Return to Commentaries from the Mailbox.Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am confused on one point, and I'd really like your opinion. Why does the New Order sometimes resort to threats and intimidation against traditional Catholics while it plays up to Protestants, Jews, Mohammedans, Hindus, and Buddhists?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Threats are a typical ploy of the Modern Vatican and the bishops against traditional Catholics. They have neither truth nor right nor Catholic Tradition on their side, so they frequently resort to being just plain bullies in an effort to intimidate the adherents of the true Faith, who refused to "obey" an unCatholic, invalid "New Order."
Unfortunately, there are those who fall prey to the intimidation and take the immoral route of least resistence, which is to "obey" the evil. What the pusillanimous do not know is that the least counter-resistance to this tactic in a one-to-one confrontation makes the Novus Ordinarian ecclesiastic cave in.
This is the lesson that the Modernists learned long ago and why they have been so successful. It is the same lesson that communist, fascist, and liberalist politicians have learned and why they have been so successful. It is unfortunate that too many traditional Catholics and too many conservative politicians are ignorant of this fact.
The destruction of the Church, that is, the destruction of the New Order Church, is proceeding according to a plan conceived decades ago. Of course, there are many factors that contribute to the destruction, but it is not possible to deny that a significant part of that destruction has been based on deliberate subversion, developed over the better part of the last century.
I had heard of the book entitled AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, but I had not taken the time to read it until now. Because of the generosity of a friend who has lent me the book, I have now had that opportunity and am now about halfway through the book, which has already provoked many reflections.
Background. In the 1960s, a French Catholic nurse, Marie Carré attended an auto-crash victim who was brought into her hospital. The man lingered there near death for a few hours and then died. He had no identification on him, but he had a briefcase in which there was a set of quasi-biographical notes. She kept these notes and read them, and because of their extraordinary content, decided to publish them.
The book was originally published in May 1972 in French under the title ES-1025, ES standing for Élève Seminariste, or Seminary Student. In 1973 it was published in English as AA-1025, AA standing for Anti-Apostle.
It is a succinct (125 pages or so) account of an atheistic Communist mole, who in 1940 was purposely sent by his superiors to inflitrate the Catholic priesthood, along with 1024 others at that time, charged with the mission to subvert and destroy the Church from within by helping effect its auto-destruction, a odd term specifically used by Paul VI years later in his December 7, 1968, Address to the Lombard Seminary at Rome. The Anti-Apostle and his 1024 colleagues were triumphantly successful, as far as the New Order Church goes.
Although the author never identifies the man, the narrative makes it clear that he attended a seminary in United States or Canada. It is certain that at least one of these 1025 men became a bishop. Curiously, although the author could not have known it at the time, the Anti-Apostle hailed from the same country as the man who was six years later to become pope: Poland.
The author prefaces her narrative by observing:
No, the very virtue of obedience is today the extremely powerful weapon that our enemies, who pretend to be our friends, make use of against what we were, to put up in its stead what they have decided to have us become.
The Anti-Apostle makes clear the basis of his plan to effect the auto-destruction of the Church. His seminary career started well before Vatican II, so the elements of his plan now bear chilling fulfillment in our time. Here are some extensive excerpts from the Communist/Liberalist/Modernist plan for the auto-destruction of the Catholic Church, specifically as they relate to the general constitution of the Church, together with our commentary on how they have come true in less than fifty years. A later Part II of this topic will treat of the destruction of the Mass and Sacraments.
If you are a member of the New Order, if you attend a Novus Ordo service, if you defend "obedience" to the Church of the New Order, know that you are simply carrying out the plan hatched as early as 1940 by Modernists and are playing right into their hands.
If you are a traditional Catholic, if you attend exclusively the Traditional Latin Mass, if you will not obey evil, no matter from what color of authority it comes, know that you are standing with Christ against the Modernist forces which would defeat Him, but which in the end will themselves be defeated.
For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ5: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend?.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attend a Traditional Latin Mass, but I am not clear about what rite I am in. Sometimes the priest will say we are the Tridentine Rite or the Old Rite or the Latin Rite. And he will refer to the Novus Ordo as the New Rite. Could you please explain what rite we are in?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Traditional Latin Mass is properly the Mass of the Latin (or Roman) Rite. However, because the Novus Ordo presumes falsely to call itself that, the true Mass is now usually called the Traditional Latin Mass or the Traditional Mass of the Roman Rite.
Tridentine is a misnomer, implying that this Mass, which actually goes all the way back to Apostolic Tradition, emitted only in the 16th century from the Council of Trent (Concilium Oecumenicum Tridentinum). Old is a loose expression and contrasts with the Novus Ordo, or "New Order" service (it isn't really a Mass, as it denies, by its very definition, the component of Sacrifice and breaks with the Catholic and Apostolic Tradition).
The best term to use is Traditional Latin Mass. Note that the New Order service is infrequently done in Latin instead of the vulgar tongues, so the term Latin Mass is ambiguous and should not be used. The New Order service, in whatever language said, is but a doppelganger, not the true Mass of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As an aspiring traditional Catholic, I have an issue on which I would like your opinion. It seems to me that the major problem with the Novus Ordo reconstruction is a change in ideology or theology that is reflected in the form of the new service. It seems to me that the ills of the Novus Ordo Church are not due intrinsically to the change of the form of the service, but rather to the change in theological interpretation that this change in the liturgy represents. Would you agree with the assertion that there are some Novus Ordo presyters who maintain the True faith in spite of the change in liturgy?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No, I wouldn't agree with that assertion. The Catholic principle is legem credendi lex statuit supplicandi, [the law of praying has determined the law of believing]. In other words, how you pray determines our faith. The Novus Ordo form of prayer, even if kept conservative, must, of necessity, lead to an erroneous faith.
The very idea of a "reconstruction" of the Catholic and Apostolic Mass is reeks of heresy and is exceedingly presumptious. You might as well tell Almighty God to "reconstruct" the Ten Commandments. The Novus Ordo, as its name indicates, is based upon a new church, not the Catholic Church. It is not possible to reconcile it with the Catholic Faith, as that would contract both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Anyone who stays in the environment of the New Order will have his faith corrupted in short time. Look around you; we are seeing the fruits of this necessary consequence every day.
When our forebears in the Catholic Faith had their faith taken away from them, as the English under the Elizabethan Terror, they didn't compromise in their Faith, but absented themselves from the places of false worship and thus false faith. They prayed in their homes, with their families, with groups of other Catholics, until the time came when they could practice the true Faith again.
They even applied to the pope about what to do. That pope (a Saint) told them never to attend the false services and to pray in whatever way they were able, while they awaited the return of the true Mass and the true Faith. It was a test of patience that took the better part of 300 years. But that was what had to be done to remain Catholic, so they did it.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The U.S. Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy declared in its July 2002 newsletter:
The bishops of the United States have decided that the normative posture for receiving Holy Communion should be standing. Kneeling is not a licit posture for receiving Holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States of America unless the bishop of a particular diocese has derogated from this norm in an individual and extraordinary circumstance.
During the Traditional Latin Mass, on the contrary, the focus of our attention is directed toward the altar, where the unbloody Holy Sacrifice of our Lord and Savior is re-presented. Kneeling is the most natural posture a Catholic can assume. It is natural for the creature to humble himself before his Creator. What greater show of humility is there than kneeling? The great Patriarchs of the Holy Catholic Church knew this to be true. Is it not in the May 1 lection from the Divine Office that St. James's knees are said to be callous from continual keeling in prayer? I can think of no better way to show penitence and sorrow for my sinful nature than to kneel before my Lord and beg to be made worthy of receiving Him.
The true Catholic Church understands what "celebration of the Mass" means. It is not a Novus Ordo rock concert or a feel-good, clap-your-hands-and-shake-a-tambourine celebration. Yet, this is what these Modernist bishops think. For them, kneeling is not conducive to celebrating the Mass. Kneeling is not fun, and it is not a celebratory posture.
I can only conclude that this is an overt denial by these Novus Ordo bishops that Christ is present in the Eucharist. For not only are they saying "stand up and eat your bread," but they allow dirty hands to soil the tabernacle and touch the sacred species (if that's what it really is in those churches).
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Is anyone taking bets now on how long it's going to take the U.S. bishops to require the standing posture at "indult" Masses too?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I just finished reading The Great Sacrilege (1972) by Fr. James Wathen. His advice to laypeople is: "Attend only the traditional Latin Mass, don't even set foot in a church that offers the Novus Ordo." This is a personal dilemma for me. Is there a legitimate question of "faculties" any longer?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Fr. Wathen's answer, prescient in 1972, has been clearly confirmed in the thirty years since he wrote his analysis. Perhaps you are unaware that your question is posed from the perspective of the Novus Ordo apparatus, most of whose Sacraments are putatively invalid anyway. Do you really think that any unCatholic self-proclaimed "New Order" apparatus has not already forfeited its own jurisdiction under canon law and has lost any standing it has to grant "faculties" to anyone?
It is a basic principle of law, whether ecclesiastical or civil, that it loses its force when it is perverted to serve a different end from that intended, that is, when a law that is enacted for a good end is perverted to serve an evil end. For example, consider the case in which a law that is enacted to protect a woman from unjust assault is perverted to justify abortion.
