Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have recently come back to the Traditional Latin Mass, having been in the Church of the New Order since Vatican II. I have friends that are heavy into the "Charismatic Renewal." I need to prove, if you will, to these friends that they are wrong in believing in this movement. Please help me explain this to them.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Welcome back to the true Faith. As to "Charismaticism," this is a particularly virulent modern-day mania infecting the Church of the New Order, which has its roots deep in heresy.
In the late 17th century, the beginnings of Charismaticism can already be seen as a derivative of the Protestant heresy. Philip Jakob Spener and his disciple, August Hermann Francke, from his vantage point at the new University of Halle, through over 6,000 graduates in Protestant theology, spread the ideas of Pietism throughout Germany. The Pietists specially emphasized emotional feeling rather than reason and cultivated "enthusiasm" in worship." They encouraged Herzensreligion, a religion of the heart founded on an "individual, personal experience" of Christ, much like the modern Protestant Evangelicals, who talk about a "personal experience of Christ," by which they refer to an over-emotionalized, highly personalized attitude that overrides true belief.
The roots of modern-day Charismaticism (Pentecostalism) go back to 1901 when a group of Methodists at a Topeka, Kansas, prayer meeting began "experiencing the spirit." The emotional prayer style soon spread throughout the Assemblies of God, as well as other small Protestant denominations. A typical charismatic prayer meeting includes music, singing or praying in tongues, healing sessions, prophesying, and body prayer.
The phenomenon caught on nationwide among Modernist Catholics who were searching for new ways of praying during the first flurry of Vatican II changes. The movement names Vatican II as the starting point, crediting a prayer by Pope John XXIII to the Holy Ghost to "renew Thy wonders in our day as by a new Pentecost." The Charismatic Movement in the American Catholic Church traces its beginnings to a "spirit-filled" graduate student and faculty retreat at Duquesne University in 1967. Protestant Pentecostal prayer forms such as speaking in tongues (glossalalia) and being "baptized in the Holy Ghost" took hold.
Known initially as "Catholic Pentecostalism," the movement was renamed to reflect the various spiritual "gifts" (charismata), purportedly given by the Holy Ghost to individuals. The movement is closely associated with the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD, which was perfectly traditional before Vatican II, but afterwards was corrupted), Taize, "oecumenism," Marriage Encounter, the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA), Renew, Focolare, and Cursillo.
RCIA is the New Order's "Christian Initiation of Adults," replacing the traditional Sacrament of Baptism. It is full of an amalgam of naturalism, environmentalism, a bit of voodoo, some white witchcraft (wicca), and some Protestant traits all mixed together, but absent is genuine Catholicism. (By the way, RCIA was never approved, even by the Modern Vatican.)
Renew is a program of deconstruction of the Church, in which the idea of a priest offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is being scuttled. Committees decide what prayers to say and what their approach to sin is, if any. Renew has been piped into schools and parishes, so that it has blanketed the Catholic Church in the United States and abroad. Having a veneer of just enough Catholic-sounding phraseology to deceive the unwary, Renew has changed Catholics without their even knowing that they are being changed.
Moreover, Renew appears to be a front group for the extremist Call to Action group, which advocates the reinventing and refounding of the Church with an entirely different structure and doctrine. It advocates the worship of a feminist/environmentalist Goddess Earth, priestesses, Church-approved homosexuality, Church-approved abortions, and witchcraft-based enneagrams, introduced through lay-led "liturgies" that take place in private homes, much like the Marxist home "cells" of the 1950s. It has also become associated with extremist social causes and liberalistic political programs.
This Charismatic Movement is far from true Catholicism. It represents an almost complete abandonment of even nominally Catholic practices, beliefs, and modes of discourse. Charismaticism is based on the erroneous notion that emotional experience always accompanies the conferral of grace, whereas the Catholic doctrine is that the only sensible indication of the conferral of grace is the Sacramental sign itself.
Charismatics see no reason to exclude non-Catholics or even non-Christians from the chance to experience the "charismata," the extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Ghost, which helped to spread the Faith during the early Church, but disappeared after the Apostolic Age, when the Church had established itself and had no further use or need of the charismata. Such manifestations had specific purposes, such as to spread the Gospel to hearers of different languages, or to prove the credibility or holiness of an apostolic speaker. In fact, one of the aims of the Charismatic Movement is to unite various Protestant movements with New Order Catholics under the banner of "signs and wonders."
Charismaticism is intimately connected with the error of "Fatimism," which finds a new basis of faith in private revelations, prophecies, visions, and "signs and wonders." So far does this sometimes go that there are "Charismatic Catholics" who still continue to practice witchcraft and idol worship. All this is, of course, heretical and of Satan, as St. Paul tells us:
And then that wicked one shall be revealed: whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: him Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders: And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish: because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying (2 Thessalonians 2:8-11/DRV).
Charismaticism bears a frightening relation to several heresies condemned by the Church:
Regardless of the fact that certain New Order Church officials have made personally favorable statements or that the post-conciliar popes have addressed groups of Charismatics, no official pronouncement has been made or official approbation given. Even the U.S. bishops in a Statement on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (1975) had to point to the dangers of the movement: gnosticism, biblical fundamentalism, exaggeration of the importance of emotionalism, reckless oecumenism, and "small faith communities."
Archbishop Dwyer, of Portland, Oregon, in a scathing criticism of the charismatic movement, warned in 1974: "We regard it bluntly as one of the most dangerous trends in the Church in our time, closely allied in spirit with other disruptive and divisive movements threatening grave harm to unity and damage to countless souls."
One author sums up the error and danger of the Charismatic Movement as
a blighted tree bearing poisonous fruit, sown by the Devil among Protestants and transplanted into the Catholic Church after Vatican II.... This fruit is truly a seed of destruction. Make no mistake. More than just a fad, the charismatic "renewal" is a dangerous and heretical movement that is installing itself in the Catholic milieu. First, it attacks the Church's character of exclusive mediator between Our Lord and men, which she possesses by divine mandate. Second, this kind of oecumenical gathering denies the exclusive nature of that mediation by encouraging intercommunion with other confessions. Charismatics should be called what they really are: "chari-schismatics." (John Vennari, Close-ups of the charismatic Movement [Tradition in Action, 2002], 175 pp.)
St. Vincent Ferrer rightly condemns such an attitude as unCatholic and spiritually deadly:
The soul that attaches itself to these false consolations falls into very dangerous errors, for God justly permits the devil to have power to augment in it these kinds of spiritual tastes, to repeat them frequently, and to inspire it with sentiments tat are false, dangerous, and full of illusions, but which the misguided soul imagines to be true. Alas! How many souls have been seduced by these deceitful consolations? The majority of raptures and ecstasies, or, to call them by their proper name, frenzies of these forerunners of Antichrist spring from this cause.
The consequences of such poisonous fruit can be seen from the following Associated Press release from Sao Paulo, Brazil:
The Rev. Marcelo Rossi readies a bucket of water and flashes a grin that might be devilish if it weren't on the face of a priest. "Here! Here!" screams the crowd, mostly women. The 192-centimeter-tall former gym teacher rears back and sends a jet of holy water over the excited congregation. Then another, and another. Soon everyone within 15 meters of the stage is soaked -- and ecstatic.
It's not your average Catholic mass. But Rossi is anything but an average priest. With his movie-star good looks and a chart-topping record, "Music to Praise the Lord," Rossi regularly draws crowds of 70,000 to the masses he celebrates four times a week in a former bottle factory on Sao Paulo's south side. The turnout is surprising. Although some 80 percent of Brazilians ostensibly are Catholics, far fewer regularly attend church.
Rossi is part of a new generation of clerics who belong to the Catholic Church's charismatic movement. The local press has dubbed them "pop star priests."
Others include Padre Zeca, the "surfing priest," who recently drew 35,000 people to a mass on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Basketball-playing priest Giovanni Carlos has a big following in Brasilia, the nation's capital.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Do we know whether Our Lord spoke Latin to Pilate during his trial, or did Pilate speak Aramaic to Him? Is there any record of Him speaking in Latin?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It is highly unlikely that either Syriac, Aramaic, Chaldee, Syro-Chaldaean, or any other local Semitic vernacular, was used. Pilate, after all, represented the Roman government, and Latin was required by law in government business. An exception was made in the eastern empire, where Greek was frequently used after the victories of Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. Hebrew was certainly not used, as it was a sacred (religious) language only, not a vernacular at that time. None of the four Evangelists mention a translator, although there may have been one present, but the Romans did not like that kind of thing, thinking that a defendant should be able to speak Latin, or at least Greek in the East.
Archaeological evidence indicates that Nazareth was only about 30 kilometres from a Greek city, that is, one founded upon the Greek principles of Alexander. So, if I had to postulate, I think that the evidence would be strongest for Greek, although Latin was certainly not impossible. Jerusalem was a large trading center, and Our Lord undoubtedly heard Latin, as well as Greek, in his annual trip there for the Passover. There are those who believe that Our Lord did in fact speak Latin on this occasion.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I wanted to let you know that my family and I have finally begun attending exclusively a traditional chapel. I very much doubt that this would have happened if you hadn't been willing to take the time to answer my many questions, as well as going as far as to spend quite a bit of time with me on the phone. I can honestly say I spoke to at least seven priests in the Novus Ordo, and the seven combined didn't have the knowledge and insight that you gave me. It took a lot of investigating, a lot of questioning, a lot of praying, and finally a lot of grace from God for me to make this move.
I read often of your telling how many Novus Ordinarians are too reticent to make the move, and I was one of them. It's really hard when you've been raised under the Vatican II teachings. You're taught from day one that you can always trust the Church and to be obedient to the pope without considering about what you are being asked to be obedient. Without your willingness to take your time with me and the help from other good traditional Catholics this would not have been possible. We finally now feel like we've come home. Thanks a million!
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Wonderful to hear! May your Catholic Faith grow in your new home.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The time has come to become an activist on behalf of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Please read the editorial from [name of a "conservative" Catholic periodical].
