal.
Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy. And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.
READ: Bill Gates: Life won’t go back to ‘normal’ until population ‘widely vaccinated’
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| Health Canada confirms cancer-linked Simian Virus 40 DNA sequence found in Pfizer COVID jab |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-24-2023, 07:25 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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Health Canada confirms cancer-linked Simian Virus 40 DNA sequence found in Pfizer COVID jab
Health Canada noted that '(a)lthough the full DNA sequence of the Pfizer plasmid was provided at the time of initial filing, the sponsor did not specifically identify the SV40 sequence.'
![[Image: Shutterstock_2196481543-1.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Shutterstock_2196481543-1.jpg)
Shutterstock
Mon Oct 23, 2023
OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The presence of Polyomavirus Simian Virus 40 (SV40), which is a monkey-linked DNA sequence known to cause cancer when it was used in old polio vaccines, has been confirmed by Health Canada to be present in the Pfizer COVID shot, a fact that was not disclosed by the vaccine maker to officials.
As first reported by The Epoch Times last week, there is still ongoing debate among scientists regarding the findings, with some reporting SV40 poses a cancer risk and was hidden on purpose while others say it is nothing to worry about.
As per an email that was sent to The Epoch Times, Health Canada said it “expects sponsors to identify any biologically functional DNA sequences within a plasmid (such as an SV40 enhancer) at the time of submission.”
“Although the full DNA sequence of the Pfizer plasmid was provided at the time of initial filing, the sponsor did not specifically identify the SV40 sequence,” Health Canada added.
Health Canada noted that Kevin McKernan, a microbiologist and former researcher and team leader for the MIT Human Genome project, and Dr. Phillip J. Buckhaults, who is a professor of cancer genomics as well as the director of the Cancer Genetics Lab at the University of South Carolina, had raised in a public manner earlier this year how SV40 was present in the jabs.
After this, Health Canada noted, it was “possible for Health Canada to confirm the presence of the enhancer based on the plasmid DNA sequence submitted by Pfizer against the published SV40 enhancer sequence.”
SV40 is used to enhance gene transcription when the shots are made.
According to McKernan, he noted in correspondence to The Epoch Times, that Pfizer did not let it be known of SV40 being in the COVID shots given its cancer link when it was used in polio vaccines decades ago.
McKernan shared his concerns about SV40 but did say there is no straightforward evidence yet if it is a full-blown carcinogenic. He did warn the public that SV40 promoters are still a concern due to the risk of them “integrating into the human genomes near oncogenes, which are genes that have the potential to cause cancer,” as noted by The Epoch Times.
According to Buckhaults, “People have a right to have their concerns taken seriously and addressed by competent, caring scientists, even if their concerns end up being invalidated. We should look for monsters under the bed and report results honestly.”
Health Canada spokesperson Mark Johnson, as noted by The Epoch Times, said the current data available regarding SV40 does not connect it to so-called “turbo cancers” linked with the COVID shot.
Dr. Joseph Mercola in an opinion piece posted to LifeSiteNews in June mentioned a discussion about COVID jab contamination between Dr. Steven E. Greer and McKernan, along with Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi.
According to McKernan’s team, SV40 DNA contamination was found in both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots, with the findings posted on OSF Preprints in early April 2023.
Greer noted, as observed by Mercola, that “governments and drug companies ‘have misled the world to a far greater extent than previously known.’ If these findings are correct, it would also mean that ‘the so-called ‘vaccines’ are actually altering the human genome and causing permanent production of the deadly spike protein,’ and this internal production of spike protein would, in turn, ‘trigger the immune system to attack its own cells.’”
Mercola wrote that as for SV40 showing up in the COVID shots, “it appears to be related to poor quality control during the manufacturing process, although it’s unclear where in the development SV40 might have sneaked in.”
“Quality control deficiencies may also be responsible for the high rate of anaphylactic reactions we’ve been seeing,” Mercola noted.
Last month, Health Canada approved a revised Moderna mRNA-based COVID shot despite research showing that 1 in 35 recipients of the booster have myocardial damage.
There is mounting evidence concerning the adverse effects they cause in many who have taken the COVID shots, including kids.
For example, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.
SV40 was ‘hidden’ from regulators by vaccine makers, doctor says
According to Dr. Janci Lindsay, who works as the director of toxicology and molecular biology for Toxicology Support Services, Pfizer did not disclose the presence of SV40 “promoters” to both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as the European Medicines Agency.
She said, as reported in The Epoch Times, the drug company “hid them.”
“So it’s not just the fact that they’re there, it’s the fact that they were purposefully hidden from the regulators,” she noted.
Lindsay explained that the full SV40 virus is not present in the COVID shots, but a nuclear localization sequence is.
She said that SV40 promoters were integrated into the “human genome — in a process known as insertional mutagenesis — that would then result in gene mutations that could cause cancers.”
Lindsay also said SV40 will “sit down anywhere” as it is a strong promoter.
As for Health Canada, it maintains that when it comes to the COVID shots, it has “concluded that the risk/benefit profile continues to support the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”
“Health Canada does not rely on the conclusions provided by vaccine manufacturers. Health Canada conducts an in-depth, independent review of the required evidence provided by the manufacturer to ensure that our high standards for safety, efficacy and quality are met,” the agency noted.
Buckhaults noted, as per The Epoch Times report, that the SV40 “sequence in the vaccine is NOT the cancer-causing SV40 large T antigen, which would be a very significant cancer risk.
He said that the SV40 enhancer is a “standard bit of molecular biology engineering to achieve high level expression of the Neo resistance marker” that has been used “for decades.”
He did state that the small DNA pieces of SV40 still have a “non-zero future cancer risk, same as all the other DNA sequences.”
“Concern among regulators is appropriate, but panic among the public is not appropriate (and indeed harmful),” he noted.
What is SV40 and why was it in the shots?
SV40 in vaccines has been linked to the spread of turbo cancers in those who have been exposed to the virus via contaminated injections. According to a 2002 study published in the Lancet, there is evidence that links the older polio vaccines, which were filed with SV40 contaminants, to certain forms of cancer.
Polio vaccines from the late 1950s to the early 1960s were all contaminated with SV40, after it was discovered that the virus was present in the monkey kidney cells, which vaccine makers used to grow the shots.
The authors of the 2002 study claim that the SV40-contaminated polio vaccine may have caused up to half of the 55,000 cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosed each year.
SV40, or the simian (monkey) virus as it is also known, according to Dr. Maurice Hilleman, who is a late vaccine developer, was put in the polio vaccine and then put into wide circulation by Merck inadvertently.
It has never been clear, as noted by Mercola, whether SV40 has been completely removed from polio vaccines since, however, it is known that contaminated jabs were in circulation in Italy as late as 1999.
The Lancet book review titled “The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Money Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine and the Millions of Americans Exposed” goes over SV40’s link to cancer in detail.
