Quote:7. Cena dominica sive Missa est sacra synaxis seu congregatio populi Dei in unum convenientis, sacerdote praeside, ad memoriale Domini celebrandum. Quare de sanctae Ecclesiae locali congregatione eminenter valet promissio Christi: "Ubi sunt duo vel tres congregati in nomine meo, ibi sum in medio eorum" (Mt. 18, 20).

"7. The Lord's Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, Christ's promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: 'Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst' (Mt. 18:20)." [Most of the elements of this statement has been condemned by the Council of Trent - The Catacombs]

• If any one saith, that in the mass a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God; or, that to be offered is nothing else but that Christ is given us to eat; let him be anathema.
  
• If any one saith, that by those words, Do this for the commemoration of me (Luke xxii. 19), Christ did not institute the apostles priests; or, did not ordain that they, and other priests should offer His own body and blood; let him be anathema.
  
• If any one saith, that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving; or, that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits him only who receives; and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities; let him be anathema.
  
• If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.
  
• lf any one saith, that Christ, given in the Eucharist, is eaten spiritually only, and not also sacramentally and really; let him be anathema.
  

• It was Martin Luther who said, "The Mass is not a sacrifice ... call it Benediction, Eucharist, the Lord's Table, the Lord's Supper, Memory of the Lord or whatever you like, just so long as you do not dirty it with the name of a Sacrifice."
  
• In the Encyclical Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII condemned the statement that "the eucharistic sacrifice" is an authentic concelebration of the priest as well as of the people present.
  
• 7th Session, Canon 13 of the Council of Trent: The correct Latin translation says:
  

  Quote:"If anyone says that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, customarily used in the solemn administration of the Sacraments, can be despised or can be freely omitted by the ministers without sin, or can be changed into other new rites by any pastor in the Church whomsoever, let him be anathema."

  
  This canon states very clearly that the Pope, who is the first and supreme pastor may never change any approved Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Rite was fixed forever by Pope St. Pius V in Quo Primum. Paul VI tried to establish a whole new Roman Rite. There is only one Roman Rite of the Mass; there cannot be two.
  

We Are About To Witness A Major Move Toward A Cashless Society

Quote:By limiting large cash payments, the EU will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money. An EU-wide maximum limit of €10.000 is set for cash payments. Member states will have the flexibility to impose a lower maximum limit if they wish.

Quote:Terrorists and those who finance them are not welcome in Europe. In order to launder dirty money, criminal individuals and organisations had to look for loopholes in our existing rules which are already quite strict. But our intention is to close these loopholes further, and to apply even stricter rules in all EU member states. Large cash payments beyond €10.000 will become impossible. Trying to stay anonymous when buying or selling crypto-assets will become much more difficult. Hiding behind multiple layers of ownership of companies won’t work any more. It will even become difficult to launder dirty money via jewellers or goldsmiths.

Quote:We are working with the national central banks of the euro area to investigate whether to introduce a digital euro. It would be a central bank digital currency, an electronic equivalent to cash. And it would complement banknotes and coins, giving people an additional choice about how to pay.

Quote:A digital euro would offer an electronic means of payment that anyone could use in the euro area. It would be secure and user-friendly, like cash is today. As central bank money issued by the ECB, it would be different from “private money”, but you could also use a card or a phone app to pay with digital euro.

Quote:Nearly two in five Americans, including half of self-identified Christians and a quarter of the religiously unaffiliated, agree “we are living in the End Times,” a new study has found.

That’s about 39% of Americans who believe we are living in the End Times, according to Pew Research, highlighted by Lifeway Research.

Social credit...

From The Catacombs archives:

Benedict praises the United Nations in a speech, later, Francis follows suit. No break, but continuity...

Quote:“But no one has tried to blackmail me. If that had been attempted I would not have gone since you are not permitted to leave because you're under pressure." (London, Bloomsbury, p. 72)

Quote:"So I wrote the text of the resignation, I cannot say with precision when, but at the most 14 days beforehand. I wrote it in Latin because something so important you do in Latin." (Ibid., pp. 60-61)

Quote:"A weak point is perhaps my lack of clear, purposeful governance and the decisions that have to be made there.,. So, practical governance is not my forte, and there, I would say, is a certain weakness." (Ibid., pp. 255-256).

Always praise and warmth for Francis and his 'mercy'

Quote:"I welcome this initiative which intends to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice according to which Pope Francis would be only a practical man deprived of particular theological or philosophical formation, whereas I was only a theoretician of theology who understood little of the concrete life of a Christian today."

Quote:"These small volumes rightly show that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation and, therefore, help us to see the interior continuity between the two pontificates, although with all the differences of style and temperament."

