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| Australian archbishop: ‘Highly likely’ Rome will end celibacy for indigenous priests |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-15-2023, 05:53 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Australian archbishop: ‘Highly likely’ Rome will end celibacy for indigenous priests
While Archbishop Mark Coleridge claims indigenous people will only become priests if the celibacy requirement is lifted, other clerics consider that possibility to be inadequate and ‘inappropriate.’
![[Image: Coleridge-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Coleridge-810x500.jpg)
Archbishop Mark Coleridge
Archdiocese of Brisbane/YouTube screenshot
Aug 14, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) – An Australian archbishop declared that it is “highly likely” Rome will end the requirement of celibacy for indigenous priests.
In an interview with The Australian published Saturday, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, former president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), declared that the requirement of celibate priests must be lifted for any hope of the ordination of indigenous priests.
Coleridge claimed there is “no way you’re going to recruit a celibate clergy in those cultures.”
While the archbishop said he wouldn’t describe an end to clerical celibacy for indigenous communities as “inevitable,” he said he believes that the development is “highly likely.”
“I don’t know quite when or how, but the … question is certainly not going away,” he told The Australian. “And I think there will come a point of maturation when it will look kind of the natural next step and not sort of an artificial or dramatic or untimely overturning of what’s been a very long tradition.”
Coleridge sees such a change as especially needed because he excludes the possibility of priests from “outsider” cultures ministering to indigenous communities as unviable.
“You can’t have the whitefella providing leadership; you’ve got to provide leadership from within the indigenous communities,” the archbishop was quoted as saying.
Coleridge noted he has been “calling loud and clear for some time” for a “new way to imagine and engage with the indigenous peoples,” and that the issue has been discussed informally among members of the country’s bishops’ conference.
Other bishops concede that recruiting priests from among indigenous peoples around the world remains a difficulty, but believe a different solution is needed.
For example, Peruvian Bishop Rafael Escudero told Amazonian Synod participants in 2019 that the people of the Amazon region need adequate evangelization rather than married priests.
Escudero called on his fellow bishops to work harder on training catechists and pastoral workers, saying, “From a people that has been evangelized and well formed, there will come charisms and from among these will come celibacy for the priesthood.”
“It would be important for evangelizers to live among them,” he said, “and therefore understand them in the midst of their culture and customs.”
During the same synod, Venezuelan Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino objected that the possibility of married indigenous priests is not only unhelpful but inappropriate.
“There are many serious questions regarding the ordination of these good elder married men,” Cardinal Urosa wrote in an article in Portuguese at ACI Digital, adding, “And this will not resolve the problems of the current situation. I don’t see it as being appropriate nor useful.”
At the time, the cardinal also questioned whether the requirement of priestly celibacy would be done away with only in the Amazonian region or impact the Church practice around the world.
The question of married, incelibate priests is now relevant as ever to Vatican officials, as shown by the Synod on Synodality Instrumentum Laboris (IL), or working document, issued on June 20. The IL explicitly posed the possibility of married priests, raising the question, “As some continents propose, could a reflection be opened concerning the discipline on access to the Priesthood for married men, at least in some areas?”
While proponents of married priests often hearken back to the early days of the Catholic Church — when married priests were permitted — to support their position, such advocates rarely mention that even during that period priests were expected to remain completely celibate while married, as Father Christian Cochini has pointed out in his book ‘The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy.”
Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder of Ignatius Press, explained the Roman Catholic perspective on clerical celibacy in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews:
“The frequently heard statement that priestly celibacy is “not doctrinal but only disciplinary” is not only misleading, it is false. False because there is no Cartesian bright line between doctrine and discipline,” Father Fessio wrote.
He noted that there is a “very variegated spectrum” between questions of pure “doctrine” and of pure “discipline,” and that “clerical celibacy is much closer to doctrine than to discipline on this spectrum.”
“The fundamental reason is Christological. A priest has expropriated himself to be united in a unique way to Christ the High Priest. The priesthood is not merely a function. It is a sacramental, ontological, mysterious union with Jesus Christ … Christ did not marry an individual woman because he is also the Bridegroom who is totally surrendered to his Bride the Church in a fruitful union that brings forth his Body the Church,” Fessio continued.
“And if I may douse with some very chill water on some of the overheated enthusiasms of those clamoring for a return to “primitive tradition,” I remind that all those “married priests” in the early Church had to have the agreement of their wives and make a vow of continence before they could be ordained.”
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| Pope Pius XII: Munificentissimus Deus - Defining the Dogma of the Assumption |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-15-2023, 05:43 AM - Forum: Encyclicals
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MUNIFICENTISSIUMUS DEUS
DEFINING THE DOGMA OF THE ASSUMPTION
Pope Pius XII - 1950
1. The most bountiful God, who is almighty, the plan of whose providence rests upon wisdom and love, tempers, in the secret purpose of his own mind, the sorrows of peoples and of individual men by means of joys that he interposes in their lives from time to time, in such a way that, under different conditions and in different ways, all things may work together unto good for those who love him.[1]
2. Now, just like the present age, our pontificate is weighed down by ever so many cares, anxieties, and troubles, by reason of very severe calamities that have taken place and by reason of the fact that many have strayed away from truth and virtue. Nevertheless, we are greatly consoled to see that, while the Catholic faith is being professed publicly and vigorously, piety toward the Virgin Mother of God is flourishing and daily growing more fervent, and that almost everywhere on earth it is showing indications of a better and holier life. Thus, while the Blessed Virgin is fulfilling in the most affectionate manner her maternal duties on behalf of those redeemed by the blood of Christ, the minds and the hearts of her children are being vigorously aroused to a more assiduous consideration of her prerogatives.
3. Actually God, who from all eternity regards Mary with a most favorable and unique affection, has “when the fullness of time came”[2] put the plan of his providence into effect in such a way that all the privileges and prerogatives he had granted to her in his sovereign generosity were to shine forth in her in a kind of perfect harmony. And, although the Church has always recognized this supreme generosity and the perfect harmony of graces and has daily studied them more and more throughout the course of the centuries, still it is in our own age that the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly.
4. That privilege has shone forth in new radiance since our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God’s Immaculate Conception. These two privileges are most closely bound to one another. Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through Baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul.
5. Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.
6. Thus, when it was solemnly proclaimed that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, was from the very beginning free from the taint of original sin, the minds of the faithful were filled with a stronger hope that the day might soon come when the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven would also be defined by the Church’s supreme teaching authority.
7. Actually it was seen that not only individual Catholics, but also those who could speak for nations or ecclesiastical provinces, and even a considerable number of the Fathers of the Vatican Council, urgently petitioned the Apostolic See to this effect.
8. During the course of time such postulations and petitions did not decrease but rather grew continually in number and in urgency. In this cause there were pious crusades of prayer. Many outstanding theologians eagerly and zealously carried out investigations on this subject either privately or in public ecclesiastical institutions and in other schools where the sacred disciplines are taught. Marian Congresses, both national and international in scope, have been held in many parts of the Catholic world. These studies and investigations have brought out into even clearer light the fact that the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption into heaven is contained in the deposit of Christian faith entrusted to the Church. They have resulted in many more petitions, begging and urging the Apostolic See that this truth be solemnly defined.
9. In this pious striving, the faithful have been associated in a wonderful way with their own holy bishops, who have sent petitions of this kind, truly remarkable in number, to this See of the Blessed Peter. Consequently, when we were elevated to the throne of the supreme pontificate, petitions of this sort had already been addressed by the thousands from every part of the world and from every class of people, from our beloved sons the Cardinals of the Sacred College, from our venerable brethren, archbishops and bishops, from dioceses and from parishes.
10. Consequently, while we sent up earnest prayers to God that he might grant to our mind the light of the Holy Spirit, to enable us to make a decision on this most serious subject, we issued special orders in which we commanded that, by corporate effort, more advanced inquiries into this matter should be begun and that, in the meantime, all the petitions about the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven which had been sent to this Apostolic See from the time of Pius IX, our predecessor of happy memory, down to our own days should be gathered together and carefully evaluated.[3]
11. And, since we were dealing with a matter of such great moment and of such importance, we considered it opportune to ask all our venerable brethren in the episcopate directly and authoritatively that each of them should make known to us his mind in a formal statement. Hence, on May 1, 1946, we gave them our letter “Deiparae Virginis Mariae,” a letter in which these words are contained: “Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?”
12. But those whom “the Holy Spirit has placed as bishops to rule the Church of God”[4] gave an almost unanimous affirmative response to both these questions. This “outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful,”[5] affirming that the bodily Assumption of God’s Mother into heaven can be defined as a dogma of faith, since it shows us the concordant teaching of the Church’s ordinary doctrinal authority and the concordant faith of the Christian people which the same doctrinal authority sustains and directs, thus by itself and in an entirely certain and infallible way, manifests this privilege as a truth revealed by God and contained in that divine deposit which Christ has delivered to his Spouse to be guarded faithfully and to be taught infallibly.[6] Certainly this teaching authority of the Church, not by any merely human effort but under the protection of the Spirit of Truth,[7] and therefore absolutely without error, carries out the commission entrusted to it, that of preserving the revealed truths pure and entire throughout every age, in such a way that it presents them undefiled, adding nothing to them and taking nothing away from them. For, as the Vatican Council teaches, “the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter in such a way that, by his revelation, they might manifest new doctrine, but so that, by his assistance, they might guard as sacred and might faithfully propose the revelation delivered through the apostles, or the deposit of faith.”[8] Thus, from the universal agreement of the Church’s ordinary teaching authority we have a certain and firm proof, demonstrating that the Blessed Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven- which surely no faculty of the human mind could know by its own natural powers, as far as the heavenly glorification of the virginal body of the loving Mother of God is concerned-is a truth that has been revealed by God and consequently something that must be firmly and faithfully believed by all children of the Church. For, as the Vatican Council asserts, “all those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written Word of God or in Tradition, and which are proposed by the Church, either in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching office, as divinely revealed truths which must be believed.”[9]
13. Various testimonies, indications and signs of this common belief of the Church are evident from remote times down through the course of the centuries; and this same belief becomes more clearly manifest from day to day.
14. Christ’s faithful, through the teaching and the leadership of their pastors, have learned from the sacred books that the Virgin Mary, throughout the course of her earthly pilgrimage, led a life troubled by cares, hardships, and sorrows, and that, moreover, what the holy old man Simeon had foretold actually came to pass, that is, that a terribly sharp sword pierced her heart as she stood under the cross of her divine Son, our Redeemer. In the same way, it was not difficult for them to admit that the great Mother of God, like her only begotten Son, had actually passed from this life. But this in no way prevented them from believing and from professing openly that her sacred body had never been subject to the corruption of the tomb, and that the august tabernacle of the Divine Word had never been reduced to dust and ashes. Actually, enlightened by divine grace and moved by affection for her, God’s Mother and our own dearest Mother, they have contemplated in an ever clearer light the wonderful harmony and order of those privileges which the most provident God has lavished upon this loving associate of our Redeemer, privileges which reach such an exalted plane that, except for her, nothing created by God other than the human nature of Jesus Christ has ever reached this level.