An expert from the book reads, “By 1960, scientists and vaccine manufacturers knew that monkey kidneys were sewers of simian viruses. Such contamination often spoiled cultures, including those of an NIH researcher named Bernice Eddy, who worked on vaccine safety … Her discovery … threatened one of the USA’s most important public-health programs.”
“Eddy tried to get word out to colleagues but was muzzled and stripped of her vaccine regulatory duties and her laboratory … [Two] Merck researchers, Ben Sweet and Maurice Hilleman, soon identified the rhesus virus later named SV40 – the carcinogenic agent that had eluded Eddy,” the book reads.
By 1963, U.S. health authorities switched to African green monkeys, which do not naturally carry SV40 to make polio shots.
Adverse effects from COVID shots on the rise in Canada
Adverse effects from the first round of COVID shots have resulted in a growing number of Canadians who have filed for financial compensation over alleged injuries from the jabs, via Canada’s Vaccine Injury Program (VISP).
Thus far, some VISP has already paid over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.
Despite the health risks associated with the COVID shots, governments across Canada all enacted strict rules, including workplace jab mandates.
As a result, many Canadians who chose not to get the shots lost their job. However, many of them are fighting back.
Last week, LifeSiteNews reported on how over 700 vaccine-free Canadians negatively affected by federal COVID jab dictates have banded together to file a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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| Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology text |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2023, 06:54 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology text
Church historian Roberto de Mattei told LifeSiteNews that this hugely significant event is the 'last act of a process' beginning with Vatican II and culminating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality.
![[Image: synod-catacombs.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/synod-catacombs.jpg)
Synod on Synodality members at the Catacombs, October 12, 2023
Vatican News X/Screenshot
Oct 20, 2023
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– In a hugely significant move, participants of the Synod on Synodality were quietly given the text of a secretive pact – first composed by a group of liberal theologians during Vatican II – which is part of a relativistic and “egalitarian” plan embodied and enacted by Pope Francis to “change the identity of the Catholic Church.”
In an article published October 13, Jesuit-run America Magazine revealed that participants of the Synod on Synodality were given a controversial and secret text during their October 12 trip to the Catacombs of Sts. Sebastian, Callistus and Domitilla. (An archive of the America Magazine report is available here.)
The report stated how the prayer booklet given to Synod participants “included the full text of the Pact of the Catacombs.” Of note is that this was not included in the booklet emailed to journalists of the Vatican press corps.
READ: SPECIAL: Pope Francis’ agenda is the progressive vision of Vatican II
The text and its being given to the Synod members is hugely significant, with Church historian Professor Roberto de Mattei describing it as the “last act of a process” beginning with Vatican II and culminating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality.
Commenting to LifeSiteNews about the event, de Mattei stated:
Quote:The Catacombs Pact distributed to the Synod Fathers last week is not a purely commemorative event, but the last act of a process that began with the Second Vatican Council and has its ultimate expression in the Synodal project encouraged by Pope Francis to change the identity of the Catholic Church, removing any “Constantinian” element and transforming it into an egalitarian and pauperist social agency.
What is the Catacombs Pact?
On November 16, 1965, 42 bishops attending the Second Vatican Council met in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla to compile and sign the “Pact of the Catacombs,” or the Catacombs Pact. The text has remained largely out of the public eye, but is a formulation of 13 key points pertaining to Church life, organization and practice, all based on tenets of the heterodox ideology known as Liberation Theology.
It highlights aspects which strongly resonate with “social justice” activists of today, such as:
- Living in the “ordinary manner of our people,”
- Rejecting “the appearance and reality of riches” including in dress and belongings, seemingly including liturgical objects,
- Handing over the finances to laity in the dioceses,
- Refusing traditional ecclesiastical titles like “Excellency,”
- Avoiding any semblance of hierarchical treatment, including during the liturgy,
- To be more focused on the style of “collegiality,”
- To “be more humanly present, more welcoming,” and to “show ourselves to be open to all, whatever their religion.”
Some accounts suggest the Pact garnered support from as many as 500 bishops at the council.
Who orchestrated it?
In his detailed account of the Second Vatican Council, de Mattei wrote how the pact was proposed by a group of prelates known as the “Church of the Poor,” which he described as one of the three “most important and effective pressure groups of the council.”
The “Church of the Poor” began meeting as early as the first session of the Council, in October 1962.
The late Bishop of Ivrea, Luigi Bettazzi – who until his death in July 2023 was the last remaining signatory of the Pact – stated the text was chiefly written by Archbishop Hélder Câmara, a Brazilian prelate who is described as an “icon” and “father” of liberation theology.
The influence of the author must not be underestimated.
Prof. de Mattei records that Câmara’s collaboration with prominent liberal advocate Cardinal Joseph Suenens at Vatican II was “one of the ‘hidden’ driving forces of the conciliar assembly.”
As de Mattei highlights, Câmara described his friend Suenens as “the key man of the Council, certain of the direct and personal trust of the Holy Father.” Câmara defended Suenens’ description as “the world head of progressivism,” adding “he is my leader at the Council.”
![[Image: Screen-Shot-2023-10-20-at-14.58.11.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-20-at-14.58.11.png)
Cdl. Joseph Suenens during a video interview
Câmara himself advocated for contraception and an acceptance of divorce during the conciliar years, and is acknowledged as “source of inspiration for Pope Francis,” especially as it was under Francis that his canonization process was approved in 2015.
Câmara was also vice-president of CELAM at the time of Vatican II, and so had influence over the six hundred or so Latin American prelates.
Nor is the composition of the signatories to be overlooked.
Bishop Luigi Bettazzi’s signature on the 1965 Pact thus linked the document to the work of other prominent liberal forces at play during those years. Bettazzi, records de Mattei, signed as the representative of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro – the Archbishop of Bologna.
Lercaro was highly influential in compiling the Novus Ordo liturgy alongside Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, and was one of four moderators appointed by Pope Paul VI to oversee daily proceedings of Vatican II, only weeks after Paul VI was elected pope in June 1963.
A certain Father Giuseppe Dossetti served as Cdl. Lercaro’s theological advisor. Dossetti was the leading figure behind the so-called “Bologna School,” which promoted the liberal “spirit” of the Council and portrayed traditionalists as enemies.
De Mattei describes the School of Bologna as “the intellectual laboratory of European ultra-progressivism.”
Thus, the founders and leading lights of extreme liberal forces both in Europe and South America were behind the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs.
To add to this, the Conciliar fathers’ moves were enacted in other parts of the Church. Commenting on the situation to LifeSiteNews, de Mattei noted that in 1965 also, “Father Pedro Arrupe, the author of a project to reform the Church that turned its foundations upside down along the lines of the Pact of the Catacombs, was elected General of the Society of Jesus.”
It was this same liberal Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Arrupe, who was a mentor for the young Fr. Jorge Bergoglio S.J. and raised him to become a district superior aged only 36. Indeed, Francis praised Arrupe even as recently as this summer, when Pope Francis hailed his “courage.”
Catacombs Pact and Pope Francis
To understand Pope Francis and his direction for the Church it is thus vital to come to grips with his relationship with the text signed by the Council fathers in 1965. For Francis has crucial links with those involved with the document, the ideologies of the text itself and its very aims.