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I don't disagree with the general premise, which has often been stated here, but the failure of the article referred to is symptomatic of a lot of what comes out of "conservative" (as opposed to traditional) Catholic publications. They rant against the New Order, they rant against the American bishops, they rant against immorality in the hierarchy, BUT they never propose a remedy.
We propose the remedy that we have proposed since the beginning of TRADITIO, and before. There is no question what that remedy is. It is not more committees, more canon law, more "lay participation." It is an complete rejection of the New Order and the evils that flow from it. It is an complete acceptance of the Roman Catholic Faith, the traditional Catholic and Apostolic Faith that has been ours for 2000 years.
It is a determination to abandon the Counterfeit Service of the New Order, which is neither Catholic nor Apostolic, nor a Mass, but an admitted concoction, a high-schoolish project, that was written by a Freemason cleric and six Protestant ministers. It is a determination to abandon the Innovated "Sacraments" of the New Order, under whatever guise they are offered: general absolution, blessing of the sick instead of Extreme Unction, RCIA, Renew, Charismaticism, and all the rest.
We have had thirty years now of excellent traditional apologetics. P.H. Omlor in 1967 demonstrated the invalidity of even the pre-New Order service. Fr. Wathen in 1972 demonstrated the legal invalidity of the post-Vatican II documents. Msgr. Gamber in 1991 demonstrated the historical and liturgical lie about Mass facing the people and Aramaic. Fr. Kramer in 1997 demonstrated the infallible nature of the Catholic and Apostolic Mass canonized by the dogmatic Council of Trent and Pope St. Pius V. Many other fine authors have ably restated and argued the traditional cause.
These "conservatives" have the knowledge. What they don't have is the courage of their convictions -- the courage that hundreds of millions of our predecessors in the Catholic Faith had, which made them willing to suffer even martyrdom for it. They know the corruption of the New Order in their hearts and often in their voices. They, however, lack the virtue of fortitude to stop compromising with what they know is not 100% Catholic, to leave the Church of the New Order, and to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church found in traditional churches and chapels across the United States and the world. For them we pray, for the grace and faith and courage to do the Catholic thing.
That is the call for the Third Millennium. The knowledge of the First and Second Millennia we have. Now we need the courage to act on it, and show the world our commitment to the true Roman Catholic Faith into the Third Millennium -- without compromise.
DUBLIN, Ireland. A prominent Irish seminary that fed priests to immigrant-rich churches in the United States for more than 150 years has closed its doors, leaving only one seminary in Ireland to train new priests.
St. Patrick's College in Thurles, County Tipperary, was closed because of declining enrollment, officials said. The seminary trained more than 1,500 priests since it opened in 1837. It will continue to offer theology classes to lay members. The closing leaves Manooth College near Dublin as the only [New Order] Catholic seminary in Ireland.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Last month I had become so fed up with sitting through the Novus Ordo while reading my Father Lasance Missal that I have quit the Novus Ordo for good. I began attending an "indult" Mass, but I discovered that the hosts were being taken from the tabernacle and therefore were from an earlier Novus Ordo service. Now I go to an independent chapel, although it is a 140-mile round trip. But the priest comes from 150 miles away! There were 20 Catholic souls at this Mass, a Traditional Latin Mass, with Hosts consecrated at a Traditional Mass. It felt like a homecoming.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Your God-given obligation is to be a true Catholic, and that means that you must be in communion with God first, His Commandments, and His Catholic and Apostolic Tradition. When these Novus Ordinarians stop spinning around and finally come to rest and discover that true Catholicism has been where traditional Catholics have always said it is, then maybe they'll return to communion with the true Church of Christ.
I've always liked St. Thomas More's response to his accusers, who perverted the law to corrupt ends: "My Lords, these are nightmares for children." In other words, adults should not allow themselves to be bullied into error by evil. Like more and more Catholics who have tried to make peace with the New Order, you have discovered that you can't. Once you make the courageous decision to turn your back on Novus Ordo Counterfeit Catholicism, God blessed you with a true Mass and a true chapel.
The time for theological debate is over. We've had thirty years of it. We don't need more books justifying traditional Catholicism. We don't need any more books showing that the Novus Ordo was based on lies from the beginning. In the last thirty years, scholarly research has devastated the "for all" wording, the turned-around altar, the "hug of peace," the spontaneous Prayer of the Faithful, and all the other counterfeits that were introduced from the pen of a third-century heretic.
What we need now among so-called conservative Catholics is action. Those who complain about the New Order and still attend it, and even contribute to it, need to pray for the courage to leave it. An alcoholic or drug addict always complains about his addiction and says that he is going to give it up -- tomorrow. It is only when he quits cold-turkey that the cure begins, as you yourself found out, by the grace of God.
Today, the Feastday of St. Michael the Archangel, our patron, is the eighth anniversary of the TRADITIO Traditional Roman Catholic Internet Site. At the same time, we have well passed reaching 325,000 participants in that time (our counter is actually low, since the University of Alberta, Canada, started it about a year after we first appeared on the internet).
TRADITIO was the first traditional Catholic site to appear on the internet. We were here even before the Vatican was! Originally, our apostolate focused on an E-mail list, with the web page supplementing that. Now our focus is the web site, with E-mail being moved to it as Commentaries from the Mailbox, together with a wealth of information on the traditional Roman Catholic Faith and its practice in our Library of Files, the traditional Divine Office for personal recitation, the text of the traditional Sacraments and Mass, the Traditional Liturgical Calendar, book reviews, holy cards, the papal photo gallery.
Our participatory departments include Booksales, Confraternity of St. Michael, Prayer Requests for the Living and the Deceased, and Traditional Catholic Priests Wanted and Available. Moreover, we offer the highly popular Ask Fr. Moderator department, in which our Fr. Moderator, an independent traditional Catholic priest, known as "the internet priest" and first Catholic chaplain to the internet (since 1994), provides personal answers by E-mail to inquiries on topics pertaining to traditional Roman Catholicism, including theology, the Bible, Church history, the Latin language, liturgy (especially the Traditional Latin Mass), and music (especially Gregorian chant).
At the heart of TRADITIO has always been the National Registry of Traditional Latin Masses, the only complete directory of Traditional Latin Masses published. Other organizations publish limited and selective directories for only their own traditional Mass sites, but the Official Directory of Traditional Latin Masses is the only complete compilation under one cover, which has now expanded beyond the United States and Canada to contacts for traditional Mass sites all over the world. We are now up to our seventh annual edition, each annual edition being a major revision on even the previous year's edition, so fast is the traditional landscape developing.
What we did not understand when we started was the vast number of traditional Catholics who were cut off from the Traditional Latin Mass, but discovered the Traditional Catholic Movement through our Traditional Directory and maintained their connection with the movement through the TRADITIO website. It is humbling to realize that we have now touched more than 325,000 souls, many of whom would never have learned about traditional Mass locations and the traditional movement except from TRADITIO. From time to time we have shared their stories with you.
During our eight years here, we have tried to focus on the truth of what is said rather than who is doing the speaking. Our subtitle tells the story: An independent, balanced voice of traditional Catholicism. Frankly, we find unChristian and tiresome those who say the most uncharitable things about hardworking traditional Catholic laypeople and especially clergy. There are some differences of opinion in the movement, mostly matters of mechanics, but these pale in comparison with the Big Three on which we are all unified: the Traditional Latin Mass, the Traditional Latin Sacraments, and the Traditional Roman Catholic Faith.
We thank the Lord for our many, many thousands of dedicated correspondents from all over the world, who keep us current on everything going on in the bowels of the Vatican, in the inner sancta of various traditional organizations, and at the many Traditional Latin Mass sites. To this raw data, we give in return a perspective not of some lay armchair theologian, but of our Fr. Moderator, a mature observer of many decades, even from before Vatican II.
If TRADITIO has been of assistance to you over these many years, please remember us prayerfully, particularly at this special time, and say a prayer to our powerful patron St. Michael, for all the traditional clergy, for the Church as a whole, and for our Roman Catholic civilization. Ad multos annos.
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio. Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur. Tuque princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.
Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In discussing the Catholic Faith with a Protestant, I was asked several questions to which I did not know the answer. Could you indicate the answers for me?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In the 1980s I gave a lecture at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh to a class of Ph.D. students. After my talk I was approached by two male students, both of whom were Jewish. The berated me -- in a manifestly self-righteous way -- for having very strong convictions. I instantly pled guilty to their charge. I then asked them quite directly if they believed that all cultures and civilizations were of equal moral worth. They expressed surprise that anyone would disagree with this observation. But then I wiped the smirk off their faces.
To make sure I understood what they were saying, I offered an example of their position. In this country we put pizza into ovens, I remarked, and in Nazi Germany they put Jews into ovens. In other words, it's just a matter of different strokes for different folks.
I thought they were going to have a stroke. Stuttering and stammering, they hastened to say that no, that was not what they meant. But, of course, they were wrong. The example I gave followed logically from what they maintained: if there is no way to rank-order cultures, it all comes down to different strokes for different folks. I advised them to consider what happens when first principles are abandoned altogether. Moral relativism is not only an intellectually bankrupt idea; it's real-life consequences can be deadly.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
"Judge not" is a typical ploy of the Modernists. It's a way of saying that we cannot judge anyone else's morals. Of course, not even the Modernists really believe this. They don't advocate the dismissal of law-courts. They don't advocate the firing of judges. They don't advocate letting murders, thieves, and rapists go free with impunity. Obviously, some judgement is acceptable.
So what does that "Judge not" mean? "Judge not according to the appearance: but judge just judgment" (John 7:24/DRV). Ah, now this puts a different light on it. It is not judgment itself that is condemned, but unjust judgment. Catholic teaching is that just judgment is proper, when it pertains to objective judgment. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to judge an objective act as murder, consign the murderer to the courts, and execute the murderer if found guilty.
What we cannot do, as only God can do that, is judge the inner soul. Perhaps the murderer in conscience thought that he was doing good by the murder. Maybe he was not responsible for his actions. Courts can try to infer from objective actions what might have been the motive, just as a priest can try to infer the culpability of a penitent, but only God knows the true heart.