In any case, one of the greatest Doctors of the Church in the area of Sacramental theology, St. Alphonsus Liguori, actually brought up the question of what happens when there are people in need of the Sacraments. He answers unequivocally that even if a priest is a simple priest, that is, a priest without any specific jurisdiction, he must attend to the salvation of the people, be it hearing confessions, marrying, preaching, or whatever is necessary:
It is useless to say, I am a simple priest; I have not the care of souls; it is enough for me to attend to myself. No; every priest is bound to attend, in the way in which he can, to the salvation of souls, according to their necessity. And in a district in which souls are in grievous spiritual necessity for want of confessors, a simple priest is, as we have proved in our Theologia Moralis [vol. 3, Lib. V, Tract IV, De Poenitentia, no. 625], bound to hear confessions [Selva, or Dignity and Duties of the Priest, vol. XII].
Who can deny that the vast majority of Catholics today are "in grievous spiritual necessity," particularly traditional Catholics, who know that the Novus Ordo is unCatholic, sacrilegious, and scandalous?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This statement has recently been made in Asia in response to certain writers who have claimed the Novus Ordo sacramental rites to be invalid because the framers of these rites did not have a Catholic intention:
I would also think it would be very difficult to claim that the Latin typical edition of the new mass (or the ordination rite) would be invalid without falling into some type of error.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Novus Ordo has been argued to be invalid on three counts:
In any case, the whole argument about the "typical edition of the Novus Ordo Missae" is a red-herring. What Novus Ordo presbyter even uses it? Probably no more than a handful around the world have even seen it! For form's sake, the Vatican prints a few copies, and then it goes out of print. The vast majority of presbyters use a vernacular "translation," usually in a throw-away missalette, which has so many options that no one can know whether it bears any resemblance to the Vatican "typical" edition or not.
It has become all too clear that the Novus Ordo has no clothes, has been exposed for the unCatholic Great Facade that it is. No amount of Philadelphia-lawyer pettifogging on the part of the New Order to make evil appear good is going to "take." The exodus from the New Order has become quite brisk after the recent financial and moral scandals and the U.S. Bishops committee's public denial of the Bible and Christian dogma, with the connivance, apparently, of Card. Ratzinger at the Vatican -- and who knows who else there?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
According to Canadian newspapers World Youth Day is $30,000,000 Canadian in debt. John Paul II's "kids" left the place a total garbage pig pen. As just one example, the kids back up the sewage in a furniture store, all the furniture was discarded, the owner has paid 500,000 for sewage clean-up, the store could be closed for three months, and so on. This is a success?!
Please pray for all those who were hurt by this "Catholic" event up here in Canada. Truly, it was just as depraved as the 1960s Woodstock in New York. As a matter of fact, that's what these "JP II" World Youth Days are called behind his back: Catholic Woodstocks!
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I remember vividly in the 1950s attending in a metropolis of the United States one of Fr. Patrick Payton's Rosary Crusades. The people -- old, middle-aged, and young; men, women, and children -- couldn't have been more reverent and well behaved. The very large numbers involved didn't turn these people into animals or pseudo-Catholics. When the crowd left, the place was left immaculate.
As I've said before, because something has the name Catholic on it doesn't mean that it has anything to do with Catholicism -- whether that word appears on the door of a church or as a publicity banner for a mob scene.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I do not know whether you and others are aware of this fact, but the American Bishops made the statement about the Jews not needing Christ because of a document that came out of the Vatican titled The Jewish People and the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible, which is authored by the Pontifical Biblical Commission and authorized and prefaced by none other than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. What is said in that document will really open your eyes. I could not believe that I was reading something that was supposed to have been written by a supposedly Catholic cardinal.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I am very well aware of that fact. When the Ratzinger preface was released, I covered it here in the TRADITIO Commentaries from the Mailbox and when the American bishops' statement was issued, the previous Ratzinger construct was referred to.
Both in foresight and in hindsight, it seems clear to me that Ratzinger planted that preface to incite just such a response from the Novus Ordo bishops. How anyone can say that Ratzinger is a friend of the Traditional Catholic Movement is beyond me! His record over the years shows that he will say whatever suits his particular purpose at the time.
Remember, Card. Ratzinger (then Fr. Ratzinger) was the peritus at Vatican II responsible for generating that infamous conciliar statement implicitly denying that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church of Christ. If you deny that basic doctrine of the Catholic Faith, it is an easy next step to deny that Christ is the Messias and Redeemer of the world. For a Church that now claims to be so biblical, I can hardly imagine a more ludicrous statement, the falsity of which is declared upon practically every page of the Bible!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am bearing witness to one of the most disturbing moments of my life: a debate on the television between a Novus Ordo presbyter, a Jewish rabbi, and a Southern Baptist Minister. I find myself on the side of the poor Baptist! The Novus Ordo Church explicitly denies the Bible and no longer believes that the Jews need Christ. Basically, Christ wasted his time being crucified, and the Apostles should have kept to fishing, tax-collecting, and tent-making.
This is the most disgraceful time to be a Catholic. I have nothing in common with these so-called prelates who have denied Christ. At the head of them is U.S. Cardinal Keeler, who claims to take his inspiration from Vatican II and the teachings of John Paul II. May God have mercy on us all!
It appears that the Novus Ordo has so degraded itself from Catholicism that now the conservative Lutheran churches are perceived as more Catholic! The Novus Ordo better beat a path back to traditional Catholicism before its ever-dwindling ranks end up Lutheran!
August 20, 2002
By Cathleen Falsani, Religion Reporter
Chicago Sun-Times
We thought it was Catholic," said Imelda Quintero, recounting the baptisms of her two children in 1997 at Iglesia La Sagrada Familia/Holy Family Church on the South Side. The church at 53rd and Maplewood has holy water dispensers and an icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Catholic patron saint of Mexico, Quintero said, the pastor is called Father, and the service was nearly identical to the Catholic Mass she was familiar with. But Sagrada Familia isn't a Catholic church. It's a Lutheran congregation, part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attended the Novus Ordo service for many years, mainly wanting to remain "obedient" to the Church by recognizing the hierarchy and magisterium. With every passing year, the Novus Ordo services were getting more empty and meaningless for me because of all the ludicrous changes introduced in it over the years. This fact greatly outweighed any guilt I could possibly have felt by attending a traditional chapel occasionally.
A couple of years ago, I started attending a traditional chapel permanently as I could no longer tolerate the Novus Ordo service at all. It took a lot of soul-searching in order for me to leave my Novus Ordo church and start attending a traditional chapel on a permanent basis, as I felt I was being disloyal to the Church.
But then I realized one day that by being loyal to the Novus Ordo, I was being disloyal to God. By attending the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively, I am still loyal to God and His true Church, not to the man-made Novus Ordo facade.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I've been troubled often by Mark 4:11, in which Our Lord tells His disciples that he speaks to them in parables so "outsiders" won't understand. Why on earth would Our Lord not want people to hear his message?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Christ understood human nature completely; after all, He created it. He knew that He could not reveal the whole truth of the Redemption to the people at once. The people were not ready to hear it or to understand it. Most of the Jews never did; eventually, they killed Him because they didn't understand His message. He had to bring the truth carefully to a jaded and confused world (much like our own) slowly. He also chose to select leaders for His Church, the Apostles, and to give them, who could better understand it, more of the truth more fully.
In part, this passage, and similar ones such as the episode with St. Philip and the Ethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles, is a direct contradiction of Luther's heresy about "private interpretation." No, Christ clearly by this passage and others places the Deposit of Faith not in the hands of individuals, but in the hands of His Church, so that its integrity can be preserved.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been a traditional Catholic for a few years now; I was initially in the Novus Ordo. Since coming over to traditional Catholicism, I have been uneasy about the style of prayer. At first this wasn't so much a problem, but once the novelty of the old ways began wearing off, things have become more difficult.
I pray to God privately, as I always have done, in a very honest manner; I speak with God as though He is my closest friend with whom I can hide nothing. But when it comes to the liturgy and formulaic private prayers, I am required to pray in a way that is unnatural to me. I feel as if I am performing a stage-act before God. Am I missing something here?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Just as religion is both external and internal, so is prayer. God needs to be worshipped publicly, not just privately. This is quite clear, not only from the Tradition of the Church but also from Scripture.
A Catholic needs to pray publicly and formally: at Mass, at the Divine Office, at Benediction, in processions, etc., as the glory of God needs to be shown in public, just as the Church itself is a public institution. Indeed, public prayer should be a kind of drama, the greatest drama of all. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office are at the center of this great drama, which elevates the human mind to things divine.
To keep God in the internal closet makes religion some kind of back-door operation, along the lines of the Protestant error, a kind of personal pietism. It is not nearly as pleasing to God as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic voice of the Church in worship together.
Yet, there must be an internal prayer life as well, as the relationship we have with God is interior as well as exterior. Without this meditation and private conversation with God, the individual soul does not have the opportunity of a private conversation, as it were. An erroneous formalism (Pharacaism) could then arise.
The true Catholic Faith, as always, is one of a heavenly balance, between the formal and the informal, between the exterior and the interior, between the public and the personal. Without that exquisite balance, one falls into error on the one side (Protestantism, Novus Ordoism) or on the other (Pharacaism).