Quote:"Thanks above all to you, Holy Father! Your kindness, from the first moment of the election, in each moment of my life here, really moves me inside."

Francis follows Benedict's footsteps and prays with an iman at a mosque in Turkey

Quote:"More than in the Vatican Gardens, with their beauty, your kindness is the place where I live: I feel protected. Thanks also to the word of thanks, of everything. We hope that you can go forward with all of us on this path of divine mercy, showing us the path of Jesus towards Jesus, towards God."

Quote:"As Pope Emeritus, I tried to create a situation in which I was absolutely inaccessible to the mass media and in which it was fully clear that there is only one Pope."

Clear continuity among the Vatican II Popes

Benedict and Francis: hosting immoral performance and circus shows in the Vatican hall

Quotes from Saints and Theologians: 'Recognizing' the Pope

Quote:“But Peter and the apostles answering, said: We ought to obey God, rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Quote:“It is written: ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’ Now sometimes the things commanded by a superior are against God. Therefore, superiors are not to be obeyed in all things.” (Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, Q. 104, A. 5)

Quote:“Although it clearly follows from the circumstances that the Pope can err at times, and command things which must not be done, that we are not to be simply obedient to him in all things, that does not show that he must not be obeyed by all when his commands are good. To know in what cases he is to be obeyed and in what not, it is said in the Acts of the Apostles: 'One ought to obey God rather than man'; therefore, were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands, to be passed over.” (Summa de Ecclesia)

Quote:“But when Cephas [Peter] was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” (Galatians 2:11)

Quote:“Superiors may be admonished by their subordinates in all humility and charity so that truth may be defended: this is the basis (Galatians 2, 11) on which St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, St. Gregory, St. Thomas and many others who are quoted support this opinion. They teach quite unequivocally that St. Peter, although superior in authority to St. Paul, was admonished by him. St. Gregory rightly states that, “Peter remained silent so that, being first in the hierarchy of the Apostles, he might equally be first in humility.” St. Augustine writes, “By showing that superiors admit that they may be rebuked by their subordinates, St. Peter gave posterity an example of saintliness more noteworthy than that given by St. Paul, although the latter showed, nonetheless, that it is possible for subordinates to have the boldness to resist their superiors without fear, when in all charity they speak out in the defence of truth.”“ (Commentary Ad Gal., II, 11.)

Quote:“There being an imminent danger for the Faith, prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects. Thus, St. Paul, who was a subject of St. Peter, questioned him publicly on account of an imminent danger of scandal in a matter of Faith. And, as the Glossa of St. Augustine puts it (Ad Galatas 2.14), 'St. Peter himself gave the example to those who govern so that if sometimes they stray from the right way, they will not reject a correction as unworthy even if it comes from their subjects.” (Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, Q. 33, A. 4)

Quote:“The reprehension was just and useful, and the reason for it was not light: there was a danger for the preservation of Gospel truth. […] The way it took place was appropriate, since it was public and manifest. For this reason, St. Paul writes: 'I spoke to Cephas,' that is, Peter, 'before everyone,' since the simulation practiced by St. Peter was fraught with danger to everyone.” (Super Epistulas S. Pauli, Ad Galatas, 2, 11-14 (Taurini/ Rome: Marietti, 1953), lec. III, nn. 83f.)

Quote:“The pope should not flatter himself about his power, nor should he rashly glory in his honour and high estate, because the less he is judged by man, the more he is judged by God. Still the less can the Roman Pontiff glory, because he can be judged by men, or rather, can be shown to be already judged, if for example he should wither away into heresy, because “he who does not believe is already judged.” (St. John 3:18) In such a case it should be said of him: ‘If salt should lose its savour, it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trampled under foot by men.’” (Sermo 4)

Quote:“If a future pope teaches anything contrary to the Catholic Faith, do not follow him.” (Letter to Bishop Brizen)

Quote:“We read that the Roman Pontiff has always possessed authority to pass judgment on the heads of all the Churches (i.e., the patriarchs and bishops), but nowhere do we read that he has been the subject of judgment by others. It is true that Honorius was posthumously anathematised by the Eastern churches, but it must be borne in mind that he had been accused of heresy, the only offence which renders lawful the resistance of subordinates to their superiors, and their rejection of the latter's pernicious teachings”.

Quote:“We foresaw that, together with them, also Honorius, before Pope of Old Rome, is cast out of the Holy Catholic Church of God and anathematized, for we have found by his writings sent to [the heretic] Sergius, that he followed the thinking of the latter in everything, and continued his impious principles. [...] To Sergius, the heretic, anathema! To Cyrus, the heretic, anathema! To Honorius, the heretic, anathema!”