15. The innumerable temples which have been dedicated to the Virgin Mary assumed into heaven clearly attest this faith. So do those sacred images, exposed therein for the veneration of the faithful, which bring this unique triumph of the Blessed Virgin before the eyes of all men. Moreover, cities, dioceses, and individual regions have been placed under the special patronage and guardianship of the Virgin Mother of God assumed into heaven. In the same way, religious institutes, with the approval of the Church, have been founded and have taken their name from this privilege. Nor can we pass over in silence the fact that in the Rosary of Mary, the recitation of which this Apostolic See so urgently recommends, there is one mystery proposed for pious meditation which, as all know, deals with the Blessed Virgin’s Assumption into heaven.
16. This belief of the sacred pastors and of Christ’s faithful is universally manifested still more splendidly by the fact that, since ancient times, there have been both in the East and in the West solemn liturgical offices commemorating this privilege. The holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church have never failed to draw enlightenment from this fact since, as everyone knows, the sacred liturgy, “because it is the profession, subject to the supreme teaching authority within the Church, of heavenly truths, can supply proofs and testimonies of no small value for deciding a particular point of Christian doctrine.”[10]
17. In the liturgical books which deal with the feast either of the dormition or of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin there are expressions that agree in testifying that, when the Virgin Mother of God passed from this earthly exile to heaven, what happened to her sacred body was, by the decree of divine Providence, in keeping with the dignity of the Mother of the Word Incarnate, and with the other privileges she had been accorded. Thus, to cite an illustrious example, this is set forth in that sacramentary which Adrian I, our predecessor of immortal memory, sent to the Emperor Charlemagne. These words are found in this volume: “Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten your Son our Lord incarnate from herself.”[11]
18. What is here indicated in that sobriety characteristic of the Roman liturgy is presented more clearly and completely in other ancient liturgical books. To take one as an example, the Gallican sacramentary designates this privilege of Mary’s as “an ineffable mystery all the more worthy of praise as the Virgin’s Assumption is something unique among men.” And, in the Byzantine liturgy, not only is the Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption connected time and time again with the dignity of the Mother of God, but also with the other privileges, and in particular with the virginal motherhood granted her by a singular decree of God’s Providence. “God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature. As he kept you a virgin in childbirth, thus he has kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb.”[12]
19. The fact that the Apostolic See, which has inherited the function entrusted to the Prince of the Apostles, the function of confirming the brethren in the faith,[13] has by its own authority, made the celebration of this feast ever more solemn, has certainly and effectively moved the attentive minds of the faithful to appreciate always more completely the magnitude of the mystery it commemorates. So it was that the Feast of the Assumption was elevated from the rank which it had occupied from the beginning among the other Marian feasts to be classed among the more solemn celebrations of the entire liturgical cycle. And, when our predecessor St. Sergius I prescribed what is known as the litany, or the stational procession, to be held on four Marian feasts, he specified together the Feasts of the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, and the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.[14] Again, St. Leo IV saw to it that the feast, which was already being celebrated under the title of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of God, should be observed in even a more solemn way when he ordered a vigil to be held on the day before it and prescribed prayers to be recited after it until the octave day. When this had been done, he decided to take part himself in the celebration, in the midst of a great multitude of the faithful.[15] Moreover, the fact that a holy fast had been ordered from ancient times for the day prior to the feast is made very evident by what our predecessor St. Nicholas I testifies in treating of the principal fasts which “the Holy Roman Church has observed for a long time, and still observes.”[16]
20. However, since the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a way that the practices of the sacred worship proceed from the faith as the fruit comes from the tree, it follows that the holy Fathers and the great Doctors, in the homilies and sermons they gave the people on this feast day, did not draw their teaching from the feast itself as from a primary source, but rather they spoke of this doctrine as something already known and accepted by Christ’s faithful. They presented it more clearly. They offered more profound explanations of its meaning and nature, bringing out into sharper light the fact that this feast shows, not only that the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained incorrupt, but that she gained a triumph out of death, her heavenly glorification after the example of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ-truths that the liturgical books had frequently touched upon concisely and briefly.
21. Thus St. John Damascene, an outstanding herald of this traditional truth, spoke out with powerful eloquence when he compared the bodily Assumption of the loving Mother of God with her other prerogatives and privileges. “It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father. It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God.”[17]
22. These words of St. John Damascene agree perfectly with what others have taught on this same subject. Statements no less clear and accurate are to be found in sermons delivered by Fathers of an earlier time or of the same period, particularly on the occasion of this feast. And so, to cite some other examples, St. Germanus of Constantinople considered the fact that the body of Mary, the virgin Mother of God, was incorrupt and had been taken up into heaven to be in keeping, not only with her divine motherhood, but also with the special holiness of her virginal body. “You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissolution into dust. Though still human, it is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged and sharing in perfect life.”[18] And another very ancient writer asserts: “As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him.”[19]
23. When this liturgical feast was being celebrated ever more widely and with ever increasing devotion and piety, the bishops of the Church and its preachers in continually greater numbers considered it their duty openly and clearly to explain the mystery that the feast commemorates, and to explain how it is intimately connected with the other revealed truths.
24. Among the scholastic theologians there have not been lacking those who, wishing to inquire more profoundly into divinely revealed truths and desirous of showing the harmony that exists between what is termed the theological demonstration and the Catholic faith, have always considered it worthy of note that this privilege of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption is in wonderful accord with those divine truths given us in Holy Scripture.
25. When they go on to explain this point, they adduce various proofs to throw light on this privilege of Mary. As the first element of these demonstrations, they insist upon the fact that, out of filial love for his mother, Jesus Christ has willed that she be assumed into heaven. They base the strength of their proofs on the incomparable dignity of her divine motherhood and of all those prerogatives which follow from it. These include her exalted holiness, entirely surpassing the sanctity of all men and of the angels, the intimate union of Mary with her Son, and the affection of preeminent love which the Son has for his most worthy Mother.
26. Often there are theologians and preachers who, following in the footsteps of the holy Fathers,[20] have been rather free in their use of events and expressions taken from Sacred Scripture to explain their belief in the Assumption. Thus, to mention only a few of the texts rather frequently cited in this fashion, some have employed the words of the psalmist: “Arise, O Lord, into your resting place: you and the ark, which you have sanctified”[21]; and have looked upon the Ark of the Covenant, built of incorruptible wood and placed in the Lord’s temple, as a type of the most pure body of the Virgin Mary, preserved and exempt from all the corruption of the tomb and raised up to such glory in heaven. Treating of this subject, they also describe her as the Queen entering triumphantly into the royal halls of heaven and sitting at the right hand of the divine Redeemer.[22] Likewise they mention the Spouse of the Canticles “that goes up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh and frankincense” to be crowned.[23] These are proposed as depicting that heavenly Queen and heavenly Spouse who has been lifted up to the courts of heaven with the divine Bridegroom.
27. Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos.[24] Similarly they have given special attention to these words of the New Testament: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women,”[25] since they saw, in the mystery of the Assumption, the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve.
28. Thus, during the earliest period of scholastic theology, that most pious man, Amadeus, Bishop of Lausarme, held that the Virgin Mary’s flesh had remained incorrupt-for it is wrong to believe that her body has seen corruption-because it was really united again to her soul and, together with it, crowned with great glory in the heavenly courts. “For she was full of grace and blessed among women. She alone merited to conceive the true God of true God, whom as a virgin, she brought forth, to whom as a virgin she gave milk, fondling him in her lap, and in all things she waited upon him with loving care.”[26]
29. Among the holy writers who at that time employed statements and various images and analogies of Sacred Scripture to Illustrate and to confirm the doctrine of the Assumption, which was piously believed, the Evangelical Doctor, St. Anthony of Padua, holds a special place. On the feast day of the Assumption, while explaining the prophet’s words: “I will glorify the place of my feet,”[27] he stated it as certain that the divine Redeemer had bedecked with supreme glory his most beloved Mother from whom he had received human flesh. He asserts that “you have here a clear statement that the Blessed Virgin has been assumed in her body, where was the place of the Lord’s feet. Hence it is that the holy Psalmist writes: ‘Arise, O Lord, into your resting place: you and the ark which you have sanctified.”‘ And he asserts that, just as Jesus Christ has risen from the death over which he triumphed and has ascended to the right hand of the Father, so likewise the ark of his sanctification “has risen up, since on this day the Virgin Mother has been taken up to her heavenly dwelling.”[28]
30. When, during the Middle Ages, scholastic theology was especially flourishing, St. Albert the Great who, to establish this teaching, had gathered together many proofs from Sacred Scripture, from the statements of older writers, and finally from the liturgy and from what is known as theological reasoning, concluded in this way: “From these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.”[29] And, in a sermon which he delivered on the sacred day of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s annunciation, explained the words “Hail, full of grace”-words used by the angel who addressed her-the Universal Doctor, comparing the Blessed Virgin with Eve, stated clearly and incisively that she was exempted from the fourfold curse that had been laid upon Eve.[30]
31. Following the footsteps of his distinguished teacher, the Angelic Doctor, despite the fact that he never dealt directly with this question, nevertheless, whenever he touched upon it, always held together with the Catholic Church, that Mary’s body had been assumed into heaven along with her soul.[31]
32. Along with many others, the Seraphic Doctor held the same views. He considered it as entirely certain that, as God had preserved the most holy Virgin Mary from the violation of her virginal purity and integrity in conceiving and in childbirth, he would never have permitted her body to have been resolved into dust and ashes.[32] Explaining these words of Sacred Scripture: “Who is this that comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?”[33] and applying them in a kind of accommodated sense to the Blessed Virgin, he reasons thus: “From this we can see that she is there bodily…her blessedness would not have been complete unless she were there as a person. The soul is not a person, but the soul, joined to the body, is a person. It is manifest that she is there in soul and in body. Otherwise she would not possess her complete beatitude.[34]
33. In the fifteenth century, during a later period of scholastic theology, St. Bernardine of Siena collected and diligently evaluated all that the medieval theologians had said and taught on this question. He was not content with setting down the principal considerations which these writers of an earlier day had already expressed, but he added others of his own. The likeness between God’s Mother and her divine Son, in the way of the nobility and dignity of body and of soul-a likeness that forbids us to think of the heavenly Queen as being separated from the heavenly Kingmakes it entirely imperative that Mary “should be only where Christ is.”[35] Moreover, it is reasonable and fitting that not only the soul and body of a man, but also the soul and body of a woman should have obtained heavenly glory. Finally, since the Church has never looked for the bodily relics of the Blessed Virgin nor proposed them for the veneration of the people, we have a proof on the order of a sensible experience.[36]
34. The above-mentioned teachings of the holy Fathers and of the Doctors have been in common use during more recent times. Gathering together the testimonies of the Christians of earlier days, St. Robert Bellarmine exclaimed: “And who, I ask, could believe that the ark of holiness, the dwelling place of the Word of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, could be reduced to ruin? My soul is filled with horror at the thought that this virginal flesh which had begotten God, had brought him into the world, had nourished and carried him, could have been turned into ashes or given over to be food for worms.”[37]
35. In like manner St. Francis of Sales, after asserting that it is wrong to doubt that Jesus Christ has himself observed, in the most perfect way, the divine commandment by which children are ordered to honor their parents, asks this question: “What son would not bring his mother back to life and would not bring her into paradise after her death if he could?”[38] And St. Alphonsus writes that “Jesus did not wish to have the body of Mary corrupted after death, since it would have redounded to his own dishonor to have her virginal flesh, from which he himself had assumed flesh, reduced to dust.”[39]
36. Once the mystery which is commemorated in this feast had been placed in its proper light, there were not lacking teachers who, instead of dealing with the theological reasonings that show why it is fitting and right to believe the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, chose to focus their mind and attention on the faith of the Church itself, which is the Mystical Body of Christ without stain or wrinkle[40] and is called by the Apostle “the pillar and ground of truth.”[41] Relying on this common faith, they considered the teaching opposed to the doctrine of our Lady’s Assumption as temerarious, if not heretical. Thus, like not a few others, St. Peter Canisius, after he had declared that the very word “assumption” signifies the glorification, not only of the soul but also of the body, and that the Church has venerated and has solemnly celebrated this mystery of Mary’s Assumption for many centuries, adds these words of warning: “This teaching has already been accepted for some centuries, it has been held as certain in the minds of the pious people, and it has been taught to the entire Church in such a way that those who deny that Mary’s body has been assumed into heaven are not to be listened to patiently but are everywhere to be denounced as over-contentious or rash men, and as imbued with a spirit that is heretical rather than Catholic.”[42]
37. At the same time the great Suarez was professing in the field of mariology the norm that “keeping in mind the standards of propriety, and when there is no contradiction or repugnance on the part of Scripture, the mysteries of grace which God has wrought in the Virgin must be measured, not by the ordinary laws, but by the divine omnipotence.”[43] Supported by the common faith of the entire Church on the subject of the mystery of the Assumption, he could conclude that this mystery was to be believed with the same firmness of assent as that given to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Thus he already held that such truths could be defined.