So, when someone gives you that "Judge not" quotation to suborn every kind of moral and intellectual perversion, tell them to go down to the courthouse, dismiss the judges and juries, and lock the doors. I don't think they're going to get very far! "Moral relativism is not only an intellectually bankrupt idea; it's real-life consequences can be deadly."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I'm sure that you are aware of the "appearance" of the Blessed Virgin's image on a window at a bank in Clearwater, Florida. That bank has been shut down because it has been turned into a "shrine." Well, a funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I stopped at a bank to use an ATM and, lo and behold, I saw a image that appears to be that of the Blessed Virgin! There it was... on the window of the bank. This past weekend I stopped there to show my wife and she spotted another image on another window! Now, I am no expert on windows but I think it would be safe to assume that there is something about these windows that produces these "apparitions."
To think that the Clearwater bank had to relocate its employees because of these hysterics! It saddens me that there are pilgrimages -- one of which was led by a Novus Ordo priest -- to this bank. The greatest of all miracles occurs in the Most Holy Eucharist, when confected in the traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Why then are people seeking out apparitions? Just one of those things that makes one go hmmm.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I guess I should not be surprised, although I am continually sickened, by events throughout the so-called "Catholic" Church that are supposed to pass as religion. First the Pretzel Mass, then the Elvis Mass, then the Clown Mass, now the Cheesehead Mitre, as reported in the Milwaukee diocesan newspaper. The New (Order) Archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy Dolan, has once again shown how corrupted the Novus Ordo is for all involved.
At this so-called mass, not only did he disgrace his position and the Lord that he represents by wearing this mockery on his head, but he also had said that he has learned to drink Miller and eat bratwurst, has savored kringles, Kopps and Leons Frozen Custard, and has cheered for the Brewers and forgotten about the Rams. This must have been part of his "relevant" homily to the audience attending.
Of course, the Novus Ordinarians attending, in search of another "feel-good" and "make me smile" atmosphere, were thrilled at Archbishop Dolan's "sense of humor," "the right spirit," and their "uplifting experiences." Sound like the junk culture of today to you?
As a Milwaukeean, this pandering sickens me. What about a call to holiness? What about a call to stand against the world in godliness? What about a call to witness to the time-honored Faith as true Catholics? I have a feeling that in a few short months, we're going to look back wistfully to the days of the Modernist-pandering Abp. Rembert Weakland, who was caught with his "hand" in the cookie jar.
If there is any doubt that the Church of the New Order does not consider itself Catholic any more, a photograph such as the above proves it to any objective observer.
This photograph is provided from page one of a diocesan newspaper of an event in Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral, Providence, Rhode Island. It pictures Bishop Robert Mulvee, seated with his back to the high altar representing Christ -- a sacrilegious pose to begin with; who does he think he is -- God?
Seated with him, also with their backs turned toward the high altar are Episcopalian bishopess Geralyn Wolf (left) and John Holt (right), executive director of the State Council of Churches. Our local correspondent notes: "the Wolf in shepherd's clothing is a pro-choice advocate." Our correspondent wonders whether this blasphemous event isn't an effort by the New Order to get Catholics used to seeing priestesses, nay, bishopesses, in the sanctuary.
Although he has his quirks (yes, yes, you don't have to write me about them), actor Mel Gibson never ceases to project his traditional Catholic Faith to the public. Who else in such a prominent position ever does?
What an exciting prospect! I'm not sure that a major motion picture has ever been released in Latin before. What a boost such a thing, as well as Gibson's own popularity and outspokenness, will give to the Immortal Language and the Traditional Latin Mass. Undoubtedly, there will be intense coverage in the press because Gibson has taken such an unusual step. This event will outrank the release of the Harry Potter series later this year in Latin and Classical Greek.
The film Gladiator, released a couple of years ago, hardly recognized the language that made Roman civilization, and Roman Catholic, civilization. About the only reference to the Immortal Language was the motto depicted over the entrance to the Roman colosseum. Ut Roma cadit, sic omnis terra [As Rome falls, so the entire world], it proclaimed. (We see this motto proven before our own eyes, both from the perspective or Roman and of Roman Catholic civilization.)
ROME (Reuters), September 13, 2002 - A film in two ancient tongues with no subtitles? The formula hardly sounds like the recipe for a hit movie, but actor Mel Gibson thinks language should not be a problem. "Passion" -- a Gibson-directed film about the last 12 hours of Christ's life -- will be in Latin and Aramaic.
"For me, that's more real, and hopefully I'll be able to transcend language barriers with filmic storytelling," Gibson told reporters. "It's very visual and it's about something that has ... affected civilization in every possible way you can imagine," the 46-year-old Catholic actor said. But Gibson, a Hollywood favorite who has starred in Patriot and Braveheart, acknowledged his choice of languages for the new film was causing headaches for U.S. distributors.
No one wants to touch something in two dead [not dead, but immortal, in the case of Latin] languages. They think I'm insane. Maybe I am," joked Gibson, who was born in New York but grew up in Australia. But Gibson is very much of the old school, and a Latin service is still held at the private chapel of his California home.
Shooting will alternate between the Cinecitta studios just outside Rome and cave-riddled Matera in southern Italy. Gibson acknowledged he was filming "in the shadow of the [St. Peter's Basilica] dome," but brushed aside questions on whether the Vatican would approve of the film. "I don't know what they like these days," he said, adding his priority was to make a credible film.
"Many people have told the story but ... it's like looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope, I mean Jesus either suffers from bad hair or it's inaccurate or you don't believe it," he said. Gibson, who turned down Martin Scorsese's offer of playing Jesus, has once again shied away from the role, giving it to Jim Caviezel, star of The Count of Monte Cristo and High Crimes. "There's two things I wouldn't do on film, and I said this when I was in my 20s -- I will never play myself if it ever comes to that and I will never play Jesus."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What traditional prayers might be used in addition to the well-known ones, particularly on penitential days, such as the Ember Days? Any advice or direction you could give me would be appreciated.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Foremost among such prayers is, of course, the Divine Office. This is the public prayer of the Church that sanctifies the hours of the day. It comes to us from the early Church and unites us with our Catholic forebears. Its variety of antiphons, psalms, historical readings, hymns, responsories, prayers, and other parts is particularly rich and authentically Catholic and Apostolic.
Otherwise, there are portions or modifications of the Divine Office that are used in the Little Offices, most notably the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which those who wear the Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel must say. This Little Office follows the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Divine Office.
One so often hears only about the Rosary that more ancient Catholic practices used throughout former centuries in the Church are all too often ignored. Among these, the Litanies are the most important. You will find these in complete handmissals like the St. Andrew Daily Missal: the Litany of the Saints first of all, then the Litany of Loretto, the Litany of the Holy Name, the Litany of St. Joseph, and the Litany of the Sacred Heart.
A particularly appropriate and formerly common practice that recent Catholics seem to be relatively ignorant of is the recitation of the Seven Penitential Psalms (6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, 142 in the Vulgate-DRV numbering)., with or without the special prayers that follow them. Catholics of past ages would look askance at our times for ignoring one of the most common penitential practices of the Church through the ages. It was the daily recitation of the Penitential Psalms that were Galileo's public penance. Another set, for the Holy Souls in Purgatory and spiritual pilgrimages purposes, are the Fifteen Gradual Psalms (119-133).
For sources of the books mentioned above, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ5: What Traditional Catholic Books Do You Recommend?.
Well, didn't you just know that it would come? Just two weeks after the extravaganza for the new Novus Ordo cathedral in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles announced a large deficit. The New Order, which mouthes platitudes about "love," blew $200,000,000 on a modernistic monstrosity of a cathedral, when it could have restored the beautiful, traditional St. Bibiana Cathedral for a quarter of that amount. Who knows how much of the deficit comes from payoffs for the -- shall we say -- "indiscretions" of the Novus Ordo cardinal and his clergy.
The $4,300,000 deficit will force laying off "scores of workers and closing headquarters operations that handle anti-abortion activities and outreach ministries to college students, people with disabilities, and gays and lesbians." On second thought, perhaps it's not all bad. Less New Order "outreach" is a good thing.
According to a new census of U.S. religions, titled 2000 Religious Congregatons & Membership Study, conducted by a Novus Ordo research group, "the Mormon church and evangelical faiths grew during the past decade while more liberal Protestant denominations shrank. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grew at the fastest rate, with the Pentecostal denomination Assemblies of God following closely behind."
Doesn't it say something that the kookiest fringes of Protestantism have grown? I doubt that even Luther or Calvin would recognize either of those groups as Protestant.
The report goes on to say that the Novus Ordo population has shifted westward and southward -- away from the Northeast and Midwest. Other statistics have shown that the N.O. is not attracting new members, but simply collecting populations of already (Novus Ordo) Catholic immigrants, both legal and illegal. Is it any wonder that the Church of the New Order never speaks out against the law-breaking involved in illegally invading the borders of the country, but instead coddles illegals?
One thing the Novus Ordo has never factored in, as far as I am aware: most of the immigrants flowing in to the Novus Ordo sites are from Mexico and other Hispanic countries. Now Latin is the mother tongue of these peoples. We even call them Latin. Spanish is only a vernacular form of the Latin language. English, although most strongly influenced by Latin (to the tune of almost 80% of its vocabulary), is not as fundamentally related to that language as is Spanish. Yet I don't see the Church of the New Order bring to these peoples the traditional liturgy in their own Latin tongue.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Thank you for your most excellent and Catholic commentary on apparitions. These are the plague of our day. We have suffered in the last ten years from:
All this is evidence of the sickness in the present Church, a craving for "signs and wonders" condemned by Our Lord. The Fatimists are equally to blame, raising their claims to the level of a dogma (how could that be?). My seminary training tells me that "public revelation" ended with the death of St. John. Again, I congratulate you for a wonderful site that inspires me every day!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Isn't it more correct to say that the Divine Office is a part of the Mass?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No, it is historically, liturgically, and spiritually incorrect to wrench the Holy Mass from its proper position as a part of the cycle of the Divine Office, its most important part, but still a part.
