It is often said that pride is the sin of our age.
So often said, that perhaps we have never meditated on what that means or surveyed how true that saying is.
The word, “pride” can signify a sin, a vice, or the esteem for a thing, as in “I take pride in my Alma Mater.”
Of the sin, it is true that pride was the first sin of the first created person: Lucifer. “I shall not serve” (Jerimiah 2:20), is the scriptural phrase oft quoted by the Fathers and Doctors and Saints and attributed, by accommodation, to Lucifer’s sign of rebellion.
Saint Bonaventure gives a wonderful meditation on this, in his tract on demonology. Therein, he says that it was in the insistence not to serve God, that Lucifer consummated his sin of pride. This is because pride is the vice which first moves the spirit to go out of its proper place and seek a higher place. Since the Angels were created to serve God, there could be no rebellion or pride in an Angel except he refuse to serve God.
The first effect, therefore, of the vice of pride, is to omit the divine service or worship of God.
This is because, the proper and just relationship of every creature to the Creator is one of a just recognition of the dependence of the creature upon the Creator in all things, a generous expression and manifestation of gratitude to the Creator and a diligent and exact worship of God in mind and heart and action, and thus the zealous service or obsequium of God.
Contrariwise, the effects of the vice and sin of pride are first to consider that the creature is NOT dependent upon God, and thus to omit the just recognition of that dependence, to omit a generous expression and manifestation of gratitude as a dependent and subject creature to the Creator, and thus to omit a diligent and exact worship of God in mind and heart and action, and consequently to omit the zealous service of God.
The self-evident characteristics of pride, when recognized, are a powerful measure by which one can recognize pride in one’s self and in our present age.
Let us take these characteristics and use them to measure what has happened in the Church in the last 60 years, and let us follow these considerations to their most impolitical but true conclusions.
Pride is the cause of its own downfall
For his sin of pride, Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, and all those angels who followed him in that sin, with him.
This casting out was formally an act of the Divine Justice: God did actually order and command and expel them from Heaven.
But for mankind, after his fall, pride is the cause of his own downfall, even without the intervention of God — though God does intervene and punish it — because it leads of itself to the ruinous disorder of man in his own mind, in his own heart, in his own person and body and relation to human society and with God.
The effect of Pride in the Church
Thus, even in the Church, the sin of pride has its own effect, even though God spiritually and temporally and eternally punishes this sin, which is mortal ex genere suo and secundum se.
It is mortal from its own very genus (ex genere suo), because it directly opposes the Divine Will which orders all things wisely and puts all in their proper place. Its mortal according to itself (secundum se), because it of necessity destroys the spiritual life.
Now the truth of the Church, obviously, like all things which pride corrupts, must be directly attacked by the pride of Catholics. The truth of the Church, however, is that She was founded by Jesus Christ as the ark of salvation and the only true religion for mankind.
When pride is introduced into the very life of the Church Militant, it must, humanly speaking, undo the truth of the Church. And the worst sin of pride which could be introduced into the Church is the pride which would attack Her most directly and intimately.
Vatican II as the consummate sin of Pride
Now the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, as Pope Pius XII taught, the Holy Spirit, Her quasi-soul. As is seen in the history of the Church, in moments of crisis, the Holy Spirit has raised up holy Saints and Doctors and Popes who have called councils to condemn errors and restore disciplines.
Now a general principle of ever creature is that it depends upon God not only for its creation, or existence, but also for its essence, nature and form; and not only for these its first being (esse primum), but also for its second being (esse secundum), that is, its actions. This does not mean that creatures are puppets who act when God commands, but that creatures on the natural level cannot do anything unless God either permits or commands; and in the supernatural world, creatures cannot do anything meritorious of eternal life unless God permits AND commands.
For this reason, if God wills that a Council be called, He gives the grace; if it is accepted and is called, He will see that it accomplishes His will, though men must cooperate. However, contrariwise, if God does NOT call a council, NO matter how many men collaborate, whether as saints or sinners, that Council cannot produce good fruit supernaturally speaking.
After 60 years, anyone with a sense of honesty must admit that something is wrong with Vatican II and its implementation. That leads to the obvious conclusion that pride has entered into the mix somewhere.
As a matter of historic fact, however, it can be confirmed that pride had everything to do with Vatican II.
First, because a council to reunite all Christians was first promoted at the international Convention of Masonic Lodges in Istanbul, when Archbishop Roncalli was the Apostolic Nuncio in Greece. At that conference, the Greek Patriarch was persuaded to accept the suggestion. He visited with Roncalli and suggested it to him. And afterwards Roncalli admitted this to his private secretary. Years later when Roncalli was elected Pope and took the name John XXIII he called Vatican II for precisely this reason.
So the inspiration for Vatican II came from the Masonic Lodges, whose three-headed God, is a devil. Hence, the inspiration for Vatican II does not come from God, but from a demon of pride. Hence the true spirit of Vatican II must be a demon of pride, not the Holy Spirit, because God does not baptize the work of demons.
Pride visible in the act by John XXIII to call Vatican II
That pride was visible at Vatican II is obvious to all who honestly look at the history of the Council.
First, John XXIII called the Council without any reason to do so.
Second, he called a Council which he personally knew was suggested to him by the Freemasons.
Third, he called a Council to change things which the Holy Spirit had already ratified in previous councils and through Sacred and Ecclesiastical tradition and the abundant fruitfulness of the Church living and promoting these things.
In this way, the pride of John XXIII offended the entire Holy Trinity. Because God the Father is the author of order and reason, not of whims and chance; God the Son is the Head of the Church, not the Freemasons; God the Holy Spirit is the Lord and vivifier of the Church, not the Pope.
A pope cannot just will something to happen supernaturally and it happens. He is not God. And to act in this way is a sin of consummate pride, because it presupposes that one is God, when one is not God.
Pride visible at the Council
That pride was visible at the Council can be seen in this: that for the Bishops of the world to convene for a council when there was no reason and to consider changing what had no need to be changed, and to presume to do this without any sign of God, relying only on the whim of a pope who is not God, is consummate pride.
To abandon carefully prepared schemata for the Council on a whim vote, is consummate pride, because certainly the best theologians working for 2-4 years are more able to prepare texts than a mix of good and bad theologians working hastily for a compromise.
To insult learned and holy Cardinals during the Council by denying them the microphone and cheering their removal from the podium, is consummate pride, because it attacks the better and exalts the mediocre.
To vote on documents which are dozens of pages long in Latin, when one has little knowledge of Latin, and to do so in a few weeks before having accurate translations, is consummate intellectual pride and wilfulness.
To call such a council “ecumenical”, “dogmatic”, “sacred”, “sacrosanct”, “infallible” or “pastoral” is also consummate pride, because it is a lie to call such a gathering any of these things.
To approve such documents and insist they then become the very norm of ecclesial renewal, is consummate pride, because it exalts the whims and haste of clergymen over the Headship of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the Church.
Pride visible in the Conciliar Texts
Consummate pride is also visible in the very texts of the Council.
It is a work of pride to change discipline before defining doctrine. But this is what Sacrosanctum concilium, the document on the liturgy did.
It is a work of pride to exalt Divine Revelation, all the while asserting one’s authority to change everything in the Church which was founded in fidelity to Divine Revelation. But this is what Dei Verbum did.
It is a work of pride to praise the pursuit of the perfection of Divine Charity, all the while setting up roadblocks and instituting processes for the breakdown and dissolution of the very communities dedicated by vow to pursue this: religious communities. But this is what Perfectae Charitatis did.
It is a work of pride to assert anyone can be saved apart from Christ and apart from His Church. But this is what Nostra Aetate did.
And one could go on and on about nearly all the Vatican II documents.
Pride visible in the Aggiornamento
Consummate pride is clearly visible in every aspect of the Aggiornamento.
First, it is visible in the very name of the renewal and application of the Council: “aggiornamento”, which is Italian for “updating”, as if the Church whose very quasi soul is the Lord and Vivifier, the Creator Holy Spirit, could be in need of updating, that is could be old or decrepit; or could be in need of being up to date with the world, though She is the immaculate Bride of God!
Second, consummate pride is visible in documents of the Aggiornamento, which cite only the Council or Scripture in the “light of the council”, as if the Catholic religion now consisted in living by the conciliar texts, just as the Church before Council lived by Sacred Scripture.
Third, consummate pride is visible in the very history and course of the Aggiornamento, in which though despite 70 years of statistical and moral proof of failure and sterility, the Sacred Hierarchy pursues loyalty to the Council even to the destruction of all souls and institutions.
Fourth, consummate pride is the very spirit of the Aggiornamento, because all addicted to it refuse to repent, to recognize their spirit as prideful, and to admit any change of course is now a moral obligation.
In short, Vatican II allowed to enter into the Church the spirit of luciferian pride and the Aggiornamento and the Sacred Hierarchy have made this diabolic spirit the official religion of the Catholic Church.
Some examples of Pride in the daily life of the Church
It is consummate pride to offer the Divine Sacrifice while turning your back to God (versus populum).
It is consummate pride to obstruct, prevent and forbid that a priest offering sacrifice to God face God (ad orientem).
It is consummate pride to put any temporal need or activity before the worship of God, by not opening Churches as early as possible, having mass in the morning, or opening them in the evening to end the day thanking God.
It is consummate pride for priests and religious to spend more time watching TV or eating than praying to God.
It is consummate pride to assert and insist that the laity receive the Most Blessed Sacrament in the hand, or in the Latin Rite, while standing.
It is consummate pride to move the Tablernacle which contains God, off the central axis of the Church and/or to hide it away from the faithful.
It is consummate pride to use secular or worldly music or instruments during Divine Worship.
It is consummate pride to use translations or liturgical texts which are ideologically manipulated in a sense incoherent and or opposed to Scripture, Tradition or the working of holiness in the Church as it has been for 1965 years prior to the close of Vatican II.
It is consummate pride to alter the Sacraments and to alter the rituals of the Mass.
It is consummate pride to alter marriage vows and the rules of religious orders founded by Saints and fruitful with numerous saints.
One could go one, endlessly, I think, but you get the idea.
What are you going to do about it?
Well, obviously, only to lament these problems, would be an act of pride, because as Catholics and God’s creatures we are obliged in justice to oppose pride and undo the works of pride.
But it would also be a work of pride to leave the Church.
It is a work of pride too to want only to manage the problem, or milk the problem, without seeking to cure the problem, as many groups and “Catholic” publications do without realizing it, perhaps.
It is also a work of pride to think or attempt to negotiate with a devil or compromise with pride and the works of pride.
The humble thing to do is 1: to completely reject what has come forth and been conceived in pride and to live one’s Catholic life as good Catholics lived before the Council, and 2: to strive to convince all other Catholics to do the same.
Rome, July 8, 2016 A.D.: His Eminence, Cardinal Sarah, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, has called upon all priests of the Roman Rite to return to praying the Mass ad orientem.
Ad orientem, is the Latin for “facing the East”. In matters liturgical, it means facing the Tabernacle placed at the center of the narthex of the Sanctuary, that is the point on the central axis between the High Altar and the back of the Church. Though, technically, in Major Basilicas, the doors of which open to the East, it means facing the main doors, as the Pope does at the Basilica of St. Peter and St. John Lateran, at Rome.
Ad orientem, means, thus, that the priest when he offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, would be facing away from the congregation, in most churches, and showing them his back.
Here are some sound reasons, to heed the Cardinal’s invitation:
He is the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, hence it must be presumed he has the Pope’s permission to issue this invitation, therefore, not to, would signify disrespect at the least, for proper ecclesiastical authority.
He is the most eminent member of the College of Cardinals from Africa, so not to heed his invitation might make some thing that one is a racist, like Cardinal Kasper.
Catholics and even all the Orthodox, have faced ad orientem, during Mass for 1965 years. The practice only was attacked after Vatican II, by the bad example of Paul VI, who tolerated and practiced this.
Ad orientem, has always been the liturgical law in the Roman Rite, even the rubrics presuppose this, but priests have been constrained by political forces in the Church, and often threaten gravely with spiritual, legal and physical violence if they kept this tradition.
This practice is more biblical, because when Our Lord Ascended into Heaven, He ascended into the East, and the Apostles and Disciples gazed for a long time to the East to see if Our Lord would immediately come back.
This practice is more eschatological, for when the Mass is offered in this direction, the whole congregation of the faithful show that they are awaiting the imminent return of the Lord, at the end of time.
This practice is more theological, because the Priest faces the Son and the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and the congregation worships the Triune God with the Priest.
This practice is more mystical, because the priest, and the congregation with him, turns to God, face to face, as Moses did on Mt. Horeb, when the living God revealed Himself for the first time, face to face to a human being.
This practice is more prayerful, since by facing in this way, there are less distractions, and the dialogue of prayer, which should be directed solely to God, is directed solely to God.