38. All these proofs and considerations of the holy Fathers and the theologians are based upon the Sacred Writings as their ultimate foundation. These set the loving Mother of God as it were before our very eyes as most intimately joined to her divine Son and as always sharing his lot. Consequently it seems impossible to think of her, the one who conceived Christ, brought him forth, nursed him with her milk, held him in her arms, and clasped him to her breast, as being apart from him in body, even though not in soul, after this earthly life. Since our Redeemer is the Son of Mary, he could not do otherwise, as the perfect observer of God’s law, than to honor, not only his eternal Father, but also his most beloved Mother. And, since it was within his power to grant her this great honor, to preserve her from the corruption of the tomb, we must believe that he really acted in this way.
39. We must remember especially that, since the second century, the Virgin Mary has been designated by the holy Fathers as the new Eve, who, although subject to the new Adam, is most intimately associated with him in that struggle against the infernal foe which, as foretold in the protoevangelium,[44] would finally result in that most complete victory over the sin and death which are always mentioned together in the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles.[45] Consequently, just as the glorious resurrection of Christ was an essential part and the final sign of this victory, so that struggle which was common to the Blessed Virgin and her divine Son should be brought to a close by the glorification of her virginal body, for the same Apostle says: “When this mortal thing hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”[46]
40. Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination,[47] immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.[48]
41. Since the universal Church, within which dwells the Spirit of Truth who infallibly directs it toward an ever more perfect knowledge of the revealed truths, has expressed its own belief many times over the course of the centuries, and since the bishops of the entire world are almost unanimously petitioning that the truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven should be defined as a dogma of divine and Catholic faith-this truth which is based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times, which is completely in harmony with the other revealed truths, and which has been expounded and explained magnificently in the work, the science, and the wisdom of the theologians-we believe that the moment appointed in the plan of divine providence for the solemn proclamation of this outstanding privilege of the Virgin Mary has already arrived.
42. We, who have placed our pontificate under the special patronage of the most holy Virgin, to whom we have had recourse so often in times of grave trouble, we who have consecrated the entire human race to her Immaculate Heart in public ceremonies, and who have time and time again experienced her powerful protection, are confident that this solemn proclamation and definition of the Assumption will contribute in no small way to the advantage of human society, since it redounds to the glory of the Most Blessed Trinity, to which the Blessed Mother of God is bound by such singular bonds. It is to be hoped that all the faithful will be stirred up to a stronger piety toward their heavenly Mother, and that the souls of all those who glory in the Christian name may be moved by the desire of sharing in the unity of Jesus Christ’s Mystical Body and of increasing their love for her who shows her motherly heart to all the members of this august body. And so we may hope that those who meditate upon the glorious example Mary offers us may be more and more convinced of the value of a human life entirely devoted to carrying out the heavenly Father’s will and to bringing good to others. Thus, while the illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals that follows from these teachings threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and to ruin the lives of men by exciting discord among them, in this magnificent way all may see clearly to what a lofty goal our bodies and souls are destined. Finally it is our hope that belief in Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven will make our belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective.
43. We rejoice greatly that this solemn event falls, according to the design of God’s providence, during this Holy Year, so that we are able, while the great Jubilee is being observed, to adorn the brow of God’s Virgin Mother with this brilliant gem, and to leave a monument more enduring than bronze of our own most fervent love for the Mother of God.
44. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.
46. In order that this, our definition of the bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven may be brought to the attention of the universal Church, we desire that this, our Apostolic Letter, should stand for perpetual remembrance, commanding that written copies of it, or even printed copies, signed by the hand of any public notary and bearing the seal of a person constituted in ecclesiastical dignity, should be accorded by all men the same reception they would give to this present letter, were it tendered or shown.
47. It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.
48. Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, in the year of the great Jubilee, 1950, on the first day of the month of November, on the Feast of All Saints, in the twelfth year of our pontificate.
I, PIUS, Bishop of the Catholic Church, have signed, so defining.
ENDNOTES
1. Rom 8:28.
2. Gal 4:4.
3. Cf. Hentrich-Von Moos, Petitiones de Assumptione Corporea B. Virginis Mariae in Caelum Definienda ad S. Sedem Delatae, 2 volumes (Vatican Polyglot Press, 1942).
4. Acts 20:28.
5. The Bull Ineffabilis Deus, in the Acta Pii IX, pars 1, Vol. 1, p. 615.
6. The Vatican Council, Constitution Dei filius, c. 4.
7. Jn 14:26.
8. Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor Aeternus, c. 4.
9. Ibid., Dei Filius, c. 3.
10. The encyclical Mediator Dei (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, XXXIX, 541).
11. Sacramentarium Gregorianum.
12. Menaei Totius Anni.
13. Lk 22:32.
14. Liber Pontificalis.
15. Ibid.
16. Responsa Nicolai Papae I ad Consulta Bulgarorum.
17. St. John Damascene, Encomium in Dormitionem Dei Genetricis Semperque Virginis Mariae, Hom. II, n. 14; cf. also ibid, n. 3.
18. St. Germanus of Constantinople, In Sanctae Dei Genetricis Dormitionem, Sermo I.
19. The Encomium in Dormitionem Sanctissimae Dominae Nostrate Deiparae Semperque Virginis Mariae, attributed to St. Modestus of Jerusalem, n. 14.
20. Cf. St. John Damascene, op. cit., Hom. II, n. 11; and also the Encomium attributed to St. Modestus.
21. Ps 131:8.
22. Ps 44:10-14ff.
23. Song 3:6; cf. also 4:8; 6:9.
24. Rv 12:1ff.
25. Lk 1:28.
26. Amadeus of Lausanne, De Beatae Virginis Obitu, Assumptione in Caelum Exaltatione ad Filii Dexteram.
27. Is 61:13.
28. St. Anthony of Padua, Sermones Dominicales et in Solemnitatibus, In Assumptione S. Mariae Virginis Sermo.
29. St. Albert the Great, Mariale, q. 132.
30. St. Albert the Great, Sermones de Sanctis, Sermo XV in Annuntiatione B. Mariae; cf. also Mariale, q. 132.
31. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., Illa; q. 27, a. 1; q. 83, a. 5, ad 8; Expositio Salutationis Angelicae; In Symb. Apostolorum Expositio, a. S; In IV Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 3; d. 43, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 1, 2.
32. St. Bonaventure, De Nativitate B. Mariae Virginis, Sermo V.
33. Song 8:5.
34. St. Bonaventure, De Assumptione B. Mariae Virginis, Sermo 1.
35. St. Bernardine of Siena, In Assumptione B. Mariae Virginis, Sermo 11.
36. Ibid.
37. St. Robert Bellarmine, Conciones Habitae Lovanii, n. 40, De Assumption B. Mariae Virginis.
38. Oeuvres de St. Francois De Sales, sermon for the Feast of the Assumption.
39. St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary, Part 2, d. 1.
40. Eph 5:27.
41. I Tm 3:15.
42. St. Peter Canisius, De Maria Virgine.
43. Suarez, In Tertiam Partem D. Thomae, q. 27, a. 2, disp. 3, sec. 5, n. 31.
44. Gn 3:15.
45. Rm 5-6; I Cor. 15:21-26, 54-57.
46. I Cor 15:54.
47. The Bull Ineffabilis Deus, loc. cit., p. 599.
48. I Tm 1:17.
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| Eucharistic profanations at WYD 2023 |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-14-2023, 05:50 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Are there really some who will argue vehemently for the case for Eucharistic miracles in the Novus Ordo? Would the Most Holy Trinity really grant miracles to the same Novus Ordo that allowed THIS:
Eucharistic profanations at WYD 2023
![[Image: B050-Pro-1.jpg]](https://traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/Images(B-001-100)/B050-Pro-1.jpg)
The photo above, posted on Instagram by one of the youth pictured in it, shows three grey plastic stackable boxes on the top of a table inside a pop-up canvas tent. On either side of the boxes there is a candle, atop the stack is a small vase with a few cheap flowers. There is no sign inside or outside of the tent indicating to the passerby what those boxes contain.
We are at the WYD-2023 in Lisbon on Saturday, August 5, the vigil of the papal Mass. Those boxes contain the Blessed Sacrament, and this is how a Conciliar Church "chapel" hosts Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist.
Was this a proper way to host the God Incarnate, the King of the Kings? No, it was not. The least we can say is that it was a profanation of the Eucharist. It was so shocking that the young American lady in the white dress kneeling in the photo – Savannah Dudzik – became indignant and called her friends to come to adore Our Lord and pray the Rosary in reparation for the blasphemy.