It is only within the context of the Divine Office as a whole, usually after the Hour of Terce, with Matins, Lauds and Prime having introduced it, that the Holy Mass can be fully understood. Otherwise, it is like a disconnected detail of great piece of art, say, Michaelangelo's depiction of the Damned Sinner, outside of the context of the entire Last Judgment.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As it is known, when one does battle, one needs the proper weapons to do battle with. The Mass is the greatest, but the offering of the true sacrifice has become so greatly diminished that it is no wonder that evil has the upper hand. Recently the idea came to my mind to try a part of the Divine Office in place of some of the prayers I say routinely at night, so I bought a Breviary. Since it is the Prayer of the Church, would it be a choice weapon to do battle with against the diabolical disorientation within the "institutional Church?"
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Absolutely. Until Vatican II, there had been an increasing participation of the laity in the Divine Office (contained in the Breviary), in groups or separately. Very few Catholics know that the Mass is really a part of the Divine Office and cannot be understood completely without the fuller context.
The sanctification of the Hours, even if one selects one or a few of them, is the most powerful prayer one can offer, as it is the public prayer of the Church. The Rosary is merely a simplification of it, since the 150 Aves of the Rosary represent the 150 Psalms of the Divine Office said over the course of a week, together with the most beautiful Antiphons, Lections, Responsories, Hymns, and Prayers that the Church has used to worship God throughout the days, weeks, and years since the earliest of times.
It is particularly edifying to the spiritual life when the Office is available in Gregorian chant. If you have an opportunity to participate in a Gregorian schola at your Mass site or to assist at Divine Office there, don't fail to seize the opportunity!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been asked why it is that if Sister Lucia has not been warned by Mary of the conciliar services being sinful, then how can it be so? How could she, in good conscience, attend a false religious service?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No "apparition" can ever replace the Catholic and Apostolic Deposit of Faith. Any apparition is, after all, private revelation -- if it is even authentic. If anything in such an "apparition" goes against the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, by definition it is false and unCatholic.
Popes and Saints have repeatedly condemned a fixation on "apparitions" as being a danger to the Faith. St. John of the Cross, arguably the Church's greatest mystic, put it best, and his is the 100% Catholic position:
The desire for private revelations deprives faith of its purity, develops a dangerous curiosity that becomes a source of illusions, fills the mind with vain fancies, and often proves the want of humility, and of submission to Our Lord, Who, through His public revelation, has given all that is needed for salvation.
There is a kind of idolatry going around these days in certain circles that would place Fatima on some kind of pedestal, equal to or even surpassing the Deposit of Faith. That is a heresy called Fatimism.
We don't know Lucia's inner spiritual disposition. There is even some evidence that she is being manipulated or constrained or used. If you were a sick elderly nun, you wouldn't have much strength to fight error. Even so, Lucia is reported to have spoken in the early 1970s about the "diabolic disorientation of the Upper Hierarchy." Moreover, we have other "visionaries" whose visions contradict what little we know about Lucia's. So one "vision" can easily be played off against another.
No wonder popes and Saints warn against getting involved in this kind of thing! It can be a real occasion of sin, especially to the feeble souls that are so prevalent today.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What do you think of the theology of Karl Rahner? I attended an RCIA program where the instructor thought very highly of him, presenting his ideas as if they were the only acceptable form of Catholicism. I ended up quitting that program and found another which used "Father Smith Instructs Mr. Jackson." What I heard in that RCIA program did not seem in conformity with my understanding of the Catholic Faith.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Karl Rahner is a New Order theologian who, along with such Modernists as Kung, de Chardin, Murray, and others, set out by to destroy the Church and its message by monkeying with the theology of 2000 years. Many of these Modernist theologians were condemned before Vatican II (like Kung), but were "restored" and fawned upon as periti at Vatican II. This is another reason why Vatican II can't be trusted: the theology of suspect and condemned theologians was written into the documents.
You were right in getting out of the RCIA program pronto. RCIA is a Novus Ordo program that is being used to break down the Catholic Faith. It is a very real danger to anyone's faith. RCIA is the New Order's "Christian Initiation of Adults," replacing the traditional Sacrament of Baptism. It is full of an amalgam of naturalism, environmentalism, a bit of voodoo, some white witchcraft (wicca), and some Protestant traits all mixed together, but absent is genuine Catholicism. By the way, RCIA was never approved, even by the modern Vatican.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Are there different levels of Hell and Purgatory?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia presents a compelling literary description of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which has taken hold in the popular imagination. His depiction, however, is not doctrinal. Yet, St. John's Apocalypse, the last book of the New Testament, does teach that there are various states of blessedness (for example, the pre-eminent state of the Holy Martyrs), so one could certainly hypothesize the same for Hell and Purgatory.
It is of interest that Dante was a Franciscan Tertiary and that his work was praised by several popes.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have a single question about the invalid-consecration controversy: when the International Committee on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), the Novus Ordo's translation arm, released the Roman Canon with all the errors in its translation into the vulgar tongues, why did no one simply provide a set of corrections to make it read properly?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No translation is ever going to "read properly." Any translation introduces error, as one language is not the same as another. All translations are merely an approximation of meaning. The Italians have an apt saying: Traduttore, traditore, a translator is a traitor. That is one of many reasons why the dogmatic Council of Trent called heretical anyone who should say that Holy Mass should be said in the vernacular.
That having been said, the New Order doesn't want it to "read properly." The New Order deliberately wants to change the theology of the Catholic Church to something unCatholic: universal salvation. The fact that the dogmatic Council of Trent condemned 400 years in advance the very thing that the Novus Ordo has attempted to do makes no difference to these people.
This is not a matter of "grammar"; it is a matter of essence. The Novus Ordo worship service has been repeatedly exposed as a Trojan horse to introduce a new religion in place of the true Catholic Faith. Haven't you read the latest? Several U.S. bishops and a Vatican cardinal say that Christ did not come for the Jews. He is not their Messias; they are still waiting. Christ came only for the Gentiles! I can hardly imagine a statement that more fundamentally denies Christ, the Apostles, the Scriptures, and the Church He founded.
The liturgy and theology of the Roman Catholic Church has, for 2000 years, been expressed in the Roman language, that is, Latin. Sts. Peter and Paul went to Rome. The liturgy of Church in Rome from was in Latin from the earliest times. You can't change the language without changing the meaning. What has happened in the New Order proves that: so much of the meaning has been changed that under Pope Leo XIII's decree, the New Order rites are just as defective as the Anglican rites he condemned as invalid.
A pope-saint and a dogmatic council infallibly declared the Traditional Latin Mass to be the rightful Catholic and Apostolic Mass, which was to be said of obligation in perpetuity. He also absolved from any penalties anyone who should say this Mass, perhaps having an inspired foresight of just what would happen in the post-Vatican II age.
Moreover, the pope's own curia has said that many Novus Ordo services in the United States are invalid because of defect of matter. Novus Ordo presbyters were ordered to repeat the services with valid matter. And what was the reaction of the U.S. Bishops Conference when presented with the Vatican's official letter? To ignore it. When you tell this fact to neo-Catholics who posture about obeying the pope, what do they do? They continue to worship bread (or a cookie).
The Vatican must be ruing the day that the Mass was wrenched from its proper Latin into the vulgar tongues. Since 1964, the Vatican has consistently had to deal with inaccurate, erroneous, and invalidating translations (as if any translation could be accurate). Traditional Catholics can rejoice that they are free from all of the problems plaguing the New Order and have the true Mass, the one received from Apostolic Tradition, in Latin.
The London Times
September 13, 2002
Bishops and New Translation of Mass Condemned by Vatican
English-speaking bishops have been strongly criticized by the Vatican for the use of "inappropriate" language in a new translation of the [Novus Ordo] Latin Mass. The bishops have been condemned for the unacceptable use of inclusive language, an unwillingness to use the term "man" and a watering down of the "noble simplicity of the Latin". The "rich language of supplication" had been reduced to "ask" or "grant", "heavenly choirs" had been watered down to mere "angels" and a focus on "transcendent realities" in the Latin had been reduced to interior dispositions.
There was a reluctance to translate the Latin homo as "man" and the Church was referred to as "it" rather than "she", failing to reflect the traditional view of the Church as the bride of Christ. The bishops have also been ordered to abandon the banal and inadequate translations of Latin phrases such as Et cum spiritu tuo and Deus omnipotens. The former will become "And with thy spirit" instead of "And also with you", while the latter will become "All powerful God" instead of "Father".
The Vatican's letter spells out the reasons for a rejection of the attempts that began in 1990 to prepare a new version of the Mass in English. The criticisms are reported in today's Catholic Herald. The Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship has written a sharply critical letter to the bishops' conferences of the English-speaking world explaining why the translation begun in 1990 was unacceptable.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What about the so-called Dialogue Mass, where the people respond with the servers. Is this a fully traditional practice?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Missa Dialogata, or Recitativa, also known as the Dialogue Mass, was introduced illegally before World War I and spread throughout Europe, and subsequently the United States, because it was immediately adopted by the military chaplains. As we know it today, the Dialogue Mass seems to have originated at the Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium about the year 1880.
The Sacred Congregation of Rites always showed considerable reserve toward the new practice. Its use spread during the "Transitional Period," when Bugnini, later the arch-architect of the Novus Ordo service, came onto the Liturgical Commission in 1947.
This technique was later to be used to perfection by the Novus Ordo to force in unCatholic practices such as communion "in the hand" and altar "girls." Here is the process.
Mel Gibson is a courageously public traditional Catholic, who "tells it like it is." His interview in conjunction with his new film on the life of Christ that has recently begun shooting flays the Church of the New Order in no uncertain terms!
London Times
Richard Owen (Rome)
Mel Gibson, a Roman Catholic who is to play Christ in a new film, has attacked the Vatican, saying that he does not believe in the [Novus Ordo] Church as an institution. The actor, who says that he is an "old fashioned Catholic" who rigorously supports the [Traditional] Latin Mass, is shooting Passion in Rome and in the southern Italian town of Matera. He says that he is happy that his only daughter has decided to become a nun.