Quote:“Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” (Epistle to the Catholics)

Quote:“What then should a Catholic do if some portion of the Church detaches itself from communion of the universal Faith? What choice can he make if some new contagion attempts to poison, no longer a small part of the Church, but the whole Church at once? Then his great concern will be to attach himself to antiquity which can no longer be led astray by any lying novelty.” (Commonitory)

Quote:“He would certainly be in sin, and it would be unlawful to allow him to act in such a fashion, and likewise to obey him in matters which are evil; on the contrary, there is a duty to oppose him while administering a courteous rebuke.

“Thus, were he to wish to distribute the Church's wealth, or Peter's Patrimony among his own relatives; were he to wish to destroy the church or to commit an act of similar magnitude, there would be a duty to prevent him, and likewise an obligation to oppose him and resist him. The reason being that he does not possess power in order to destroy, and thus it follows that if he is so doing it is lawful to oppose him.”

“It is clear from the preceding that, if the pope by his commands, orders or by his actions is destroying the church, he may be resisted and the fulfilment of his commands prevented. The right of open resistance to prelates’ abuse of authority stems also from natural law.” (Dialogus de Potestate Papae)

Quote:“It is imperative to resist a pope who is openly destroying the Church.” (De Comparata Auctoritate Papae et Concilio).

Quote:“According to natural law, violence may lawfully be opposed by violence. Now, through the acts permitted and the orders of the kind under discussion, the Pope does commit violence, because he is acting contrary to what is lawful. It therefore follows that it is lawful to oppose him publicly. Cajetan draws attention to the fact that this should not be interpreted as meaning that anybody whosoever can judge the Pope, or assume authority over him, but rather that it is lawful to defend oneself even against him. Every person, in fact, has the right to oppose an unjust action in order to prevent, if he is able, its being carried out, and thus he defends himself.” (Obras, pp. 486-7)

Excerpt from The Mystery of Jesus: The Meditations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

The Blasphemies of Luther



A reproduction of Luther's face based on his death mask

• “Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well of Jacob about whom St. John wrote. ‘Was not everyone around Him murmuring: What has He been doing with her?’ After that, with Mary Magdalene, and then with the woman taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus, even Christ, who was so righteous, had to be guilty of fornication before He died.” (1)
  
• “Don’t you think that the drunk Christ, having imbibed too much at the Last Supper, bewildered His disciples with his empty prattling? (2)
  
• “Deus est stultissimus” [God is very stupid]. (3)
  
• “Certainly God is great and almighty, good and merciful and all that one can imagine in this sense, but He is stupid.” (4)
  
• “God always acts like a madman.” (5)
  

• “When the Mass will be turned on its head, we will have turned the papacy on its head! Because it is upon the Mass, like a rock, that the papacy is completely supported, with its monasteries, bishoprics, colleges, altars, ministries and doctrine… All this will tumble down when this sacrilegious and abominable Mass tumbles.” (6)
  
• On the Offertory, he wrote: “Then follows that abomination which is called the Offertory, where everything in it expresses oblation.” (7)
  
• On the Canon of the Mass: “This abominable Canon is a collection of muddled lacunas; … it makes the Mass a sacrifice; offertories are added. The mass is not a sacrifice or the action of one who sacrifices. We see it as a sacrament or a testament. Let us call it a blessing, the eucharist, the table of the Lord or the memorial of the Lord.” (8)
  
• On the tactic to install the Protestant mass: “To securely and happily reach our goal, we must keep some of the ceremonies of the old Mass, so that it will be accepted by the weak, who could be scandalized by too hasty changes.” (9)
  
• On the priesthood
  
• “What a madness to want to monopolize it [the priesthood] only for a few.” (10) For Luther, the priesthood was shared by all the faithful.
  

Catastrophic Contagion

Quote:The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Catastrophic Contagion, a pandemic tabletop exercise at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022.

The extraordinary group of participants consisted of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, Germany, as well as Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The exercise simulated a series of WHO emergency health advisory board meetings addressing a fictional pandemic set in the near future. Participants grappled with how to respond to an epidemic located in one part of the world that then spread rapidly, becoming a pandemic with a higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.

Participants were challenged to make urgent policy decisions with limited information in the face of uncertainty. Each problem and choice had serious health, economic, and social ramifications. 

Quote:Lessons from the exercise

Leaders must prepare now to make difficult, critically important decisions with limited information in the early days of the next pandemic in order to increase the chances that a dangerous outbreak can be contained at the source. In the early days of a major new contagious disease epidemic, there could be a brief window of opportunity to stop it from becoming a pandemic. To successfully contain such an outbreak, decisive and bold action would need to be taken in the face of incomplete data, high scientific uncertainty, and potential political resistance. Thinking through such challenges, preparing in advance to react effectively, and practicing through both high-level tabletop and operational exercises should start now.