De Mattei told LifeSite that Francis has been in possession of a text of the document from at least the start of his time in the Vatican. “On 21 March 2013, a week after his election, Pope Francis received a copy of the Pact of the Catacombs from the hands of Argentine activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporter of Marxist dictators Fidel Castro, Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chaves,” said the historian.
De Mattei added how in July 2014, the Pope’s favored liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, “published an article with the title El pacto de las catacumbas vivido por el Papa Francisco, in which, after transcribing the Catacombs Pact of 1965, he concluded with these words: ‘Aren’t these precisely the ideals presented by Pope Francis?’”
In 2015, Bishop Bettazzi stated that the text he and his fellow signatories worked on was now “bearing fruit.” “The pact of the catacombs today… is Pope Francis,” he said. Incidentally, when Bettazzi died in June, Pope Francis described him as “… a man of dialogue and a point of reference for numerous representatives of Italian public and political life.”
![[Image: cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422.jpeg]](https://www.vaticannews.va/content/dam/vaticannews/multimedia/2022/10/10/bettazzi-con-Papa-Francesco.jpeg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422.jpeg)
Pope Francis and Bishop Bettazzi. Credit: Vatican News
Indeed, with 2015 being the 50th anniversary of the text, there was a renewed interest in the document which had largely remained out of the public consciousness.
The Washington Post wrote how “perhaps nothing has revived and legitimated the Pact of the Catacombs as much as the surprise election, in March 2013, of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio – Pope Francis.”
The heterodox German prelate, Walter Cardinal Kasper, stated to the news outlet that Francis’ “program is to a high degree what the Catacomb Pact was.”
Kasper stated that “now he [Francis] brings it back,” saying that already in 2015 “the Catacomb Pact is everywhere now in discussion.”
Amazon Synod and a new Pact
With Pope Francis being described as the very embodiment of the Pact, it is not surprising that the document has assumed a key role in his pontificate, albeit not quite having the public exposure to be described as having taken center stage.
Perhaps, though, no clearer sign was given of Francis’ commitment and promotion of the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs than during the 2019 Synod on the Amazon.
During that synod – which is perhaps most infamously known for its Pachamama pagan idols being honored in the Vatican – a renewed version of the 1965 Pact was signed. (A copy can be viewed here.)
In the very same Catacombs of St. Domitilla, a group of cardinals, bishops and Synod members celebrated Mass and signed a “Pact of the Catacombs for the Common Home.” They were led by Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, who proudly announced that he was wearing Archbishop Câmara’s stole. Câmara was a man to whom Hummes “was extremely devoted,” observed de Mattei.
Hummes’s leadership of the 2019 Pact is also a sign of Francis’ approval of the endeavor. Hummes was seated next to Cardinal Bergoglio during the 2013 papal conclave, accompanied the new Pope Francis onto the balcony to greet the crowds on March 13, 2013 and remained in Francis’ own words “a good friend.” Hummes also had key responsibility for the Amazon Synod, serving as relator general – the position now held by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich for the Synod on Synodality.
As de Mattei commented to LifeSite about the 2019 Pact, “the socio-political Pact of the 1960s became the fifteen-point socio-cosmic pact entitled: ‘Catacombs Pact for the Common Home. For a Church with an Amazonian face, poor and servant, prophetic and Samaritan.’”
Writing about the 2019 Pact at the time, LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits noted how the new text also featured considerably more explicit arguments in favor of ecological and indigenous talking points.
Quote:The new Pact of the Catacombs not only proclaims preferential attention for the poor, as did the first Pact signed in 1965 – the poor now being represented by the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, but also their right to their traditional (pagan and pantheistic) ‘spirituality’ and their right to participate in all Church decisions in their area.
The pantheistic element is present in the Pact in the affirmation of an ‘integral ecology, in which everything is interconnected, the human race and all creation, for all creatures are daughters and sons of the earth.’
“The 1965 Pact has now simply been updated,” wrote Smits.
Here, as in so many aspects of the details regarding the Catacombs Pact, there is further integration of details. For it was the laicized priest Leonardo Boff, who in 2015 likened Francis’ pontificate to the 1965 Catacombs Pact, who is widely credited with providing the theological groundwork for the 2019 Amazon Synod.
READ: 47-year-old photo shows future Pope Francis with dissident priest who helped engineer Amazon synod
As Dr. Maike Hickson recounted, Boff’s friendship with Francis dates back decades, and has grown more impactful for the Church since Cardinal Bergoglio assumed the papal throne and kept Boff as a close friend and advisor.
Indeed, evidencing Francis’ commitment to the liberation theology ideals of the Catacombs Pact, Boff claimed in a 2016 interview that Pope Francis is “one of us.”
“He has turned Liberation Theology into a common property of the Church. And he has widened it,” said Boff.
With Francis now ensuring that members of his pontificate’s major work, the Synod on Synodality, receive the text of the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs, his agenda for the Church is increasingly clear for those who wish to see it.
“Today,” said de Mattei to LifeSite, “this legacy is taken up by an organism that is called a Synod, even though it is not an authentic Synod (the bishops are only a part of its members), and which expresses a magisterium that is not a magisterium, because it lacks the content and form of authentic Catholic teaching.”
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| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Twenty-first Week after Pentecost |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2023, 05:58 AM - Forum: Pentecost
- Replies (6)
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When God, at length, sees that we will not respond to benefits, nor threats, nor admonitions, nor amend our lives, He is forced by our own very selves to punish us. God will then chastise us because we ourselves force Him to chastise us.
I.
When God, at length, sees that we will not respond to benefits, nor threats, nor admonitions, nor amend our lives, He is forced by our own very selves to chastise us, but while punishing us, He will place before our eyes the great mercies He has extended to us: Thou thoughtest unjustly that I shall be like to thee; but I will reprove thee, and set before thy face (Ps. xlix. 20). He will then say to the sinner: Think you, O sinner, that I had forgotten, as you had done, the outrages you put upon Me, and the graces I dispensed to you? St. Augustine says that God does not hate but loves us, and that He only hates our sins. He is not wroth with men, says St. Jerome, but with their sins. The Saint says, that by His nature God is inclined to benefit us, and that it is we ourselves who oblige Him to chastise us, and assume the appearance of severity, which He has not of Himself. St. Jerome, reflecting on those words which Jesus Christ on the day of the General Judgment will address to the reprobate: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv. 41), inquires, who has prepared this fire for sinners? God, perhaps? No, because God never created souls for hell, as the impious Luther taught: this fire was kindled for sinners by their own sins. He who sows in sin, shall reap chastisement. He that soweth iniquity shall reap evils (Prov. xxii. 8). When the soul commits sin, it voluntarily obliges itself to pay the penalty thereof, and thus condemns itself to the pains of hell. For you have said; we have entered into a league with death, and we have made a covenant with hell (Is. xxviii. 15). Hence, St. Ambrose well says, that God has not condemned any one, but that each one is the author of his own punishment. And the Holy Ghost says, that the sinner shall be consumed by the hatred which he bears himself: with the rod of his anger he shall be consumed (Prov. xxii. 8). He, says Salvian, who offends God has no more cruel enemy than himself, since he himself has caused the torments which he suffers. God, he continues, does not wish to see us in affliction, but it is we who draw down sufferings upon ourselves, and by our sins enkindle the flames in which we are to burn. God punishes us, because we oblige Him to punish us.