Gibson, 46, had a Catholic upbringing and attended a Catholic boys' school in Australia. He is scathing about the Church's hierarchy, saying that the Vatican was "a wolf in sheep's clothing." "I believe in God," he told the newspaper Il Giornale. "My love for religion was transmitted to me by my father. But I do not believe in the [Novus Ordo] Church as an institution." Gibson has a private chapel at his home in Malibu, California, at which the service is conducted every Sunday in Latin.
[The Traditional Latin] Mass continues to be said in Latin in about 20 churches in Italy. These include the Church of Gesu and Maria in Rome, where it has become fashionable for high-society Catholics to hold weddings and baptisms to the sound of Gregorian chant. Church officials say that there is a growing movement for the restoration of Latin. In private the Pope continues to say Mass in Latin [with the Novus Ordo service]. A seminary near Florence that still trains priests in the Latin liturgy claims that its conservatism has "growing appeal".
Gibson, whose latest film, Signs, is released today, is said by friends to have become more conservative in his religious views in middle age. He has been married to his wife, Robyn, for more than 20 years, unusually long by Hollywood standards, and says that his faith enabled him to survive as a family man despite the drinking binges and infidelities that accompanied his early success. He protects the privacy of his seven children (six of them sons) fiercely, but he said that his "adventuresome" daughter Hannah wanted to be a nun, and he was very happy about it. She was "healthy, smart and well-traveled" and he did not have to worry about her.
Gibson, who is renowned for his swashbuckling heroics in action films such as Braveheart, Mad Max, and Lethal Weapon, said that portraying Christ during his final earthly hours would be the most difficult role of his life. He said that what attracted him to the story of Christ's last hours before the Crucifixion was that it was "the drama of a man torn between his divine spirit and his earthly weakness". In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the road to Calvary and at Golgotha, Jesus was usually described as resigning himself to death without a tremor of fear, whereas "my Jesus will be shaken by his human suffering. Real blood will flow from the wound in his side, and the screams of his Crucifixion will be real as well."
Catholic sources said that Gibson, who sought the advice of theologians and prelates in Rome for his film, had strong views on divorce, abortion and contraception that would appeal to Vatican conservatives.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attend a Traditional Latin Mass every week. There are a few people there who oppose my comments regarding the hoped-for restoration, even though I am merely echoing my priest's own outlook. I wonder whether you could offer any advice on how to annunciate the Catholic attitude more clearly. I try to be cheerful, but they get grumpy and moan, "What restoration? There isn't going to be any restoration!"
Fr. Moderator Replies.
First of all, the restoration is right in front of their eyes, but apparently their negative attitude has prevented them from seeing it. The fact that they have a traditional priest and a traditional chapels is evidence of the Traditional Catholic Restoration. The fact that attendance at the Novus Ordo service has dropped in 40 years from 78% to 17%, while attendance at the Traditional Latin Mass increases by 10% a decade is evidence of the Restoration.
Such an attitude as theirs bespeaks a lack of the virtue of hope, a lack of trust in God, a lack of prayer, and an ignorance of Church history. These people should be reading the encouraging Psalms from the Divine Office with their priest, lest they sink into the grave sin of despair.
From the historical perspective over the last 2000 years, there have been many periods of faithlessness, extending a century or more, but after the test the Church has always come back stronger. One such period was the devastating Protestant Revolt, from which arose the great Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent, Queen of All Dogmatic Councils, Pope St. Pius V, and dozens of Saints walking the earth.
What are these people doing for the Faith? Are they apostles for Christ? Are they doing corporal and spiritual works of mercy while they carry the Faith to others? Are they encouraging others in the true Faith? I have said before that it is not the New Order that will ultimately repress the Faith; the New Order is killing itself. It will be the traditional Catholics, if we don't exemplify the virtues of Christ!
The Catholic Voice, one of three periodicals that TRADITIO most highly recommends for traditional Catholics, in a September 2002 cover piece entitled "A Typical Defense: The Novus Ordo Is OK, It is Approved" presents one of the best and most succinct arguments for totally rejecting the Novus Ordo service as a counterfeit:
The most important point to note, and which most Catholics -- even many of the Traditional Movement -- fail to make in the "promulgation" of the new missal is that, from its beginning, the Novus Ordo Missae is illegal and powerless as a form of Catholic worship. This is true because no one in the Church, not even a pope, has the power or the right to make the sweeping changes made to the Liturgy as we saw following the close of Vatican II, and still call it valid Catholic worship.
But along came the Modernists, and, playing on the ignorance of Catholics, they have proclaimed that the Church has both the power and the right to change the substance of the Sacraments. Why? Where did the Church get this "new" power? The sophism in the reply is remarkable.
The Modernists tell us: "Because the pope is infallible. He has the power to change anything he wants." Gullible and ill-informed Catholics have been fooled by this sophism, and so many have accepted the Novus Ordo Missae simply because it was "approved." ... We are critical of the Novus Ordo Missae because, in point of fact, it is not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, nor is it a valid form of liturgical worship for Roman Catholics. No one has the power or the right to make the changes in the substance of the Mass (the words of Consecration) and, sadly, Catholics have been "worshipping" at a false liturgical ceremony for over three decades, and their faith has suffered as a result.
But, you might say, doesn't the pope have that power? The answer from Roman Catholic teaching, from a dogmatic oecumenical council at that, is an emphatic NO! When the doctrine of papal infallability was defined at Vatican I, the Council Fathers and the pope were very careful to see that the doctrine not be overstated or made to be something contrary to what Christ had instituted.
Therefore, the Council's definition of papal infallability was very limited and carefully restricted as to its proper end. This is how the First Vatican Oecumenical Council put the matter in its First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus), Chapter 4, On the Infallible Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff:
Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus sanctus promissus est, ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente traditam per apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent.
[For the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Apostles.]
Therefore, as St. Cajetan, one of the Church's pre-eminent dogmatic theologians, points out:
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.
Moreover, the noted Jesuit theologian Suarez quotes the statement of St. Cajetan:
And in this second way the Pope could be schismatic, if he were unwilling to be in normal union with the whole body of the Church, as would occur if he attempted to excommunicate the whole Church, or, as both Cajetan and Turrecremata observe, if he wished to overturn the rites of the Church based on Apostolic Tradition.
Thus, the Novus Ordo Missae does not have a leg to stand on, and certainly can't be justified on the basis of "papal infallibility." Rather, the Novus Ordinarians, in using this argument to justify a counterfeit "mass," are committing the error of papolatry, that is, attributing to the pope, a man, the attributes of God. That is blasphemy and is tantamount to the worship of a false god.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
My family and I started praying the Angelus three times daily since about a year ago. I thought that if the Mohammedans routinely pray a prayer at set times during the day, why can't we try to make the effort at least to pray the Angelus? Can you give a brief history of the Angelus?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The recitation of the Angelus morning, noon, and night is a long-standing Catholic custom. It appears to have arisen out of the Divine Office, in that when the bell for the Hour of Compline, the last Hour of the Day, was tolled from the belltower, the laypeople would say the Angelus in imitation of the Hour of Compline said by the clergy, just as the full (150 Ave) Rosary is a lay imitation of the 150 Psalms of the Divine Office said by the clergy.
Since it is believed that the Angel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Hour of Compline, the devotion started then and later came to be repeated before the Hour of Prime (early morning) and at the Hour of Sext (midday), signaled by the tolling of the bells.
The Angelus is a short practice of devotion in honor of the Incarnation, consisting of essentially the triple repetition of the Ave Maria, to which in later times have been added three introductory versicles and a concluding versicle and prayer. From the first word of the three versicles, i.e., Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae [the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary] the devotion derives its name.
An indulgence of 100 days for each recitation, with a plenary indulgence once a month, was granted by Benedict XIII. When recited as a public devotion, the Angelus should be said kneeling (except on Sundays and on Saturday evenings, when the rubrics prescribe a standing posture).
It is sad that in our modern, supposedly "environmental" age, Catholics have lost the sense of time through the day and are not greeted at these times with the tolling of the bell, reminding them of their salvation and of the mystery of the Incarnation and that sublime moment when the Blessed Virgin became the Mother of Our Savior. Every Catholic should take the time to say the Angelus at least once a day, preferably three times a day, in thanksgiving for this wonderful gift to the human race.
The Angelus prayers will be found in the TRADITIO Library of Files in LATPRAY: Useful Latin Prayers / Orationes Latinae Utiles.
One of TRADITIO's correspondents sent a recent copy of a Novus Ordo publication that gave over two pages of space to TRADITIO's list of papal indiscretions, published in an earlier Commentaries from the Mailbox (repeated below). I was surprised that so much space was given to listing, point by point, the entire list and that the periodical attempted to respond to only seven errors out of some two dozen listed, and of those seven, the periodical admitted the certain or probable accuracy of five.
Moreover, this periodical admitted that when the pope kissed the Koran, he perhaps did so in ignorance of what it contains! If the Novus Ordinarians really believe that the pope of the Catholic Church is ignorant of the fact that the Mohammedan Koran contains blasphemies against Our Lady, the Saints, and even the Most Blessed Trinity, well, the Novus Ordo surely is walking in darkness. How can any Catholic trust anything the pope says if can't distinguish between Catholicism and Mohammedanism? This is certainly a case of "damned by faint praise"!
Before I repeat below the list of papal indiscretions, I should point out that I reproduce here nothing secret, nothing that the Vatican denies. In fact, the Vatican takes great pride in these actions. Most of them have been culled from Vatican Press Office releases and photographs, and can conveniently be checked in Fr. Daniel LeRoux's Peter, Lovest Thou Me? John Paul II: Pope of Tradition or Pope of Revolution? or Atila Sinke Guimares & Marian Therese Horvat's Previews of the New Papacy. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ5: What Traditional Catholic Books Do You Recommend?.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Is it good or praiseworthy to pray for the victims of the September 11 attack? Isn't it, basically speaking, a waste of time since not all of the victims were Catholic and are not in Purgatory?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No prayer is ever a waste of time. These souls may need our help, but many others do as well. I'm not much for these public extravaganzas. The participants engage in a lot of posturing and "good production values," but there seems to be little, if any, real religion involved. Mouths may sing "God Bless America," but rampant immoral and irreligious actions call down the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I think that you would be better off praying in private, every day, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, particularly those who have none to pray for them. Or better, if you have the opportunity, to pray at a Requiem Mass.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What would be the best prayer that traditional Catholics could pray on 9/11?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I can think of no better prayer than the Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in its unadulterated form given by Pope Pius XI in his Encyclical Letter Quas primas of December 11, 1925. (Under John XXIII, the sentences praying for the conversion of the Jews and Mohammedans was stricken in the name of "oecumenism." Those sentences are given in boldface below, as it is these that are most germane to this day.) To this prayer may commendably be added the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race, look down upon us humbly prostrate in Thy presence. We are Thine, and Thine we wish to be; but to be more surely united with Thee, behold, each one of us freely consecrates himself today to Thy most Sacred Heart.