This practice is more priestly, because the priest has the intimacy of praying to God without distractions and with his own face veiled to the people, as it were, since they cannot see him face on; while the faithful join him in the same attitude of prayer, sharing in it in their own way.
This practice is more ecclesiological, because priest and faithful pray in the same direction in unity.
This practice is more pastoral, because it manifests evidently to all the faithful that the Mass is a prayer to God.
This practice will promote vocations, because men and altar boys will recognize more clearly that the role of the priest is not to be an actor before men, but a priest before God, and that the Mass is a solemn act of sacrifice and worship, not a stage for entertainment.
This practice will promote reverence, because facing God in this way removes all need for showing off to the congregation, and obstructs it.
This practice will promote mass attendance, because the faithful, wearied throughout the week by their mundane duties, will at last have the most important moment of their week, the prayer of the Canon of the Mass to themselves as a prayer time with God, their Lord, Savior and Redeemer, without distractions.
This practice will promote the restoration of the Ancient Liturgies of the Church, because the silly language and non reverential rubrics promoted by the Aggiornamento will be more easily seen for the discordant realities that they are.
But most importantly of all, Catholics always have prayed the Mass in this way, and if that or all these reasons are not enough, there is something gravely lacking in the faith of the local church and her pastors.
On behalf of the members of the International Association of the Faithful for the promotion and defense of the Catholic Faith, known as, « Veri Catholici », I welcome you to the International Conference to condemn the errors contained in the recent Post Synodal Exhortation on the Family, by Pope Francis, entitled: ‘Amoris Laetitia’
This conference is the first meeting of the Association and the first Conference we have sponsored. We have figuratively named it: A Pilgrimage of Grace & Mercy, because as Catholics from all over the world, we wanted to come to Rome in pilgrimage during the Holy Year of Mercy, to do a spiritual work of mercy which we believe is both necessary for the good and welfare of the entire Church universal, but in particular for the healing of the conscience of Our Holy Father, Pope Francis.
Indeed, the first duty of fraternal charity is to correct an erring brother. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, after his election as Roman Pontiff, does not cease to be our brother in Christ. And Christ Himself, when rebuked wrongly by Simon Peter, confirmed for us by His example, that charity can at times rightfully move us to correct a superior: for on that occasion Our Lord did not rebuke Peter for attempting to correct Him, but rather for having done so on the basis of worldly prudence. The Holy Spirit confirms this teaching by inspiring the Evangelists to record it, and by moving the Apostle St. Paul to rebuke Peter after Pentecost for his dissimulation.
This is the same reason we have been motivated to hold this conference to Condemn ‘Amoris Laetitia’. We expressly intend to avoid to speak according to worldly prudence and to reaffirm that we hold the faith which comes from the lips of the historic Christ through the preaching of the Apostles and the perennial Magisterium of the Church.
For it is not enough to consider whether Peter has spoken or not, to know if a Catholic should assent to his teaching. The Sacrosanct and Infallible Council of the Vatican, held during the reign of Bl. Pius IX confirmed that the office of teaching was not entrusted by Christ to His Church or to the Vicar of Christ, the Pope, that they might teach novelties, but only so that the self same doctrine which the Son of God handed down, through the Apostles might be forever believed in the same sense and terms throughout all the ages until the end of time.
From this there flows the theological truth, that even if a Pope should in private conversation affirm that what he has said or written is magisterial or infallible, nevertheless there remains the rule of Faith, whereby if what he has said or written in any aspect is discordant with it, a Catholic is not only not obliged to accept that, but to contradict it and give his reasons for such.
It is with this same spirit we have come together today, to speak the truth of the Catholic Faith as the Church has handed it down and to give an occasion to the Holy Father to examine his own conscience, while calling upon the entire Sacred Hierarchy and the whole body of Christ’s faithful to join us in doing the same, while praying for the immortal soul of Pope Francis, which is gravely jeopardized by the monstrous sin and scandal of signing the document, ‘Amoris laetitia’, even if he did not author it in part or in its entirety.
Finally, I will close this opening salutation, by thanking one and all who have helped this Conference be a reality, for the time, talent and treasure which they shared as members and friends of our Association, Veri Catholici. With especial thanks to the true daughter of St. John of Arc who made a very generous donation so that we could afford this Sala Magna for our conference, and to the individual donors who as of today have donated approx. 80% of the costs for it, but in particular to the translators who have worked with us since our founding in February of last year, and especially for this Conference, to bring to the world of Italian and Spanish speakers knowledge about what is being and will be said, here. I wish also to personally thank the volunteers who have agreed to read those texts in Italian and Spanish and the other languages, for the convenience of those who are attending via Video-Conference and who are following us via GOTO Meeting throughout the entire world.
9:20 The Crisis of Kasperism or the Heretical Conspiracy of Team Bergoglio
Never before in the history of the Church have we seen a case in which the friends of the Pope, while remaining his friends and continuing to receive his favors, openly accuse him of being part of a heretical conspiracy to overthrow the Catholic Faith and undermine the ecclesiastical discipline of the Church, which the Church Herself received from Christ and the Apostles.
The testimony of the Pope’s personal friends and collaborators cannot be ignored, by any means. For it is a self-evident principle of forensic analysis that the uncontested testimony of friends is the most probative of all evidence as to the intentions and character of an human person.
Thus, if what was said of the Pope by these friends were said by anyone else, it could be dismissed as slander, gossip or calumny. But in the case of his friends, so long as they are not publicly disapproved of, we must regard the testimony as true and act on it.
Long before the St. Gallen Mafia were formed — this is Cardinal Daneels name for the group of Cardinals who meet in 2005 at the Monastery of St. Gallen in Switzerland, to plot the ascension to power of Cardinal Bergoglio, during the conclave which elected, instead, Jospeh Cardinal Ratzinger — the theological leader of this group, Cardinal Kasper, was notorious for his stated and manifest plan to destroy the Catholic Church and Faith by means of a theological project which attempted to circumvent the principle of non-contradiction.
I speak of his Article which appeared in the London Tablet, on May 24, 2003, “So that all might be one? But how”. The Tablet has long since pulled that link, so I will make my comments from an unofficial Italian translation which appeared shortly afterwards on the net.
It was in that talk, that the Cardinal spoke significantly of the God of Surprises, saying:
Ma – e questo è il mio secondo punto – mi chiedo se sia utile in questo momento ricordare a noi stessi che lo Spirito Santo può non essere l’ente ingenuo che molti suppongono. Lo Spirito Santo come pioniere del movimento ecumenico ci chiama a riflettere sulla natura del nostro viaggio, poiché lo Spirito è dinamico, è vita, è libertà. Lo Spirito Santo ci può sempre sorprendere. In questa prospettiva, non è possibile tracciare una copia fotografica della futura unità della Chiesa. La luce emanata dallo Spirito Santo è simile a quella di una lanterna che illumina il nostro prossimo passo e che risplende soltanto se proseguiamo il nostro cammino.
The appeal to a God of Surprises, here identified with the Holy Spirit, was a clever theological trick to introduce novelty under the guise of inspiration, even though all the Catholic and Orthodox Fathers have forever condemned novelty in matters of faith or discipline.
A God of Surprises, however, is not the God of the Bible or of Holy Mother Church. He is rather a false and deceptive demon, who would have himself worshiped as the true God.
The reason for this is that the living God, who has revealed Himself, is not just a God of love and mercy, but also a God of fidelity. Indeed, just as in the time of Arius, and so throughout all the ages of the Church, every heresy or arch-heretic who has moved against the Church, has founded his error on a corrupted notion of one of the Names of God.
Some of the first heretics in the Church were the Anomians of Corinth. They held that since Christ had fulfilled the Law, not only the ritual precepts of Leviticus, but also all the moral precepts of the old Law were no longer binding on Christians. St. Paul rebuked them in his Letters. But this error has smouldered in the Church, appealing at times to the teaching of the Apostle St. John, who revealed another essential name of God, when he wrought, “God is Love”.
Like the Anomians of old, the Kasperites love to appeal to God’s Names. God is Love, God is Mercy, they say. Love is an essential name of God, because it reflects His very being as He is in Himself, apart from every other consideration. But Mercy is not an essential name of God, because mercy presupposes fault, and there is no fault in God.
The name of God which the Kasperites don’t want you to hear, is that God is Justice. Justice is an essential name of God, because God is perfectly just in Himself, in the inter-trinitarian relations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But God is both Justice and Mercy, because another of His true essential names is: Faithful Love. Indeed, when the Apostle St. John said God was love, he spoke in Greek, though it can be argued that he was thinking in Hebrew. That he thought in Hebrew even at the late date of his writing of the Book of the Apocalypse can be shown from the expression he uses there frequently: He who was, and is, and who is to come. This is because in Hebrew, the signification of verbs in relation to time differs from the western languages. Thus when we say in Italian, English, Latin or Greek, “I am who am”, we mean only that, but in Hebrew the same ancient expression found in the book of Exodus, which reproduces the exact quotation from God, when He spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai, means much more: For each verb can have three senses. was, is and will be. Thus the expression can mean, “I was who I was, I was who I am, I was who I will be”, and “I am who I was, I am who I am, and I am who I will be”, and finally, “I will be who I was, I will be who I am, and I will be who I will be”.
For this reason, when St. John the Apostle wrote, God is love, we can with greats probability argue that he meant the word “love”, not in the Greek sense of the word, “agape”, free love, but in the Hebrew sense of the word, which means “faithful love”.
Indeed, if we contemplate this Hebraic meaning we see that the entirety of Scripture and Tradition, all the perennial teaching of the Church, especially on the Sacraments, reflects this Name of the Triune God. God is Faithful Love.
Because God is Faithful Love, He is true to His promise to love, He is merciful and forgiving, because He prefers the salvation of all men, even if He has foreseen that many will ultimately reject Him. For that reason the God who is Faithful Love has created a hell, a purgatory and a heaven, to recompense each man according to his personal merits. A God who was only love and not fidelity, would never create hell, because He would not have to be faithful to His justice; He would not create a purgatory, because He would not have to be faithful to His mercy, and He would not create a Heaven, because there would be no necessity that He remain faithful to His love for us, through all eternity.
This name of God, that God is Faithful Love is denied by the thesis of Kasper that God is a God of surprises. A surprise is the work of an imperfect creature who aims to instill an emotional response by doing something out of the ordinary, to which His fidelity has no relation. He is a trickster and a deceiver, a worker of novelties and thus a tempter and a seducer.
Those who are experts in using the human kiss to seduce know these things well. For that reason it does not surprise me in the least bit that the famous journalist Sandro Magister should have discovered that key passages in the Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, were written by a self-proclaimed expert in the art and culture of the kiss.
But none of this impresses us who are true Catholics. Because we have learned from the God who is Faithful Love, that a violation of fidelity is a hateful and loathsome thing, to be shunned, lamented, vituperated and condemned.
And it is for this reason, that such Catholics despise and abhor much of what is contained in Chapter 8 of the Exhortation, though not only Chapter 8 is stained with error, because this Exhortation is an inducement against remaining faithful to the God who is Faithful Love, and seeks to convince Catholics that the God of Love is no longer Faithful, or that the Church of His Love does not have to remain Faithful.
The document, therefore, is an act of adultery and a call to adultery in the worse possible kind: not only to promote adultery among men and women, or in the Church, but of the Church Herself with the world, even though She be called to be and is the Immaculate ever Faithful and Loving Bride of Christ.
That the St. Gallen group should thus, be addicted to infidelity and false love, should not surprise us, having taken as they have Cardinal Kasper as their chief theologian. For them, therefore, it is nothing to violate the Papal Law against vote canvassing, a thing of which no one accused them except their own friends and members.
That the Cardinals and Bishops of the Church, heretofore, have not called out this conspiracy is very sad. But we hope that at the news of this present conference, they may harken to their duty, and show a faithful love to God by fulfilling it.
Finally, if you want to know more about the St. Gallen group or the Team Bergoglio scandal, just google those words in English for more information.
Our Lady of La Salette, on Sept. 19, 1846, revealed to 2 small children in the French Alps the future of the world until the end of time..
Here, the From Rome Blog, presents, on the left, the Original Italian text, approved by the Catholic Bishop of Lecce, Italy (where Melanie lived the last years of her life) in 1879, as an official part of the revelations of La Salette; on the right, our English translation.
The following are the words of Our Lady, at La Salette, as revealed to Melanie:
I governanti avranno tutti un medesimo progetto, che sarà di abolire e fare scomparire tutti i principi religiosi per sostituirli con il materialismo, l’ateismo, lo spiritismo, e ogni sorta di vizi.
The politicians will all have the same plan, which will be to abolish and cause to disappear religious principles to substitute them with materialism, atheism, spiritism, and every form of vice.
Nell’anno 1865 si vedrà l’abominio nei luoghi santi; nei conventi i fiori della Chiesa saranno putrefatti e il demonio diventerà come il re dei cuori.