Here are some suggestions for a full and proper prayer life:
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Please explain the oath that priests took (initiated by Pope St. Pius X) against the heresy of Modernism. Also please explain just how, when, and why priests (many of whom are now bishops) were released from this oath.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In the aftermath of Vatican II, the Anti-Modernistic Oath was eliminated as part of the ordination process. Why? Well, for one thing, a Novus Ordo presbyter could not swear that oath and accept the changes in the Faith and Sacred Liturgy that were introduced after Vatican II, which went directly contrary to the oath. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for Anti-Modernistic Oath.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As I see it, the Novus Ordo has a social structure of ministries and Protestant "fellowship" functions that is hard for some to leave. It would take a lot of courage for a family to uproot itself from the insidious web of social functions that bind them together with other Novus Ordinarians. Going to church for them is not a religious function but a social one.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
True, the Novus Ordo has engineered a number of "social" structures to bind their people in. Hitler and Stalin did the same things to implement their respective totalitarian plans, particularly with the youth. (We know that Communists successfully infiltrated the Church throughout most of the 20th century, as documented in Marie Carre's The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.) It is at once a brilliant and malicious tactic. People are led to sell out their Faith without a whimper, as long as they get a donut hour after Mass!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
We attended the Novus Ordo funeral service for my sister-in-law on Friday. She is now officially in heaven; no need to pray for her soul. In fact there was no mention of her soul. You never heard so many Protestant songs in your life. The church, ironically named "St. Pius X," had a table with a white sheet over it: really Catholic looking. This Novus Ordo service would have stirred the heart of any Protestant. It reeked of Cranmer's and Luther's false liturgy, meant to destroy the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The traditional Catholic part of the family and I agonized through this ceremony, celebration, and canonization, while sitting in aisle 3, wondering what has happened to our Church, where it had gone? Let me tell you that aisle 3 did not participate in the Protestant "communion" service. We sat in our seats! Oh yes -- everybody received (except us), including a number of people I know who are Protestants. But we are told that they worship the same god as us now. I just haven't figured out which god that is: Buddha perhaps?
Most of our tears were for the lack of a real Mass to send off her soul to God. What a tragedy. There were about 400 hundred people at this service. Just imagine what help 400 hundred prayers of reparation would have meant to her.
Pray for our Church, as it is in the catacombs. I have to go down there now, so good-bye for now.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I once again remind every traditional Catholic that to avoid such a fiasco engineered by Novus Ordo relatives, you must leave funeral instructions with your attorney and write out of your will anyone who would attempt to countermand them. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs? in the article "Cremation and Traditional Funeral Instructions.
Just this week the "Bagel Mass," and now the "Elvis Presley Mass"! Associated Press reports (August 16, 08:26 ET):
Roman Catholic priest [sic] John Gilbert Martin, from California, holds his hands in prayer next to portraits of Elvis Presley, while celebrating Mass at a church in Fatima, central Portugal, Friday, Aug. 15 2002, for the 25th anniversary of the singer's death. The church is located just a few kilometers from the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.
It makes one question what the Fatima apparition means concerning the faith in Portugal when such goings-on are conducted right under the nose of Our Lady herself! Presley was not Catholic, but Pentecostalist. Thus, any public Mass for him is prohibited and is gravely scandalous.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been having discussions with a friend who is a conservative Neo-Catholic about Vatican II and the Novus Ordo service. I was amazed with the ferociousness of his attack when I pointed out that Mass attendance has dwindled since the Novus Ordo was forced upon Catholics (I acknowledge other contributing factors too).
I was further shocked by his defense of Vatican II. While he acknowledged that there were problems, he claimed that Vatican II ushered in a renewal of the Church that was greatly needed. However, when asked, he could not point out a single instance of how the Church was renewed. Moreover, he claimed that after all the great councils, there was a period of unrest and chaos, resulting in groups separating from the Church because they were upset by the "changes."
Father, is his claim true that after every council there was great unrest in the Church? While there have always been schismatic or heretical groups, what seems to dispute his idea of unrest being normal is the fact that our faith was deepened and remained intact after the earlier councils. Vatican II, on the other hand, created a new religion and neo-Catholics ignore 2000 years of teaching and tradition. Moreover, how can Neo-Catholics believe the Church has experienced a great renewal? What do they point to as their proof?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
What you are getting is the Great Lie of the Novus Ordo. It is deliberate disinformation instilled by the Modernists in their rank and file. It is no wonder that your friend cannot answer your reasonable questions, as the Great Lie does not jibe with the facts. His anger arises from frustration, because there is no way that he can reasonably answer your questions.
You are pointing out that there is no really no "renewal." The Novus Ordo thinks that if it constantly talks about how "renewed" it is, people will believe the Great Lie. But "New Mass" attendance has plummeted from 4 in 5 to less than 1 in 5 since Vatican II. The number of vocations to the priesthood, sisterhood, and brotherhood since Vatican II is too paltry to mention. Catholic schools, as already called by Bishop Sheen in 1967, once the envy of the public-school system, are for all intents and purposes dead as religious institutions. Catholics have more abortions than Protestants. Large numbers of young people regard "J.P. 2," as they call him, as no more than a rock star, sponsoring a biennial Woodstock, complete with sex, drugs, tatooing, and piercing.
By what measure has the Catholic Church been "renewed" -- except by Novus Ordo propaganda?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As further clarity for those who struggle within themselves to accept the reality that the post-Vatican II Catholic Church is now Protestant and for those who struggle to understand the enormity of the devastation, the following comments and questions were located on a "catholic" website which assists parishes across the U.S. with "liturgy concerns":
Regarding greeters and ushers as "Ministers of Hospitality," everyone who submitted questions as how to go about "properly conducting this ministry" were greatly encouraged to contact the nearest Protestant church and invite the pastor to their parish to set up a program where the Protestant minister will be invited to the church in order to be able to teach catholics how to "make the space (meaning the sanctuary) feel inviting and welcoming to outsiders."
The topic of "liturgical musicians" was addressed enthusiastically by a catholic musician: "The church's music is rapidly changing so 'us' musicians have gotta change with the times because there's some really good stuff out there using 'midi files with synthesizers and digital instruments' that would ensure the 'right beat or tempo' to enhance the liturgy."
Not surprisingly, this invalid recipe for the "bread" was submitted by a woman: "I have a recipe for eucharistic bread which contains several natural ingredients such as honey, salt, oil, flour, water. Some say that eucharistic bread should only contain flour and water. This to me will yield a product that resembles the 'plastic wafers' that are often used. If we wish to have our 'assembly' sense that they are truly gathered around the table then should we not share a meal that does indeed resemble real food? If all natural products are used, is the end product not kosher?"
This, my beloved Roman Catholics, is but a small sample of "Amchurch."
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I don't doubt that the Novus Ordo "cookie" can be kosher, that is, conforming to the Jewish dietary laws. The problem is that it doesn't conform to Catholic laws -- and is certainly invalid.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The following would have been considered a horrible abomination years ago, as it would be today, if it were actually taking place in a Catholic Church instead of a Novus Ordo Church:
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Modern Maturity
Taste the kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes) and you'll know why this is one of the best food festivals in America. Check out the polka Mass, where communion includes a giant pretzel. October 17-20. Free admission.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This last week I got some Novus Ordo lady all upset because I called her communion a "cookie." Most people are unaware of it, but even the Vatican admits in writing that many Novus Ordo services in the United States (and probably elsewhere) are invalid because of defect of matter. For validity, only wheaten flour and water can be used in Communion bread (some Eastern rites add leavening, which does not follow the precedent from the Jewish Passover).
Other components are invalidating: vegetable oil, baking power, sugar, vanilla, etc., as these make the matter something other than bread -- a cookie. I get Novus Ordinarians who say, "We don't use that at our parish." Oh really? I have received "recipes" sent me from all over the country, official diocesan recipes, from which I am led to believe that at least half of the dioceses in the United States, even after a severe warning by the Vatican, still use invalid matter. They receive invalid cookies as "communion."
Interestingly, these are the same people who claim that the Novus Ordo service goes back to more authentic Catholic times, early in the Church. Well, we know for a fact what Christ used at the Last Supper. It was the same material that every Jew used -- and still uses -- at Passover: unleavened bread, composed of wheaten flour and water, period. You will even find that in the Bible. You can get the same material at your grocery store at Passover time. It is like a simplified soda cracker, without the salt and other added components.
This Novus Ordo lady readily admitted that the service at her parish was not right. When I pointed out its flaws, she was unable to take the next step: to leave the Novus Ordo. Instead, she attacked the messenger. Why? I think because of guilt.
You see, most Novus Ordinarians know that there is something very wrong in what they are doing by lending their presence at a service that they know is unCatholic. But these people are like "junkies." They know in their head that cocaine or heroine or whatever is not good for them, but in their heart they cannot find the courage to go "cold turkey." They find every excuse in the book to justify continued attendance at the Great Facade, just as a junkie will use every excuse in the book to justify continued drug-taking.
But, like the junkie, when the crisis occurs, when they realize that death (in this case, spiritual death) is staring them in the face, and they do go cold turkey, they wonder how they could have become "hooked" on what was such an evil thing.
It is certainly painful to go cold turkey, and traditional Catholics who have gone through it need to be empathetic to such Novus Ordinarians. But, as with the case of drugs, one cannot -- ever -- espouse the principle that evil can be compromised with, that it can be rationalized away. We must use "tough love." The New Order must be abandoned -- totally and completely.
Ah, and then the spiritual health that results is wondrous to see! The people wonder how they could ever have sunk so deeply into the pit of the New Order that was killing their Roman Catholic Faith.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.
V. Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur.