Many indeed have never known Thee; many too, despising Thy precepts, have rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them to Thy Sacred Heart.
Be Thou King, O Lord, not only of the faithful who have never forsaken Thee, but also of the prodigal children who have abandoned Thee; grant that they may quickly return to their Father's house lest they die of wretchedness and hunger.
Be Thou King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinion, or whom discord keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and the unity of faith, so that soon there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.
Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolotry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them all into the light and kingdom of God.
Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people. Of old, they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may It now descend upon them as a laver of redemption and of life.
Grant, O Lord, to Thy Church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm; give peace and order to all nations, and make the earth resound from pole to pole with one cry: Praise be to the Divine Heart that wrought our salvation; to It be glory and honor forever. Amen.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Someone told me that Homo factus est is the only part of the Consecration that can't change. Is that part allowed to be changed? Also, there is a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. hanging up at the back of the church where we attend an "Indult" Mass, where the Novus Ordo service is also said. The picture looks like an icon. Is that appropriate to be in a Catholic Church? The picture is hanging on the wall where the congregation sits.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The first is a prime example of what I call "lay theology." Since the Novus Ordo, the number of silly people who think that they can pronounce on theology is legion. As a matter of fact, the words Homo factus est have nothing to do with the Consecration. You won't find the words in the Sacred Canon at all, but rather in the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed! Whoever your "someone" is, he seems to be ignorant of the Catholic Faith.
As to "St." Martin Luther King, this is another blasphemy that is being pushed by the New Order. Martin Luther King was a heretic (and apparently a cheat on his Ph.D. and an adulterer as well) and has no place in a Catholic Church, let alone being positioned as a "saint." One is led to the conclusion that whatever the sign on the door says, this is not a Catholic church. Your situation shows how the "Indult" Mass is far from a solution to the crisis of Faith and is becoming corrupted with Novus Ordo elements, officially since Protocol 1411 of 1999, which makes all "indult" arrangements subservient to the New Order.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Some people I know claim that in the early Church Christians confessed very infrequently, and only when the sins they had committed were of a very serious nature, e.g., murder or adultery.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
If these people want to go back to the early Church in this way (an error that Pope Pius XII condemned as archaeologism), they need to go all the way, don't we, if they are to be consistent and honest? That means that murderers and adulterers will dress in sackcloth and ashes and wait outside the Church for forty days during Lent while they expiate their sins, as was the practice in the early Church. Are these people arguing for this practice? I thought not.
Moreover, I must assume that these people are the strongest public advocates for the exclusive use of the Traditional Latin Mass, as that was the Mass of the early Church of Rome. No? They attend the New Order service written in 1965 by a Freemason and six Protestants?
Why am I not surprised? You see, such arguments are simply Novus Ordo red-herrings, having no truth in history or logic. These peoples' minds have been benumbed by the Novus Ordo disinformation over the last forty years. Have any of them bothered to check the truth of the contentions they are spouting? I thought not.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Would you please give me your opinion why good priests who see all this scandal and agree that it's wrong don't go to the pope personally as St. Paul did and demand change?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The virtue of fortitude has not been evidenced by this generation. It really is not enough to know what is right; one has to have the virtue of fortitude to do what is right. So many conservative Novus Ordinarians will mouthe complaints about the New Order, but they do not have, as we say, the courage of their convictions. They still obey evil bishops, who conduct New Order sacrilege before their very eyes in a travesty of the Catholic Mass and in the corruption of Catholic doctrine.
These are not the kind of bishops that we see in the early Church. As opposed to the puny minds of the modern age, the early Church had towering -- and courageous -- intellects like Paul, Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Ambrose, Martin. These men did not hestitate even to denounce and disobey popes when those popes presumed to corrupt the Faith one iota.
These were not "organization men." They were not willing to sell their souls to remain on good terms with the CEO. As good Catholics, they knew full well to put God first: Bonum est confidere in Domino quam confidere in homine It is good to confide in the Lord, rather than to have confidence in man (Psalms 117:8/DRV).
If the clergy in the early Church were like those of the modern age, the Catholic Church would have been dead by the fourth century. Most of the clergy today are wimps, of the kind of whom God says, in the words of the Apocalypse: "But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth" (3:17/DRV).
There are only a few to whom God gave the courage in our times to stand up to the New Order nonsense while all around them were making excuses for the evil: Bp. Kurz, Bp. de Meyer, Abp. Lefebvre, Cardinal Bacci, Cardinal Ottaviani, and a few others. Without them there would not be a Traditional Movement that is increasing daily, as the New Order sinks. We should never forget the courage of these men and should pray for the repose of their souls.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As you know, the duty of the Promotor Fidei (informally called the Devil's Advocate) is to investigate and bring any evidence, however slight, against a candidate for sanctity, as well as to "insist" that any witness found negating sanctity be heard before the commission. In the traditional Codex Iuris Canonici, there is also a section which deals with the duty of "all the faithful" who have reason to negate the sanctity of the candidate, to come forward (whether they have been found or called by the commission or not) and give such information to the Church. The interest and honor of the Church are very much at stake in preventing anyone from receiving the apparent honors of sainthood, whose death is not juridically proven to have been "precious in the sight of God."
It should be noted that there were changes in the canonization process made under Paul VI, and there was a complete overhauling of the canonization process in 1982-83 by John Paul II, expunging those sections which concerned not only the Devil's Advocate, but the duties of the Devil's Advocate, as well as the duties of the faithful. These omissions are not an abrogation of law, but simply a failure to acknowledge laws which already exist, laws which flow from the natural law and cannot be abrogated. These omissions call the entire canonization process into serious question and disrepute.
For example, in the case of Msgr. Josemaria Escriva, of Opus Dei notariety, who is scheduled to be "canonized" on October 6, 2002, many of the eye-witnesses who had a long-standing relationship with the candidate, and direct and personal knowledge of his lack of virtue (e.g., Carmen del Tapia, Miguel Fisac, et al.) were either barred or not called during the commission's investigation. The reason given by Opus Dei is that they were "unsuitable". Yet, direct eye-witness testimony is the most suitable of witnesses in the law, and so the conclusion that these witnesses were "unsuitable" is ipso facto completely inconsistent with the rules of evidence that flow from the natural law.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It has been frequently bandied by those ignorant of theology that canonizations are unquestionably "infallible." Such a position is not consistent with the teachings of the Doctors of the Church, including the Supreme Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.
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 opened the Pandora's box by tampering with the Catalogus Sanctorum in the cases of St. Philomena, who had been publicly venerated by several Saints and popes, and the 14 Auxiliary Saints, who had been venerated by millions of Catholic since the early Church, including St. Christopher and St. Barbara. If the Church of the New Order wishes to decanonize traditional Saints, turnabout is fair play: traditional Catholics can reserve judgment on the New Order's unproven candidates.
There is the possibility that factual errors may have been made in some of these post-conciliar 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 full confidence and faith.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
On September 4, I heard the "self-proclaimed Catholic" Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News channel say that the Bible is all allegory and parables, which are there only to teach us how to live a good life. He said he was taught this notion in "Catholic" school. He insinuated that the stories in the Bible did not really happen. He went on to say that the four Gospels do not even mention that homosexuality is wrong; therefore we must not try to judge immoral actions. I have heard this same notion palmed off by other Catholics, including Novus Ordo presbyters. I would like to know what the traditional Catholic teaching is in regards to the authenticity of what is in the New Testament.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The parables in the Gospels are, as the Church Fathers tell us, to be interpreted on four levels of meaning: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic (spiritual). However, very little of the New Testament contains parables or allegory.
A case in point. Chapter 1 of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is certainly not allegorical by any stretch of the truth. St. Paul was literally condemning immoral practices that he knew of only too well in the society around him. What O'Reilly was taught certainly bears no relation to Catholicism; it is pure Modernism, condemned as such in the Syllabus of Errors.
If we follow O'Reilly's perverted notion to its logical conclusion, we should close all the courts, open all the prisons, and let people act with impunity just as evilly as they desire: murder, rape, sodomize, commit adultery, lie, cheat, steal.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Do animals have souls? I ask this because our family dog has just died. My wife and I are both Catholic. She fancies that they do; I do not.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes and no. Soul is a confusing word in English. Latin is much more precise in this as in so many things. That is why the Church traditionally prefers Latin and avoids the vulgar tongues for such purposes as doctrine.
Animals do have an anima, that is, a life-force. Our English word animate derives from the Latin anima. Animals do not have an animus, that is, a rational intellect. The English word soul usually refers to the latter meaning.
Only the animus (rational soul) is immortal, as it participates in the divine principle. That is what is meant when it is said that man was created in the image and likeness (Genesis 1:26/DRV) of God, with a rational principle.
Whenever I mention the Clown Mass or the Polka Mass or the Candy Mass or the Santa Claus Mass or the Gay Mass or the Cookie Mass, I always get a Novus Ordinarian or two who won't believe that such things exist and say, "Prove it!" Well, if a picture is really worth a thousand words, the picture above is proof of just one of the multitudinous instances of invalid travesties going on all over the country.
The photograph was provided by a photographer at the Clown Mass, held on Sunday, September 1, 2002, at the 9:15 a.m. Mass of Christ the King Church, in a California diocese. Pictured is the pastor "vested" in a clown suit to the left of a member of the Troupe of Fools holding up a gospel book. The gospel was subsequently "performed" by the Troupe of Fools and followed by a "homily," also "performed" by the Troupe.