In the year 1865, the Abomination will be seen in the holy places; in the convents the flowers of the Church will be corrupted and the Demon will be come the king of hearts.
Coloro che sono a capo delle comunità religiose si guardino dalle persone che esse devono ricevere, perché il demonio userà tutta la sua malizia per introdurre negli ordini religiosi delle persone dedite al peccato, perché i disordini e l’amore dei piaceri carnali saranno diffusi su tutta la terra.
Those who are at the head of religious communities are to take care regarding the persons they should receive, because the Demon will use all his malice to introduce into the religious orders persons who are addicted to sin, so that the disorders and love of carnal desires spread over all the earth.
La Francia, l’Italia, la Spagna e l’Inghilterra saranno in guerra: il sangue scorrerà per le strade; il francese combatterà contro il francese, l’italiano contro l’italiano, vi sarà poi una guerra generale che sarà spaventevole. Per qualche tempo Dio non si ricorderà piú della Francia né dell’Italia, perché il Vangelo di Gesú Cristo non è piú conosciuto.
France, Italy, Spain and England will be at war: blood will flow through the streets; Frenchman will fight against Frenchman, Italian against Italian, there shall be a universal war which will be horrible. For a time, God will no longer remember France or Italy, because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not longer recognized.
I malvagi userano tutta la loro astuzia; ci si ucciderà, ci si massacrerà reciprocamente perfino nelle case.
The wicked will use all their cleverness; here one will be slain, there one will be massacered even in their own home.
Al primo colpo della Sua spada fulminante le montagne e la natura tutta tremeranno di spavento perché i disordini e i crimini degli uomini trafiggono la volta celeste.
At the first strike of His flaming sword, the mountains and all Nature will tremble with terror on account of the disorders and crimes of men piercing the firmament of Heaven.
Parigi sarà bruciata e Marsiglia inghiottita; molte grandi città saranno scosse e inghiottite da terremoti; si crederà che tutto è perduto; non si vedranno che omicidi; non si sentiranno che colpi d’arma e bestemmie.
Paris will be burnt and Marseille will be gutted; many great cities will be shaken and gutted by earthquakes; one will come to believe that all is lost; there will be seen nothing but homicides; nothing will be heard but the clash of arms and blasphemies.
I giusti soffriranno molto, le loro preghiere, la loro penitenza e le loro lacrime saliranno fino al Cielo e tutto il popolo di Dio chiederà perdono e misericordia e chiederà il Mio aiuto e la Mia intercessione.
The just will suffer much, their prayers, their penance and their tears will rise up to Heaven and the whole people of God will ask for pardon and mercy and will ask My help and My intercession.
Allora Gesú Cristo con un atto della Sua misericordia grande per i giusti comanderà ai Suoi angeli che tutti i Suoi nemici siano messi a morte.
Then, Jesus Christ, with an act of His great Mercy for the just, will command His Angels to put all His enemies to death.
Improvvisamente i persecutori della Chiesa di Gesú Cristo e tutti gli uomini dediti al peccato moriranno e la terra diventerà come un deserto.
Suddenly, the persecutors of the Church of Jesus Christ and all men given up to sin will die and the Earth shall become as a desert.
Allora si farà la pace, la riconciliazione di Dio con gli uomini; Gesú Cristo sarà servito, adorato e glorificato; dappertutto fiorirà la carità.
Then, between God and men there shall be peace, reconciliation; Jesus Christ will be served, adored and glorified; everywhere charity will flourish.
I nuovi re saranno il braccio destro della Santa Chiesa, che sarà forte, umile, pia, povera, zelante e imitatrice delle virtú di Gesú Cristo.
The new kings will be the right arm of the Holy church, which will be strong, humble, pious, poor, zealous and an imitatrix of the virtues of Jesus Christ.
Il Vangelo sarà predicato dappertutto e gli uomini faranno grandi progressi nella fede perché vi sarà unità tra gli operai di Gesú Cristo e perché gli uomini vivranno nel timor di Dio.
The Gospel will be preached everywhere and men shall make great progress in the Faith because there will be unity among the workers of Jesus Christ and because men shall live in the fear of God.
Questa pace tra gli uomini non sarà lunga: venticinque anni di abbondanti raccolti faranno loro dimenticare che i peccati degli uomini sono causa di tutte le pene che arrivano sulla terra.
This peace among men will not be long: 25 years of abundant harvests will make them forget that the sins of men are the cause of all the punishments which befall the Earth.
Un precursore dell’anticristo, con le sue truppe di parecchie nazioni, combatterà contro il vero Cristo, il solo Salvatore del mondo, egli spargerà molto sangue e vorrà annientare il culto di Dio per farsi guardare come un Dio.
A precursor of the Antichrist, with his troops of many nations, will fight against the true Christ, the Only Savior of the world, he will spill much blood and will want to annul the worship of God to make himself seen as a God.
La terra sarà colpita da ogni sorta di piaghe, (oltre la peste e la carestia che saranno dovunque), vi saranno delle guerre fino all’ultima guerra, che sarà allora fatta da dieci re dell’anticristo, i quali re avranno tutti lo stesso progetto e saranno i soli a governare il mondo.
The Earth shall be struck by every kind of plague, (in addition to the pestilence and famine which will be everywhere), there will be wars until the last war, which will be started by the ten kings of the Antichrist, who will all have the same plan and will be the only ones to rule the world.
Prima che ciò succeda vi sarà una specie di falsa pace nel mondo; non si penserà che a divertirsi; i malvagi si abbandoneranno a ogni sorta di peccato; ma i figli della Santa Chiesa, i figli della fede, i miei veri imitatori crederanno nell’amore di Dio e nelle virtú che mi sono piú care.
Before this happens there will be the appearance of false peace in the world; one will think of nothing but of entertainment; the wicked will abandon themselves to every kind of sin; but the sons of the Holy Church, the sons of the Faith, My true imitators will believe in the love of God and in the virtues which are most dear to Me.
Felici le anime umili guidate dallo Spirito Santo! Io combatterò con esse fino a che esse saranno nella pienezza dell’età. La natura chiede vendetta per gli uomini ed essa freme di spavento nell’attesa di ciò che deve arrivare alla terra insudiciata dai crimini.
Happy shall the humble souls, guided by the Holy Spirit, be! I shall fight with them until they shall have come to full age. Nature seeks vengeance against men and She trembles with terror in expectation of what must befall the Earth, sullied by crimes.
Tremate terra e voi che fate professione di adorare Gesú Cristo e che dentro di voi adorate solo voi stessi; tremate perché Dio sta per consegnarvi al Suo nemico, perché i luoghi santi sono nella corruzione, molti conventi non sono piú le case di Dio, ma i pascoli di Asmodeo e dei suoi.
Tremble o Earth and you who profess to adore Jesus Christ but who within yourselves adore only your selves; tremble, because God is about to hand you over to His enemy, since the holy places are in corruption, many convents will no longer be houses of God, but pastures of Hasmodeus and his own.
Sarà durante questo tempo che nascerà l’anticristo da una religiosa ebrea, da una falsa vergine che sarà in comunicazione con il vecchio serpente, il padrone dell’impurità; suo padre sarà Vescovo, nascendo vomiterà delle bestemmie, egli avrà dei denti, in una parola sarà il diavolo incarnato; egli lancerà delle grida spaventose, farà dei prodigi, non si nutrirà che di impurità.
It will be during this time that the Antichrist will be born from Jewish nun, from a false virgin who will be in communication with the Ancient Serpent, the patron of impurity; his father will be a Bishop, at birth he will vomit forth blasphemies and bear teeth, in a word he will be the devil incarnate; he will shout out terrifying screams, he will work prodigies, he will be nourished on naught but impurity.
Egli avrà dei fratelli che, sebbene non siano dei demoni incarnati come lui, saranno dei figli del male; a dodici anni essi si faranno notare per le prodi vittorie che otterranno; presto essi saranno ognuno alla testa degli eserciti assistiti dalle legioni dell’inferno.
He will have brothers, who though they will not be demons incarnate like himself, will be sons of evil; at twelve years they will be known for the prodigious victories which they will obtain; soon they will each be at the head of armies assisted by the legions of the inferno.
Le stagioni saranno cambiate, la terra non produrrà che frutti cattivi, gli astri perderanno i loro movimenti regolari, la luna non rifletterà che una debole luce rossastra; l’acqua e il fuoco daranno al globo terrestre dei movimenti convulsi e degli orribili terremoti che inghiottiranno delle montagne, delle città.
The seasons will be changed, the earth will produce naught but bad fruits, the stars will lose their regular movements, the Moon will reflect naught but a weak reddish light; water and fire shall give to the globe of the Earth convulsive movements and horrible earthquakes which will swallow mountains, cities.
Roma perderà la fede e diventerà la sede dell’anticristo. I demoni dell’aria con l’anticristo faranno dei grandi prodigi sulla terra e nell’aria e gli uomini si pervertiranno sempre piú.
Rome will lose the Faith and will become the throne of the Antichrist. The demons of the air with the Antichrist will work great prodigies upon the Earth and in the air and men will become all the more perverted.
Dio avrà cura dei suoi fedeli servitori e degli uomini di buona volontà; il Vangelo sarà predicato dappertutto, tutti i popoli e tutte le nazioni conosceranno la verità.
God will take care of his faithful servants and of men of good will; the Gospel will be preached everywhere, all the peoples and all the nations shall know the truth.
There follows counsels given by Our Lady for perseverance and the apostolate.
Translator’s note: When God reveals the Majesty of His own Foreknowledge and Prescience of things to come, as a loving Father, desiring not to cast us into the twin errors of despair which arise from Fatalism (the error that says that all has been predetermined and what we do does not matter, since it all works toward that Fate) and Deism (the error which says God does not intervene in the affairs of men, and thus there is no need to shout out with ardent prayers for His help), He reveals future things under the veil of apocalyptic language, in which symbols are used for persons, things, ideas. In this way He manifests His Providential Love for those whom He has adopted in Christ and at the same time encourages us to meritorious action, while avoiding the paths of wickedness. The Blessed Virgin Mary, being a true daughter of the Most High, when She speaks of things future, out of Her love for Her faithful children, She imitates the Lord and speaks in symbolic language. Therefore, the correct way to understand this prophecy is not one in which all is taken literally, nor one in which it is taken only to be moral encouragement, but one in which each sign and symbol has the meaning given it in Scripture, where similar apocalyptic language is used. In this way, only those lead truly by God’s spirit and predestined by God to be of the Elect, can understand what is said. And this is right and just, because the message contained and the encouragement offered is for them alone.
Saturday afternoon. Preparations are in place for the whirlwind of weekend pastoral activities… leaving certain responsibilities on hold…when suddenly I start receiving so many cell messages that I will never have time to answer… “Father, did you see the latest?” “Father, now concubines can receive Communion!”, “Father, is there no such thing as mortal sin any more in the Church?”, “Father – is it a sin to live as brother and sister now?”, and so on.
I end up opting to put the device on airplane mode, to get a moment to write a few lines about the new Bergoglian encyclopedia “Amoris Laetitia”: The “joy of love”. It is an encyclopedia that attempts to be a Gospel, the “Gospel of the Family” … of the Bergoglian family, that is. The word-count of the four Gospels of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, comes to a total of approximately 76,000 words, in the Jerusalem version. The new “Bergoglian Gospel” (which we can consider an authentic 21st century apocryphal gospel), is over 60,000 words long, much longer than the three Synoptic Gospels all together. It’s confused verbosity – that, above all, causes confusion – has left all commentators, including the writer of these lines, in doubt as to whether or not it was worthwhile reading the whole thing, or to write anything about it…
To use the term “gospel” with respect to the recent document was not my idea, but rather what the author himself called it: “the Gospel of the Family” (AL 60, 63, 76, 200, 201). And we qualify it as “apocryphal”, since this is the term used for texts containing that mix realities and true doctrines with errors, lies and outright heresies. In the first centuries, they were normally the conceited writings of the Gnostics or Nicolaitans; for which reason their authors would attempt to ‘hide’ their identity in anonymity, as well maintain secrecy about their writings – hence the use of the Greek term ‘hidden’ to identify these writings: apókryphos (all hidden). But the Church has always witnessed the existence of apocryphal texts – full of verboseness, like certain dishes in which one notes nutritious and tasty ingredients buoying together with venomous elements in the same nauseating stew.
(Read the rest at the URL above: Many thanks to the priest from Rome, for this handy summary and refutation of Amoris Laetitia)
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Nota Bene: While it is good to critique the errors and deceits of this document, ‘Amoris Laetitia’, it remains morally necessary that these errors be condemned and the Document be recinded, its authors called to repentance and the Bishops of the world urged to these things.
And now there is a means to urge this: the #AL Conference in Rome, on June 25th, see Veri Catholici for more info.