II.
You will say the mercies of the Lord are great: no matter how manifold my sins, I have in view a change of life by and by, and God will have mercy upon me. God does not wish you to speak thus. Say not the mercy of the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the multitude of my sins (Ecclus. v. 6). The reason is this, for mercy and wrath quickly come from him (Ibid. 7). Yes, it is true, God has patience, God waits for some sinners; I say some, for there are some whom God does not wait for at all: how many has He not sent to hell immediately after the first transgression? Others He does wait for, but He will not always wait for them; He spares them for a certain time and then punishes. The Lord patiently expecteth, that when the day of judgment shall come, he may punish them in the fulness of their sins (2 Mach. vi. 14). Mark well, when the day of judgment shall come: when the day of vengeance shall arrive, in the fulness of their sins. When the measure of sins which God has determined to pardon is filled up, He will punish. Then the Lord will have no mercy, and will chastise to the full.
The city of Jericho did not fall during the first circuit made by the Ark, it did not fall at the fifth, or at the sixth, but it fell at last at the seventh. And thus it will happen with thee, says St. Augustine, "at the seventh circuit made by the Ark the city of vanity will fall." God has pardoned you your first sin, your tenth, your seventieth, perhaps your thousandth; He has often called you, He now calls you again; tremble lest this should be the last circuit of the ark, that is, the last call, after which, if you do not change your life, it will be over with you. For the earth, says the Apostle, that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it ... and which bringeth forth thorns and briars is reprobate, and very near unto a curse, whose end is to be burned (Heb. vi. 7). That soul, he says, which has often received the waters of Divine light and grace, and instead of bearing fruit produces nought but the thorns of sin, is nigh unto a curse, and its end will be to burn eternally in hell fire. In a word, when the time comes, God punishes.
Spiritual Reading
II. MORTIFICATION OF THE EYES
The Saints were particularly cautious not to look at persons of a different sex. St. Hugh, bishop, when compelled to speak with women, never looked at them in the face. St. Clare would never fix her eyes on the face of a man. She was greatly afflicted because, when raising her eyes at the elevation to see the consecrated Host, she once involuntarily saw the countenance of the priest. St. Aloysius never looked his own mother in the face. It is related of St. Arsenius, that a noble lady went to visit him in the desert, to beg of him to recommend her to God. When the Saint perceived that his visitor was a woman, he turned away from her. She then said to him: "Arsenius, since you will neither see nor hear me, at least remember me in your prayers." "No," replied the Saint, "but I will beg of God to make me forget you, and never more think of you."
From these examples may be seen the folly and temerity of those who, though they have not the sanctity of a St. Clare, still gaze around upon every object that presents itself, even on persons of a different sex. And notwithstanding their unguarded looks, they expect to be free from temptations and from the danger of sin. For having once looked deliberately at a woman, the Abbot Pastor was tormented for forty years by temptations against chastity. St. Gregory states that the temptation, to conquer which St. Benedict rolled himself in thorns, arose from one incautious glance at a woman. St. Jerome, though living in a cave at Bethlehem, in continual prayer and macerations of the flesh, was terribly molested by the remembrance of ladies whom he had long before seen in Rome. Why should not similar molestations be the lot of those who wilfully and without reserve fix their eyes on persons of a different sex?
"It is not," says St. Francis de Sales, "the seeing of objects so much as the fixing of our eyes upon them that proves most pernicious." "If," says St. Augustine, our eyes should by chance fall upon others, let us take care never to fix them upon any one." Father Manareo, when taking leave of St. Ignatius for a distant place, looked steadfastly in his face: for this look he was corrected by the Saint. From the conduct of St. Ignatius on this occasion, we learn that it is not becoming in those who aspire to sanctity, to fix their eyes on the countenance of a person even of the same sex, particularly if the person is young. But I do not see how looks at young persons of a different sex can be excused from the guilt of a venial fault, or even from mortal sin, when there is proximate danger of criminal consent. "It is not lawful," says St. Gregory, "to behold what it is not lawful to covet." The evil thought that proceeds from looks, though it should be rejected, never fails to leave a stain upon the soul. Brother Roger, a Franciscan of singular purity, being once asked why he was so reserved in his intercourse with women, replied, that when men avoid the occasions of sin, God preserves them; but when they expose themselves to danger, they are justly abandoned by the Lord, and easily fall into some grievous transgressions.
Evening Meditation
CONFORMITY TO THE WILL OF GOD
XI. SPECIAL PRACTICES OF THIS VIRTUE.
I.
We may at times have to suffer the loss of persons who, in either a temporal or spiritual point of view, happen to be of service to us. This is a matter in regard to which devout people are often very faulty, through their want of resignation to the Divine dispensations. Our sanctification must come, not from spiritual directors, but from God. It is, indeed, His will that we should avail ourselves of directors as spiritual guides, when He gives them to us; but when He takes them away, He wills that we should rest content, and increase our confidence in His goodness, saying at such times: Lord, it is Thou Who hast given me this assistance; now Thou hast taken it from me; may Thy will be ever done; but I pray Thee now to supply my wants Thyself, and to teach me what I ought to do to serve Thee. And in the same way ought we to receive all other crosses from the hands of God. but so many troubles, you say, are chastisements. But, I ask in reply, are not the chastisements God sends us in this life acts of kindness and benefits? If we have offended Him, we have to satisfy Divine justice in some way or other, either in this life or in the next. Therefore we ought all of us to say with St. Augustine, "Here burn, here cut, here do not spare; that so Thou mayest spare in eternity"; and again, with holy Job: And that this may be my comfort, that, afflicting me with sorrow, he spare not (Job vi. 10). It should, too, be a consolation to one who has deserved hell to see that God is punishing him in this world; because this will give him good hopes that it may be God's will to deliver him from punishment eternal. Let us, then, say when suffering the chastisements of God what was said by Heli the high priest: It is the Lord; let him do what is good in his sight (1 Kings, iii. 18).
II.