“At that moment I was infuriated: How dare they disrespect Our Lord?" she wrote. "What do they think they are doing – putting Him in a box with almost zero respect… people walking right past not knowing it’s Him at all!”
She went on to describe the ambience around that tent: “There were people smoking right outside the tent, there were girls not wearing shirts, there were girls in bras, I am not talking about crop-tops, I'm talking about bras. It didn’t look great. There were people dancing in circles, chanting, and I’ve heard that the chanting was praise, but there were a lot of things that didn't look Catholic there.”
The same grey boxes were also placed on tables in other tents, below first and second rows.
In yet other tents, third row, the Eucharist was kept inside restaurant style foil-topped serving dishes, lined up on tables like "meals-to-go," another grave profanation.
After the young lady's denunciation went viral on the Internet, the religious authorities were asked about the grey boxes. They admitted that it actually was a mistake to put the large grey boxes on the tables. They should have been under the table and the foil top boxes-to-go should have been displayed on the tables. That was the only error they acknowledged...
Millions of dollars were spent to promote this event and to bring Francis to Lisbon. No money was allocated to honor Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who should be the center of the WYD if it were really Catholic.
Fourth row, the posting of Savannah Dudzik that brought attention to the profanation; fifth row, the ambience of semi-nudism of the WYD in Lisbon, corresponding perfectly to her description.
![[Image: B050-Pro-2.jpg]](https://traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/Images(B-001-100)/B050-Pro-2.jpg)
Photos from the Internet; text partially based on The Pillar article |
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| CFN interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-13-2023, 08:00 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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CFN INTERVIEWS VIGANÒ: Francis, Trump, Ukraine, Child Trafficking, and More
CFN [slightly adapted]| August 11, 2023
Editor’s Note: In this new interview with CFN’s Matt Gaspers, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò comments on a wide variety of topics including the Francis pontificate after ten years, the 2013 Conclave, Donald Trump’s efforts to obtain a second term as President, the Russia-Ukraine war in light of Our Lady’s Fatima Message, child trafficking and the new film Sound of Freedom, and more. “The failures of the deep church, like those of the deep state, can be hidden and denied, but they are apparent in all of their disastrous consequences,” His Grace says, while emphasizing that in these difficult times we must rely on “the sane (Catholic and Roman) pragmatism which combines the omnipotence of God in deciding the fate of the world with the generous cooperation of man whom He has created and redeemed. In a word, it is the multiplication of the few loaves and fishes.”
INTERVIEW
with Matt Gaspers for “Catholic Family News”
CFN: Your Grace, we are now in the tenth year of Francis’s pontificate. From his comment, “Who am I to judge?” to Amoris Lætitia, from the Abu Dhabi Declaration to the Pachamama incident (and the ongoing Synod on synodality), we have witnessed truly unprecedented papal scandals over the past decade — scandals touching on both faith and morals. In your opinion, what has been the most damaging affair of this pontificate and how can the Church recover from it?
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: It is difficult — and I think many will agree with me — to identify the single issue that has had the most negative influence out of all of Bergoglio’s actions and words. His every gesture is deliberately provocative and histrionic, deliberately designed to leave the interlocutor baffled, or to offend him, or to make fun of him. Those who think that Bergoglio is naïve are mistaken: his every word is spoken with the purpose of arousing scandal, distancing himself from all his predecessors, and criticizing the Church’s past, falsifying it and misrepresenting it with irritating simplifications. And above all: he never affirms. If you have noticed, his most controversial utterances are not the result of an autonomous statement, but the answer to questions asked by others according to the directions they have received, giving the appearance that the topic has been chosen by the interviewer or interlocutor. It is curious, if you pay attention, that all of his most puzzling statements — from “Who am I to judge” to his latest zinger “God loves you as you are” — are answers to questions. Bergoglio himself confirmed this during the press conference returning from Portugal when he said: “Thank you for the courage to ask this question. Thank you” (here).
In practice, regardless of the topic, all Bergoglio’s words are based a priori on a fiction, a lie. In some cases, these manipulations take place with systems that are more elaborate but always dishonest and disloyal: think of the maneuvers to impose his agenda at the recent Synods and his absolute contempt for the rules. Add to this the mocking contempt with which he attributes to other circumstances and other people what he ostentatiously does first himself.
Beyond all of the individual scandals, I believe that the greatest damage done to the Church by this “pontificate” has been the discredit and dishonor that has been thrown on the Papacy, on the Church, on the clergy, and on the faithful. His hatred for Tradition knows no rest, and this necessarily has repercussions on what is a natural expression of that Tradition: doctrine, morality, liturgy, and spirituality. The demolition is systematic and starts mainly from authority, which is corrupt and subservient to the enemy, abusing its power for the opposite purpose to that which legitimizes it. The democratization of the Church, conciliar “collegiality,” and Bergoglio’s “synodality” are all colossal lies, behind which tyranny hides: the parallel with governments subjected to the globalist elite is evident and confirms a single coordination of the two subversive actions. Both institutions, as we see, are discredited and delegitimized by those who hold positions of authority. In this way, if in the future this crisis should come to an end, restoring trust in the Church and restoring her authority will be almost impossible, humanly speaking.
CFN: In a recent interview (here), you said that certain Cardinals “created by Benedict XVI have proved to be completely inferior to the expectations of faithful conservatives,” and that some of them “at the last Conclave witnessed things that they do not denounce publicly.” What things do you believe they witnessed and why do they not denounce them?
Some cardinals who entered the Conclave in 2013 do not seem to understand the gravity of what happened in the Conclave and continues to happen, under false appearances of formal legality. We have heard them fiercely defend the Papacy, declaring that the errors proposed by Bergoglio and his impromptu provocations are not to be considered papal Magisterium; we heard them ask Bergoglio to resolve the Dubia without him even deigning to answer, and everything ended there. But this denunciation of the effects — that is, the present “pontificate” — is completely useless as long as it refuses to recognize their causes in the conciliar revolution, sidelining this question. Their tetragonal desire to “save” the pseudo-magisterium of Vatican II, which is the remote cause of the present crisis, renders utterly useless any action in defense of the Church.
As for their silence on the events that took place during the Conclave, I see here as well a certain formally legalistic mentality prevailing over the urgent need to put an end to the subversive coup d’état of the deep church. Their main concern is to not undermine the observance of norms that are valid in times of relative normality, so that it cannot be said that they have violated human precepts, while with their respect for procedures they find themselves endorsing the violation of divine precepts carried out by none other than the leaders of the Catholic hierarchy.
I find it incomprehensible that a member of the College of Cardinals can confide to friends that he has witnessed facts that render the election of Jorge Mario null and void, and at the same time he does not want to denounce them publicly so as not to break the Pontifical secret: the secret that he has already broken by talking about it with those who can do nothing, which forces His Eminence into silence before the Church, whose Pastors could perhaps settle the question. But here we are not talking about the Seal of Confession, but rather about matters that have reason to be reserved until this is to the detriment of the institution that brought them into force; otherwise we find ourselves like the Pharisees of the Gospel, who asked Our Lord if it was lawful to pull a donkey out of the well on the Sabbath day.
The indiscretions of these Cardinals focus on the evidence of serious irregularities, without providing further details. I am reminded of what happened in 1958, with the question of the smoke that was initially white and then turned black: it seems that Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was elected, but then, due to the opposition of the Soviet communist regime, the Fathers were forced to elect another man as Pope, who coincidentally turned out to be the conciliatory Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli.
If these confidences are true, I dare not think of the moral travail of those who are preparing to take the secret to the grave, when they would have had the opportunity of unmasking the intrigues and plots of the Saint Gallen Mafia. If they are not true, it would not make sense to talk about it even with the most trusted people (who, however, must have told others, since the news has leaked).
CFN: Humanly speaking, do you foresee any way the next conclave will not repeat the outcome of 2013?
Except for extraordinary interventions by Providence, the College of Cardinals has been largely entirely discredited by Bergoglio: Caligula limited himself to the threat of appointing his horse Incitatus as priest and consul; the present crisis instead creates Cardinals who under Pius IX would have been sent in partibus infidelium. The outcome of the next Conclave therefore seems obvious, rebus sic stantibus. But if evidence were to emerge of some serious irregularity in the 2013 Conclave, this would ipso facto render the outcome of its election null and void, and consequently all the acts of government and magisterium carried out by the one elected. Included among these null and void acts would be, of course, the creation of Cardinals, so that all the Consistories of Bergoglio would be null: we would find ourselves as if by magic back in the situation of 2013, and this would disrupt Bergoglio’s plans, because if the electors of the next Conclave were only those cardinals appointed prior to 2013, they would certainly be less inclined to repeat the mistakes already committed and, strengthened by the experience of the past ten years, they could elect the least bad candidate among them.
CFN: Next year, Americans will face another presidential election. In 2020, you were greatly supportive of Donald Trump’s efforts to obtain a second term. In light of his continued promotion of COVID vaccines and his rhetoric in favor of the LGBTQ agenda, do you believe that Catholics can still support him in another bid for the presidency? Do you still consider him to be a “katechon” of sorts?
The President of the United States of America can be a sort of katechon if he is clear about the global coup d’état perpetrated by the deep state. I believe that Donald Trump has understood the deception he has been subjected to by Antony Fauci and the other Big Pharma peddlers, and that he is also capable — as is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the Democrat side — to verify whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus is part of a military project which has used pharmaceutical companies only for the large-scale production of serums (which significantly began even in 2019, before the declaration of the pandemic emergency).
With regard to other forms of more or less explicit support for movements or ideologies contrary to the Catholic Faith, I would like to suggest to the President not to be influenced by the reports and percentages of the electoral communication agencies, and to think about the responsibility before God for the decisions that, as President of the United States, he takes on. The task of the President of the United States is to govern his people for the common good, according to justice and with respect for the natural and divine Law. If he fulfills this task, the Lord — Who is Almighty and Who decides the fate of nations and individuals — will bless him and the American people; if, on the contrary, he fails in his duties and panders to the mentality of the world and the advice of his electoral experts, he can certainly not expect God, offended and disobeyed, to help him and the Nation.
It must be said that Trump, in his recent rallies, has strongly denounced woke policies and pledged to combat gender transition and mutilation for minors, gender indoctrination in schools, the hyper-sexualization of children, and child trafficking. It is significant that, just when the people’s perception of the very serious threat of the pedophile lobby is increasing, the US Department of Justice has nothing better to do than reduce the level of social alarm: evidently the dome of perverts that maneuvers Biden feels public awareness breathing down their necks.
In any case, I prefer a thousand Trumps to one Biden, there is no doubt about that. Also, because Trump has shown himself in fact much closer to the image of a Catholic politician than the self-styled Catholic Biden has done.
CFN: Do you have any thoughts about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for President? Given his support of abortion, could a Catholic vote for Kennedy in good conscience?