The False Shepherd, a detail of the illumination from the mss. Douce 266 in the Bodleian Library
Rome, May 12, 2016 A.D: There is no greater and more radical challenge for the Christian believer than to take another as his Master.
Indeed, Christians are recognized by the fact that they regard Jesus Christ, and Him alone, as their Master, in accord with the scripture verse, in which Christ condemned the religious leaders of ancient Israel, Matthew 23:10 ff:
10 Neither be ye called masters; for one is you master, Christ. 11 He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
Indeed, its very tempting, in today’s world in which truth is up for grabs and violent political clashes are being waged on all sides, for the Christian to take an “I’m ok, you’re ok” view, that is, a “get along with everyone” kind of attitude, in which truth does not matter, only co-existence.
The Loadstone of Hope
The only problem is, that there is a vast difference between the man who thinks Christ is a religious teacher and the man who is loyal to Christ no matter what. First first regards Him as one might regard a philosopher: taking the man’s teachings here and there, according to his personal tastes and likes, but not as a rule of life.
The second regards Him as the Incarnate Son of God, apart from Whose teaching No man on Earth can escape eternal and perpetual damnation in the fires of Hell.
As St. Augustine said, “If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
Indeed, what distinguishes the Christian from all other men is Hope.
Hope is that theological virtue least spoke of today, because in modern times a proper understanding and appreciation of it has been so attacked in the minds of men, that nearly nobody appears to have it or cultivate it or use it.
Hope is that theological virtue which puts full faith and confidence in the promises of God for those who keep them. Its the most essential and key Christian virtue, given to us in Baptism, but cultivated only with good works. If you do not really hope that God will reward you for fidelity to Christ, then obviously you will not be faithful to Him. Likewise, if you think that you can manage for yourself the rules by which you will get into Heaven, there is no need for you to have hope in God’s promises, you can presume for yourself — a presumption which is both your ultimate self-deceit and the absolute guarantee of your own damnation.
All of this has an ecclesiological impact, that is, all of this effects the Church, what She is and your place in or outside of Her, who alone is the ark of Salvation, the Pillar of the truth, apart from AND outside of which no man woman or child can be saved.
The Temptation of Bergoglio
The great temptation presented by the election and presence of Bergoglio on the Apostolic Throne, then, is precisely this: the offer of a Church, of a Christianity, in which Christ is no longer The master, but merely a guide post from which one can wander here or there and remain a “christian” without fidelity and without the need to practice hope.
This temptation is offered the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests, the religious and the laity, is offered thus to the whole Church, because in Bergoglio they have, without any shadow of a doubt, a man who does not believe in Christ as his Sole Master, who does not love or tolerate the Church as Christ founded it or gave it, does not suffer the rules the Apostles, the Faithful Disciples of the Lord handed down to us, and is filled with compassion and love for the traitor who sold Christ for 30 shekels of silver.
To have a public manifest heretic on the throne of the Apostle Peter, and tolerate him, presents for every true Christian, the opportunity of pretense, to keep the name “Christian” or “Catholic” without any more obligation to Christ. Its the ultimate game-plan of Lucifer.
Either Bergoglio must Change or the Church has changed
Finally, if one were to accept this situation and the principles which erroneously lead to it, as have been briefly described here, it would be enough to end this article with the usual lament. Because with faith it is possible to lament these things, but with hope it is not possible to tolerate them. Nearly every author on the Internet today, and as far as we know, all the Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church since April 8, 2016, the date on which “Amoris Laetitia” what released, do not have or are not acting faithfully to Christian Hope.
For the man with Christian hope, would declare and manifestly insist and demand that Bergoglio be canonically reprimanded, and if refusing 3x, be declared to be in open schism with Christ and His Church, and self-deposed by reason of his malice and heresy against Him and His Bride, the Church, whose first duty is to keep herself immaculate and worthy of Him.
Either Bergoglio must change or the Church has in fact changed, because if he repents, the Church is saved in Her fidelity to Christ, and Christ is glorified above all human whim, even the human whims of the Roman Pontiff. But if Bergoglio does not change AND the Church tolerates him, it is the Church which has changed, She has committed adultery with Bergoglio, accepting him rather than Jesus Christ as Her spouse, the God above all other gods…
Fue el Papa Pío XI quien afirmó que “el comunismo es intrínsecamente perverso, y no se puede admitir que colaboren con el comunismo, en terreno alguno, los que quieren salvar de la ruina la civilización cristiana” (Encíclica Divini Redemptoris n.º 60).
Y fue el mismo Papa el que condenó también el nazismo en otra de sus grandes encíclicas, la Mit brennender Sorge (1937).
A la perversión moral en la que estamos hoy, no se llegó de la noche a la mañana.
Pensadores como Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-1778), Diderot (1713-1784), y los enciclopedistas gestaron la Revolución Francesa, algunos de los cuales negaban la existencia de Dios, o si la admitían, sostenían que Dios no tenía nada que ver con este mundo, “que Él le había dado cuerda como a un reloj, y lo había abandonado hasta que esa cuerda se acabe”. Lo que equivaldría por así decirlo, a que estamos solos, y concluyeron glorificando al hombre y el razonamiento humano con la ideología de la “autonomía de la razón”, su filosofía moral el deísmo, y denominaron a sus tiempos “el siglo de las luces”.
Los revolucionarios franceses, como seguidores del racionalismo llevaron sus enseñanzas a su lógica conclusión: asesinaron a sacerdotes y monjas, saquearon y profanaron iglesias, destruyeron imágenes, y hasta llegaron a entronizar a la actriz mademoiselle Aubryan, en la Catedral de Notre Dame, denominándola “la diosa razón”, una expresión idolátrica en su forma más beligerante.
Durante el reinado del terror de la Revolución Francesa, se utilizaron las iglesias como establos para demostrar el desprecio de los revolucionarios a la Religión Verdadera, el hombre sin fe rechazó a Dios y su Ley, y parecía haber ganado temporalmente.
La Revolución Francesa “fue una consecuencia de la negación y de las rupturas del siglo XVI, del enfriamiento de la fe durante el siglo XVII, de la exaltación de la razón en el siglo XVIII, y de la explotación de la rebelión por el poder de la francmasonería fundada en 1717 (…) Desde el siglo XVI sale el drama de la rebelión” (P. José de Sainte Marie). Aquí vemos prefigurado el materialismo del comunismo ateo.
El deísmo del siglo XVIII engendró el racionalismo del siglo XIX y éste produjo el humanismo secular del siglo XX en los Estados Unidos y el comunismo ateo en Rusia, donde Stalin en su búsqueda “de usurpar la autoridad de Dios por medio de la exaltación del hombre”, conllevó terribles sufrimientos y destrucción para el mismo hombre.
Piotr Kropotkin, “considerado como uno de los principales teóricos del movimiento anarquista, dentro del cual fue uno de los fundadores de la escuela del anarcocomunismo, y desarrolló la teoría del apoyo mutuo”, dijo que la Revolución Francesa fue “la fuente y el origen de todas las concepciones actuales comunistas, anarquistas y socialistas”.
El gran Papa León XIII, el Papa de la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia, condenaba así: “…aquella secta de hombres que, bajo diversos y casi bárbaros nombres de socialistas, comunistas o nihilistas, esparcidos por todo el orbe, y estrechamente coaligados entre sí por inicua federación, ya no buscan su defensa en las tinieblas de sus ocultas reuniones, sino que, saliendo a pública luz, confiados y a cara descubierta, se empeñan en llevar a cabo el plan, que tiempo ha concibieron, de trastornar los fundamentos de toda sociedad civil. Estos son ciertamente los que, según atestiguan las divinas páginas, ´mancillan la carne, desprecian la dominación y blasfeman de la majestad´ (Jdt. epist. v. 8)”.
En efecto, toda ideología, toda concepción política, todo gobierno que prescinda de Dios y del orden moral objetivo son “intrínsecamente perversos”, ya que afirman en la doctrina y en la práctica la autonomía soberana de la libertad.
Siguiendo la doctrina del Papa Pío XI en la encíclica “Divini Redemptoris”, quien condenó “los errores presentados bajo un falso sentido místico”, y del Concilio Vaticano II que advirtió “de esta especie de falseada redención de los más humildes” (GS 20-21), el Nuevo Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica (Nº 676), pone de aviso sobre los “mesianismos secularizados”: “esta impostura del Anticristo aparece esbozada ya en el mundo cada vez que se pretende llevar a cabo la esperanza mesiánica en la historia, lo cual no puede alcanzarse sino más allá del tiempo histórico a través del juicio escatológico: incluso en su forma mitigada, la Iglesia ha rechazado esta falsificación del Reino futuro con el nombre de milenarismo (cf. DS 3839), sobre todo bajo la forma política de un mesianismo secularizado, “intrínsecamente perverso”.
El cristiano no puede adherir a aquellos “sistemas ideológicos que se oponen radicalmente o en los puntos sustanciales a su fe y a su concepción del hombre: ni a la ideología marxista, a su materialismo ateo (…) ni a la ideología liberal” (Juan Pablo II, Carta apostólica en el 80º aniversario de la Rerum Novarum, Nº 26), estas corrientes buscan apoderarse de la religión, instrumentalizando a las iglesias para servirse de ellas con el fin de la destrucción de la religión y de la creencia en Dios (cf. Miguel Poradowski, el Marxismo en la Teología).
¿Será eso que Francisco, el actual Obispo de Roma quiso decir cuando exclamó: Pecadores sí, Señor, lo somos todos, ¡pero corruptos jamás!”?
(*) Director Nacional Pioneros de Abstinencia Total
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(Article reprinted with author’s permission, from the text at La Patria, Martes, 10 de mayo de 2016, Bolivia – Nacional).
Il paradosso delle interpretazioni contraddittorie di «Amoris laetitia» L’Esortazione Apostolica «Amoris Laetitia» (AL) pubblicata di recente, che contiene una grande ricchezza spirituale e pastorale per la vita nel matrimonio e nella famiglia cristiana della nostra epoca, purtroppo ha già in … Continue reading →
No difficulty can arise that justifies the putting aside of the law of God which forbids all acts intrinsically evil. There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in wedlock their chastity unspotted. –Pius XI, Casti Connubii
Introduction: Spreading Alarm
As Cardinal Burke has observed in an article appearing in the National Catholic Register, upon careful reading AMORIS LÆTITIA reveals itself to be “a personal, that is, non-magisterial” document, “a personal reflection of the Pope” that “is not confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium.” This is true enough, but perhaps not for the reasons the Cardinal expresses, as I show at the conclusion of this essay.
But that hardly eliminates the massive problem with this utterly unprecedented 256-page “apostolic exhortation.” What motivates all the pages to follow here is that Pope Francis has promulgated AmorisLaetitia as if it were an authentic and binding act of the Magisterium and that it will be treated as such by his collaborators and by ecclesial progressives throughout the Catholic world. AmorisLaetitia is, therefore, yet another addition to The Great Façade of pseudo-doctrines in the form of non-binding pastoral and disciplinary novelties and new attitudes and “approaches”—all emerging for the first time during that great epoch of enlightenment known as the Sixties. These include the new liturgy (which the faithful were never actually required to attend), “ecumenism,” “dialogue” and “interreligious dialogue.” Their combined effects have been ruinous.
And now this.A commentary at the Rorate Caeli blog site said what had to be said for the sake of truth: “There’s no other way to put it: The pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia is a catastrophe.” Voice of the Family likewise recognized what was immediately apparent from a reading of the critical Chapter 8: “Our initial overview provides sufficient cause to regard this document as a threat to the integrity of the Catholic faith and the authentic good of the family.”
Even normally middle-of-the-road commentators have not concealed their alarm over the document’s patent downgrading of Our Lord’s demanding teaching in the realm of sexual morality and Francis’s thematic argument that “mitigating factors” and “concrete situations” somehow convert mortally sinful adultery and fornication into mere “irregularities” falling short of the “ideal” of Christian marriage but nonetheless possessing “constructive elements.” See extended discussion atII.