We must be conformed to God's will in times of spiritual desolation. When a soul begins to lead a spiritual life, the Lord is accustomed to heap consolations on it in order to wean it from the pleasures of the world; but afterwards, when He sees it more settled in spiritual ways, He holds His hand, in order to try its love, and to see whether it serves and loves Him unrecompensed and deprived of spiritual joys. "While we are living here below," St. Teresa writes, "our gain does not consist in any increase of enjoyment of God, but in the performance of His will." And in another passage: "The love of God does not consist in tenderness, but in serving Him with constancy and humility." And again, elsewhere: "By means of drynesses and temptations the Lord tries the fidelity of those who love Him." Let the soul then thank the Lord when He caresses it with sweetness; but not torment itself by acts of impatience, when it finds itself left in desolation. This is a point which should be well attended to; for some foolish persons, finding themselves in a state of aridity, think that God has abandoned them; or, that the spiritual life was not for them; and so they leave off prayer, and lose all they have gained. There is no time better for exercising resignation to the will of God than the time of dryness. I am not saying that you will not suffer pain at seeing yourself bereft of the sensible presence of God, for it is impossible for a soul not to feel such pain as this. Neither can we refrain from lamentation, when our Redeemer Himself upon His Cross complained: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. xxvii. 46). But, in its sufferings, it should ever resign itself perfectly to the will of its Lord. This spiritual desolation and abandonment is what all the Saints have suffered. "What hardness of heart," said St. Bernard, "do I not experience! I no longer find any delight in reading, no longer any pleasure in meditation or in prayer."
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| Two Homosexuals Can Receive Blessing "Together", Says Tucho |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-20-2023, 04:08 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Cardinal Fernández says blessings are for ‘every’ person in ‘every situation’
Cardinal Fernández granted an exclusive interview to LifeSiteNews in which he expanded on his openness to same-sex blessings, despite Catholic teaching prohibiting them on the grounds that sin can never be blessed.
![[Image: fernandez-2.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/fernandez-2.jpg)
Victor Cardinal Fernández speaking to media, September 30, 2023.
Michael Haynes/LifeSiteNews
Oct 19, 2023
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– Speaking to LifeSiteNews, Victor Cardinal Fernández expressed his openness to same-sex blessings, saying that blessings are a sign of “pastoral work” for people “in every situation.”
Speaking in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews on the day he was made a cardinal, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández gave his thoughts on the matter of blessings for same-sex individuals.
LifeSiteNews asked the new prefect of the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) whether it is “always wrong to give a blessing to homosexuality, to homosexual couples or not.”
Since being announced as the new CDF prefect on July 4, Fernández has given a number of interviews, and this question has been repeatedly raised. He has consistently replied with confusing phraseology, notably avoiding a straightforward pronunciation of the Catholic teaching condemning same-sex blessings.
The cardinal at first downplayed the possibility of same-sex blessings, if such an instance would cause confusion with marriage. But he continued by saying that a “blessing is not a sacrament” and should not have the same “conditions” as a sacrament would.
In light of this, Fernández stated that a blessing is a “sign of pastoral work” which could be given to “every people in every situation.”
Fernández’s full response to LifeSiteNews is as follows:
Quote:What the Church said is that the homosexual union is not blessed, because it [the Church] has the clear definition of marriage which is a union between a male and female open to new life.
Only that is called matrimony – marriage, only that reality is called that way.
So the blessing that could confuse and not make clear about this reality is not good for the Church.
But perhaps also [they] need blessings, not only one isolated person, but two persons who are asking for a blessing because they want to be faithful to God, they want to be better, they want to grow in their Christian life.
The blessing is not a sacrament. And we mustn’t ask the same conditions [for] a simple blessing that we ask for a sacrament.
Blessing is a sign of the “opera pastorale” [pastoral work], to every people in every situation, and we [need to] know nothing [about] the people with how is his Christian life, the morals and other things [in order] to give the blessing.
His answer generates confusion, and appears contradictory in many ways. For while he begins by suggesting that a blessing which causes “confusion” with marriage is “not good for the Church,” he then continued by arguing in favor of blessings for “every situation.”
Notably, while the new CDF prefect described a same-sex blessing that could be confused with marriage as “not good for the Church,” he did not in fact rule it out as impossible. Instead, he explicitly defended a universal approach to handing out blessings.
Cdl. Fernández and the era of interview confusion
Since his arrival to the Vatican over the summer, Cardinal Fernández has made waves for his statements on matters of Catholic doctrine. His role as the ghostwriter of Amoris Laetitia has meant that such statements are not without precedent.
READ: Theologians warn Archbishop Fernández pushing ‘heresy’ by promoting Amoris Laetitia
Amoris Laetitia’s now infamous Chapter 8 opened the door to allowing the divorced and “remarried” access to receive Holy Communion, and Francis soon responded to questions by saying there is “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia except the one provided by the bishops of Buenos Aires allowing Communion for the divorced and remarried.
Fernández is believed to have been chiefly responsible for the lines from the apostolic exhortation, and more recently Francis affirmed this argument of Amoris Laetitia’s by signing a document Fernández wrote in response to Cardinal Dominik Duka.
“Amoris laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist when, in a particular case, ‘there are limitations that mitigate responsibility and guilt,’” the Pope and his fellow Argentine wrote.
As regards Fernández’s openness to same-sex blessings, the cardinal has been consistent. In July he argued that “if a blessing is given in such a way that it does not cause that confusion, it will have to be analyzed and confirmed. As you will see, there is a point where we leave a properly theological discussion and move on to a question that is rather prudential or disciplinary.”
This he repeated to the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin in September, arguing that the Church’s understanding of doctrine is developing over time. While Fernández stated that “at this point it is clear that the Church only understands marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman who, in their differences, are naturally open to beget life,” it appeared that he was arguing that this could change in time.
READ: Archbishop Fernández again fails to rule out homosexual ‘blessings’ in latest interview
“In some areas,” said Fernández, “it has taken centuries for the Church to make explicit aspects of doctrine which at other times she did not see so clearly.”
“The Church,” he added later, “will always be tiny in the midst of such an immensity of truth and beauty and will always need to continue to grow in her understanding.”
Catholic teaching on same-sex blessings
However, under the former CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., the Vatican ruled in the negative in March 2021 as to whether the Catholic Church has the “power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.”
The CDF stated that it is “not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”
Cardinal Ladaria added that a blessing to “individual persons with homosexual inclinations” who displayed the “will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching,” was acceptable – thus further ruling out any blessings of couples.
Furthermore, the CDF declared “illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such,” i.e., as unions.
Meanwhile, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s tenure, in 1986 the CDF released its document “On the pastoral care of homosexual persons,” which stated that a “truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
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| Meat-Giant Tyson Foods Reveals New Insect Plant In 2025 |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:31 AM - Forum: Health
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Meat-Giant Tyson Foods Reveals New Insect Plant In 2025
ZH | OCT 17, 2023
Tyson Foods Inc. is buying a stake in insect-protein company Protix BV. The two companies will collaborate to establish a manufacturing facility in the US to produce bug-based meal and oil, typically used in fish feed and dog food.
Quote:The American meatpacker said Tuesday that it agreed to buy a stake in Dongen, Netherlands-based Protix BV to help fund its expansion. The companies will also form a joint venture to build and operate a US facility that will produce bug-based meal and oil, which are typically used in fish feed and dog food. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. --Bloomberg
"It's a multibillion-dollar industry opportunity that has tremendous growth potential, and we see Protix as being a leader there," Tyson CFO John Tyson said in an interview.