Robert Kennedy certainly has a clear view on the pandemic and vaccine fraud and the deep state’s assault on Americans’ fundamental rights. The positive aspects of his political program do not take away the fact that he supports abortion, and this means one cannot vote for him, especially since Kennedy declares himself Catholic despite being in serious contradiction with the teaching of the Church as well as the natural law. Here too we need a jolt of pride, which puts aside electoral calculations and makes a radical choice. Compromise is no longer practicable today.
CFN: Arguably the most significant event since Joe Biden took office has been the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, which seems to have been provoked at least in part by bad actors. What do you think the deep state is hoping to achieve through this ongoing conflict?
The Ukrainian crisis has been prepared for years, in order to destroy the Russian Federation through a process of balkanization, so as to guarantee a hegemony of the Anglosphere in the international geopolitical balance and keep the European nations in a position of subordination with respect to Anglo-American power.
The conflict was supposed to have resulted in Putin’s further rapprochement with Xi Jinping, which was largely predictable and could have been avoided. It is possible that pushing Russia into China’s arms could constitute, in the minds of the New World Order hierarchy, the casus belli for a declaration of war on China itself, which is consistent with the White House’s request to European partners to end the so-called Silk Road trade agreements. This claim will not only have serious repercussions for the reduction of exports to China and for the foreseeable increases in raw materials and semi-finished products from China that until now have been important; it also constitutes the premise for an instability and economic crisis that are usually the antechamber of a military conflict, to the benefit of arms sellers and those who profit from reconstruction (see Iraq, but also Greece). I doubt, however, that the elite has the time necessary to achieve these goals: its days are numbered, because the lie on which their power is based is now exposed.
Beyond the political strategies of one part of the American establishment, we know that the war in Ukraine has also served to hide the scandals of the Biden family and cover up the activity of biolaboratories financed by the Pentagon and America or its allies: artificial viruses genetically modified to be effective on certain ethnic groups have been discovered in those laboratories, in violation of international agreements. Probably the partial failure of the pandemic project — which in 2015 foresaw very large reductions in the world population — is due to the fact that Putin sped up the start of his military operation and put the scientists of those biolaboratories in prison.
Let’s not forget that Ukraine is the main player in the market of surrogacy, organ predation, and human trafficking, which also feeds the pedophile network. The denunciations of humanitarian organizations leave no doubt about these unprecedented horrors: children are being killed and dismembered to send their organs to clinics in the West; wounded Ukrainian soldiers are having their organs harvested for the same purpose; the lives of innocent creatures are being sold to rich perverts to satisfy their abominable deviations. And we know how much the deep stateis composed of characters who can be blackmailed precisely in furtherance of these execrable crimes, a dynamic highlighted by the recent film Sound of Freedom.
CFN: If peace in Ukraine were the true goal, what steps would need to be taken in order to obtain it?
Ukraine acts as a battering ram in NATO’s proxy war against the Russian Federation, so we should first stop considering Zelensky as a legitimate interlocutor in any peace agreements. If he has counted for nothing in the declaration of war and in the continuation of the military actions carried out so far, I do not see what his role should or could be at a peace negotiating table.
Certainly, the Ukrainian crisis can end immediately, if Kiev returns to being a buffer between the NATO bloc — which had previously pledged not to expand to the East — and guarantees the autonomy of Donbass and the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk. The problem is that the damage suffered and the colossal debt taken on by Ukraine in order to cope with the procurement of weapons and the sending of soldiers to the front makes it difficult to end the conflict, also because victory against Russia is impossible without the official involvement of other nations. As long as there was a plan to merely send old tanks or a few volunteers, NATO convinced its member countries to support the war, but I do not believe that they really want to start a world war, despite the ranting statements of some politicians.
CFN: In past statements and interviews, you have expressed notable support for Russia in the context of the war. While Ukraine clearly has the support of Western globalists, would you not agree that Russia’s strong alliance with Communist China is equally concerning, especially in light of Our Lady of Fatima’s prophecies concerning the “errors of Russia”?
My support is not for Russia per se, but for those who are actively opposing the plans of the New World Order at this juncture. It was well known that a conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation would inevitably strengthen the ties of the latter with China: it is only to be hoped that the alliance between Putin and Xi Jinping is not only to the advantage of the Chinese communist dictatorship, and that the balance will be maintained.
I believe, however, that the time has come to get out of the ideological cage that leads us to consider Americans “good” and Russians “bad,” on the basis of a prejudice wanted and imposed by the deep state. As Giulio Andreotti rightly observed — before being ousted from international politics by the intervention of the Atlantic services with the collaboration of organized crime and mafia informants — “NATO should have been dissolved in favor of a social purpose when the Berlin Wall fell in ‘89” (Repubblica, 28 October 2004). Until we realize that Western governments are hostage to an elite dome of subversives who manage power against the peoples, we will not be able to defeat this institutional cancer that alters the international balance and feeds on wars, famine, and poverty.
When Our Lady speaks of the “errors of Russia,” we should consider that these errors have now spread throughout the West, while in Russia materialist atheism and communism have now become a minority. It is in the West — and even within the Catholic Church — that Marxist errors are today publicly professed by governments, in an infernal union between socialism and liberalism that is an expression of the two great Masonic currents, the socialist and revolutionary currents of French Freemasonry and the liberal and institutional currents of Anglo-American Freemasonry.
CFN: One of the hidden plagues in our world today is child trafficking. The new film Sound of Freedom starring Jim Caviezel, the actor who portrayed Our Lord in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, shines a light on this plague and calls upon all people to help eradicate it. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice appears to be downplaying the problem (here). Do you believe, as Caviezel does, that there is a connection between global elites, government agencies, and child trafficking?
As I said earlier, Ukraine is at the center of child trafficking and pedophilia, which principally involves the members of the Satanic elite of the New World Order and government agencies of many states. I am not surprised that this elite seeks in every way to minimize or hide these heinous crimes, also resorting to the power it possesses throughout politics, the media, and the world of entertainment. If we think about how Joe Biden’s son, who has been photographed in poses with minors that are as obscene as they are eloquent, is still at large, we ought to ask ourselves what forces are in play and how deep is the corruption of our leaders and the entire ruling class that revolves around them.
Caviezel’s denunciation has the merit of bringing to light this network of complicity and crimes which cry out for vengeance before God, and which cannot go unpunished. I think also that the now-imminent collapse of the entire deep state will be due more to the indignation of common citizens over the horrors it has perpetrated against children than to the evidence of their plan to exterminate humanity by means of pandemics and famines.
When I hear Klaus Schwab declare: “Climate lockdowns are coming: no more debate necessary,” I wonder how much of a hurry these subversives — Schwab, Gates, Soros, etc. — are in to bring their infernal project to completion in order to hide the reality of what they are doing. Their plans for total control ultimately aim to guarantee themselves impunity by manipulating the Truth and imposing a lie.
CFN: In light of the increasing suppression of the True Mass by the hierarchy, what advice would you give to Catholics who are concerned about attending Mass by, or receiving sacraments from, a priest lacking written faculties or in an “irregular canonical status”?
During the 1970s, when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre distanced himself from the “conciliar church” and continued to ordain priests who would guarantee the celebration of the Catholic Mass, the first measures taken against the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X were of a canonical nature: suspension a divinis for having conferred Holy Orders in an institute that had become irregular from one day to the next. The same thing that Archbishop Lefebvre had done up until the day before with the encouragement of the Pope had become illicit overnight. It was only fifteen years later, in 1988, with the Consecration of bishops that excommunication was imposed on Lefebvre, which was then revoked by Benedict XVI. Archbishop Lefebvre had the strength to bear witness to his fidelity to Christ even by disobeying the orders of the Hierarchy, and it is thanks to this holy disobedience that the clergy and the faithful have been able to benefit first from the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei and then from Summorum Pontificum.
In fact, I would say more: many of those people who today indulge in giving little lessons about orthodoxy to others, seeking to demonstrate the acceptability of Vatican II, and who attend liturgical celebrations in the Ancient Rite with the tacit agreement that they will not reject the Council — these individuals can do so only thanks to the “intransigence,” that is, to the principled steadfastness, of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who denounced the errors of that most unfortunate assembly and the liturgical reform that followed it. Without his courage; without the testimony of priests who continued to celebrate the Mass of all Ages and who were torn away from the altars only because they were ordered by their Bishops, the traditional rite would have definitively disappeared from our churches, as it did for nearly the first twenty years following the Council.
And so I ask myself: is it possible that the authority of the Church can be used to prevent the very same thing that the authority of the Church blessed and praised prior to the Council? Can the vicarious power of the Pope and Bishops go against the purpose for which Our Lord, the holder of that power, has established the Church? And again: what credibility can the authority of the Shepherds have when it first establishes a universal norm, then prohibits it, then restores it, and then finally de facto suppresses the same rite? It is necessary to recognize that the exercise of ecclesiastical authority is indissolubly tied to the purpose for which Christ has instituted the Sacred Hierarchy, and that no subversive power can usurp this authority without placing itself in opposition to the Church and to Christ Himself. The abolition of the Apostolic Mass by Paul VI in order to replace it with a counterfeit written by heretics was an abuse, and the nullification of Summorum Pontificum by Bergoglio was also an abuse. It is no coincidence that they are both part of a “conciliar church” broken off from the Catholic Church; a self-referential “church” that has separated from Sacred Tradition, with its own “saints,” its own rites, its own doctrine and morality, all in stark contrast to the Saints, Rites, Doctrine and Morality of the Church of Christ.
Anyone who impedes the celebration of the Tridentine Mass does so indefectibly for evil reasons. But in the entire history of the Church no one has ever dared to forbid the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in a particular form by using the rationale that it does not express a “new ecclesiology.” Because if anyone had ever said this, he would have by those very words been implicitly recognizing that there is a new doctrinal formulation in contrast with that of the Mass of all Ages, something that, for a Catholic, is completely unacceptable and inconceivable.
If, therefore, the Mass of Saint Pius V is heterogeneous with respect to the religion imposed by the “conciliar church,” then it is the “conciliar church” that is placing itself outside the Church, and not those who, changing nothing of what has always been celebrated and believed, wish to defend a rite that has molded and still molds the holiness of the faithful and of priests.
I have personally founded the Exsurge Domine Association (here the link where you can make your donation) in order to help priests and men and women religious who are being persecuted by the Bergoglian junta. We are constructing a monastic village in the Viterbo province in Italy, in order to give a home to the nuns of Pienza who have been persecuted by the Holy See and their Bishop. We are helping priests left without a parish simply because they celebrate the Apostolic Mass, priests who have been removed from ministry solely because they do not accept the present apostasy. I appeal to all Catholics, asking them to contribute to this project.
The failures of the deep church, like those of the deep state, can be hidden and denied, but they are apparent in all of their disastrous consequences. In order to remove the deep church from the ecclesial body — just like amputating an infected limb — it is necessary above all to denounce the false shepherds, firmly resist their illegitimate orders, and coordinate pastoral care for the small communities of those who are “refractory”. This will probably not assure the victory, but our commitment, our sincere desire to serve the Lord and save souls, our testimony of the coherence of our Christian lives, will be able to induce the Lord to that “everything” which only our “nothingness” can move.