EWTN’s show The World Over presented a politely devastating critique by Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal and Raymond Arroyo. The participants described passages to be examined here as “dangerous,” “very disturbing,” “very problematic,” “not the language of the Gospel,” “very odd,” “very strange,” “a big mistake,” “set[ting] up straw men to knock down,” “a direct contradiction of John Paul II in Familiaris consortio and subsequent documents,” “not in accord with what the Church has said until now,” “false mercy” favorable to “‘Father Friendly’ who wants to sell the store,” that would make receiving Communion “a badge of honor that you receive even you though you know what you are doing is contrary to the teaching of the Church,” and an “attempt to paper over what really is a change of doctrine… but denying that you’re changing the doctrine.” As Arroyo observed, according to the general tenor of the document “the exception becomes a very difficult rule, or no rule at all” while the Church, to quote Father Murray, becomes involved in “the excuse-making business, not the Gospel business.” Given the last word, Father Murray, citing the natural right of the faithful to voice their concerns as recognized by the Code of Canon Law, concluded:
As a Baptized member of the Catholic Church, in accord with my divine right to make known to my sacred pastors, the things which I see as necessary to the unity of the Church, the preservation of the Faith and the salvation of souls, I herewith submit this petition to the College of the Cardinals, as princes of the Roman Church, to whom it belongs both in law to elect the Roman Pontiff, and by immemorial right, to judge the man who holds the Pontificate if he err from the faith, and depose him, as Fr. Matthias a Corona taught in his, Tractatus Postumus (Liege, 1677), Tract I, Chapter XXI, n. II, “Whether the Cardinals have any power about the Pope?”:
A Pontiff, lapsed into heresy, can be most justly deposed. Thus Duvallius, above in q. 10. The reason is, that it is not credible that Christ wants to retain him as Vicar of His Church, who pertinaciously segregates himself whole from Her, since Christ has especially commanded Her, to hear His Voice as a faithful people, and to comply with Him, just as sheep hear the voice of their shepherd. John 10: 3: The sheep hear His Voice and they follow Him. Verse 4: The sheep follow Him. But far be it, only, that the Church should hear a Pontiff lapsed into heresy, She who rather is bound to stop up Her own ears against his violent speech, lest She be infected by the venom of his doctrine, and his casting-out and new election ought to be urged by the assembly of the Sacred Cardinals. The reason is, for, since the Pontiff is the fundament of the Church, the Rock, the Cornerstone, the Base, the Teacher, and the general Shepherd, his heresy abolishes all his privileges, and cancels (them), because he is a destroyer and scatterer of the Church, and consequently is no longer the Pontiff. And/or if he remains there, after he will have been judicially denounced as a heretic, he is to be immediately dispossessed of the Pontificate, if his heresy is external and manifest through the evidence of fact, and/or the declaration of a Council. But not if it be internal and only mental. The reason is, because he is no longer a member of the Church, nor Her head, nor does he cleave to Her by the internal union, which is through faith, nor by the external, which is through the confession of the Faith, and has been cut off from Her in each manner. A schismatic Pontiff incurs the same punishment, as Turrecremata, bk. 4, of Summa Ecclesia, part 1, ch. R1, says; Cajetan, II, II, q. 37, a. 1. Duvallius teaches above in q. 9, that he can enter into schism. First, if he no longer fulfills the office of the Pontiff, or does not wish to be subject to him, who would be elected in his place, but would join himself to the Conciliabula of the Schismatics. Second, if he should wish to change the ancient rites and customs of the Church, remaining from Apostolic tradition, or, rather, if he would pluck away and separate from the unity of the Church those wanting to retain these ceremonies. Third, if he would separate himself on account of an unjust cause from the communion of the whole Church and of all the Bishops, and at the same time will to communicate with certain adherents of his, as is shown in the divine Cyprian, bk. 4, epistle 2, Novatian did, who was pointed out by Cyprian a little after as a Schismatic, and outside the bosom of the Church. And though (this is to be deplored), he had patiently tolerated tyrants for Christ’s sake, Saint Cyprian wrote back that thereafter there was inflicted upon him a death outside the unity of the Church, not the crown of a Martyr, but the punishment of perfidy.
Mindful, that by the decree of Pope Paul IV, Cum ex apostolatus officio (Dec. 21, 1566), the College and indeed the entire Church is gravely bound to only choose and recognize as validly chosen a man of the Catholic Faith; and mindful that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has both before and after his election on March 13, 2013, expressed himself and acted in ways long condemned by the Apostolic See, as one of many faithful, I humbly ask you to fulfill your duty to protect the Church and the Apostolic see from corruption, by convening at a place chosen among yourself, to judge the questions:
1) Whether Jorge Mario Bergoglio was validly elected, in fulfillment of the decree of Paul IV, just mentioned,* inasmuch as prior to his election he promoted for years in Argentina the concession of communion to those in irregular marriages during the Curas Villeros (cf. Sandro Magister, “Francis’ Patient Revolution”, Expresso Online Oct. 24, 2014), which directly contradicts the teaching of the Council of Trent, Session 13, canon XI:
CANON XI.: If any one saith, that faith alone is a sufficient preparation for receiving the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist; let him be anathema. And for fear lest so great a sacrament may be received unworthily, and so unto death and condemnation, this holy Synod ordains and declares, that sacramental confession, when a confessor may be had, is of necessity to be made beforehand, by those whose conscience is burdened with mortal sin, howsoever contrite they may think themselves. But if any one shall presume to teach, preach, or obstinately to assert, or even in public disputation to defend the contrary, he shall be thereupon excommunicated.
Since, if he was subject to this censure, then in accord with the decree of Pope Paul IV, above mentioned (n. 6), he was invalidly raised to the dignity of the Cardinalate, and also invalidly elected Roman Pontiff.
2) If, however, you should judge that he was validly elected, I then ask you to judge whether he has lost the office of Roman Pontiff on account of his pertinacious denial of the Faith and/or his malicious manifest intent to persecute the faithful attached to the ancient ecclesiastical traditions, each of which is in violation of the anathema of the Second Council of Nicea, held in 787 A.D.: “If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema.” (4th Anathema on Holy Images), among which traditions are the celebration of the Ancient Roman Rite and the perennial practice of the Catholic Church, from Apostolic times, of refusing communion to adulterers and public sinners.
For, if he falls under this censure of Nicea, then likewise would his election be invalidated by the decree of Pope Paul IV.
3) Finally, even if the anathemas and canons, which Pope Paul IV declares valid in perpetuity (ibid. n. 2), would not be enough reason for any member of the Sacred College to convict the man of heresy or perfidious malice to overthrow ecclesiastical tradition, it remains a theological truth of the divine law and ecclesiology, that no one who seeks to harm the Church in anything essential, such as Her fidelity to Christ’s Magisterium, can be in communion with Her; and as such, even a schismatic, morally speaking, cannot be considered in communion with the Church, and thus should and must be removed from office. Wherefore, I ask you to judge whether he is morally in schism from the Church, regarding Her immemorial faith and practice which can never be changed.
Considering the gravity of what is petitioned, I the undersigned, for the love of Christ Jesus, request a diligent and thorough investigation and ask that you princes of the Sacred College gather to judge these matters in special meeting at a place chosen by yourselves.
Rome, April 9, 2016 A.D: The universal scandal given by and contained in the new Papal Post-Synodal Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Laetitia, cannot be tolerated in silence. It must be denounced. Numerous commentators throughout the world and Church have pointed out how it is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to the teaching of Christ, the Apostles and Apostolic Tradition on the matter of the discipline of the Sacraments and the nature and discernment of the gravity of sin.
What many have not noticed is that the entire argument advanced in Amoris Laetitia presupposes that Ecclesiastical Tradition is merely a human hand-me-down, left over from a darker more puritanical age, and that it does not come from Christ nor was it faithful to the Apostolic Preaching.
For this reason, one must say with many others that this document is in toto, heretical. That is represents, from even a brief study of the history of the Pontificate of Cardinal Bergoglio, a manifest and pertinacious attack upon the Church and denial of revealed truths.
It is exceedingly pertinacious, since the Pope received the corrections of numbers of theologians formally and informally, yet still published it.
On account of the universal scandal given by it, on account of its universal reception by the press as signifying the abandonment of Scripture and Tradition as the remote Rule of Faith in the Church; inasmuch as it is recognized by all and the author itself to contain novel doctrines, which contradict the past ones and past pastoral practice, every Catholic is obliged to REJECT and CONDEMN it AND DISREGARD the authority the author pretends to exercise in it.
Furthermore, the document Amoris Laetitia in itself is sufficient canonical evidence for the Cardinals of the Roman Church, the clergy of Rome and the bishops of the Catholic Church to now issue the first public rebuke to Francis, pointing out that unless he rescind or repudiate the document, that he has ipso facto lost his office on account of formal manifest pertinacious heresy.
If he does not, they must warn him 2x more, and if he still does not change, they must convene a Synod and declare him self-deposed.
Finally, it is obvious on account of the gravest moral obligation of charity for the whole Church, that these three groups are obliged to act, and that if they do not act, each of them individually merits ETERNAL DAMNATION for having loved themselves more than Christ and His Church.
In the coming day and weeks, we shall see which of these cleaves to Christ and which deny him by an effeminate silence.
A back door to a neo-Mosaic practicein the Final Report of the Synod
By the Most Rev. Athanasius Schneider
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
The XIV General Assembly of the Synod of the Bishops (October 4 – 25, 2015), which was dedicated to the theme of “The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and Contemporary World”, issued a Final Report with some pastoral proposals submitted to the discernment of the Pope. The document itself is only of an advisory nature and does not possess a formal magisterial value.
Yet during the Synod, there appeared those real new disciples of Moses and the new Pharisees, who in the numbers 84-86 of the Final Report opened a back door or looming time bombs for the admittance of divorced and remarried to Holy Communion. At the same time those bishops who intrepidly defended “the Church’s own fidelity to Christ and to His truth” (Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, 84) were in some media reports unjustly labeled as Pharisees.
The new disciples of Moses and the new Pharisees during the last two Assemblies of the Synod (2014 and 2014) masked their practical deny of the indissolubility of marriage and of a suspension of the Sixth Commandment on a case-by-case basis under the guise of the concept of mercy, using expressions such as: “way of discernment,” “accompaniment”, “orientations of the bishop,” “dialogue with the priest,” “forum internum,” “a more fuller integration into the life of the Church,” a possible suppression of imputability regarding the cohabitation in irregular unions (cf. Final Report, nn. 84-86).
This text section in the Final Report contains indeed a trace of a neo-mosaic practice of divorce, even though the redactors skillfully and, in a cunning manner, avoided any direct change of the doctrine of the Church. Therefore, all parties, both the promotors of the so-called “Kasper agenda” and their opponents, are apparently satisfied stating: “All is OK. The Synod did not change the doctrine.” Yet, such a perception is quite naive, because it ignores the back door and the pending time bombs in the abovementioned text section which becomes manifest by a careful examination of the text by its internal interpretive criteria.
Even when speaking of a “way of discernment” there is talk of “repentance” (Final Report, n. 85), there remains nevertheless a great deal of ambiguity. In fact, according to the reiterated affirmations of Cardinal Kasper and like-minded churchmen, such a repentance concerns the past sins against the spouse of the first valid marriage and the repentance of the divorced indeed may not refer to the acts of their marital cohabitation with the new civilly married partner.
The assurance of the text in the numbers 85 and 86 of the Final Report that such a discernment has to be made according to the teaching of the Church and in a correct judgement remains nevertheless ambiguous. Indeed, Cardinal Kasper and like-minded clerics emphatically and repeatedly assured that the admittance of the divorced and civilly remarried to Holy Communion will not touch the dogma of the indissolubility and of the sacramentality of marriage, and that a judgement in the conscience in that case has to be considered as being correct even when the divorced and remarried continue to cohabitate in a marital manner, and that they should not be required to live in complete continence as brother and sister.
In quoting the famous number 84 of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio of Pope John Paul II in number 85 of the Final Report, the redactors censured the text, cutting out the following decisive formulation: “The way to the Eucharist can only be granted to those who take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples”.
This practice of the Church is based on Divine Revelation of the Word of God: Written and transmitted through Tradition. This practice of the Church is an expression of the uninterrupted Tradition since the Apostles and, thus, remains unchangeable for all times. Already Saint Augustine affirmed: “Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude” (De adulterinis coniugiis, 2, 16). In fact, the above intentional censorship of the teaching of Familaris Consortio in n. 85 of the Final Report, represents for any sane hermeneutics the very interpretation key for the understanding of the text section on divorced and remarried (numbers 84-86).
In our days exists a permanent and omnipresent ideological pressure on behalf of the mass media, which are compliant with the unique thought imposed by the anti-Christian world powers, with the aim to abolish the truth of the indissolubility of the marriage – trivializing the sacred character of this Divine institution by spreading an anti-culture of divorce and concubinage. Already 50 years ago, the Second Vatican Council stated that the modern times are infected with the plague of the divorce (cf. Gaudium et spes, 47). The same Council warns that the Christian marriage as Christ’s sacrament should “never be profaned by adultery or divorce” (Gaudium et spes, 49).
The profanation of the “great sacrament” (Eph 5, 32) of the marriage by adultery and divorce has assumed massive proportions at an alarming rate not only in the civil society but also among Catholics. When Catholics by means of divorce and adultery theoretically and as well as practically repudiate the will of God expressed in the Sixth Commandment, they put themselves in a spiritually serious danger of losing their eternal salvation.