Sometimes a single word is worth a thousand pictures. I'll let you fill in the appropriate word!
One of the best representations of the trickery played by the Novus Ordo is exemplified by the recent dedication of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
Originally, the bishop (Mahoney) mouthed the platitude that it was not necessary to build a cathedral because the money could better be spent on the poor: the very argument put up by the traitor Judas Iscariot and condemned by Our Lord.
But Los Angeles had a perfectly good traditional cathedral, St. Bibiana, named after the Saint whose sacred body Pope Pius IX over 100 years ago sent to Los Angeles to repose beneath the high altar. It appears, however, that the bishop wanted to dump his traditional cathedral and build a Modernistic monstrosity. So, the disinformation campaign began.
The old cathedral would cost too much to restore. The figure for restoration was $50 million, but the new monstrosity cost four times as much $200 million. So profligate was this expenditure that the new cathedral has already been dubbed the "Taj Mahoney."
Then there was that problem with the Saint. What do you do with her? The bishop, whose personal morals have been exposed recently in the "scandal" and whose ecclesiastical morals were previously exposed a few years ago in Newsweek when he commandeered the funeral industry for profit, had the solution to the problem. After all, we don't venerate Saints any more after Vatican II anyway, so why not just dig a hole and throw her in?
And that's exactly what he did. When he shut down St. Bibiana's, he buried corpus in a common grave, with no candles, no tombstone, no marks of veneration at all. Recent reports indicate that the corpus has been brought back, but not to repose under the high altar for the veneration of the people, as it was in the original cathedral and as Pope Pius IX had intended it.
So now an extravagant cathedral, built in modernist style, at a cost of four times more than it would have taken to restore the traditional cathedral, is dedicated to the "Spirit of Vatican II" -- and Pope Paul VI himself tells us that the "Spirit of Vatican II" is Satan).
I am told by Los Angeles correspondents that there is no holy water font at any of the entrances, lest the faithful be seen making the Sign of the Cross. The Stations of Cross are hidden away in the basement, almost as much exiled as St. Bibiana is. They wouldn't want anyone to be reminded of that outward sign of devotion.
I have no doubt that before much longer, the cathedral will end up the property of the scores of individuals who are now suing the bishop for his "improprieties." The diocese certainly can't cover these suits out of its petty cash fund. Wanna bet the first property to be handed over to the courts will be the venerable St. Bibiana's Cathedral? Fine: just let the recipients turn in into the finest independent traditional Roman Catholic cathedral in the world!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I went to a JFK exhibit recently where a picture of the former president's Requiem Mass was on display. The accompanying articles pointed out it was a Low Mass. I thought that Mozart's Requiem was sung at Saint Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. Was the High Mass after Kennedy's burial?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Exequial Mass for President Kennedy was in fact a Pontifical Low Mass, celebrated by Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, a friend of the Kennedy family, in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, November 25, 1963.
It did seem at the time that there should be far more solemnity, but I understand that Mrs. Kennedy requested it that way. As one who lived through that sad time, I can appreciate how the suddenness and manner of the President's death might have led to that preference on her part.
It is hard to describe the tenor of those days for those who did not live through them. The radio was taken up with the continuous news of the situation, of course, but also with announcements of the cancellation of schools, concerts, civic meetings, and sports events. The television carried only news and funeral music for three days. Everything stopped for three days in the United States of America.
It is hard to imagine that we will ever see this country so united again, particularly in this religious way that was prominently Catholic. Robert Kennedy's funeral in 1968 was sadly corrupted by the post-conciliar bastardization of the Sacred Liturgy that had taken place starting in 1964, and he was in the middle of a very partisan electoral campaign, not a representative of the entire country, like the President.
We are told how awful "9/11" was, but nothing much stopped then. We were told that life should go on as usual. Pray for the souls of the people lost? -- well, somehow that was lost in the parade of showy civic "performances," replete with the secular light-opera ditty, God Bless America. Certainly the Great God Sport went on as if nothing had happened. Cancel the World Series? Oh, no. We're not that affected.
Although in my parents' generation, the death of President Roosevelt was said to have been an event of universal grief in the country, Roosevelt was a much older man, in not the best of health. Kennedy, on the other hand, was a man in early middle age who appeared quite vigorous.
I am quite familiar with the details of the Exequial Mass, Final Absolution, and Commitment, having done research on them some years after the actual events to confirm my recollections at the time.
The cortege was greeted at the foot of the great steps of the cathedral, the cardinal sprinkling the casket with the same lustral water with which each of the faithful is sprinkled before the principal Sunday Mass, with the words of that most contrite, and at the same time hopeful, of the Penitential Psalms, the Miserere, (Psalm 50) composed by King David, when he had fallen into sin with Bersabee, and had deeply repented:
Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor:
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
[Thou shalt sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed:
thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.]
The casket of the President was carried up the great steps of the cathedral by the representatives of the military services, while the cardinal recited the second great Penitential Psalm of the Church, the De Profundis (Psalm 129). The Exequial Mass followed.
In accordance with the traditional practice of the Church, there was no eulogy at the Mass, even for a President. After the Exequial Mass and before the Final Absolution, one of the monsignori of the cathedral read some passages of Scripture that were particular favorites of the President and that he had often used in his memorable speeches expressed in grand classical oratory.
As an aside, the Novus Ordo practice of delivering eulogies at funerals is quite unCatholic. The purpose of a Catholic funeral is (1) to offer public prayer for the deceased, by which any temporal punishment in Purgatory might be remitted and (2) to remind the faithful present of their own end and to encourage them to remain true to their practice of the Faith, since one day they too will be in the same situation as the deceased.
And the wisdom of the Church is amply proven in the case of President Kennedy's funeral. With all due credit to what the President did and his wondrously elevating speeches, it is apparently undeniable that his moral life was not what it appeared in public. Traditional Catholicism does not try to eulogize a man in the Sacred Liturgy, but lets God be the Final Judge. The Novus Ordo, on the contrary, presumes to preempt God's judgment and pronounce its own erroneous judgment, no matter how immoral the individual's public life has been.
After the cardinal imparted the Final Absolution, the casket of the President was borne out of the cathedral to the chant of one of the most sublime pieces in the Church's treasury of Gregorian chant, the In Paradisum:
In Paradisum deducant te Angeli,
In tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,
Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.
[May the Angels lead you into Paradise,
At your arrival may the Martyrs take you up,
And lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem.]
The cortege then proceeded to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Commitment was performed at the gravesite.
About two months after the Exequial Mass, a Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Cushing at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston on Sunday, January 19, 1964, at 10:00 a.m. This was a Mass suitable to the death of a President. The Ordinary of the Mass was Mozart's great Requiem, the Mass he wrote and left uncompleted on his deathbed. Present were the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New England Conservatory of Music Chorus pro Musica, and the Harvard and Radcliff Glee Clubs. The Boston seminarians chanted the Gregorian Propers.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have recently started attending the Traditional Latin Mass and have grown attached to the Mass, its practices, etc. The only question I have is that how can I embrace the Traditional Latin Mass without denying the working of the Holy Spirit in Vatican II?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
If you don't embrace the Traditional Latin Mass, you will be denying the working of the Holy Ghost at twenty undisputed dogmatic oecumenical councils of the Church!
One certainly doesn't have to accept that the Holy Ghost had anything to do with Vatican II. In fact, Pope Paul VI apparently rejected such an interpretation when he said that the darkness of Satan had entered the Church through that means.
Moreover, Vatican II, at best, was merely a pastoral council, not a dogmatic council, as confirmed by the pope who called it and the pope who promulgated it. There have been many councils of the Church that were condemned and certainly not guided by the Holy Ghost. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ8: What Is the Authority of Vatican II?.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
A topic I am debating with Evangelicals is Purgatory. They claim that Christ shed his blood to remove all sin and that there does not have to be a place to pay for our sins as He already did so. Also, the two books that the Protestant revolutionaries removed from the Bible -- who did so and why? It seems that these books counter what Protestants do not want to accept.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It is interesting that when the Bible doesn't support their notions, the Protestants are the first to dump the Bible to hold to their own notions. There are many citations in our article on Purgatory. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs?.
When arguing with Protestants, you must force them to counter all nine Biblical verses there, on authority, not just their own opinion, and then force them to confront the combined teaching of all the verses together. Don't let them get off with some general notion that does not answer the specific teaching of each verse, which the early Fathers clearly understood. They need to explain to you convincingly why they understand the nine Biblical passages in a way different from the early Fathers of the Church? Do they presume to know more about the Bible than these authorities of the Church, whom Protestants accept?
Remember you have nothing to prove to them. They have to prove their new ideas from a mere 400 years or so ago, while your belief stands with the Church from Apostolic times. This is a frequent mistake of Catholic apologists. They try to convince Protestants. Rather, they should insist that the Protestants convince them of the Protestants' revolutionary notions. In doing so, they will inevitably tangle themselves up in contradictions and in denials of Bible verses that are clearly against their notions.
As to the missing books in Protestant editions of the Bible, Luther removed them because he didn't like their teaching (so much for Protestants accepting the authority of the Bible!). Actually, he removed not two, but seven books from the Old Testament. He even wanted to remove three books from the New Testament! Fortunately, the tradition of the New Testament was so strong that he couldn't get away with that. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for BIBLE: Why Do Christians Have Different Bibles?.
Today, the feastday of Pope St. Pius X, who, shortly after the turn of the 19th to 20th century, temporarily quashed the designs of the Modernists until they broke out again more virulently at Vatican II, it seems particularly appropriate to conclude our commentary on how the destruction of the Church is proceeding according to the Communist/Liberalist/Modernist plan of 1940, as documented in Marie Carré's book, AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.
Part I of our commentary appeared under the date of August 30, 2002 and treated of the plan for the destruction of the general constitution of the Church. 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.