And this is, after all, what gives a reason for hope in these circumstances: not the (Orthodox) fatalism of those who await a divine intervention without lifting a finger; not the (Protestant) activism which leaves God’s help out of the picture and places all its hope in itself; but rather the sane (Catholic and Roman) pragmatism which combines the omnipotence of God in deciding the fate of the world with the generous cooperation of man whom He has created and redeemed. In a word, it is the multiplication of the few loaves and fishes.
August 10, 2023
S. Laurentii Martyris
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| Satanists desecrate Eucharist inside Panama church |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-13-2023, 04:34 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
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Satanists desecrate Eucharist inside Panama church, archdiocese issues condemnation
Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Panama Father Carlos Mejía has urged priests and faithful to 'redouble' their prayer efforts, especially for those 'submerged in this type of syncretistic practice.'
![[Image: Screenshot-2023-08-11-at-12.50.47-PM-810x500.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-11-at-12.50.47-PM-810x500.png)
Aug 11, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) – The Archdiocese of Panama has released a statement condemning the actions of yet unknown persons who desecrated a Catholic church in the Western part of the nation, spelling out a satanic phrase with Communion hosts.
According to a local report published Thursday, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Panama Father Carlos Mejía issued a statement urging local Catholics to engage in “reflection” following last week’s desecration of Mary Help of Christians church in Bejuco, Chame, while reminding the laity of their duty to ensure “zealous care” is taken of their “places of worship.”
Mejía also called for the evangelization of those “submerged in this type of syncretistic practice,” urging parish priests and others to “redouble their prayer efforts so that the Lord may help them to redouble their prayer efforts.”
The mayor of the district of Chame, Abdul Juliao, referred to the desecration as being so terrible it has “no name,” and vowed to make sure those responsible are fully prosecuted under the law.
According to the local report, it was last Wednesday when parishioners at Mary Help of Christians (María Auxiliadora) entered their church to discover that at least one vandal had taken consecrated hosts from the tabernacle and “dispersed” them around the church.
Footage on social media shows that some of the hosts were laid on the ground to form the phrase “Ariel Satan Vive” or, in English, “Satan Lives.” Other hosts were used to form upside-down crosses, a symbol commonly used by those engaged in satanic practice.
Panama’s National Police (FN) is actively investigating the incident, and noted that neither the church nor the tabernacle were broken into.
Many Catholics took to social media to lament the blasphemous event, and encouraged Catholics to pray and do penance in reparation for the grave mockery of Jesus Christ’s True Presence in the Most Holy Eucharist.
While the desecration of Catholic churches is nothing new, such acts of hatred toward Christ and His Church have continued to ramp up in historically Catholic regions in Central and South America.
In 2019, Antifa-like protesters in Chile desecrated a church and tabernacle in Santiago. Similar acts of anti-Catholic persecution have occurred in Mexico and Nicaragua.
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| Historic Catholic Church in Lahaina Miraculously Untouched by Maui Wildfires |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-13-2023, 04:05 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Historic Catholic Church in Lahaina Miraculously Untouched by Maui Wildfires
![[Image: Maria-Lanakila-Catholic-Church-1024x642.jpg]](https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/Maria-Lanakila-Catholic-Church-1024x642.jpg)
Maria Lanakila Catholic Church-Image: Screenshot @HawaiiBrunoldSquad/TikTok
GP | Aug. 12, 2023
The Gateway Pundit reported on the devastating wildfires in Hawaii that have left at least 80 dead with approximately 1,000 people still unaccounted for.
Maria Lanakila Catholic Church, which opened in 1846, was miraculously untouched amidst the devastation surrounding it after wildfires ravaged the area.
Directly across the street from Maria Lanakila Catholic Church-Image: Screenshot @HawaiiBrunoldSquad/TikTok
Video of the still standing church was captured and posted to TikTok.
https://www.tiktok.com/@hawaiibrunoldsqu...9550199083
The New York Post reports:
When the camera pans around, the rest of the town — the largest tourist destination on Maui — looks like a smoldering hellscape of rubble.
Viewers hailed the jaw-dropping miracle as an act of God.
“A def sign from God,” one TikTok user wrote, adding, “he is with you. hold on and keep that faith. we are all praying for you.”
The Pillar spoke with Msgr. Terrence Watanabe, pastor of the nearby parish of St. Anthony’s Who shared,”Basically what we know is the fact that all of Lahaina Town has been consumed by fire. It’s all gone. The church, Maria Lanakila [Our Lady of Victory], is still standing, as is the rectory. The school’s been a little bit affected. They’re still not allowing people to drive into Lahaina. And then 36 people are dead, that they’ve reported, and about 271 facilities have been impacted, not to mention all the cars that are still on the streets, that also got burned.”
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| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Eleventh Week after Pentecost |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-13-2023, 03:49 AM - Forum: Pentecost
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A Novena of Meditations and Readings for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary begins here.
Let us consider how holy Mary passed from this world by a sweet and happy death. Three things render death bitter -- attachment to the world, remorse for sins, and the uncertainty of salvation. Mary died as she had lived, entirely detached from the things of the world; she died in the most perfect peace; she died in the certainty of eternal glory.
I.
Death being the punishment of sin, it would seem that the Divine Mother -- all holy, and exempt as she was from its slightest stain -- should also have been exempt from death, and from encountering the misfortunes to which the children of Adam, infected by the poison of sin, are subject. But God was pleased that Mary should in all things resemble Jesus; and as the Son died, it was becoming that the Mother should also die; because, moreover, He wished to give the just an example of the precious death prepared for them, He willed that even the most Blessed Virgin should die, but by a sweet and happy death. Let us, therefore, consider how precious was Mary's death, on account of the special favours by which it was accompanied.
There are three things that render death bitter: attachment to the world, remorse for sins, and the uncertainty of salvation. The death of Mary was entirely free from these causes of bitterness, and was accompanied by three special graces, which rendered it precious and joyful. She died as she had lived, entirely detached from the things of the world; she died in the most perfect peace; she died in the certainty of eternal glory.
There can be no doubt that attachment to earthly things renders the death of the worldly bitter and miserable, as the Holy Ghost says: O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions! (Ecclus. xli. 1). But because the Saints die detached from the things of the world, their death is not bitter, but sweet, lovely, and precious; that is to say, as St. Bernard remarks, worth purchasing at any price, however great. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord (Apoc. xiv. 13). Who are they who, being already dead, die? They are those happy souls who pass into eternity already detached, and, so to say, dead to all affection for terrestrial things; who, like St. Francis of Assisi, find in God alone all their happiness, and with him can say: "My God and my All!"
II.
What soul was ever more detached from earthly goods, and more united to God, than the beautiful soul of Mary? She was detached from her parents, for at the age of three years, when children are most attached to them, and stand in the greatest need of their assistance, Mary, with the greatest intrepidity, left them, and went to shut herself up in the Temple to attend to God alone. She was detached from riches, contenting herself always to live poor, and supporting herself with the labour of her own hands. She was detached from honours, loving an humble and abject life, though the honours due to a queen were hers, as she was descended from the kings of Israel. The Blessed Virgin herself revealed to St. Elizabeth of Hungary that when her parents left her in the temple, she resolved in her heart to have no father, and to love no other good than God.
St. John saw Mary represented in that woman, clothed with the sun, who held the moon under her feet. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet (Apoc. xii. 1). Interpreters explain the moon to signify the goods of this world, which, like the moon, are uncertain and changeable. Mary never had these goods in her heart, but always despised them and trampled them under her feet; living in this world as a solitary turtle-dove in a desert, never allowing her affection to centre itself on any earthly thing; so that of her it was said: The voice of the turtle is heard in our land (Cant. ii. 12). And elsewhere: Who is she that goeth up by the desert? (Cant. iii. 6). Whence the Abbot Rupert says "Thus didst thou go up by the desert; that is, having a solitary soul." Mary, then, having lived always and in all things detached from the earth, and united to God alone, death was not bitter, but, on the contrary, very sweet and dear to her; since it united her more closely to God in Heaven, by an eternal bond.
Spiritual Reading
TO THEE DO WE CRY, POOR BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE
I.-THE PROMPTITUDE OF MARY IN ASSISTING THOSE WHO INVOKE HER.
Truly unfortunate are we poor children of Eve; for, guilty before God of her fault, and condemned to the same penalty, we have to wander about in this valley of tears as exiles from our country, and to weep over our many afflictions of body and soul. But blessed is he who, in the midst of these sorrows, often turns to the comfortress of the world, to the refuge of the unfortunate, to the great Mother of God, and devoutly calls upon her and invokes her! Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates (Prov. viii. 34). Blessed, says Mary, is he who listens to my counsels, and watches continually at the gate of my mercy, and invokes my intercession and aid.
The holy Church carefully teaches us her children with what attention and confidence we should unceasingly have recourse to this loving protectress; and for this purpose commands a worship peculiar to Mary. And not only this, but she has instituted many Festivals that are celebrated throughout the year in honour of this great Queen: she devotes one day in the week, in an especial manner, to her honour: in the Divine Office all Ecclesiastics and Religious are daily obliged to invoke her in the name of all Christians; and, finally, she desires that all the faithful should salute this most holy Mother of God three times a day, at the sound of the Angelus-bell. And that we may understand the confidence that the holy Church has in Mary we need only remember that in all public calamities she invariably invites all to have recourse to the protection of this Divine Mother, by novenas, prayers, processions, by visiting the churches dedicated to her honour, and her images. And this is what Mary desires. She wishes us always to seek her and invoke her aid; not as if she were begging of us these honours and marks of veneration, for they are in no way proportioned to her merit; but she desires them, that by such means our confidence and devotion may be increased, and that so she may be able to give us greater succour and comfort. "She seeks for those," says St. Bonaventure, "who approach her devoutly and with reverence, for such she loves, nourishes, and adopts as her children."
The Saint remarks that Ruth, whose name signifies, "seeing and hastening," was a figure of Mary; " for Mary, seeing our miseries, hastens in her mercy to succour us." Novarino adds that "Mary, in the greatness of her desire to help us, cannot admit of delay, for she is in no way an avaricious guardian of the graces she has at her disposal as Mother of Mercy, and cannot do otherwise than immediately shower down the treasures of her liberality on her servants."