The most merciful act on behalf of the Shepherds of the Church would be to draw the attention to this danger by means of a clear – and at the same time loving – admonition about the necessarily full acceptance of the Sixth Commandment of God. They have to call the things by their right name exhorting: “divorce is divorce,” “adultery is adultery” and “who commits consciously and freely grave sins against the Commandments of God – and in this case against the Sixth Commandment – and dies unrepentantly will receive eternal condemnation being excluded forever from the kingdom of God.”
Such an admonition and exhortation is the very work of the Holy Spirit as Christ taught: “He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16: 8). Explaining the work of the Holy Spirit in “convincing sin,” Pope John Paul II said: “Every sin wherever and whenever committed has a reference to the Cross of Christ-and therefore indirectly also to the sin of those who “have not believed in him,” and who condemned Jesus Christ to death on the Cross” (Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, 29). Those who conduct a married life with a partner, who is not their legitimate spouse, as it is the case with divorced and civilly remarried, reject the will of God. To convince such persons concerning this sin is a work moved by the Holy Spirit and commanded by Jesus Christ and thus an eminently pastoral and merciful work.
The Final Report of the Synod unfortunately omits to convince the divorced and remarried concerning their concrete sin. On the contrary, under the pretext of mercy and a false pastorality, those Synod Fathers who supported the formulations in the numbers 84-86 of the Report tried to cover up the spiritually dangerous state of the divorced and remarried.
De facto, they say to them that their sin of adultery is not a sin, and is definitely not adultery or at least is not a grave sin and that there is no spiritual danger in their state of life. Such a behavior of these Shepherds is directly contrary to the work of the Holy Spirit and is therefore anti-pastoral and a work of the false prophets to whom one could apply the following words of the Holy Scripture: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Is 5:20) and: “Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading” (Lam 2: 14). To such bishops the Apostle Paul without any doubt would say today these words: “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Cor 11:13).
The text of the Final Report of the Synod not only omits to convince unambiguously divorced and civilly remarried persons concerning the adulterous and thus gravely sinful character of their life style. It justifies indirectly such a lifestyle by means of assigning this question ultimately in the area of the individual conscience and by means of an improper applying of the moral principle of imputability to the case of cohabitation of the divorced and remarried. In fact, the applying of the principle of imputability to a stable, permanent and public life in adultery is improper and deceptive.
The diminution of the subjective responsibility is given only in the case when the partners have the firm intention to live in complete continence and make sincere efforts therein. As long as the partners intentionally persist to continue a sinful life, there can be no suspension of imputability. The Final Report gives the impression to intimate that a public life style in adultery – as it is the case of civilly remarried – is not violating the indissoluble sacramental bond of a marriage or that it does not represents a mortal or grave sin and that this issue is furthermore a matter of private conscience. Hereby one can state a closer drift towards the Protestant principle of subjective judgement on matters of faith and discipline and intellectual closeness to the erroneous theory of “fundamental option,” a theory already condemned by the Magisterium (cf. Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 65-70).
The Shepherds of the Church should not in the slightest manner promote a culture of divorce amongst the faithful. Even the smallest hint of yielding to the practice or to the culture of divorce should be avoided. The Church as a whole should give a convincing and strong witness to the indissolubility of the marriage. Pope John Paul II said that divorce “is an evil that, like the others, is affecting more and more Catholics as well, the problem must be faced with resolution and without delay” (Familiaris Consortio, 84).
The Church has to help the divorced and remarried with love and patience to recognize their own sinfulness and to help them to convert with one’s whole heart to God and to the obedience to His holy will, which is expressed in the Sixth Commandment. As long as they continue giving a public anti-witness to the indissolubility of marriage and contributing to a culture of divorce, the divorced and remarried cannot exercise those liturgical, catechetical and institutional ministries in the Church, which demand by their own nature a public life in accordance with the Commandments of God.
It is obvious that public violators for instance of the Fifth and Seventh Commandments, such as owners of an abortion clinic or collaborators of a corruption network, not only cannot receive Holy Communion but, evidently, cannot be admitted to public liturgical and catechetical services. In an analogous manner, public violators of the Sixth Commandment, such as divorced and remarried, cannot be admitted to the office of lectors, godparents or catechists. Of course, one must distinguish the gravity of the evil caused by the life style of public promotors of abortion and corruption from the adulterous life of divorced people. One cannot put them on the same footing. The advocacy for the admission of divorced and remarried to the task of godparents and catechists aims ultimately not the true spiritual good of the children, but turns out to be an istrumentalization of a specific ideological agenda. This is a dishonesty and a mockery of the institute of godparents or catechists who by means of a public promise took on the task of educators of the faith.
In the case of godparents or catechists who are divorced and remarried, their life continuously contradicts their words, and so they have to face the admonition of the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the Apostle Saint James: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1: 22). Unfortunately, the Final Report in n. 84 pleads for an admittance of the divorced and remarried to liturgical, pastoral and educational offices. Such a proposal represents an indirect support to the culture of divorce and a practical denial of an objectively sinful lifestyle. Pope John Paul II on the contrary indicated only the following possibilities of participating in the life of the Church, which for their part aim a true conversion: “They should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favor of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God’s grace” (Familiaris Consortio, 84).
There should remain a salutary area of exclusion (non-admittance to the Sacraments and to the public liturgical and catechetical offices) in order to remind the divorced their real serious and dangerous spiritual state and, at the same time, to promote in their souls the attitude of humility, obedience and of longing for the authentic conversion. Humility means courage for truth, and only to those who humbly subject themselves to God, will receive His graces.
The faithful, who have not yet the readiness and the will to stop with the adulterous life, should be spiritually helped. Their spiritual state is similar to a kind of “catechumenate” regarding the sacrament of Penance. They can receive the sacrament of Penance, which was called in the Tradition of the Church “the second baptism” or “the second penance,” only if they sincerely break with the habit of the adulterous cohabitation and avoid public scandal in an analogous manner as do the catechumens, the candidates to the Baptism. The Final Report omits to call the divorced and remarried to the humble recognition of their objective sinful state, because it omits to encourage them to accept with the spirit of faith the non-admittance to the Sacraments and to the public liturgical and catechetical offices. Without such a realistic and humble recognition of their own real spiritual state, there is no effective progress towards the authentic Christian conversion, which in the case of the divorced and remarried consists in a life of complete continence, ceasing to sin against the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage and to disobey publicly the Sixth Commandment of God.
The Shepherds of the Church and especially the public texts of the Magisterium have to speak in an utmost clear manner, since this is the essential characteristic of the task of the official teaching. Christ demanded from all His disciples to speak in an extremely clear manner: “Let what you say be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Math 5: 37). This is valid all the more when the Shepherds of the Church preach or when the Magisterium speaks in a document.
In the text section of the numbers 84-86 the Final Report represents, unfortunately, a serious departure from this Divine command. Indeed in the mentioned passages the text does not plead directly in favor for the legitimacy of the admittance of the divorce and remarried to Holy Communion, the text even avoids the expression “Holy Communion” or “Sacraments.” Instead, the text by means of obfuscating tactics, uses ambiguous expressions like “a more full participation in the life of the Church” and “discernment and integration.”
By such obfuscating tactics the Final Report in fact put time bombs and a back door for the admittance of the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion, causing by this a profanation of the two great sacraments of Marriage and Eucharist, and contributing at least indirectly to the culture of divorce – to the spreading of the “plague of divorce” (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 47).
When reading carefully the ambiguous text of the text section “Discernment and integration” in the Final Report, one has the impression of a highly skillful, elaborated ambiguity. One is reminded of the following words of Saint Irenaeus in his “Adversus haereses”: “He who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism, will doubtless recognize the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures, but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them. For, though he will acknowledge the gems, he will certainly not receive the fox instead of the likeness of the king. But since what may prove a finishing-stroke to this exhibition is wanting, so that any one, on following out their farce to the end, may then at once append an argument which shall overthrow it, we have judged it well to point out, first of all, in what respects the very fathers of this fable differ among themselves, as if they were inspired by different spirits of error. For this very fact forms a proof from the outset that the truth proclaimed by the Church is immoveable, and that the theories of these men are but a tissue of falsehoods.” (I, 9, 4-5).
The Final Report seems to leave the solution of the question of the admittance of the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion to local Church authorities: “accompaniment of the priests” and “orientations of the bishop.” Such a matter is however connected essentially with the deposit of faith i.e. with the revealed word of God. The non-admittance of divorced who are living in a public state of adultery belongs to the unchangeable truth of the law of the Catholic faith and consequently also of the law of Catholic liturgical practice.
The Final Report seems to inaugurate a doctrinal and disciplinary cacophony in the Catholic Church, which contradicts the very essence of being Catholic. One has to be reminded of the words of Saint Irenaeus, about the authentic shape of the Catholic Church in all times and in all places: “The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes the points of doctrine just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world (Italy). But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it.” (Adversus haereses, I, 10, 2).
The Final Report in the section on the divorced and remarried carefully avoids confessing the unchangeable principle of the entire Catholic tradition, that those who live in an invalid marital union can be admitted to Holy Communion only under the condition that their promise to live in complete continence and avoid public scandal. John Paul II and Benedict XVI confirmed strongly this Catholic principle. The deliberate avoidance of mentioning and reaffirming this principle in the text of the Final Report can be compared with the systematic avoidance of the expression “homoousios” on behalf of the opponents of the dogma of the Council of Nicea in the fourth century – the formal Arians and the so-called Semi-Arians – , who invented continuously other expressions in order not to confess directly the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father.
Such a declination from an open Catholic confession on behalf of the majority of the episcopate in the fourth century caused a feverish ecclesiastical activity with continuous synodal meetings and a proliferation of new doctrinal formula with the common denominator of avoiding terminological clarity i.e. the expression “homoousios.” Likewise, in our days the two last Synods on Family avoided naming and confessing clearly the principle of the entire Catholic tradition, that those who live in an invalid marital union can be admitted to Holy Communion only under the condition that their promise to live in complete continence and avoid public scandal.
This fact is proven also by the immediate unequivocal reaction of the secular media and by the reaction of the main advocators of the new un-Catholic practice to admit divorced and remarried to Holy Communion while maintaining a life of public adultery. Cardinal Kasper, Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop Forte, for instance, publicly affirmed that, according to the Final Report, one can assume that a door in some way has been opened to Communion for the divorced and remarried. There exists as well a considerable number of bishops, priests and laity who rejoice because of the so-called “opened door” they found in the Final Report. Instead of guiding the faithful with a clear and an utmost unambiguous teaching, the Final Report caused a situation of obscuration, confusion, subjectivity (the judgement of the conscience of the divorced and forum internum) and an un-Catholic doctrinal and disciplinary particularism in a matter which is essentially connected to the deposit of faith transmitted by the Apostles.
Those who in our days strongly defend the sanctity of the sacraments of Marriage and Eucharist are labeled as Pharisees. Yet, since the logical principle of non-contradiction is valid and common sense still functions, the contrary is true.
The obfuscators of the Divine truth in the Final Report are more like Pharisees. For in order to reconcile a life in adultery with the reception of Holy Communion, they skillfully invented new letters, a new law of “discernment and integration,” introducing new human traditions against the crystalline commandment of God. To the advocators of the so-called “Kasper agenda” are addressed these words of the Incarnated Truth: “You made void the word of God by introducing your own tradition” (Mark 7: 13). Those who during 2,000 years spoke relentlessly and with an utmost clarity about the immutability of the Divine truth, often at the cost of their own life, would be labelled in our days as Pharisees as well; so Saint John the Baptist, Saint Paul, Saint Irenaeus, Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil, Saint Thomas More, Saint John Fisher, Saint Pius X, just to mention the most glowing examples.
The real result of the Synod in the perception of the faithful and of the secular public opinion was that there has been practically only one focus on the question of the admittance of the divorced to Holy Communion. One can affirm that the Synod in a certain sense turned out to be in the eyes of public opinion a Synod of adultery, not the Synod of family. Indeed, all the beautiful affirmations of the Final Report on marriage and family are eclipsed by the ambiguous affirmations in the text section on the divorced and remarried, a topic which was already confirmed and decided by the Magisterium of the last Roman Pontiffs in faithful conformity with the bi-millennial teaching and practice of the Church. It is therefore a real shame that Catholic bishops, the successors of the Apostles, used synodal assemblies in order to make an attempt on the constant and unchangeable practice of the Church regarding the indissolubility of the marriage, i.e. the non-admittance of the divorced who live in an adulterous union to the Sacraments.
In his letter to Pope Damasus, Saint Basil drew a realistic picture of the doctrinal confusion caused by those churchmen who sought an empty compromise, and an adaptation to the spirit of the world in his time: “Traditions are set at nought; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the Churches; now men are rather contrivers of cunning systems than theologians; the wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes and has rejected the glory of the cross. The elders lament when they compare the present with the past. The younger are yet more to be compassionated, for they do not know of what they have been deprived” (Ep. 90, 2).