R. Et renovabis faciem terrae.
Come, Holy Ghost. Fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
V. Send forth Thy spirit, and they shall be created. R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What I find interesting in the whole Vatican II fiasco is the fact that everyone thought the Novus Ordo regime would be the gateway for Protestants to convert to the Catholic (Novus Ordo) Church because it would be more Protestantized. That sure hasn't happened, even though the Novus Ordo bent over backwards to please the Protestant denominations. So I ask myself what was the entire point of Vatican II? Church attendance has dropped dramatically in all Christian denominations since the late 1950s.
Now the U.S. Bishops claim that the Jewish people need not be converted. This just may be the beginning of the end for the Novus Ordo and the break we traditional Catholics have been waiting for!
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It is interesting that just before the Council of Trent, there were even Saints who thought that Luther and the Protestants could be compromised with and won over. There was even talk about giving the "cup" to communicants!
At least the Saints were smart enough to realize quickly that the Protestants wanted to take, take, take and give nothing in return; that they were heretics pure and simple, who had no desire to be Catholics any longer. Your point is that what the Saints of the 16th century were smart enough to realize, Vatican II and its aftermath were too dumb to realize.
Or, rather, Vatican II had a different agenda in mind: to destroy the Catholic Church as twenty centuries had known it, from Christ and the Apostles, and to replace it with a political institution to push the Modernist political agenda by giving it a sugar-coating of religion.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In all fairness, I must respond to the latest public bulletin from the SSPX's Chief Bishop. It appears that the Novus Ordinarians at the Vatican desire a "plum in their miter," and the SSPX will give it to them someday soon. I personally spoke with the Chief Bishop three years ago at length on subjects that were of concern to others and myself. When I asked him, "How many years do you think you could hold out?," his answer to me was "ten years -- or maybe less!"
His reply was not even thought out, but he answered without hesitation, yet that concept was not honestly included in the recent public bulletin. Since the Chief Bishop has issued an open, public letter to the traditional community, it is only fair that your readers have the more accurate picture "from the horse's mouth," as it were.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In our day of ambiguity and mind-bending double-speak, I was somewhat relieved to hear of the U.S. Bishops' recent statement about the Jews not being in need of conversion for salvation. That statement really helps resolve any scruple that I may have for not being in union with my local Bishop. In my opinion, that statement places the U.S. bishops outside the faith officially, outside what the Church teaches. I am actually glad they made that statement. Now let's see what the Vatican, "the guardian and protector of the faith," does.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This statement from the U.S. Bishops Conference has stimulated more messages to TRADITIO than any other topic in recent memory. Many of the messages indicate that this single statement has made the writers leave the Novus Ordo entirely and attend exclusively the Traditional Latin Mass outside the diocesan auspices.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This statement on the Jews seems to contradict everything I was taught as a child, though I cannot be certain of the Catholicity of anything I was taught, since I received my education from the Novus Ordo establishment. Salvation may come to the whole human race, which is true, but only through the Catholic Church. It seems the (Novus Ordo) prelates have forgotten what the Catholic Church has taught for 2000 years, that there is no salvation outside of the Church.
This is most evident from the recent decision not to evangelize Jews. I need not mention that not once during the Assisi fiasco did John Paul II try to evangelize participants who worship false gods, despite teachings from St. Paul, etc. It seems that when the Church opened its doors to the world, it led to a new religion and forced the true Church into the catacombs.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am looking for the meaning, significance, and short history of the term feria.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Feria in classical Latin meant a holiday. From this usage, it came into ecclesiastical Latin meaning a weekday (that is, not a Sunday/Lord's Day or Sabbath/Saturday). In that usage, the days of the week came to be named: feria secunda (second feria/Monday), feria tertia (third feria/Tuesday), etc.
In liturgical usage, feria means a day on which no commemoration of a feast occurs, whether a Double, Semidouble, or Simple feastday. It is a simple weekday, on which the ferial Office is recited or chanted.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Who wrote each Eucharistic Prayer and in what year? Did Eucharistic Prayer II precede Eucharistic Prayer I?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Roman Catholic Mass has only one Canon ("Eucharistic Prayer" is a Modernist term). That is the Sacred Canon coming to us from the Apostles, which no Pope or Council would ever -- our could ever -- dare to touch. After Vatican II, in 1969, a Freemason named Hannibal Bugnini and six Protestant ministers concocted a "New Order of Mass" and came up with three other "Eucharistic prayers," as well as changed the Sacred Roman Canon (which became number I).
I understand now that there are some 100 "Eucharistic prayers" for various purposes. None of these is, of course, Catholic: they defy the Catholic and Apostolic Tradition. Nor is the "New Mass" really a Mass at all, but a "worship service" that is quite acceptable to Protestants, many of whom use it in their own services. Even the Novus Ordo apparatus doesn't like to call it a "Mass," as that implies the notion of sacrifice. They prefer terms like Eucharist, liturgy, etc.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
It the following article true? I have been hanging on and hanging on, but I can now no longer continue with this false Church of the New Order. This is the straw that broke the camel's back.
Catholic [sic] Bishops Reject Evangelization of Jews
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff, August 13, 2002
The [Novus Ordo] Catholic Church ... has come to the conclusion that it is theologically unacceptable to target Jews for evangelization, according to a statement issued yesterday by organizations representing US Catholic bishops and rabbis from the country's two largest Jewish denominations. Citing teachings dating back to the Second Vatican Council, and statements by Pope John Paul II throughout his papacy, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared unequivocally that the biblical covenant between Jews and God is valid and therefore Jews do not need to be saved through faith in Jesus.
The Communications Office of the U.S. Catholic Bishops release states:
campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It indeed appears the Novus Ordo U.S. bishops have fallen into formal heresy by teaching officially that the Catholic Faith is not the true Faith for Jews. This statement directly contradicts the dogmatic teaching that the Catholic Faith is the one and only true Faith for all men.
With such a statement, these "bishops" have denied Christ Himself. It is unchangeable Catholic dogma that Christ came to redeem the Jews, as well as all men. Was His crucifixion pointless? Did He suffer and die in vain? All the Holy Popes, Fathers, and Doctors of the Church would rise out of their graves and anathemize such "bishops," who seem now to have publicly and "unequivocally" denied a dogma of the Roman Catholic Faith.
Every single one of the Apostles was a Jew who rejected Judaism to follow the Christian Faith. St. Paul in particular makes that point crystal clear in his Epistles. The veil of the Temple was rent, and that was the end of the Old Covenant.
It is really difficult to make the argument any longer that the New Order is Catholic. It denies the Roman Catholic Mass. It denies Roman Catholic dogma. What more does it take before the Novus Ordinarians -- at least those who have a shred of Catholicism left in them -- finally conclude "He is not here" in the New Order?
Moreover, lest anyone say that the Vatican is opposed to this, remember that just a few months ago Card. Ratzinger, the Vatican's chief theologian, added a preface to a work published by the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome that said exactly the same thing. "Conservative" Novus Ordinarians and Indultarians, who have consistently mischaracterized Ratzinger as a friend of traditional Catholics, have been shown up once again as being very poor judges of what is going on in the Vatican, or even deliberate disinformants.
However, TRADITIO pointed out the underlying truth of the matter at the time. You always get the straight story here, based on our 40+ years of observing the scene from before Vatican II, unfettered by entanglements with any organization that has its own agenda to push outside the traditional Roman Catholic Faith. To those who have a different agenda than traditional Roman Catholicism, including the Novus Ordo apparatus all the way across the ocean, hearing that truth is like a hooked fish flailing desperately to get the hook out of its mouth.
I am a married man. I have consistently felt that God wanted me to do something very special with my life. I know that the priesthood is not open anymore, but what is open to me in this case?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
First of all, your chosen vocation is husband and father. That is already the "very special" thing that you are doing with your life. It is the thing from which St. Joseph, the Guardian of the Holy Family, found his salvation. But in addition, you can undertake further spiritual duties in the Church by assisting the priest at your local traditional church or chapel. Undoubtedly, he would most welcome your assistance, as so few even thing to help him with his holy work.
These spiritual functions can be anything from being sacristan or sexton, serving Holy Mass, singing in (or forming) a Gregorian schola, accompanying your priest when he travels with the Blessed Sacrament, helping in various ways around the church or chapel, or 101 other things that I'm sure he desperately needs. These are spiritual and corporal works of mercy that are of inestimable value for your soul, as well as replete with indulgences for remitting your debt of temporal punishment due to sin.
Of course, there is much you can do privately in your own spiritual life. One excellent spiritual work of mercy is to pray the Divine Office each day, or parts of it, in reparation for the sins of the world or for the repose of the Holy Souls in Purgatory. The world and the Holy Souls need this assistance from you more than ever, as the Church of the New Order rarely prays for such things, and as a consequence the world is abandoned to the wrath of God, and the Holy Souls have few to pray for them.
Sometimes people think so high that they forget that their salvation is almost always dependent upon small things. Very few are called to be a Paul or Augustine. We are reminded frequently at the Hours of the Divine Office: quia in pauca fuisti fidelis,... intra in gaudium Domini tui because thou has been faithful in small things,... enter into the joy of thy Lord].
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I really enjoy reading the commentaries from other traditional Catholics as well as your responses. Some of the comments and responses got me thinking back to the time of the Vatican II sessions. Did the Pope, Cardinals, and other participants of Vatican II honestly think that each and every Catholic would simply abandon the Holy Mass, Catholic Catechism, and centuries of Tradition without giving it a second thought and/or without some kind of backlash to the Novus Ordo?