Tyson said, "In the long run, insect-protein inclusion in animal-feed diets can be a real thing that exists and can be one that is good for people, planet and animals."
Protix already supplies insect-based protein to pet food makers Nestle SA and Mars Inc. The company was established in 2009, and the partnership with Tyson will expand operations internationally.
"It is definitely a huge way to establish ourselves into an international context," Protix CEO Kees Aarts said. He added the deal with Tyson is a "tipping point we have been working for."
Aarts said the US plant will not be ready until 2025. He said the new facility will be four times larger than its existing facility in the Netherlands.
Slowly but surely, the World Economic Forum and major corporations appear to be resetting the global food supply chain. WEF has been very vocal about how the masses must give up beef because cow farts are polluting the air and, instead, eat insects.
Also...
Corporate media has been trying to convince the masses...
In Europe, an additive made out of powdered crickets has already made its way into pizza, pasta, and cereals.
Tyson's foray into bug production for animal food is an ominous sign that the meat giant could also be planning edible insects for human consumption.
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| Fr. Hewko: Bishop Faure told me he was wrong to go along the New Mass Fake Miracles |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:19 AM - Forum: Rev. Father David Hewko
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In his first Sermon at the new Oratory of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary, Fr. Hewko spoke of a conversation he had in the last few months with Bishop Faure.
Fr. Hewko relates that Bishop Faure told him that he (Bp. Faure) had been wrong to go along and accept the New Mass miracles promoted by Bishop Williamson.
Quote:"I did have a good conversation with Bishop Faure about two months ago now, where he encouraged me, "Go forward. We need a seminary of Archbishop Lefebvre in the United States of tradition and of the counter-revolution." But I said, we're going to need a bishop to take care of these boys and ordained them.
And you can certainly test them. You can see their exams, no problem. And his message was, "I'll talk to Bishop Zendejas." Well, I don't know how that's going to go. But at least Bishop Faure is willing to do something. And he told me this, and I say it happily, maybe he's already said it publicly in French and Spanish, which is where he usually speaks because he lives in France. But he did tell me, "I don't agree with the New Mass miracles [as promoted by Bishop Williamson]. I don't agree with the promoting of the New Mass miracles. And I was wrong," he said, "to go along with that. And I was just going along because to go along," but he said, "I was wrong too." And he was. He was wrong to go along with that. So pray for him that... That's a good sign. And then it's also a good sign that there are prelates preaching the truth."
After hearing that Bishop Williamson will not help other traditional clergy unless they accept New Mass [false] miracles as a condition for aid, perhaps this is why so many in the Fake Resistance have 'supported' Bishop Williamson, they were being held hostage so to speak over the Holy Oils?
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| Pope Francis Interview: 'Progress is necessary and the Church has to incorporate these novelties'' |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:15 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope Francis: “War is the great enemy of the universal dialogue that we need”
Telam.com.ar - English version | 16-10-2023
These are busy days at the Vatican, as they usually have been during the last ten years of a papacy that shook lethargic structures to set them in motion at the pace that our current times demand. His answers and initiatives not only consider the complexity of a world moving with or without a compass, but also the necessary actions to overcome a civilizing crisis that will help improve the present and build a different future.
During the Synod taking place these days -an assembly in which the Church listens and reflects about itself-, Pope Francis appeals “to the blessing and welcoming gaze of Jesus that prevents us from falling into some dangerous temptations: of being a rigid church, which arms itself against the world and looks backward; of being a lukewarm church, which surrenders to the fashions of the world; of being a tired church, turned in on itself”.
On this late September afternoon, life offers me once again the chance to interview the most important religious, social and ethical leader of the planet. During our talk in Santa Marta, the Pope unravels alerts, solutions and reflections from his universal, embracing and transforming point of view.
During our talk, Pope Francis says: “I believe dialogue cannot be just nationalist, it must be universal, especially nowadays with the advanced communication systems we have. That is why I speak of universal dialogue, universal harmony, universal encounter. And of course, the enemy of this is war. Since the end of World War II up until today, there have been wars everywhere. That’s what I meant when I said we are living a World War in pieces”.
His words should appeal to the consciousness of our planet, when the violence between Israel and Palestine has escalated dramatically since the morning of October 7th.
On Sunday 8th, at the end of the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis expressed his sorrow over the escalation of a war that plunges the Holy Land into mourning: “I express my closeness to the victims’ families. I pray for them and for everyone that is living hours of terror and anguish. May the attacks and the weaponry cease, please! And let it be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but to the death and suffering of so many innocent people”.
Only 72 hours later, in his weekly Wednesday audience of October 11th, the Pope doubled his call for peace: “Terrorism and extremism do not help reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but fuel hatred, violence, revenge and cause suffering for both sides”.
And during the Angelus on Sunday 15th, the Pope renewed his call for peace and for the respect of Humanitarian Law, “especially in Gaza where there is an urgent need to guarantee humanitarian corridors and to rescue the entire population.”
“Wars are always a defeat”, insisted the pilgrim Pope, whose face lit up with enthusiasm on that late September afternoon, in Santa Marta, at 86 years old, when he mentioned the expected worldwide destinations in the schedule of this tireless pastor, to walk once more together for a future of hope.
- Pope Francis, do you still have important trips to make?
- Well, yes. To Argentina (laughs).
- Of course.
I’d like to go…
When it comes to more distant countries, I still haven’t visited Papua New Guinea. Somebody said that if I go to Argentina, I should stop at Rio Gallegos, then head to the South Pole, land in Melbourne and visit New Zealand. It would be a rather long journey.
- How do you plan your trips? How do you pick the destinations?
- We receive many invitations. There is a lineup of possible trips and some impose themselves. Mongolia, for example. Others require thorough planning, like traveling across Europe, to Hungary for instance. Each case is different. There is always an invitation and then there is an intuition regarding the timing. It is not an automatic decision. Each trip is unique.
- Your trips usually display purpose, important topics to delve into, and closeness to the people, which is coherent with your idea of transformations demanding the commitment from powerful leaders but also from individualities. When we see far-right forces expanding, a feeling of frustration or disappointment toward politics and people expressing that in the ballot box, do you see these crises as momentary or long-lasting? What can be done to overturn them?
- I like the word “crisis” because it contains inner movement. Yet, the only way out from a crisis is upward, there is no easy way out. The way out is upward and never on our own. Those who intend to emerge alone from a crisis, turn the way out into a labyrinth that goes round and round. A crisis is a labyrinth. Also, a crisis makes you grow. Whether it’s a person, a family, a country or a civilization in crisis, if it is solved well, there is growth.
I’m concerned when problems turn to themselves and there seems to be no way out. We must teach young boys and girls to be able to manage a crisis. To solve a crisis. Because that instills maturity. We were all unexperienced young people once, and sometimes young boys and girls hold onto miracles, to a messiah, to things being solved in a messianic way. There is only one Messiah who saved us all. The rest are all clowns of messianism. None of them can promise a solution to conflicts, unless it’s emerging upward from the crisis. And never on our own. Let’s think of any kind of political crisis, in a country that doesn’t know what to do, there are many in Europe. What can be done? Shall we look for a messiah to come save us? No. We must find where the conflict is and solve it. There is wisdom is the management of a crisis. But you can’t move forward without a conflict.