In a letter to Pope Damasus and to the Occidental Bishops, Saint Basil describes as follows the confused situation inside the Church: “The laws of the Church are in confusion. The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is, that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past. There is no precise knowledge of canons. There is complete immunity in sinning; for when men have been placed in office by the favour of men, they are obliged to return the favour by continually showing indulgence to offenders. Just judgment is a thing of the past; and everyone walks according to his heart’s desire. Men in authority are afraid to speak, for those who have reached power by human interest are the slaves of those to whom they owe their advancement. And now the very vindication of orthodoxy is looked upon in some quarters as an opportunity for mutual attack; and men conceal their private ill-will and pretend that their hostility is all for the sake of the truth. All the while unbelievers laugh; men of weak faith are shaken; faith is uncertain; souls are drenched in ignorance, because adulterators of the word imitate the truth. The better ones of the laity shun the churches as schools of impiety and lift their hands in the deserts with sighs and tears to their Lord in heaven. The faith of the Fathers we have received; that faith we know is stamped with the marks of the Apostles; to that faith we assent, as well as to all that in the past was canonically and lawfully promulgated.” (Ep. 92, 2).
Each period of confusion during the history of the Church is at the same time a possibility to receive many graces of strength and courage and a chance to demonstrate one’s love for Christ the Incarnated Truth. To Him each baptized and each priest and bishop promised inviolable fidelity, everyone according to his own state: through the baptismal vows, through the priestly promises, through the solemn promise in the episcopal ordination. Indeed, every candidate to the episcopacy promised: “I will keep pure and integral the deposit of faith according the tradition which was always and everywhere preserved in the Church.” The ambiguity found in the section on divorced and remarried of the Final Report contradicts the abovementioned solemn episcopal vow. Notwithstanding this, everyone in the Church – from the simple faithful to the holders of the Magisterium – should say:
“Non possumus!” I will not accept an obfuscated speech nor a skilfully masked back door to a profanation of the Sacrament of Marriage and Eucharist. Likewise, I will not accept a mockery of the Sixth Commandment of God. I prefer to be ridiculed and persecuted rather than to accept ambiguous texts and insincere methods. I prefer the crystalline “image of Christ the Truth, rather than the image of the fox ornamented with gemstones” (Saint Irenaeus), for “I know whom I have believed”, “Scio, Cui credidi!” (2 Tim 1: 12).
November 2nd, 2015
+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
___________
Reblogged from http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/11/rorate-exclusive-bishop-athanasius.html
Rome, August 17, 2015 A. D.: If we wanted to succinctly summarize the nature of the church of the Modernists and compare it to the nature of the Catholic Church which Christ founded, we could do no better than to call it a Zombie church. For just as a zombie is a dead corpse moved by an evil, unnatural principle, so the church of the Modernists is dead to Christ in virtue of having rejected Him as God and Master, and is moved in pursuit of evil, the exaltation of man unto the contempt of God and all which is from God.
Thus we arrive at a more correct and true understanding of the spiritual and ecclesial battle which is being waged within the visible structures of the Catholic Church today, when we say simply that this war is between the Zombie church and the true Church which Christ founded.
This Zombie church which broke forth into existence at the Second Vatican Council has all the characteristics of a dead corpse: loss of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, loss of practice of the faith among the laity; ability to parody the words and actions of the True Church before the Council, but always with a sickening and perverse bent which reveals that the principle of life which Christ gave His Church, namely, the Holy Spirit, is no longer present, and a new sinister motivation is at work: Modernism, under the non-negotiable dictkat of aggiornamento.
Thus, the Zombie church goes through the motions, but its unending, continual, unyeilding purpose and motion is ever downward morally, ever more destructive ecclesiologically, ever more accommodating with the malign trinity of principles which is at work in the world: sin, vice, death.
While the true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church lives on among the faithful, the little folk, who reject the errors of the Aggiornamento, it is more and more killed off among those who remain in subjection and obedience to the promoters of death and division. This is effected by the substitution of the notion of faithful obedience to Christ Jesus and the infallible Magisterium of the Church, with a notion of unyielding, self-destructive obedience to the Aggiornamento and the pastoral fallible magisterium of those men who, while holding the public positions of authority in the Church, commit themselves to the agenda of the Modernists, either openly or by silence acquiescence.
The way to victory over the Zombie church is clear as it has always been and it takes only a small group of Catholics with the fortitude of their forefathers to initiate it. Name the beast, renounce the beast, convoke the faithful together and publicly denounce the errors of modernism and excommunicate the adherents of the Zombie church.
To do this requires that the Catholics who remain faithful to Christ and who reject all which the Zombie Church promotes gather together and publicly act.
Opposed to this are all who demand and insist on continued obedience to the church of the Zombies, to the principles of their unnatural organization and to the continued existence and toleration of them among the faithful, as well as to collaboration with them in anything at all.
The Zombie church will call this “schism”, but separation from the dead is not schism, since spiritually and morally speaking they are not of Christ in anything but appearances. Nay, rather, those who refuse to separate from the Zombie church are those who are dead to Christ, intent on schism with Him.
I, as a disciple of Christ Jesus, hold and believe that the U.S. Supreme Court has no authority to impose Sodom upon America in name of the U.S. Constitution; and that such a judgement would be null and void. For the institution of marriage, which originates with the Creator of Man, falls under His Authority alone, and it can no more be changed by a government of men, than the nature of man could be changed by a government of men.
Therefore, no State or Federal officer, representative, or official could justly — either according to the Divine, moral, or natural law — enforce such a Court decision. Nor would anyone be obliged to obey them if they were to command that such laws or
decisions be observed.
For these reasons, all men and women of good will have the right and liberty to refuse compliance to such a court decision and to insist upon the liberty of nature itself against the tyranny implied in the same: the tyranny of a new and perverse gnosticism which asserts that human liberty can be in defense of the perversion of nature, or that human dignity can be founded upon ignominy.
I further hold that against such a court order, all men and women have the natural right to self-defense against its imposition, observance, recognition or toleration.
For I hold that a government, even elected by the people, which seeks to observe and/or impose or even to acquiesce to such a court order, looses its legitimacy in the sight of Nature and Nature’s God, since in doing so, it would not so much be a government of men, as the absence of government: a chaotic mass of tyrannical authority at war with Nature itself.
Finally, I hold and protest against such a government, that all men, who seek to restore the Natural order, have, in the face of the persecution of themselves and their fellows — when all peaceful forms of resistance, petition and reform are obstructed — the right to take up arms to protect and ensure their own liberty, so that they might live in harmony with Nature and the Author and Creator of Nature. For this right, is not only the right of the Christian, but is inherent in Nature itself, since it is nothing more than the right to self-defense: of Nature, on behalf of the Author of Nature.
For, indeed, it is the birth-right of every Christian to defend himself, his family, his possessions and his society, from that indignity and offense of the Divine Majesty which is inherent in every and any denial of that order of the human family, which is constituted by natural marriage: in which there are mutually pledged one man and one woman in a sacred bond of fidelity for the procreation and upbringing of a new generation of children. For the violation of this institution by the perversion of Sodom, without a doubt, cries out to God for vengeance: a vengeance which not only those, who promote such sins, justly merit from Him, but also those who tolerate such; a vengeance which they all must endure from Nature herself, when she avenges the enemies of her God, Creator and Author, by the calamity and turmoil of special and tremendous dispensations.
Let all men, therefore, know and heed, this manifesto of Christian conscience and hearken to the truths and rights which it declares, for the honor and glory of God and the defense of the United States of America. And let them not so much trouble themselves and tremble before the men who profess it, but fear and cower beneath the Majesty and Authority of God the Creator, the Judge of the living and the dead, Which it acknowledges.
St Nicholas of Myra slapping Arius at the Council of Nicaea. Icon at Soumela Monastery, Maçka/Trabzon, Turkey.
Editorial, May 25, 2015: All Christians know that Christ Jesus is their Lord and Master. By “master”, we mean “teacher”, “instructor”, the One who shows us the way to Heaven and the way to get to Heaven.
Consequently, the teachings of Jesus Christ are the very essence of Christianity, and Christianity is in its essence a religion defined by Christ’s teachings.
Now, just as the christian church which is true to Christ in all His teachings, both doctrinal and moral, is the true Church of Christ — and this is the Catholic Church — so is Christian faith, hope and charity defined by the affirmation of Christ’s teachings, and not just some of them (for even a pagan can admire some of them), but all of them. And not just professing with one’s lips that they are true, but living and obeying them in one’s own person and life. This is, infact, what it means to be a true Christian, a true Catholic.
It follows then, that saying what is NOT the teaching of Christ and what transgresses His teaching is absolutely necessary. For just as it is necessary to every property owner, who wishes to retain his property, that he know the boundaries of that property and defend them and his title to them, so in matters of being a Christian, the fidelity which leads one to accept and put into practice the teachings of Our Lord and Master, requires that we know precisely where those boundaries are, so that we might not be fooled into thinking that something is nor is not part of Christ’s teaching.
The ancient word, which Christians use for this, comes from the Greek word, αἵρεσις (haeresis), which means “choice”. The first Christians used this word to signify a teaching which differed from Christ’s teaching, because they understood simply and truly that the litmus test for being a disciple of Christ was that the disciple accepted everything Christ taught and chose to believe nothing which was disharmonious with it.
So, the choice to believe other masters was called a αἵρεσις, and thus that false doctrine was called also a heresy.
For this reason, we can say that without the word, “heresy”, a Christian could not distinguish a true disciple from a false one. For many are the antichrists which have gone out from us, says the Apostle St. John in 1 Jn 2:18 ff..:
18Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last hour. 19They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us; but that they may be manifest, that they are not all of us. 20 But you have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things. 21 I have not written to you as to them that know not the truth, but as to them that know it: and that no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son. 23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son, hath the Father also. 24 As for you, let that which you have heard from the beginning, abide in you. If that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning, you also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father.
Hence, the Christian who refuses to use the word, “heresy”, in regard to false teaching, is in truth the Christian who no longer wishes to follow Jesus Christ. He has chosen instead to live and get along and not rock the boat. And thus he no longer has either right faith, nor true hope in the salvation Christ’s promised; and most of all, he has not the charity which binds the disciple to His Master and holds his fellow Christian as dear as himself, wishing to guard him from the danger of damnation by warning him, with the word, “Beware, what that man is saying is heresy!”
by Antonio Socci, unofficial English translation by the From Rome blog.
That Ireland, ancient fortress of Catholicism, has gone over to the people of “gay” marriage (“and who am I to judge”, as the Bishop of Rome is want to say), is a historical event. If this sounds like the profound rumble of an avalanche, as in the collapse of a mountain falling down, it is just to ask, “Is this an Bergoglio effect?”
Besides, in South America, the Church has already been crumbling for years (the statistics are horrible); now in Europe, the heart of Christendom.
That which renders secularism dominant — as Cardinal De Lubac used to say — is the propulsion and instrumentalization of “a Christianity ever more in the minority, reduced to a vague and impotent theism.”
Barack and his Puppets
Today, only such a theism is permitted. Instead, the Catholic Church as She has been known upto now is threatened even as regards Her existence.
There is only place for a ridiculous laicized parody of Herself, as the humanitarian “courtesan” (as Andrea Emo would have it), as an “agency for religion” which on the great life issues submits herself to the dictates of Obama-like ideology, which renounces proselytism and the “Catholic God” (as Bergoglio says, “There exists no Catholic God”), which dissolves herself into an ecumenical freemasonry of so many religions, which busies herself with the climate and the recycling of garbage, teaching good manners (Good Morning! Good Evening! Thank you! and Pardon me!) and goofy-pleas for the help of the poor. But for the true Catholic Church, there is no longer any seat at the table, as the drama of the last great pope, Benedict XVI shows, “fired”, self-incarcerated and silenced.
The True Church
The Church has illumined and conquered the darkness of the world of the gods and has rehabilitated the history of a pagan and anti-human age: the Church of the Word of God made Flesh, who has the presumptuousness to announce the Truth, the Church of the great Saints, of the Martyrs, of the Missionaries, the Church of the Divine Liturgy and of the masterpieces of Art, the Church of Mother Teresa, of great ideas, of great popes, of Padre Pio, with Her outbursts of the supernatural, the Church which has held Herself firm head-to-head with the ferocity of the Mohammedan and the great genocidal totalitarianisms of the 20th Century: this Church, today, no longer has the rights of citizenship.
Yesterday, Msgr. Galantino (Secretary of the Italian Bishops’ Conference) — according to a tweet from Alberto Mingardi — seems to have said at a conference: “When the Church was Catholic and the Mass was in Latin …”.
A Freudian slip which is explosive and revealing. In fact, today, we are in the midst of the last act of the “liquidation of the Catholic Church,” as Giuseppe Prezzolini foretold, a layman but concerned with the abyss to which the Catholic world was running, anxious as it was to be “modernized” and to surrender to all the ideological fashions of the moment.