Logically, it had to have crossed the minds of many of the participants of Vatican II that numerous Catholics would, at the very least, have a tough time accepting an abrupt and shocking change to our Catholic faith, not to mention those Catholics who would reject the whole notion of Vatican II from its very beginning. How could the Vatican ever have assumed that all Catholics would erase years of being instructed on the true faith, dogmas, and tradition by the Novus Ordo regime without a fight?
I'm astounded that in today's Novus Ordo Church a big welcome is given to all kinds of absurd theatrics in the liturgy (dancing in the aisles, rock music, plays, and re-enactments, etc.), but refuses anything traditional and truly Catholic. When will this insanity ever end?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
That's an intriguing question. Here are some thoughts from 35 years of observation.
There were three groups of bishops at Vatican II:
The bishop of Rome at this time was pretty much out of it, being ill and to die a year or so after the council began to sit. There are strong indications that Pope John XXIII intended nothing of what happened, as confirmed by his rejection of the liberalizing Italian synod that had occurred just previously. There are reports that his intimate friends heard him say "Stop the Council!" on his deathbed, or at least heard his dissatisfation with the way things were going, as confirmed by his promulgation of Veterium Sapientia, which bound the Church to the Sacred Tradition of the Latin language in liturgy and seminary studies.
The liberalists-modernists believed that the vast majority of Catholics would blindly follow the New Order because they had been trained to obey without question, a technique that had been perfected in Europe by the Nazis and the Communists. And, by and large, they were correct in that assessment, since there was little resistance, except among the Traditional Catholic pioneers, until the 1980s.
One can see the same dynamic at work even today, after 35 years of deceit, deception, and decimation of the Catholic Church by the New Order. The Novus Ordinarians rarely try to justify their hijacking of the Roman Catholic Church. If a traditional Catholic objects to the unCatholic nature of the New Order, they answer is always the same: "Obey the bishop! Obey the pope! Otherwise, you're schismatic!" Of course, the Novus Ordinarians don't obey the pope or anyone. They have turned schism into an art! It is all a ploy, which they have used effectively to get so-called "neo-Catholics" or "conservative Catholics" to attack the traditional Catholicism that they are supposed to be supporting.
Hitler and Stalin, had they lived, would certainly have admired the Novus Ordo partisans for their propaganda success. The plan of the liberalist-modernists was brilliant and well prepared, and was very successful for a couple of decades, dependent as it was upon the silent acquiescence of rank-and-file Catholics, just as Hilter was able to rely upon the silent acquiescence of the German people in his totalitarianism.
But just as Napeoleon followed Robespierre, the Novus Ordo is now in the midst of the Great Backlash to the Great Facade. The New Order structures, based in deception and disinformation, are crumbling before our eyes. Just as the lion in his last agony will find the strength to lash out one final time against his aggressors, the Novus Ordo will not admit its failure, but is lashing out against traditional Catholicism one last time.
That is the phase of this divine drama that we are currently in. It will end, as it always has in history of the Church, with the reconfirmation of the rule of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostles, the Catholic and Apostolic Tradition, the Sacred Scripture, and the true Church. We just have to continue fighting the good fight and patiently await Our Lord's good time.
Sunday August 11, 2002
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)
The Roman [sic] Catholic Diocese of San Jose [California] is taking the recently established "no tolerance" policy on sexual misconduct to a new level. Bishop Patrick J. McGrath has ordered that windows be placed in all confessionals, allowing others to see inside while parishioners reconcile their sins. The windows have been mandated in all of the diocese's 52 parishes and are to be installed over the coming year. The policy is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, although new and renovated Catholic churches in Europe have windows and glass walls in their confessional boxes.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This is simply a consequence of the Novus Ordo's obsession with "process" rather than getting to the heart of the issue. The "scandal" in the Novus Ordo is due to its abandonment of the traditional Roman Catholic Faith, not the architecture of confessionals!
What in the world a "glass confessional" would do to solve the moral problems of the Novus Ordo I fail to see. Most Novus Ordo "reconciliations" are done in "reconciliation rooms," not confessional boxes anyway. The bishop named in the article is a well-known Novus Ordo zealot. One look at his cathedral, in which his chair now replaces the Blessed Sacrament, indicates the New Order hierarchy: bishop first, God second.
I think that the glass confessional may be a ploy to make the Novus Ordo "reconciliation" all that much more difficult. After all, the Novus Ordo has already de facto quashed the Sacrament of Penance by changing its form (thus opening it to invalidity); by effectively denying the existence of sin, Hell, and Purgatory; and by replacing it with Pentecostalist "penitential services," which are so bizarre that even the current pope has several times raised his voice against them and called them invalid.
Of course, these bishops, who claim to be "in union with Rome," ignore and reject the Roman Pontiff, while traditional Catholics try to follow him in what is Catholic in his words and actions (which is very little of late). So, who are the real Roman Catholics and who are the real schismatics in this picture?
Most confessions in the traditional rite don't even occur in confessional boxes anyway. If one does not have the benefit of a fully-equipped church building (the true church is effectively in the catacombs, after all, as Pope Pius XII said), there is no confessional box. The Christians in the catacombs certainly didn't have confessional boxes! Confession is truly one of those Sacraments in which Christ comes to the penitent anywhere. The important thing is not the box, but the penitent, the contrition, and the Catholic and Apostolic form.
I remember that in my parish as a child, confessions were held outside of a box (though privately, of course), when the overflow of penitents required it or when a new church was still under construction. The Novus Ordo certainly doesn't have to worry either about an overflow of penitents or new churches!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Chapter 12 of Daniel speaks of the Anti-Christ and says the eternal sacrifice will be suspend. Is this so?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Daniel 12:11/DRV speaks of "the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up." It appears that after Alexander the Great conquered the Near East in the fourth century before Christ, the sacrifice of the Temple ceased, with the connivance of many Jews, who were all too ready to give up their faith to embrace their Hellenistic conquerors. Eventually, the Temple was turned over to the worship of the pagan Zeus, the abomination referred to in the prophecy.
A small group of traditional Jews, the Maccabees, stood up for their faith and reclaimed the Temple for the Jewish sacrifice. The history of this period is recorded in the First and Second Books of Maccabees in the Catholic Bible, which every Catholic should take the time to read because of its great historical and spiritual significance.
Will the sacrifice of the New Covenant be taken away at some point? In fact, hasn't it already been taken away in most places? Are traditional Catholics the Maccabees of the New Covenant, who will reclaim for God His right worship? The situations are strongly analogous.
And who will be the God's agent to assist in this battle? It is none other than TRADITIO's patron, St. Michael the Archangel:
But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book (Daniel 12:1/DRV).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
An elderly Jesuit writing in a conservative journal published in London speaks very favourably of the Traditional Latin Mass. Advertisements for the "indult" Mass [to whatever degree it is traditional] are frequently placed in this journal. But among his conclusions are these following:
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Authority without law is totalitarianism. A Catholic is never bound to obey any authority that willy-nilly proclaims itself, but only lawful authority. How can the New Order presume to demand obedience to itself, when it itself disobeys Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles by proclaiming a false "New Order" religion?
No, a "New Order" hierarchy that denies the Roman Catholic Faith in word and deed and substitutes for the Catholic and Apostolic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass a "New Order" Protestantized service must not be obeyed. That is the clear teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who often stood up against popes and prelates who abused their authority or corrupted the Faith. Wasn't it just such mindless "obedience" to Novus Ordo bishops that has produced the current "scandal" in the Church?
No, false obedience is irrational and immoral for a Catholic, as we have always been taught. It is only the New Order, which cannot rely on reasoned concurrence, but must resort to the weakest of all arguments, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, obedience. And no "New Order" can have the right to be obeyed.
As to the Novus Ordo and the catacombs, well, if the Jesuit believes that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell him! This is another one of those pieces of disinformation that the Novus Ordo tried to put over on the Catholic population to give itself credibility -- falsely, of course. That piece of deceit has long ago been blasted to smithereens by Msgr. Klaus Gamber in The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.
As to hope, yes! Just as the Protestant Revolt resulted in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent, and Pope St. Pius V, together with the greatest outpouring of Saints in the history of the Church since the Roman martyrdoms, this "New Order" attempt at hijacking the Church will, I am confident, lead, on the contrary, to a new respect for the true Mass, Sacraments, and Faith in a disbelieving world. We are seeing it happen before our very eyes today, as the New Order, for all its prattle, sinks like the Titanic. "And great was the fall thereof" (Matthew 7:27/DRV).
It amazes me how "conservative" Novus Ordinarians continue to argue for "obedience" to the Novus Ordo apparatus. Can any authority reside in a Novus Ordo Church that suborns paganism over Christ? To hire a pagan to teach at a religious college is a violation of even the Novus Ordo's own "rules." Of course, the New Order expects traditional Catholics to genuflect to the Novus Ordo, while it blithely disobeys the Church from the pope on down!
Pagan Witch Is Hired to Teach at Jesuit College
By P.J. Bonthrone
Filed: January 24, 2002, London
A WITCH has been hired as a lecturer at a leading Jesuit university faculty. Heythrop College, part of the University of London, has appointed Vivianne Crowley, who describes herself as a Wiccan high priestess, as a visiting tutor. Dr. Crowley, once described by a women's magazine as "the nicest witch you could ever meet," will lecture throughout the Lenten term on the psychology of religion.