Oh, how prompt is this good Mother to help those who call upon her! Thy two breasts, says the sacred Canticle, are like two roes that are twins (Cant. iv. 5). Richard of St. Laurence explains this verse, and says, that as roes are swift in their course, so are the breasts of Mary prompt to bestow the milk of mercy on all who ask it. By the light pressure of a devout salutation and prayer they distil large drops." The same author assures us that the compassion of Mary is poured out on every one who asks it, even should it be sought for by no other prayer than a simple "Hail Mary." Wherefore Novarino declares that the Blessed Virgin not only runs but flies to assist him who invokes her. "She," says this author, "in the exercise of her mercy, knows not how to act differently from God; for, as He flies at once to the assistance of those who beg His aid, faithful to His promise, Ask, and you shall receive (John xvi. 24), so Mary, whenever she is invoked, is at once ready to assist him who prays to her. "God has wings when He assists His own, and immediately flies to them; Mary also takes wing when she is about to fly to our aid." And hence we see who the woman was, spoken of in the following verse of the Apocalypse, to whom two great eagle's wings were given, that she might fly to the desert. And there were given to the woman two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the desert (Apoc. xii. 14). Ribeira explains these wings to mean the love with which Mary always flew to God. "She has the wings of an eagle, for she flies with the love of God." But the Blessed Amadeus, more to our purpose, remarks that these wings of an eagle signify "the velocity, exceeding that of the seraphim with which Mary always flies to the succour of her children."
This will explain a passage in the Gospel of St. Luke, in which we are told that when Mary went to visit and shower graces on St. Elizabeth and her whole family, she was not slow, but went with speed. The Gospel says: And Mary, rising up, went into the hill country with haste (Luke i. 39). And this is not said of her return. For a similar reason, we are told in the sacred Canticles that her hands are skilful at the wheel (Cant. v. 14), meaning, says Richard of St. Laurence, "that as the art of turning is the easiest and most expeditious mode of working, so also is Mary the most willing and prompt of all the Saints to assist her clients." And truly "she has the most ardent desire to console all, and is no sooner invoked than accepts our prayers and helps us." St. Bonaventure, then, was right in calling Mary the "salvation of all who call upon her," meaning, that it suffices to invoke this Divine Mother in order to be saved; for, according to Richard of St. Laurence, she is always ready to help those who seek her aid. "Thou wilt always find her ready to help thee." And Bernardine de Bustis adds that "this great lady is more desirous to grant us graces than we are desirous to receive them."
Evening Meditation
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PASSION OF JESUS CHRIST
I.
The Prophet David predicted many circumstances, and in great detail, respecting the Passion of Jesus Christ. Especially in the twenty-first Psalm he foretold that Jesus would be pierced with nails in His hands and in His feet, and that they would be able to count all His bones. He foretold that before He should be crucified, His garments would be stripped from Him and divided among the executioners. He spoke of His outer garments, because the inner vestment, which was made without seam, was to be given by lot: They parted my garments amongst them, and upon my vesture they cast lots (Ps. xxi. 19). This Prophecy is recalled both by St. Matthew and St. John (Matt. xxvii. 35; Jo. xix. 23).
David also foretold what St. Matthew relates respecting the blasphemies and mockeries of the Jews against Jesus Christ while He hung upon the Cross: They that passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, Vah, thou that destroyest the temple of God, and in three days dost rebuild it, save thy own self; if thou be the son of God, come down from the cross. In like manner also, the chief priests, with the scribes and ancients, mocking, said: He saved others, himself he cannot save; if he be the king of Israel, let him come now down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God, let him now deliver him if he will have him; for he said: I am the Son of God (Matt. xxvii. 39-43). All this was in accordance with what David had foretold: All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn; they have spoken with the lips and wagged the head. He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him, let him save him seeing he delighteth in him (Ps. xxi. 8, 9).
II.
The Royal Prophet further foretold the great pains Jesus would suffer on the Cross in seeing Himself abandoned by all, and even by His own, except St. John and the Blessed Virgin; while His beloved Mother, by her presence, would not lessen the sufferings of her Son, but rather increased them through the compassion He felt for her, in seeing her thus afflicted by His death. Thus our suffering Lord, in the agonies of His bitter death, had none to comfort Him. This also was foretold by David: I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none; and for one that would comfort me, and I found none (Ps. lxviii. 21). The greatest suffering, however, of our afflicted Redeemer consisted in His beholding Himself abandoned by His Eternal Father, upon which He cried out, according to the prophecy of David: O God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins (Ps. xxi. 2), as though He had said, "O my Father, the sins of men, which I call My own, because I have taken them upon Me, forbid Me to be delivered from these sufferings which are ending My life; and why hast Thou, O My God, abandoned Me in this My great agony?" To these words of David correspond the words which St. Matthew records as uttered by Jesus upon the Cross a little while before His death: Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani? that is: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. xxvii. 46).
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| FDA Drops Ivermectin Bombshell |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-11-2023, 02:44 PM - Forum: Health
- No Replies
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FDA Drops Ivermectin Bombshell
ZH [not all hyperlinks included from original] | AUG 11, 2023
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Doctors are free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a lawyer representing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said this week.
“FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The government is defending the FDA’s repeated exhortations to people to not take ivermectin for COVID-19, including a post that said “Stop it.”
The case was brought by three doctors who allege the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements.
A federal judge dismissed the case in 2022, prompting an appeal.
“The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,” Jared Kelson, representing the doctors, told the appeals court.
The FDA on Aug. 21, 2021, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter:
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
The post, which linked to an FDA page that says people shouldn’t use ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19, went viral.
In other statements, the FDA said that ivermectin “isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19” and “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”
Command or Not
“FDA made these statements in response to multiple reports of consumers being hospitalized, after self medicating with ivermectin intended for horses, which is available for purchase over the counter without the need for prescription,” Ms. Honold said.
A version of the drug for animals is available, but ivermectin is approved by the FDA for human use against diseases caused by parasites.
Ms. Honold said that the FDA didn’t purport to require anyone to do anything or to prohibit anyone from doing anything.
“What about when it said, ‘No, stop it’?” Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, on the panel that is hearing the appeal, asked.
“Why isn’t that a command? If you were in English class, they would say that was a command.”
Ms. Honold described the statements as “merely quips.”
“Can you answer the question, please? Is that a command, ‘Stop it’?” Judge Elrod asked.
“In some contexts, those words could be construed as a command,” Ms. Honold said.
“But in this context, where FDA was simply using these words in the context of a quippy tweet meant to share its informational article, those statements do not rise to the level of a command.”
The statements “don’t prohibit doctors from prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID or for any other purpose” Ms. Honold said. She noted that the FDA, along with the statements, said that people should consult their health care providers about COVID-19 treatments and that they could take medicine if it was prescribed by the provider.
“FDA is clearly acknowledging that doctors have the authority to prescribe human ivermectin to treat COVID. So they are not interfering with the authority of doctors to prescribe drugs or to practice medicine,” she said.
Judge Elrod is on the panel with Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement and Don Willett. All three were appointed under President Donald Trump.
Federal Law
The plaintiffs are Drs. Paul Marik, Mary Bowden, and Robert Apter. They say they were professionally harmed by the FDA’s statements, including being terminated over efforts to prescribe ivermectin to patients.
Dr. Marik has noted that a number of studies support using ivermectin against COVID-19, as the FDA itself has acknowledged. Some other studies show little to no effect.
Federal law enables the FDA to provide information, such as reports of adverse reactions to drugs, but not medical advice, Mr. Kelson said.
“This is something the FDA has never been able to do. And it’s a bright line,” he told the court, adding later:
“The clearest examples of where they have gone over the line are when they say things like, ‘You are not a horse, you are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.'”
Judges indicated they agree that the FDA lacks the power to give medical advice; Judge Clement said, “You’re not authorized to give medical advice.”
But Ms. Honold said the government “isn’t conceding that in this case.”
She also argued that Congress has empowered the FDA to protect public health and make sure regulated products are safe and effective, giving it the “inherent authority to further its mission by communicating information to the public about safe uses of drugs.”
A ruling in favor of the doctors would prevent the FDA from reporting on consumers suffering after cooking chicken with NyQuil or that opioid addiction is a problem, she claimed.
Mr. Kelson said that wasn’t accurate. “It’s when they step beyond that [and] start telling people how they should or should not be using approved drugs,” he said.
Ms. Honold also said that the courts can’t hold agencies accountable when they provide false or misleading information: “The FDA is politically accountable, just like all other executive agencies.”
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| UN Chief: Christians Who Don’t Accept MAPs Will Be Excluded From Society. |
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Posted by: ThyWillBeDone - 08-10-2023, 12:58 PM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
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UN Chief: Christians Who Don’t Accept MAPs Will Be Excluded From Society.
The United Nations has warned Christians that if they do not fully embrace the legalization of pedophilia, they will be excluded from participating in society.
In a disturbing new declaration, UN expert Victor Madrigal-Borloz says religious freedom can only be tolerated if religious people fully embrace the globalist agenda, including radical LGBTQ+ ideology.
The LGBTQ+ ideology the UN is pushing originates from a report issued earlier this year that calls for the decriminalization of sex between adults and minors.
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/un-chief-chri...om-society
T.me/LetThereBeLightNow
T.me/LetThereBeLightChat
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| Archbishop Viganò: Pope Francis wants to create a ‘schism’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-09-2023, 05:04 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Archbishop Viganò: Pope Francis wants to create a ‘schism’ by excommunicating Latin Mass devotees
Pope Francis 'has placed in key positions in the Roman Curia those characters who guarantee the worst possible management of the dicasteries entrusted to them, with the worst possible result and the greatest damage to the ecclesial body,' Viganò said.
![[Image: Vigano_and_Pope_Francis-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Vigano_and_Pope_Francis-810x500.jpg)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Pope Francis
Mon Jul 24, 2023
(LifeSiteNews [emphasis mine - slightly adapted]) –– The outspoken former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has argued that Pope Francis is looking to corral devotees of the traditional Mass into the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and then excommunicate the Society.
Speaking with veteran Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli in a July 15 interview, Archbishop Viganò commented on the recent cardinal-designates announced by Pope Francis and the Pope’s moves against the traditional Mass.
The archbishop stated that the Pope was looking to “create the premises for a schism, which he denies and deplores in words, but which he has been preparing for some time.”
Such a move, argued Viganò, would be “to separate, in one way or another, the good part of the faithful and clerics from the official Church; and to achieve this, to ensure that they distance themselves from the modernist Sanhedrin, he [Pope Francis] has placed in key positions in the Roman Curia those characters who guarantee the worst possible management of the dicasteries entrusted to them, with the worst possible result and the greatest damage to the ecclesial body.”
To this perceived end, Viganò suggested that the Pope’s restrictions on the traditional Mass were part of a larger move aimed at orchestrating a de facto schism.
This could be achieved by channelling traditional Catholics into the SSPX, he argued, and then issuing an “intolerable provocation” that would “force at least one faction of the Society of Saint Pius X to distance themselves from Bergoglian Rome, sanctioning the ‘excommunication’ of traditionalism, no longer represented within the official Church, if it ever was.”
He argued:
Quote:The progressive restrictions on the celebration of the ancient liturgy serve to confine conservatives to hunting reserves, in order to then channel them towards the Society of Saint Pius X, as soon as the Synod leads the doctrinal, moral and disciplinary changes that are in the pipeline to their tragic consequences, causing an exodus of Catholics into what, after the suppression or normalization of the Ecclesia Dei Institutes, will become the “monopolist” of Tradition.