- What is humanity lacking and what is there in excess?
- Humanity is lacking protagonists of humanity, who can display their human prominence. Sometimes I notice that inability to manage a crisis and to make their own culture come to the surface. We should not be afraid to show the true values of a country. A crisis is like a voice telling us where to act. On the contrary, problems that are put away are like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. You hear flute playing, you follow the music and everybody gets drowned. I am very much afraid of Pipers of Hamelin, because they are entrancing. If they were charming snakes, I would let them (laughs), but they are charming people…people who end up drowned, people who believe they can emerge from a crisis dancing to the sound of the flute, with redeemers who appeared out of nowhere. No. A crisis must be accepted and overcome, but always emerging upward.
- Is there an excess of individualism or indifference?
- I am much more afraid of indifference, because it is a kind of cultural apathy. Let this or that happen, while the piper keeps playing the flute and people drown. The great dictatorships were born from flute playing, from an illusion, a momentary charm. And then we say “that’s a shame: we were all drowned”. I insist: I like the image of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
- What is the danger of a single identity, a single mindset?
- It destroys human richness. A single mindset banishes human richness. And human richness must consider three realities, three languages: the language of our mind, our heart and our hands. In such a way that we think what we feel and what we do, feel what we think and what we do, and do what we think and feel. That is human harmony. If a person is lacking one of those three languages, there is an imbalance that leads to a single feeling, a single pragmatism or a single mindset. These are treacheries to humanity.
- Austerity is a common practice in your life. It is a conviction. Is it also a message?
- Well, austerity itself does not exist. There are austere men and women. And what does that mean? A person who lives off of their work, who has a culture and knows how to express it, and who knows how to walk ahead transmitting that austerity. Within the culture of easiness, of bribery, of so many escapisms, it very difficult to talk about austerity. Austerity is taught through work. An austere person doesn’t live without working. What defines an austere person is their work, their commitment, earning their bread by the sweat of their brow, whether it’s physical or intellectual sweat. It’s important to understand work as something inherent to a human being. Laziness is a social sickness. There are even rich lazy people who live off the work of others without thinking of the common good. Sloth and laziness are treacherous because they feed that malice of taking advantage of others, of living on the backs of others. That is why a person who works, no matter what they do, gains dignity.
Another problem is the lack of dignity when the culture of squandering is imposed. The culture of having a good time, of exploitation, of not working. That’s when a person loses their dignity. A person has dignity when they earn their living and they take care of other people.
- You extend the culture of work to other realms. What does work mean today in an unequal world that offers no opportunities for many people?
- I insist: works provides dignity to a person. The greatest treachery to that road to dignity is exploitation. I don’t mean exploiting the soil so it produces more, but exploiting the worker. Exploiting people is one the most serious sins. And to exploit them for one’s own benefit. I have data regarding exploitation of labor in the world and they are huge. And that is very hard. Work provides dignity, and therefore the worker has specific rights. When a worker is hired, they must be provided with social services, which are part of their rights. Work should come with rights, otherwise it is slavery.
- Some people think that labor laws are the main obstacle when trying to create new jobs and increase productivity. Some political leaders in different countries base their electoral promises on putting an end to workers’ acquired rights.
- When workers have no rights or they are hired for very little time to be replaced later and to avoid paying social security contributions, they are turned into slaves and the hiring person becomes an executioner.
An executioner is not just the person who kills others, but also the person who exploits others. We must be aware of that. When I say the things I wrote in the Social Encyclicals, some people say “the Pope is a communist”. I am not. The Pope reads the Gospel and speaks what is in the Gospel. In the Old Testament, Hebrew law required that the widow, the orphan and the foreigner be taken care of. If society takes care of these three situations, things will go well. Because those are extreme circumstances. If society takes care of extreme circumstances, it will do the same with other circumstances.
When workers are hired informally to avoid social security contributions and the workers’ future is negotiated toward slavery, that’s when work becomes a sickness. Instead of providing dignity, work becomes slavery. We must pay close attention to this. And I want to make clear that I am not a communist as some people say (laughs). The Pope follows the Gospel.
- What do you think of this accelerated technological development, such as Artificial Intelligence, and in which way do you think it could be addressed from a more human point of view?
I like the word “accelerated”. When something is accelerated, it worries me, because there is no time for it to settle. When we look back at the industrial revolution up until the 1950s, we see non-accelerated development. There were control and helping mechanisms. When change is accelerated, there is not enough time for assimilation mechanisms, and we end up becoming slaves. It is equally dangerous to be a slave to a person or to a job, as it is to be a slave to a culture.
The key to cultural progress, such as Artificial Intelligence, is the ability of men and women to handle it, assimilate it and control it. That is, men and women are masters of Creation, and we must not give that up. A person’s control over anything. Serious scientific change is progress. We must be open to that.
- Francis, in the face of wars and conflicts, you appeal to a new concept: integral security. What does
that global idea mean?
- A country cannot have partial security unless there is integral security for everybody. It is impossible to speak of social security unless it is a universal security, or in the process of becoming universal. I believe dialogue cannot be just nationalist, it must be universal, especially nowadays with the advanced communication systems we have. That is why I speak of universal dialogue, universal harmony, universal encounter. And of course, the enemy of this is war. Since the end of World War II up until today, there have been wars everywhere. That’s what I meant when I said we are living a World War in pieces. Now we see it because that World War is close.
- What circumstances foster or favor war?
- Exploitation is one of the causes of war. Another cause is geopolitical: territory control. Some wars that seem endless are caused by cultural conflicts but in reality they are about territory control. Myanmar, for instance, has been at war for years and years, and the Rohingya people, who follow Islam, have been persecuted for years and years because of an elitist power who thinks they are superior as human beings.
I also believe that war is fostered by dictatorships. Some dictatorships are declared, we can find many examples in the world, but others are not declared, but they hold power as a dictatorship.
- Do you believe that uniting our consciousness, beyond our religious or political differences, is a way to
begin the construction of peace and common good?
- Yes, absolutely yes, but with one condition: being aware of one’s own identity. You cannot dialogue with others if you are not aware of where you come from. When two aware identities get together, they can have a conversation and take steps toward an agreement, toward progress, walk together. But if one is not aware of one’s own identity, one assumes things as one’s own and betrays one’s people, country or family. Being aware of one’s identity is very important for dialogue. If I, as a Catholic, have to talk to someone from other religion, I must be fully aware of being a Catholic and that the other person has the right to their religion. But if I’m not aware of my own identity, I can’t have a conversation, I’m going to laugh at everything, I’m going to sell everything, to fake everything. I wouldn’t be truly consistent.