Wicca, from the old English word for witch, is defined as the practice or cult of witchcraft, a form of paganism. It is now regarded as part of the New Age movement. The appointment, reported in this week's Catholic Herald, is bound to create controversy, not merely because Heythrop is a leading Roman Catholic educational institution, founded in Belgium in 1614, but because the liberal Jesuit order has been criticised recently for "disloyalty" to Rome and its teachings.
The Principal of Heythrop College, Fr. John McDade, S.J., denied yesterday that Dr Crowley would be promoting witchcraft. "She is not a member of the theology faculty at Heythrop College," he said. "She has been assisting us with some teaching in two areas of psychology of religion. She does not teach any other areas of study at Heythrop." Fr. McDade said Dr. Crowley was until last year teaching at King's College. Dr. Crowley was not available for comment last night.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
It seems that in the secular world the New World Order, announced by various politicians, is going apace with the New Order Church. Is this mere coincidence?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Why should it surprise anyone that what has invaded the Catholic Church is exactly the same thing that has invaded secular realm -- godlessness, immorality, and all the rest? The Novus Ordo apparatus claims that it wants to be like that secular world, so it becomes polluted by it. In the past, the Church always set itself aside from, and above, the secular world.
It is the responsibility of the laity, not the clergy, to take the message of Christ into the politics of the world. The Catholic laity have largely failed to do so of late. There were a few Catholics who once protested abortion, but I have yet to hear of any organized resistance to "gay" marriage, blasphemy, immoral teaching in the schools, etc.
The New Order in the Church gutted Catholic lay action. One of the reasons why the anti-abortion action fizzled out was that it became politicized as part of the New Order apparatus and was coopted into nothingness. That is what always happens when one becomes associated with the New Order, as the New Order in the Church wishes to be friends with the New Order of the State.
Still too many Catholics play footsie with the New Order, calling it "obedience" or some other excuse for sloth in doing the right thing. Seems to me I recall a little man with a mustache who pandered the same propaganda and almost became the dictator of All Europe!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I'm surprised that the Los Angeles Times printed my letter! Background: Indianapolis Carmelite sisters break their convent enclosure and become modern bag-ladies.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Choosing Between Faith and Works
The Los Angeles Times
August 7, 2002
"Opening a Citadel of Prayer" (Aug. 3), about the Indianapolis Carmelite sisters:
Perhaps if the Carmelite nuns still wore their traditional black habits and practiced the faith of their founder instead of mocking the discipline of contemplative life they would have novices and postulants looking to join their order. Instead, these women in "sundresses from Goodwill," talking to no one at the local strip mall, simply look weird.
Is it a coincidence that there are fewer than half the number of nuns since Vatican II "relaxed" the church's standards on religious life?
Kenneth J.
Va.
The secular media have banned an honest presentation of the history of Islam against the West, but every Catholic needs to known the truth of the matter, so here it is. On at least three occasions, the Mohammedans tried to subjugate the West and Christianity. In each case, the Catholic Church was instrumental in preventing the disaster.
Note that the diasters of September 11, 2001, occurred on the same day that John Sobieski defeated the Mohammedans in 1683 in Vienna. Coincidence?
Who said: "The altar should not remain its current form, and the priest should always face the people. It will be necessary to preserve for a time some of the ceremonies of the ancient Mass for the weak-minded who might be scandalized by too sudden a change."
That's too easy. It's got to be Hannibal Bugnini, the architect of the Novus Ordo with six Protestants. Or maybe it's Cardinal Ratzinger, who was a randy modernist until he found more recently that traditional books sell. Or perhaps it was Paul VI himself in an honest moment.
All wrong! This statement, which describes what was put over as the "New Order of Mass" in 1969 was made almost 500 years ago -- by the Arch-heretic Martin Luther!
Lest anyone believe that the bishops of Vatican II just wanted more "participation" in the Mass, or a little aggiornamento, or updating, of the Church, the this statement of Luther strips the lie bare. No, the Fathers of Vatican II, knowingly or unknowingly, bent their knee to Martin Luther and voted to implement the very plan of the destruction of the Church that he had so ably concocted in the first half of the 16th century!
In another prophetic statement, Luther said: " When the Mass has been overthrown, I think we will have overthrown the Papacy. I think it is in the Mass, as on a rock, that the papacy wholly rests.... Everything will of necessity collapse when their sacrilegious and abominable [Traditional Latin] Mass collapses."
Luther couldn't have been more right. When John XXIII started to play with the Mass, followed by Paul VI, and John Paul II, they were undermining the papacy itself. Is it any wonder that now the youth of the world regard the present pope like a rock-star and laugh at the moral doctrines of the Church? The (almost) destruction of the true Mass did that. But never in his wildest dreams could Luther have imagined that his prophecy would come true because the pope himself would capitulate to his heresy!
Now that the papacy has been virtually destroyed, will Luther's last prophecy come true? Tolle Missam, tolle ecclesiam [Destroy the Mass, and you destroy the Church].
[The bishops of the Church] have not only destroyed the Church of God, but built up another after their own fashion. This is the New Church. Go to Rome and see. These prelates have no belief in God and jeer at the mysteries of our faith. Lord, deliver your Church from the hands of the devils, from the hands of tyrants, the hands of iniquitous prelates.
Pretty strong words, aren't they? Were they written just after Vatican II? No. After the Novus Ordo was introduced in 1969? No. After the indult fiasco of 1988? No. Well, surely, during the recent "scandal"? No.
These words that so clearly describe our own time were spoken over 500 years ago in a similar situation in the Church, when the bishops had substantially given up the Catholic Faith and had become grossly corrupt, promoting a New Church. These words were spoken by the straight-shooting Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola, of Florence (1452-1498), attacking the corruption in the Church of his time, the pope of his time, and the bishops and cardinals of his time. The cause for his canonization has been advanced at Rome.
Let no one think that the current situation in the Church does not have its precedents in other times. Let no one think that the Saints have not, on many occasions in the past, blasted with fiery criticism the pope and the bishops for straying from the Catholic Faith -- not only Savonarola but also St. Augustine, St. Catherine, St. Bridget, and so many others.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
You did it. You and others have made me a traditional Catholic. I am now sending out for my mantilla as I write. I am quite new to TRADITIO's website, and only in the past few months have I discovered the true Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass.
I am 16. I am the president a Catholic apologetics club at my high school. I will be taking my Latin and my mantilla to college next year, but meanwhile I am trying to take over the high-school scene to promote traditional Catholicism and to be in a position to make the local Novus Ordo service into a Traditional Latin Mass.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You are the kind of person that most drives the Novus Ordo crazy. According to the disinformation that the Novus Ordo propagates, only "old foggies" are interested in the traditional Mass and Faith because they are "too old to change" and too dependent upon "nostalgia." When the U.S. bishops discovered that Traditional Latin Masses were being attended primarily by the young and middle-aged, they flew off the handle and tried to prevent anyone but an "old foggie" from attending.
Isn't it interesting that in all the years since the U.S. (Novus Ordo) Bishops Conference has been established, it has never once taken the question of the Traditional Latin Mass to the floor?! Not one single bishop has the guts. Oh, they will discuss it in the cloakrooms, but they don't ever want it to get on television that there is a large, organized resistence to their New Order.
But that is what we have come to expect from the New Order: disinformation, deceit, and disrespect of what is truly Catholic. It will be youth such as you that will bring these bishops to their knees to worship once again in the only true Catholic Faith there really is.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
At the Novus Ordo service this past Sunday, I settled in while the presbyter began a homily on Matthew 14, wherein Our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed five thousand men. The priest prefaced his remarks by saying he didn't know how we were going to take this; then he continued by saying that the feeding of the five thousand was a "social miracle." He explained the passage by saying that the multitude had brought food with them on the journey to hear Our Lord, and that Jesus merely organized the feast by exhorting his followers to share what they had in their possession with those around them. Hence, it was a "social miracle," and not a supernatural multiplication of the loaves and fishes by Our Lord. Is this denial of Our Lord's true miracle not heresy?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It does sound very much like the Arian heresy that practically destroyed the Church in the fourth century, carrying in its wake the pope and most of the bishops. The essence of the Arian heresy was that it denied the full divinity of Christ. It is a well-known aphorism in ecclesiastical history that there are no new heresies, only rebirths of the old ones. The current situation in the Novus Ordo apparatus, combining as it does the heresies of neo-Arianism and neo-Modernism, with some neo-Gnosticism thrown in, is a good example.
This Novus Ordo presbyter is so far outside the Catholic Faith as taught by the Fathers of the Church -- but I cannot be surprised. Far more presbyters have studied Karl Marx in the seminary than have studied St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, Pope St. Gregory, and the other great Catholic Fathers of the Church.
One disservice of the recent "scandal" in the Novus Ordo apparatus is that it has concealed far more serious problems. Everybody, it seems, is fixated on a juicy sex scandal, but how many people have stopped to wonder what else is going on in Novus Ordo seminaries?
These Novus Ordo seminarians don't learn the Catholic Faith any more. They learn some secularized, revisionist notion of Scripture, learn the Party Service instead of the real Mass, learn the New Morality rather than Catholic morality. Personal immorality is bad enough, but that immorality is only based on what is taught in the New Order. Why should anyone be surprised that it bears rotten fruit?
But I must ask you -- why are you risking your Catholic Faith by attending what you yourself term as an "heretical" non-Mass? You are simply absorbing the same God-is-dead theology as the Novus Ordo seminarians are getting. You are in mortal danger of corrupting your Faith, and you know, I'm sure, that it is a grave sin against the First Commandment to worship false gods and to put your own faith in jeopardy.