But at that point — that is, when the traditional Catholics have migrated into the Society and its leaders believe they have won a victory over the competition from the suppressed Summorum Pontificum — a new intolerable provocation will force at least one faction of the Society of Saint Pius X to distance themselves from Bergoglian Rome, sanctioning the “excommunication” of traditionalism, no longer represented within the official Church, if it ever was. For this reason, in my opinion, it is important to maintain a certain fragmentation, in order to make the malicious maneuver of expelling traditional Catholics from the ecclesial body more complex.
Highlighting Pope Francis’ promotion of heterodox prelates—such as Cardinal-designate Victor Manuel Fernández—Viganò stated that the Pope’s aim is “to create confrontation, let it grow, encourage the supporters of the most extreme requests with appointments and promotions.” This, he stated, would lead to a “predictable reaction of condemnation” from the “few good remaining bishops, priests, and religious,” who by doing so would encounter “Bergoglio’s trap door.”
They would then “have two choices: either to return to suffer in silence, or or to stand up, denounce the betrayal of Catholic Truth, and be forced to leave one’s post and exercise the ministry clandestinely or at least in apparent canonical irregularity.”
By this method, “the Bergoglian hierarchy will be able to exercise full control over the clergy and people, certain of the obedience of those who remain,” Viganò argued. “And this sect, which will only have the name of Catholic (and perhaps not even that anymore), will totally eclipse the Bride of the Lamb, in the paradox of a traitorous and corrupt Hierarchy that abuses Christ’s authority to destroy his Church.”
The archbishop expanded on these statements in a subsequent conversation with Valli, in which Viganò recalled how Pope Francis had already stated “I am not afraid of schisms.” Viganò commented:
Quote:And while he [Francis] stated that “schismatics always have one thing in common, they detach themselves from people, from the faith of the people, from the faith of the people of God,” he added: “The morality of ideology leads you to rigidity, and today we have so many schools of rigidity within the Church, which are not schisms, but they are pseudo-schismatic Christian ways that will end badly: when you see rigid Christians, bishops, and priests, there are problems behind them, there is not the sanity of the Gospel.” As usual, he accused Catholics of doing what he himself was about to do.
Referring to Pope Francis’ July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Archbishop Viganò argued that the text was a means to effect such a plan of fomenting a schism. To this, he added the current practice of how “the Vatican does not hesitate to limit the rights of Bishops to prevent them from helping certain traditional communities to survive, [and] it significantly extends the rights of other Bishops beyond the law – by sanating the irregularities and abuses of its own lackeys – whenever it serves to suppress and persecute such communities.”
“To this we may add the Constitution Vultum Dei Quærere and the Instruction Cor Orans, with which Bergoglio has deprived monastic communities of their autonomy and arranged them into federations under the strict control of ultra-progressives – along with Chinese-style reprogramming – of the self-styled Dicastery for Religious,” he continued.
What about an impending schism?
When questioned by Valli about what devotees of the traditional liturgy and faith should do when such devotion is deemed to be increasingly hostile to the current Vatican program, Viganò outlined an image of an abducted Church. He stated that since the Second Vatican Council “we have become accustomed to seeing the authority of the Pastors used against the faithful and against the Church herself, all while maintaining an appearance of formal legitimacy.”
Quote:The “Council” itself – the only Council that is dear to the heart of the Modernists, because it is the only one of which they are the architects and that has nothing Catholic about it – was a colossal deception against the ecclesial body, because it maintained the authority of an Ecumenical Council while fraudulently insinuating heretical doctrines; it maintained the authority of the Council Fathers and the Roman Pontiff precisely as it was being used to demolish the Catholic edifice; it imposed blind and servile obedience to norms in contrast with the uninterrupted and immutable Magisterium.
Addressing the “abolition of the traditional Liturgy,” which he said was “intended by Paul VI using his apostolic authority,” Viganò described this action as “a fraud.”
And the current attempt to cancel Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum with an analogous Motu Proprio – apparently carrying the same canonical efficacy – is no less malicious.
Such an action – meaning Traditionis Custodes – is intended for the “ruin” of the Church and of souls, argued the outspoken prelate:
Quote:Its aim is not the good of the Church and the salvation of the faithful, but the ruin of both. On the other hand, even the accusation of blasphemy that the Sanhedrin brought against Our Lord had all the appearances of a formally unexceptionable action, even though it was intrinsically illegitimate and null, because it was used against the Divine and Innocent Legislator.
He alluded to Pope Francis’ campaign against the traditional liturgy as a form of “authoritarianism,” by which an individual governs in his own name but “not because he is a vicar of the authority of Christ.”
“This makes it a subversive power,” he said, “unchained from any duty to conform itself to the will of Christ in pursuing the common good, and for this reason it is inexorably destined to transform itself into hateful tyranny.”
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| Major Australian Banks Are Going Cashless - Forced Acceptance Of CBDCs Next? |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-08-2023, 05:11 AM - Forum: Global News
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Major Australian Banks Are Going Cashless - Forced Acceptance Of CBDCs Next?
ZH AUG 07, 2023
The core problems of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have been addressed many times here, but it may bear repeating these two facts - First, in a cashless society all privacy in trade is lost, and second, banks and governments will control access to all of your money. If such a system is allowed, it will act as a major stepping stone to technocratic authoritarianism. It's inevitable.
The Australian government and central bank have been involved in a beta test for the past year with the proliferation of CBDCs in mind. Their partnership projects with the Bank for International Settlements and pilot programs with companies like Mastercard are about to wrap up this fall, and it looks as though Aussie bureaucrats are planning to implement their cashless system very quickly after the trial run is finished.
In defense of CBDCs officials suggest that Australians are already shifting into a cashless society, citing the fact that the population went from 32% using cash to only 16% using cash in the span of three years. Of course, what they don't mention is that Australia's aggressive and draconian covid lockdowns and mandates since 2020 pushed the public into relying more on digital and online purchases.
Already, the top four banks in the country are removing over the counter cash withdrawals at most of their branches. "Special centers" will be put in place for "more complex banking needs including cash" but the overall trend will be the reduction of paper money, forcing the populace to go fully digital.
The use of CBDCs by the establishment to control the flow of money is tied directly to social engineering programs. As members of the World Economic Forum have openly admitted, governments could program CBDC usage to prevent purchases of items they deem to have a negative social impact. These restricted items could be anything from ammunition to meat. In other words, they don't have to officially "ban" certain products, all they have to do is make it impossible to buy them.
But the micromanagement goes well beyond this. There are plans to make CBDCs that "time out," compelling the public to spend them before they expire. There is also the issue of social credit scoring, which has been established in China and is creeping into western institutions. What if one day the powers-that-be decide that certain speech and certain beliefs cause "harm" to the greater collective and must be suppressed through monetary penalties? This could result in limitations on how you can use your bank account everytime you make a comment they don't like on social media. Or, it could result in your account being frozen for a period of time until you publicly apologize for your statements.
It makes sense that Australia would be one of the first western nations to adopt the cashless structure. The government was rather successful in enforcing extreme covid lockdowns with minimal public resistance, to the point that citizens in cities were under house arrest and were not even allowed to go to the parks or beaches in many cases. It's likely the the establishment sees Australians as an easy target for the first volley of cashless controls.
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| 'Disease X': UK scientists begin developing vaccines against new pandemic |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-07-2023, 06:42 AM - Forum: Health
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'Disease X': UK scientists begin developing vaccines against new pandemic
The work is being carried out at the government's high-security Porton Down laboratory complex in Wiltshire.
SkyNews | 7 August 2023
UK scientists have begun developing vaccines as an insurance against a new pandemic caused by an unknown "Disease X".
The work is being carried out at the government's high-security Porton Down laboratory complex in Wiltshire by a team of more than 200 scientists.
They have drawn up a threat list of animal viruses that are capable of infecting humans and could in future spread rapidly around the world.
Which of them will break through and trigger the next pandemic is unknown, which is why it's referred to only as "Disease X".
Sky News was escorted around the site, which is run by the UK Health Security Agency, to see the work being done in high-containment labs.
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, the head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), told Sky News: "What we're trying to do here is ensure that we prepare so that if we have a new Disease X, a new pathogen, we have done as much of that work in advance as possible.
"Hopefully we can prevent it [a pandemic]. But if we can't and we have to respond, then we have already started developing vaccines and therapeutics to crack it."
The Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre at Porton Down has been expanded to take on the work.
Originally, it was focused on COVID and testing the effectiveness of vaccines against new variants.
But scientists at the centre are now involved in monitoring several high-risk pathogens, including bird flu, monkeypox and hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents.
![[Image: skynews-porton-down-vaccination_6242399....0806152750]](https://e3.365dm.com/23/08/2048x1152/skynews-porton-down-vaccination_6242399.jpg?20230806152750)
File photo of a high containment lab at Porton Down
One early success is the world's first vaccine against Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a disease that's spread by ticks and has a fatality rate of 30%.
Early-stage clinical trials have just started, with 24 volunteers expected to test the jab.
The disease is becoming more common in Europe as global temperatures rise and some travellers have returned to the UK with the infection.
UK scientists have begun developing vaccines as an insurance against a new pandemic caused by an unknown ‘Disease X’. The work is being carried out at the government’s high-security Porton Down laboratory complex in Wiltshire by a team of more than 200 scientists.
Prof Harries said climate change and population shifts are making another pandemic more likely.
"What we're seeing is a rising risk globally," she said.
"Some of that is because of things like urbanisation where you may get virus jumping into humans [living close-by], as we've seen with bird flu.
"And some of it is because of climate change where you get things like ticks and mosquitoes moving to where it was previously cold and is now becoming increasingly warm.
"So this is a growing risk agenda. But it's one we can use our science actively to prevent human impact."
Bird flu is currently thought to be the most likely pandemic threat.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says at least 30,000 seabirds have died around the UK this summer as a more virulent strain of the H5N1 virus has swept around the world.
There is also evidence of limited spread in some mammals.
Bird flu is currently thought to be the most likely pandemic threat. The RSPB says at least 30,000 seabirds have died around the UK this summer as a more virulent strain of the H5N1 virus has swept around the world.
![[Image: skynews-bird-flu-vaccine-porton-down_624...0806201357]](https://e3.365dm.com/23/08/2048x1152/skynews-bird-flu-vaccine-porton-down_6242757.png?20230806201357)
Bird flu is currently thought to be the most likely pandemic threat
And four people working on poultry farms in the UK have also tested positive, but were only mildly affected.
The UKHSA has started monitoring people in close contact with birds in case it can spread without causing symptoms.
The agency is part of a global effort to develop a vaccine within 100 days of a new pathogen being recognised as having pandemic potential.
"Historically, that would be unheard of," said Prof Harries.
"It would normally take five or 10 years. For COVID it was around 360 days.
"So this is a really high ambition. But for some viruses, it is definitely possible."
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