- The Synod 2023 is taking place, within a context that you defined, fundamentally, as the end of an era. In which way does the Church adapt to this reality? What kind of Church is needed these days?
- Since the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII had a very clear perception: the Church has to change. Paul VI agreed, just like the succeeding Popes. It’s not just changing ways, it’s about a change of growth, in favor of the dignity of people. That’s theological progression, of moral theology and all the ecclesiastical sciences, even in the interpretation of Scriptures that have progressed according to the feelings of the Church. Always in harmony. Rupture is not good. We either progress through development or things don’t turn out right. Rupture leaves you out of the sap of development. I like the image of a tree and its roots. The roots receive the humidity of the soil and take it upward, through the trunk. When you separate yourself from that, you end up dry, without traditions. Tradition in the good sense of the word. We all have traditions, a family, we were all born within the culture of a country, a political culture. We all have a tradition for which to take responsibility.
- You speak of tradition and progress as complements.
- Progress is necessary and the Church has to incorporate these novelties with a serious conversation from a human point of view. The Greek thinker Publius Terentius Afer says “Nothing human is alien to me”. The Church holds what’s human in its hand. God became a man, not a philosophical theory. Humanity is something consecrated by God. That is, everything human must be assumed and progress must be human, in harmony with humanity.
In the 1960s, Dutch people came up with the word “rapidity”, which is much more than acceleration. Well, in the context of the rapidity of scientific knowledge, the Church has to pay close attention and have its thinkers be ready to dialogue. And I emphasize this: we must dialogue with scientific knowledge. The Church must dialogue with everybody, but being aware of its identity. Not from a borrowed identity.
- How can the tension between changing and not losing its essence be solved?
- The Church, through dialogue and taking up new challenges, has changed in many ways. Even regarding cultural matters. A theologist from the 4th Century said that changes in the Church must comply to three conditions to be real: consolidating, growing and ennoble themselves along the years. It is a very inspiring definition by Vincent of Lérins. The Church has to change. Let’s think of the ways it has changed since the Council until now and the way it must continue changing its ways, in the way to propose an unchanging truth. That is, the revelation of Jesus Christ does not change, the dogmas of the Church do not change, they grow and ennoble themselves like the sap of a tree. The person who does not follow this path, follows a path that takes steps backward, a path that closes on itself. Changes in the Church take place within this identity flow of the Church. And it has to keep changing along the way, as challenges are met. That is why the core of change is fundamentally pastoral, without recanting the essence of the Church.
- Is it hard being the representative of God on Earth, and at this time?
- I’m going to do a heresy. We are all representatives of God. Every person who believes must testify to what they believe and, in this sense, we are all representatives of God. It is true that the Pope is a privileged representative of God (laughs), and I must testify to an inner coherence, to the truth of the Church and the pastorality of the Church. That is, a Church that keeps its doors open for everybody.
- Francis, what’s your relationship with God?
- Ask Him (looks up and smiles). I believe it’s an image, but there’s truth in it: I maintain the piety I had as a child. My grandmother taught me how to pray and I maintain that simple piety of praying, as we say in Argentina “the faith of a coal miner”. I’m not complicated when I pray. One might even say I have an old-fashioned spirituality. Maybe. In this sense, there is a unifying thread from my childhood to this day. My religious consciousness has grown a lot, that’s different, it has matured, but the way I express myself to God has always been simple. Being complicated is not in me. Sometimes I say (looks up) “you fix this, because I can’t”. And I ask the Virgen and the Saints to intercede, to help me. And when I have to make a decision, I always pray…to the light above. But the Lord is a good friend, He has been good to me. He takes care of me, as He takes care of all. We must pay attention to the way He takes care of each of us, He has a different style with each of us. That is beautiful.
- Can one ever be angry at God?
- No, I get angry with other people. I might complain now and then, but I know He is waiting for me, always. When I make a mistake or when I was unjustly angry with someone. Yet, He never reproaches me. In my dialogue with the Lord, a reproach is always a caress. Today, I was reading Hosea Chapter 11, where he speaks of that caress, that love of God to each of us as if we were the image of that lamb he carries on his shoulders. The three qualities of God, the most forceful ones, are closeness, mercy and tenderness. God is close. God is merciful, He forgives everything and has impressive patience with us. And He is tender. That delicate touch of God, even in our trials. That’s the way I experience Him.
- You smile, you laugh, you show a great sense of humor. What kind of things amuse you?
- A sense of humor is a certificate of good health (laughs).
For over 40 years, every day I have prayed St Thomas More’s prayer for a sense of humor. He was great. I included that prayer in the 101 note of “Gaudete et exsultate” (Editor’s note: exhortation “on the call to holiness in our present world”, from March 2018), in case somebody would like to see it. The prayer asks the Lord for the ability to laugh, to see the funny side of things, to see life with a smile, always. The prayer begins in a beautiful way: “Give me, Lord, a good digestion and, naturally, give me something to digest.” (Laughs) He begins with a sense of humor from the start. And I like that, because a sense of humor humanizes. People who don’t have a sense of humor are boring.
- Very boring.
- Even boring to themselves. In my sacerdotal work, I sometimes would advise people to look at themselves in the mirror and laugh at themselves. It’s horribly difficult for some people, because they lack a sense of humor. Well, those things are not very dogmatic. That is a bit of life wisdom I was taught and I try to use it to help others.
- Fears are inherent to the human being. However, you as Pontiff, usually convey a sense of embracing peace. Are you ever afraid?
- Yes, because I know that if I make a mistake, a lot of people might be hurt by my mistake. That is why I let some decisions rest, so time makes them ripe. Other decisions, I bring them to a synod so the whole Church can express itself about the matter.
- Did you ever think we would have an Argentine Pope?
- Back in the day, the name of Pironio was often mentioned (Editor’s note: Eduardo Francisco Pironio, Catholic Cardinal-Bishop). I remember that a sector of the Argentine episcopate that was close-minded and traditionalist, portrayed him as disagreeable. They thought his appointment could really hurt the Church. He helped created the World Youth Day, which has been so good for the Church. And his name was mentioned as a possible Pope. So, the idea of an Argentine Pope was born with Pironio. Then, that didn’t happen because he died of cancer. And now we are about to receive the study about a miracle he did and, God willing, he will be beatified by the end of the year.
- As a prophet of hope, what can you tell us to nourish it?
Hope is the humble virtue, the everyday virtue, the one we think least important. We always talk about faith, charity and love. And hope is in the kitchen, but that’s precisely why it’s our everyday virtue. We must not only keep our hope, but also nourish it. We must have a hopeful heart, a heart with hope. Hope is so fecund! A poet used to call it the humble virtue. We cannot live without hope. If we erased our little daily hopes, we would lose our identity. We don’t realize that we live by hope. And theological hope is very humble but it seasons our daily condiments. It’s not escapism to think tomorrow might be better. It’s different.
- I really liked some words about you that I read recently in Argentina: “Pope Francis, the prophet of human dignity”. Thank you, as always.
- Pray for me, please. But pray in my favor, not against me (laughs).
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