But, to liquidate the Church, it is not the persecutions, nor the hatred of the secularist, but — as Paul VI said — it’s the “self-demolition” from within which is the cause.
The way to the abyss was undertaken not with the Council — as certain lefebrvians think — but at its end, exactly 50 years ago, with the “post-Conciliar” age.
In the days following, in the newspapers, one was reminded of the 5oth anniversary of the first Mass in Italian, and another layman like Elémire Zolla, in those days, came to underline the event in apocalyptic tones: “The 7th of March, the Mass dies, Gregorian chant dies. Heard for the last time. Now, as a dry branch, the Church shall be burnt.”
In reality, the problem was not only the use of the vulgar language in the liturgy (a thing, which I think is positive), but the successive “liturgical reform” of 1969 and above all the de facto, but illegal, banning of the Mass of the preceding millennia of Catholic liturgy.
Joseph Ratzinger made us understand, many years afterwards, the enormous error, even theological, which was committed at that time. Which would have colossal consequences, even in the tragic loss of faith.
To Save the Cathedral
But, curiously, in those days, the ones to raise the alarm, in a dramatic manner, for this Church which in an instant has refused its own bimillenarian rite (that around which our Cathedrals were constructed), were above all the laymen-intellectuals.
Who protested with the same consternation with which we contemplate, today, the tragic devastation wrought by Isis in the ancient Middle-East.
On September 5, 1966, there was issued the first appeal to Paul VI to safe-guard the Latin-Gregorian liturgy (a few months before the devastating flood which struck the ancient, Catholic beauty of Florence).
That manifesto/appeal was signed by some 40 great intellectuals and it is impressive, today, to read some of their names: Jorge Luis Borges, Salvatore Quasimodo, Eugenio Montale, Giorgio De Chirico, Robert Bresson, Jacques Maritain, François Mauriac, Gabriel Marcel, Maria Zambrano, Cristina Campo, Elena Croce, Wystan Hugh Auden, Jorge Guillen, Elémire Zolla, Philip Toynbee, Evelyn Waugh, Salvador De Madariaga, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Julien Green, Elsa Respighi, Francesco Gabrieli, José Bergamin, Fedele D’Amico, Luigi Dallapiccola, Victoria Ocampo, Wally Toscanini, Gertrud von Le Fort, Augusto Del Noce, Lanza Del Vasto.
The appeal made a great impression, even in the Vatican, but di not succeed in stopping the landslide. Thus, in 1971, another was made, and the number of intellectuals who added their names was even more.
I remember some of their names: Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, Harold Acton, Mario Luzi, Andrés Segovia, William Rees-Mogg (the director of the Times), Joan Sutherland, Guido Piovene, Giorgio Bassani, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ettore Paratore, Gianfranco Contini, Giacomo Devoto, Giovanni Macchia, Massimo Pallottino, Rivers Scott, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Colin Davis, Robert Graves, Yehudi Menuhin, Kenneth Clark, Malcolm Muggeridge.
Self-Demolition
It was for the most part, useless, but little by little the same Paul VI became aware of the tragedy which was in course: the collapse of religious practice, the thousands of priests and religious who abandoned the habit, the catholic intellectuals who submitted to marxism, the great part of the youth seduced by the myths of the revolution (by Fidel Castro, by Mao, by the Vietcong, by Che Guevara, and last by Stalin), the spread of the Theology of liberation and of the modernist theologies which demolished Catholic Doctrine.
Paul VI, in his last years, spoke in ever increasing dramatic tones: “We believed that after the Council there would have come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. There came, instead, a day of clouds and storms, and of darkness”, “from somewhere the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God”, “the opening to the world was a true invasion of worldly thought in the Church … We we have been, perhaps, too weak and imprudent.”
Paul VI denounced “those who try to knock the Church down from within” and he began to cite the books of Louis Bouyer, “The Decomposition of Catholicism” and “Religieux et Clercs contre Dieu.”
To his friend Jean Guitton, he confided: “There is a great turmoil in this moment in the world and in the Church, and what is in question is the faith. I find myself, now, repeating the obscure phrase of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke: “When the Son of man returns, shall He still find faith upon earth?” What strikes me when I consider the catholic world,” the Pope continued, “is that inside Catholicism there seems to sometimes prevail a mentality of the non-catholic type, and it might happen that this non-catholic thought within Catholicism becomes stronger tomorrow. But it shall never represent the thought of the Church.”
Then, thanks be to God, there arrived John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger. The Barque of Peter was tirelessly repaired, the compass of the Faith found its way and a generation of young people experienced anew the beauty of Christianity.
But this was the spring which was bitten by some sort of powerful and obscure frost, which for the first time in the history of the Church, placed before us the drama of a “Pope emeritus” self-imprisoned in the Vatican and of a “bishop dressed in white” which was acclaimed by all the eternal enemies of the Catholic Faith, who has brought the Church into a submission with the worldly ideologies of the 70’s (having even re-exhumed the theology of liberation and its founder Gutierrez, which now pontificates from the Vatican).
We seem to have reached the final abyss. Unless God….
(Published in the Libero, May 24, 2015: this English translation is currently unapproved, but if the author gives us some corrections, it will be amended in the next few days. — The translator, while not agreeing with all of the authors judgements, nevertheless believes that the article poses significant contributions to Catholic thought for the present hour).
Rome, May 22, 2015: The interpretation of St. John the Apostle’s Book of the Apocalypse is the most difficult of all the books of the Bible, precisely because it is a prophetic book which speaks in symbolic language of the things which are to come.
Of the Antichrist the Fathers of the Church have spoken much, and speculated much. They concur that he will be a real human person, a man, whose mother will be of the race of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and whose father will be a Catholic Bishop.
But of the false prophet, they have not said much.
From the Scripture, we can readily see however, that the false prophet is one who will easily deceive even the elect, speaking as he does in sweet and convincing ways.
Who is the False Prophet, then? — The man who excuses sin, the man who ignores God, the man who belittles the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the man who presents Christ in a false light, the man who undermines the Catholic Church.
But above all, the False Prophet will be the man who succeeds in getting nearly the entire world to agree with him, expressly or implicitly by their silence.
We have no way of knowing with certainty if we are at the end of the world or not. But we do know that it is a mortal sin for any Catholic to be silent when the truth of the Faith or the integrity of the Church is attacked or sullied.
Cardinal Bergoglio, has without a doubt, proved to be the man whose duplicity, deceits, maneuvering, errors and outright heresies and blasphemies deserve to be denounced from every pulpit, in every Catholic Monastery, Convent, and home.
The silence of so many proves that they are sinning gravely against their duty to be faithful to Christ.
The silence of so many Bishops proves that they are not worthy of their office.
The silence of so many Cardinals proves that they love themselves more than Jesus Christ.
Many are meriting eternal damnation by their silence, just as they will in the days of the False Prophet, whensoever be the days of his coming.
This day, then, choose life or death; speak the truth and denounce the errors and the man, or remain silent and merit eternal Hell fire. It’s your choice.
In 1962, a young woman, taken with a divine love for the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, forsook everything and joined a strict convent, so that every day she might have many and frequent sacrifices to offer God, her Love, as a chaste spouse to a much beloved husband. And all the other catholic nuns in the convent did the same.
Then came a Bishop, who, being in admiration for the art of statuary and the aesthetics of the Renaissance, donated to all the convents in his diocese, a copy of the Statue of St. David, King of Israel, as crafted by Michelangelo.
At first, the Mother Superior of the Convent objected, saying to the Bishop: that kind of art is not appropriate in a convent of consecrated virgins. But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want my favor and blessing, you will not spurn my gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and took the statue.
When the Bishop came the next year to visit the Convent, he asked, “Where is the statue I donated?” The Mother Superior said, “I did not have the money for a pedestal which would properly display the statue, so it is being stored temporarily in the lumbar room (i.e. the storage room).” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want my favor and blessing, you will not spurn my gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and bought a pedestal and set the statue up.
In the third year, the bishop came to visit the Convent, again, and asked, “Where is the statue I donated?” The Mother Superior said, “I could not think of where such a statue might be placed, worthy of its full artistic effect. So it is for the time being set up in an unused chapel, at the back of the Convent.” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want my favor and blessing, you will not spurn my gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and moved the Statue to the courtyard.
At this, the nuns of the Convent all objected, saying, that such artwork was not appropriate for the courtyard of a Convent. But the Mother Superior said, “Don’t be puritanical, after all, it is only a statue of St. David!” And so all the nuns relented, and ceased their complaints. Except one faithful virgin, who out of meekness guarded her eyes, and never looked upon the statue again.
In the fourth year, the bishop came to visit the Convent, again, and asked, “Where is the statue I donated? Why have you dishonored it?” The Mother Superior said, “Your Excellency, I have placed it in the most visible part of the Convent, so that all the nuns can see it daily.” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want my favor and blessing, you will not spurn My gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and moved the Statue to the main Chapel of the Convent.
At this, the nuns of the Convent, though they were fewer in number, all objected, saying, that such artwork was not appropriate for the main chapel of the Convent. But the Mother Superior said, “Don’t be puritanical, after all, it is only a statue of St. David!” And so all the nuns relented, and ceased their complaints. Except one faithful virgin, who out of meekness guarded her eyes, and never walked on that side of the Chapel again.
In the fifth year, the bishop came to visit the Convent, again, and asked, “Where is the statue I donated? Why have you dishonored it?” The Mother Superior said, “Your Excellency, I have placed it in the most visible side-niche of the Chapel, so that all the nuns can see it daily during Mass and Office.” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want My favor and blessing, you will not spurn My gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and moved the Statue to the main altar of the Chapel.
At this, the nuns of the Convent, though they were much fewer in number, all objected, saying, that such artwork was not appropriate for the main altar of the Chapel Convent. But the Mother Superior said, “Don’t be puritanical, after all, it is only a statue of St. David!” And so all the nuns relented, and ceased their complaints. Except one faithful virgin, who out of meekness guarded her eyes, and never looked up at the main altar again, taking her seat in the last pew furthest from it.
In the sixth year, the bishop came to visit the Convent, again, and asked, “Where is the statue which I donated? Why have you dishonored It?” The Mother Superior said, “Your Excellency, I have placed it above the main altar so that the nuns of our Convent cannot but see it daily during Mass and Office.” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “If you want My favor and blessing, you will not spurn My gifts!” And so the Mother Superior relented, and required that each nun renew her vows of chastity, while kneeling before it.
At this, the nuns of the Convent, who were now only a few, all objected, saying that such a statue should never be the object of their vow of chastity. But the Mother Superior said, “Don’t be puritanical, after all, it is only a statue of St. David, from whom came Christ Our Lord”. And so all the nuns relented, and remade their vows before it. Except one faithful virgin, who out of meekness guarded her eyes, and made her vows with her back to it.
At this the Mother Superior said, “That will not do, Sister! Either make your vows facing the statue or get out of my Convent!” And so, at that, the one and only faithful nun was kicked out of the Convent.
In the seventh year, the bishop came to visit the Convent, again, and asked, “Where is the Statue which I donated? Why have you dishonored It?” The Mother Superior said, “Your Excellency, I renew my vows monthly at the feet of your statue.” But the Bishop demurred, and replied, “Where have all the nuns of this Convent gone?” And, the Mother Superior replied, “I do not know, they all got the idea in their head that it would be more pleasing to God for them to marry, and so they left the Convent and married men from the village.” “All of them? exclaimed the Bishop in dismay. “Yes, all of them”, said the Mother Superior, “All, that is, except one rigorist, antiquarian, neo-pelagian, who thought looking at the statue of a nude man was against her vow of chastity and virginity! Imagine that”. To which the Bishop said, “Incredible!”
* * *
And Our Lord’s disciples, hearing this, asked Him to explain this parable, and He said, “Just as a consecrated virgin is to My Sacred Heart, so are the Catholic Faithful who eschew error and falsehood, especially in regards to all which I taught them. For I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And all who come to Me shall find Life. But all who deny Me by their words, deeds or omissions, I too shall deny before the Throne of My Father in Heaven. Let this be a warning to each of you! Let him who has ears to hear, hear!”
* * *
Editor’s Note: This parable is, of course, a fiction, but I would bet that if such a Bishop ever existed, if he would ever encounter such a nun in the street, still wearing her habit, he would demand that she sign an act of reconciliation before that Statue as a prerequisite for being readmitted to full communion.
N.B.: For those who don’t understand what the Statue represents, simply read the documents of Vatican II from beginning to end.
News and Commentary on the Catholic Church
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On behalf of the members of the International Association of the Faithful for the promotion and defense of the Catholic Faith, known as, « Veri Catholici », I welcome you to the International Conference to condemn the errors contained in the recent Post Synodal Exhortation on the Family, by Pope Francis, entitled: ‘Amoris Laetitia’