It may seem like all these critical policy decisions have been resolved during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have not. In the Catastrophic Contagion simulation, even a group of some of the wisest and most experienced international public health leaders who lived through COVID-19 wrestled with opposing views on whether countries should impose travel restrictions or close schools to try to contain a serious new epidemic that was disproportionately affecting children. The exercise raised a pivotal question: If future pandemics have a much higher lethality than COVID-19, or for example, if they affect predominantly children, would or should countries take different, stronger, earlier measures to contain it, and what are those measures?   

These are not purely public health and scientific decisions; they will be made by leaders in the context of political, economic, and social realities that can be anticipated and considered in advance. Through routine simulations and operational exercises, we can strategically prepare for such challenges ahead of time. The more effectively we can reach scientific and practical consensus on the best approach to very hard but foreseeable problems, the more we will be ready in the future to protect lives and national economies. Political leaders, in addition to health leaders, must be at the table during exercises to respond effectively during the next pandemic.

Countries should establish a global network of professional public health leaders who can work together to improve epidemic preparedness and response and strive for consensus on scientific issues in advance of the next major outbreak. There is no existing worldwide professionalized network of public health preparedness and response leaders who can work together between and during epidemics to better prepare all countries and provide mutual aid and sharing of best practices during serious epidemics. Establishing an international network of national public health leaders, along the lines of the professionalized “Pandemic Corps” referred to in our exercise, could substantially help countries save lives and livelihoods during major epidemics and recover more quickly. Political leaders, who are entrusted with keeping their citizens safe, could benefit from consensus views offered by such a group, rather than having to make impromptu, high consequence policy decisions when lives are at stake during dangerous outbreaks.

Countries should prioritize efforts to increase trust in government and public health; improve public health communication efforts; increase the resiliency of populations to misleading information; and reduce the spread of harmful misinformation. In future pandemics, we should continue to expect even more major disruptions from misinformation and disinformation. The WHO can be a globally trusted source, and it can share science and public health information widely, but we should not expect it alone to combat or put a stop to the spread of this mis- and disinformation. Countries need to collaborate to anticipate that threat and prepare to combat it with their own laws and procedures. Just as many types of economic and societal harms can be anticipated and accounted for in pandemic preparedness plans, so too can predictable false or misleading health messaging. Concertedly exploring ways to address this phenomenon on a national level in advance of the next pandemic will be crucial to saving lives.

WHO member states should strengthen international systems for sharing and allocating scarce public health resources. Groundbreaking global collaborations, such as the ACT-Accelerator and COVAX, were launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, public health leaders still lack confidence in current approaches to fairly allocate medical countermeasures during a future pandemic. Even if there were a global commitment around equity for all countries, implementing equitable allocation will continue to be very difficult in the future, especially if there are practical challenges and special requirements like refrigeration or IV administration. Empowering all regions of the world to save lives during a pandemic would increase equitable access to life-saving treatments and vaccines. Therefore, we need to build up manufacturing, distribution, and administration capacities around the world, paying particular attention to countries with poor infrastructure. This should happen now, rather than during a growing pandemic.

It is clear from Catastrophic Contagion that even after the terrible impact of COVID-19, more preparedness work needs to be done, new decisions need to be made, and additional resources committed. We need to expand the limits of our ability to respond.

saying that 'you who are fighting to save your country from a communist takeover are not alone.'



Heuler Andrey/Getty Images)

Quote:Your Eminence, for six weeks now, millions of citizens have been demonstrating and camping out in front of the army barracks all over Brazil to protest against the proposed communist takeover facilitated by rigged elections. Do you have a message for these courageous people and the Brazilian government?

Quote:So our address to God becomes an address to ourselves: God invites us to join with him, to leave behind the ocean of evil, hatred, violence and selfishness and to make ourselves known, to enter into the river of his love.

This is precisely the content of the first part of the prayer that follows: "Let Your Church offer herself to You as a living and holy sacrifice." This request, addressed to God, is made also to ourselves. It is a reference to two passages from the Letter to the Romans. We ourselves, with our whole being, must be adoration and sacrifice and, by transforming our world, give it back to God.

The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.

And let us pray the Lord to help us become priests in this sense, to aid in the transformation of the world, in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves. That our lives may speak of God, that our lives may be a true liturgy, an announcement of God, a door through which the distant God may become the present God, and a true giving of ourselves to God.

(Benedict XVI, Homily at the Vespers July 24, 2009, in the Cathedral of Aosta, L'Osservatore Romano, English online edition, July 29, 2009)