I am reminded of the man who phoned me to complain of the Candy Mass in his parish at Christmas. "The priest," he said, "consecrated candy and handed it out for communion." I replied, "Why didn't you and your family walk out?" He paused for a time, then said: "You know, Father, it never occured to me."
We cannot become inured and complaisant like that about the corruption of our Catholic Faith, sitting by with whatever vain excuse we concoct while some non-Catholic "service" goes on before our very eyes. We are not attending Mass in such a case; we are attending a travesty and participating in the sacrilege even by our silent presence. We may as well be the Roman soldier whipping Our Lord and pushing down His crown of thorns all the harder into His head.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
For the ten years that I'd been attending Novus Ordo services, I knew that "something" very devastating had happened to the Church and that "something" very devastating had happened to Catholics. Most afflictive was the knowledge that it was no longer the Catholic Mass, that it was a Protestant service. I'd initially been seduced by the interior beauty of the Church and wrestled in trying to convince myself that "this beautiful Church is God's House. It is the Catholic Church!"
However in January of this year, the Blessed Mother gave me to understand with absolute clarity that I could no longer continue to be part of the desecration and abomination. All those years of anguish and conflict over whether I should leave what I hoped and prayed was the Catholic Church, and my constant pleading in prayer to God to help me find a Traditional Latin Mass was beautifully answered in March of this year.
In these days of disorientation and overwhelming confusion, God's remnant needs to understand that we are in a diabolical war. Since I began attending the Traditional Latin Mass, I've met so many other Catholics who also struggled to understand the magnitude of the destruction that has taken place and to come to the full knowledge that the existential Church is disintegrating before our very eyes. It's a particularly painful realization to admit that the existential Church is no longer Catholic, that it is, instead the Great Facade of the New Order.
As you stated, during the Reformation, untold numbers of priests were hunted down like wild animals and hanged from the towers of their parish churches for the "crime" of celebrating Mass. The Catholics in Devonshire assembled in the thousands demanding the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass and the abolition of the new liturgical service in English which they described as "a game." In order to show the religious character of their revolt against the state imposition of the new form of religion, these Catholics carried the Most Holy Sacrament in a pyx and marched with processional crosses and banners throughout the town. However, through the aid of German and Italian foreign mercenaries they were defeated and twenty thousand men who rose in defense of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass were slaughtered.
Shame on the Catholics of our time for slothfully sitting by while the New Order takes their very faith away! We are more cowardly than those strong Catholics of Devonshire. What is worse, some Catholics, knowing the truth in their hearts, still attend, subsidize, and excuse the Novus Ordo.
Dogmatic Canon 13 of De Sacramentis of the Council of Trent states: "if anyone shall say that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church may be changed by any pastor [that includes the pope] of the church to other new rites,... let him be anathema." Even Cardinal Ratzinger stated: "Today, we might ask: Is there a Roman Rite at all anymore? Certainly there is no awareness of it. To most people the liturgy appears to be something for the individual congregation to arrange."
As the Catholics of Devonshire lamented that the "new liturgy" was "a game," need any more be said as to the invalidity of the Novus Ordo service?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As to whether Novus Ordinarians are receiving invalid matter when then receive cookie dough, etc., I do not think that is so. As long as valid matter is used, and the priest intends fully to change bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is done. I do not like the Novus Ordo, but if I didn't go to "mass" on Sundays, I think I would be in mortal sin. The Saints have taught us that where Peter is, there is the Church. But with all that, I'm pretty confused.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
That's just the point: it isn't valid matter. Moreover, you missed another critical point about the invalidity of the Novus Ordo service: it lacks valid form. Since the Novus Ordo rejected the unquestionably valid Apostolic form, which was confirmed as dogma by the Council of Trent, there can really be no moral doubt that the Novus Ordo consecration is invalid, particularly as it employs, in its commonly-used vernacular translations, a heresy that was condemned by the Council of Trent, namely, universal salvation. Furthermore, it removed from the Consecration the very words that confirm the transubstantiation, which came from the Apostles.
It is a little known fact, because the U.S. bishops have tried to conceal it, just as they tried to conceal the scandals that were going on in their dioceses, that the Vatican itself has acknowledged that many Novus Ordo services are invalid because of defect of matter. If this were to become common knowledge, of course, the Novus Ordinarians would have to admit for a certainly that their services are not masses at all. Therefore, the chief U.S. bishop suppressed the publication of the Vatican's declaration of invalidity. However, it has been published in other sources.
I have a copy of the "recipe" for "bread" used in this diocese and many others. It is not bread, but a sugar cookie. This is clearly invalid matter, as the Vatican has acknowledged. Has the situation improved since the Vatican's declaration of invalidity in 1969? No! The U.S. bishops continue personally to foster -- even command -- the use of invalid matter in the Novus Ordo to a greater degree than ever before.
As to the intent of the Novus Ordo presbyters (they don't really like to call themselves "priests," but the laity are more confortable with the latter term and continue to use it), we have the independing polling information from the Gallup Organization, indicating that more than 80% of Novus Ordo presbyters do not believe that they are confecting the Body and Blood of Christ. Rather, they identify with the heretical Lutheran (or less) opinion that what is involved is merely a "symbol" or exists only because of the presence of the congregation.
To sum up, what does the New Order service offer: invalid form, invalid matter, and/or invalid intention. As I've said in the past, we traditional Catholics don't have to argue for the invalidity of the Novus Ordo. The Novus Ordinarians are quite happy to admit the fact themselves.
Look at how that treat "it." They allow laypeople to touch what should be the sacred species with their dirty hands that have scratched their nose and other parts of their body, and then pop "it" into their mouths, or put "it" into their prayerbooks, or throw "it" on the floor -- all these have been confirmed by eyewitnesses on multiple occasions. Not to speak of the crumbs all over the floor that should be the sacred species, but, by the Novus Ordinarians own admission in act and word, are just bread crumbs.
As to the obligation to worship God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this grave obligation is not just some empty form. The Saints knew this. In the horrible England of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the Catholics didn't go to the Anglican churches just to fulfil an empty form, even though the Anglican service looked almost identical to the true Mass. No! They stayed away from those heretical places and worshiped in homes among themselves. At that time Pope St. Pius V condemned anyone who would compromise the true Mass with a "New Order." His condemnation is just as valid today with the "New Order" service.
As to the "where Peter is" argument, St. Cajetan, the great theologian of the Church whose feastday just happens to be today, explains it as follows in its Catholic sense:
The famous axiom Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia [where the Pope is, there is also the Church] holds true only when the Pope acts and behaves as the Pope, because Peter is subject to the duties of the Office; otherwise, neither is the Church in him, nor is he in the Church. One must resist to his face a Pope who publicly destroys the Church. (Cf. Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, Q. 39, Art. 1, ad 6)
Another great theologian of the Church puts it:
By disobedience, the Pope can separate himself from Christ despite the fact that he is head of the Church, for above all, the unity of the Church is dependent upon its relationship with Christ.... Especially is this true with regard to the divine liturgy, as, for example, if he did not wish personally to follow the universal customs and rites of the Church.... By thus separating himself apart, and with obstinacy, from the observance of the universal customs and rites of the Church, the Pope could fall into schism. The conclusion is sound and the premises are not in doubt, since just as the Pope can fall into heresy, so also he can disobey and transgress with obstinacy that which has been established for the common order of the Church. (Summa de Ecclesia)
It is understandable that some Novus Ordinarians would like to stick their head in the sand like ostriches and just not deal with all of this. It is certainly unsettling. It is easier to cling to a few external symbols, like Linus to his blanket, rather than to make an effort to find the true Faith. However, what they have ended up with is a service instead of a mass and a piece of bread instead of the Body and Blood of Christ.
One cannot help but think of the statement of the Angel to the believing women, quoted by John Henry Cardinal Newman of the Anglican Church, which is even more true of the New Order now: "He is not here" (Matthew 28:8/DR).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In the Apostles Creed, why does the English version say: "He arose again from the dead." Shouldn't the Latin and the English translation mean the same thing?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Sometimes the English translations are not particularly accurate. That is why I keep reminding people that the vernacular is only an approximation of the faith and is not to be taken too far. There is no again in the original version, Greek or Latin. Sometimes extra words are put in only to make the phrasing rhythmical!
Another vernacular translation that drives me crazy is world without end in the Gloria Patri. I haven't been able to figure out what that phrase is supposed to mean even in English, semantically or syntactically. The literal meaning of per omnia saecula saeculorum is "through all the ages of the ages." That makes sense!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The World Youth Day I saw in Toronto was sickening -- from the vulgarity of the attire for both males and females, to the satanic rock 'n roll "music" that was blasted out from all corners including during the "mass," to the dancing around a statue of the Blessed Mother in a Church, to a pagan "line dance."
I'd attended "mass" at that church for twenty years every single day during the week and on Sunday. In those earlier years, I never saw young people behave and dress like what so many of us have now witnessed. One of the most disturbing things that I witnessed at the largest Church in America was the tour busses of "Catholic youth" arriving on Sunday for "mass."
The first thing that was noticed was the appalling lack of manners these kids had; the fact that very few -- if any -- genuflected before entering pews, and once in the pews, they'd flop down and begin laughing, talking, combing hair, or yelling across the aisles to their friends. There was absolutely no reverence nor piety. The very sight of them was distressing: the tacky crumbled shorts, revolting t-shirts with irreverent sayings on front and back, rings in their ears, lips, noses, and eyebrows, multi-colored hair, and garrish colored lipsticks and black eye liner, dirty sneakers, and up-to-the-crotch vulgar short shorts and skin-tight halter tops worn by the females.
What the pope and the Novus Ordo calls as "the hope of the future," these kids have lost their faith. They have no concept of what Catholic means. Such concepts as mortification and perfection are as foreign to them as would be living in a foreign country. Without the purity of traditional Catholic teaching and firm Catholic parental discipline, these kids are now full-fledged, card carrying members not of the Catholic Church, but of the Amchurch with its New Age, pagan, animist, heretical, Protestanized teachings.
My heart is broken for these youth. World Youth Day is an abomination of the highest degree and a terrifying example of what has happened to these fragile human beings at the hands of dysfunctional parents and the twisted gang of New Order cardinals, bishops and priests. What lies in store for this strange breed five or ten years down the road as the Novus Ordo apparatus continues to belch up from the bowels of Hell more and more of this cancer? We need prayer to St. Michael and St. Joseph to save the Church as its special patrons, now more than ever.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Being a traditional Catholic apologist, I have to deal with the question of Sister Lucy and the Novus Ordo. My common response to people is that such an argument is based on a number of false assumptions that are made by Novus Ordinarians. I will list just a few:
No, it doesn't do to succumb to seers and visionaries and phantasms that the popes and the Saints have repeatedly condemned. We must rely ultimately upon the Head of the Church, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Catholic and Apostolic Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition that He gave His Church to ensure true Catholic doctrine.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I'm confused about the "restoration" of the Easter Vigil by Pope Pius XII. Some accounts I have read believe that this was a good thing, as denoted by the term "restoration." Are you of the opposite opinion? Do you feel this was a bad move? If so, why?
Fr. Moderator Replies
There was really no "restoration" of the Easter Vigil. The question was at what time the rites of Holy Saturday were to be celebrated. In ancient times a vigil would last the whole day before the feastday. The people and clergy would gather all day for the celebration of the special Divine Office for that day.
The rites of Holy Saturday that we have in the Traditional Latin Rite are probably a selection from these fuller rites. Some of the sections may have been celebrated the night of Holy Saturday; other parts may have been said earlier in the day. By about a millennium ago, the time came to be stabilized at some two hours or so before noon of Holy Saturday, at which time the fast and abstinence of Lent ended.
In 1951 the rites of Holy Saturday were allowed to be celebrated just before midnight ad experimentum. In 1956, for those who followed the changes introduced at that time (many traditional Catholic sites follow the more ancient traditional rite), the time change was made permanent, together with a number of objectionable changes in the text of the most sacred and ancient rites of the Church.
This may have been the first instance of a liturgical innovation being "tested." It sounds more like a chemistry experiment than a matter of the Sacred Liturgy, whose ancient Apostolic rites should not have been tampered with in that way. Somehow Bugnini's committee slipped that one past an ailing Pope Pius XII, who actually never signed the document personally. Bugnini, of course, was the later Grand Architect of the Novus Ordo. Even in 1956 he was insinuating his unCatholic innovations into the Sacred Liturgy. My sources in Europe indicate the 1956 modifications were rejected throughout most of Europe, which just ignored them.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attend an traditional Latin Mass because to me it is reverent and most importantly it is the canonized liturgy. A friend of mine attends both the Novus Ordo service and the traditional Latin Mass. He defends the N.O. by saying that Sister Lucy, an alleged seeress, always attends the N.O. and has "talked to God." If God has not warned her not to attend the N.O., it must be all right, he says. What kind of a defense is this?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
A pretty lame one. Seeresses are surely not infallible, and "visions" are not doctrines of the Faith. How does your friend respond to the fact that the mystic Padre Pio, who also "talks to God" and was recently canonized as a Saint, refused to say anything but the Catholic and Apostolic Traditional Latin Mass, condemned what was going on at Vatican II, and asked for a blessing from Abp. Lefebvre?
I don't think that your friend has a leg to stand on with that specious argument. It is just an excuse to stay connected for social purposes with a arguably invalid, certainly sacrilegious, non-Apostolic "service" concocted by a Freemason with the assistance of six Protestant ministers.
Associated Press reports that in a canonization ceremony on July 31, pagan rites desecrated the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, as "dancers dressed in feathered Aztec costumes shook rattles and blew into conch shells as the image of the new saint was carried to the altar. Priests read from the Bible in Spanish and in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs."
Could you imagine the uproar that would be caused if Christopher Columbus were declared a Saint, or Isabella of Spain, in the traditional Latin rite of the Church? Oh, no, that wouldn't be politically correct. And yet here a pagan cult is given access to a basilica, a pagan cult that still practiced human sacrifice when the Spanish came to the New World and routed out the practice, which was decimating the other native populations that were being used as the Aztecs' victims!
And what of the new saint, who "was instrumental in the conversion of millions in the Americas to the Catholic faith"? What would he think of the New Order recognizing today the very paganism that the Saint fought to convert in his own time?
Reports from Mexico indicate that that Catholic Faith is dying there, being replaced by Santeria-like animal sacrifices on the one hand or a rush to cults like Seventh Day Adventism, Mormonism, and Jehovah's Witnesses on the other. The Novus Ordo is allowing the once converted Catholics to regress into paganism once again.
The new saint must be turning over in his grave!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The following excerpt is from Fox News. You just recently replied about doubts pertaining to the pope's frequent "canonizations." It seems that such doubts are well warranted and prove the wisdom of the Church's traditional canonization process, which has been abandoned by the Novus Ordo.
Juan Diego was an Indian born before Europeans arrived in the New World. According to pious belief, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in 1531, leaving an olive-skinned image of herself on his cloak and helping drive the conversion of millions of Indians throughout the Americas.
Debate has intensified in recent months over Juan Diego, who some believe never existed. Several Mexican priests unsuccessfully petitioned the Vatican to delay the canonization because of the doubts. But the vast majority of Mexicans tie their national identity to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and to the man to whom she appeared.
So it would not be "politically correct" act cautiously and investigate further. No, rush it through and let some other pope handle the future scandal.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Just today I saw a news bit that stated Pope John Paul II has canonized 463 Saints during his time as pontiff. I would like your thoughts on sainthood and the amount mentioned. I was under the impression that canonization was a very long and thoroughly-examined process. Has the New Order had some effect on this process too? The way the Novus Ordo is, I suspect that there is some influence on the process.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Novus Ordo has brought into question the accuracy of the canonizations. In 1983 Pope John Paul II gutted the long-standing tradition of the Church with respect to a rigorous process for canonizations used since at least Pope Sixtus V.
Instead, he instituted a new system of canonization that has been challenged as leading to treatment of candidates not so much for their individual spiritual merit (in the past proven by an often centuries-long process of investigation, miracles, and cultus) as for their "political correctness" for modern times. The role of the Advocatus Diaboli (Devil's Advocate) was eliminated, and the number of substantiated practically to nothing.
In addition, John Paul II is turning out beati and sancti in numbers unprecedented in the history of the Church and has thereby depreciated the cultus of the saints. And this at a time when Novus Ordinarians have become thoroughly ignorant of the most important saints of the Church's history, such as St. Augustine and St. Dominic.
There is now serious question whether these rushed-through modern candidates have been scrutinized sufficiently or whether mistakes been made because of rushed investigations (which used to take centuries) and because of "P.C." concerns.
The post-conciliar Vatican itself opened the Pandora's box by "de-canonizing" St. Philomena, who had been publicly venerated by several modern saints and popes. St. Christopher and St. Barbara, venerated from ancient times as Auxiliary Saints, were demoted in the New Order in 1969.
Fortunately, Catholic theologians through the centuries have provided a bailout for such a situation. Canonization is not invariably held to be an act of papal infallibility, and is certainly not a primary exercise thereof. St. Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibet 9.c.16) holds that the pope may err in this, as in other matters where his decision depends on the truth of human testimony. St. Robert Bellarmine holds that it is quite possible for the pope "to err in particular controversies of fact which depend chiefly on human information and testimony."
Apparently, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI themselves did not consider canonization infallible. Otherwise, they would not have tampered with the Catalogus Sanctorum in the cases of St. Philomena and the 14 Auxiliary Saints venerated since the early Church, including St. Christopher and St. Barbara. There is the possibility that factual errors may have been made in some of these cases and that a future traditional pope will have to sort the cases out at some point in the future, when the Church is returned to Tradition.
In the meantime, there are many thousands of traditional Saints, whose cultus are well established and whose intercession with our Lord Jesus Christ may be prayed for by the Roman Catholic faithful with confidence and faith.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
My wife is Methodist and I am Catholic. I attend a Traditional Latin Mass. My wife will attend the Novus Ordo because it is closer to her Methodist service, but not the Traditional Latin Mass. Is it wrong for me to attend the Novus Ordo with her, without participating in communion, while also attending and participating at the Latin Mass, which I will not abandon?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In going to the Novus Ordo, you may as well be going to a Methodist service. Your wife has acknowledged that by treating the Novus Ordo as just as Protestant as the Methodist service. You've actually got things upside down. You are trying to achieve a secondary goal (joint attendance) by rejecting the primary goal (true worship). The end result may well be that you yourself will lose your own Faith by exposure to a false worship. It is certain that you will be a party to scandal and sacrilege by your association with an unCatholic "new order." What example of the Faith does that set for your wife?
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