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 infiltrate 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 before 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 destruction of the Mass and Sacraments, together with our commentary on how they have come true in less than fifty years:
So, do we traditional Catholics sink into despair and hopelessness, even into distrust of God, knowing that the New Order has been executed exactly according to the plan of atheistic Modernists as early as 1940? No! I end this commentary by quoting from the truly Catholic woman whom the Anti-Apostle met -- sent by God to save him if that were possible, who knows? God gives even atheistic Modernists a chance at grace, if they will but accept it and convert.
Many souls, my Dear, will yield to the temptation of joining a completely human Church, which will mix up all beliefs so as to render them unrecognizable, but the [true] Catholic Church will continue to stand. If you persecute it, it will go into hiding, but its soul will always remain standing. For the mark of this Church is the submission to a Revelation which comes from Heaven....
You might win a certain number of souls to your perverse doctrines, maybe even a part of the Clergy (although I do not believe it), but you will never win all the souls; on the contrary, you will fortify the Saints. Yes, my poor dear friend, by attacking the Church of God you are but a toy in the hands of the All-Powerful. You believe yourself to be strong, but you are only strong insofar as God permits. Fear the day when the Lord will say: "It is enough, I have heard the prayers of those who suffer, and I have decided to comfort them by destroying My enemies."
And that, my fellow traditional Catholics, is the explanation of what is going on in the Church today. It is a great test of our souls and of our sanctity. The magnitude of the forces against true Catholicism, even if it be within the Church, even if it be to the papacy itself, is but nothing against the All-Powerful.
It is up to us merely to keep the traditional Faith, to keep praying for the restoration of the Church, and one day the enemies of the Church will be destroyed as Marie Carré says -- maybe sooner, maybe latter, but the Faith teaches us that the question is not if, but when.
For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ5: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend?.
Just as TRADITIO predicted, Novus Ordo presbyters are now turning on the bishops that sold them out to dry. Bully for them! The Novus Ordo bishops sold their own presbyters out so that they could maintain their own good P.R. Even the pope played Casper Milquetoast when it came to disciplining Novus Ordo cardinals who had acted incompetently in the "scandal."
I can say this as one who has criticized Novus Ordo presbyters in the past for the religious scandal of the Novus Ordo. In this case, I'm glad to see that at least a few Novus Ordo presbyters won't cave in to seeing their characters unjustly assassinated. One can't help but feel that there are some, perhaps many, innocent presbyters being railroaded by accusers who want to get free money, by a bigoted anti-Catholic press, by incompetent Novus Ordo bishops who have lost all sense of responsibility as spiritual fathers, and by leftist "child advocates," who out of the other side of their mouth are sponsoring the murder of foetuses.
Associated Press
Catholic Priests Sue Accusers
By Rachel Zoll
August 29, 15:45 (ET)
Some [Novus Ordo] priests who say they have been falsely accused of molesting children have turned to civil courts for relief, filing defamation lawsuits against the people claiming to be their victims.
Advocates for abuse survivors say these clergymen are trying to intimidate victims. But the priests argue a lawsuit is one of the few ways they can clear their names in a climate of public anger over offenders who remained in parish work.
"Child sexual abuse - that's an unconscionable crime and sin. The defamation of character of a good priest, that's a crime as well," said the Rev. Robert Silva, head of the National Federation of Priests' Councils, which claims about half of the 46,000 U.S. priests as members.
Priests in the dioceses of Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, St. Louis, and Orange County, Calif., have recently filed defamation lawsuits. A sixth priest has filed a defamation claim under church law in the Diocese of Trenton, N.J.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
My father says that in the early or mid 1950s, at the height of the Church's vigor, an article or editorial ran in the New York Daily News about a Communist plot to destroy the Catholic Church. According to the article, the failed methods of the past, i.e., closing or shooting up churches, arresting priests, and other overt suppression had always proved failures, and so the new plan was to destroy the Church by infiltrating it and then instituting little changes, slowly at first, but at a gradually increasing and finally dizzying pace.
According to the article, the Communists believed that the dumb faithful would embrace the first changes, which would be relaxations of old disciplines (remember the relaxation of the Eucharistic Fast in 1956?) with open arms. Only after this process had continued some years, the Communists predicted, would some (not all) Catholics wake up and realize that the Catholic Church had disappeared, but by then it would be too late.
Due to the apparently strong condition of the Church at the time, this story was widely derided as nonsense, according to my father. When, just a few years later, the effects of Vatican II began to be felt, my father strongly disagreed with what was going on, and we began attending a Traditional Latin Mass as soon as we found one. My father always says that the reason we didn't go along with the "New Order" was this article and how things played themselves out exactly as written in the article. He often wishes he had a copy of this prophetic article so many years later.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
One thinks of King Nebucodonossor in the Old Testament, who saw the handwriting on the wall prophesying the fall of his great kingdom of Babylon. Now that we look back, how clear the signs were that something was subverting the Church! Pope St. Pius X at the turn of the century saw them and acted vigorously to counter them, but the subsequent popes became complaisant of the evil Modernism festering in the Church.
Unfortunately, because of the complaisancy mentioned in the article, we could not see the pattern starting in the 1950s. We did not see it when the Easter Vigil was changed in 1951. We did not see it when the Eucharistic Fast was changed in 1953. We did not see it when the most ancient rites of Holy Week were changed in 1956. We did not even see it when the Second Vatican Council was called in 1958.
God help us, many didn't even see it when the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was corrupted in 1964 by the introduction of vulgar tongues and the changing of the Sacred Rites. Even to this day some do not see the corruption, daring to defend a "New Order" that all previous Popes, Councils, Fathers, Doctors, Apostles, and, yes, even Christ Himself, would condemn, if He had not given men free will to choose evil and error over Himself, His Apostles, and His true Church.
It is only now that the devious subtlety of such ilk can be appreciated for what it was, as Hannibal Bugnini, who, playing to the Masonic and Protestant interests with the goal of a secularized One-World Religion, began in 1947 to dismantle the Catholic religion by doing what Luther had commanded: Tolle Missam, Tolle Ecclesiam [Destroy the Mass, Destroy the Church].
Or as that of Josef Ratzinger, who, playing to the Protestant interests of the Second Vatican Council, persuaded that council to adopt a new definition of the Catholic Church, not as the one and only true Church of Christ, as had always been taught, but as merely one in which the Church of Christ "subsisted" [subsistit].
But, as the true Catholic faithful wake from their slumber over the post-conciliar years, there is even more reason to hope now than ever before. The first Hannibal looked as if he could accomplish the unthinkable, the defeat of Rome on its own home turf. Yet that was not the end of the story. Hannibal became haughty and was eventually himself defeated not in Italy, but on his own home turf in Africa, by the great Roman general, Scipio Africanus.
With more and more of the Christian faithful praying for a new Scipio, a new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, not the Novus Ordo Church, will God not eventually heed the prayers of His true faithful? Of course, He will. Our role is to be watchful, vigilant, and prayerful -- and patient. The end of the New Ordo will come not with a whimper, but with a bang, must as it did with St. Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century and as it did with Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Of that, no true Catholic can ever doubt.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
If Communists, Masons, Liberalists, and Modernists have so cleverly infiltrated the Church all the way the top of the hierarchy with such astounding organization and patience, why do traditional Catholics often advocate the approach of fighting for the cause of the true faith by going outside of the Novus Ordo existential Church? Shouldn't we traditional Catholics take a leaf out of the Communist/Masonic/Liberalist/Modernist book and, for the past forty years, worked quietly "within" the New Order establishment, patiently supplanting these people, disabling and preventing their implementations?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
An interesting thought, but I think that the situation is different. (Traditional) Catholics were supposedly in charge in the Church at the time the Modernist elements were at work. A movement such as the Modernist/New Order Movement works only when it is on the "outs," relying on the complaisance of the "in" establishment.
Now, you might argue, things are turned around, with the (traditional) Catholics on the "outs." Why don't they try the same trick? Well, first of all, those of a traditional or conservative persuasion tend not to engage in such Modernist trickery, not in the Church and not in secular politics. It seems immoral to them. Traditional Catholics are not manipulative, deceptive Communist-Marxist-Atheistic-Liberalists. Remember, too, that Anti-Apostle 1025 started his work in the 1940s, and it is still not completed, over sixty years later. So it would take a significant amount of time to work that way.
I have certainly criticized the heretic Martin Luther harshly here, but one thing I give him credit for is honesty, in that, however much in error and immoral he was, he followed that one Catholic virtue. He nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral and challenged anyone to debate him publicly on his points. He didn't slither around the "back channels" like a Bugnini or a Ratzinger to infiltrate his errors into the Church by subterfuge.
So at least we traditional Catholics can usually take consolation in that we are honest. We are like the little child in Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The Emperor's New Clothes, who, while all the adults hypocritically fauned on the feigned finery of the emperor, cried out: "But he has nothing on!" Frankly, I cannot think of a more salient parable for the condition of the haughty Novus Ordo Church in our day, with its non-existent "authority" and its non-existent "justifications." See if you can catch the truths taught in this classic parable and how they apply to the Novus Ordo today.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) The Emperor's New Clothes
Many years ago there lived an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of grand new clothes that he spent all his money upon them, that he might be very fine. He did not care about his soldiers, nor about the theatre, and only liked to drive out and show his new clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day; and just as they say of a king, "He is in council," so they always said of him, "The Emperor is in the wardrobe."
In the great city in which he lived it was always very merry; every day came many strangers; one day two rogues came: they gave themselves out as weavers, and declared they could weave the finest stuff any one could imagine. Not only were their colors and patterns, they said, uncommonly beautiful, but the clothes made of the stuff possessed the wonderful quality that they became invisible to any one who was unfit for the office he held, or was incorrigibly stupid.
"Those would be capital clothes!" thought the Emperor. "If I wore those, I should be able to find out what men in my empire are not fit for the places they have; I could tell the clever from the dunces. Yes, the stuff must be woven for me directly!"
And he gave the two rogues a great deal of cash in hand, that they might begin their work at once.
As for them, they put up two looms, and pretended to be working; but they had nothing at all on their looms. They at once demanded the finest silk and the costliest gold; this they put into their own pockets, and worked at the empty looms till late into the night.
"I should like to know how far they have got on with the stuff," thought the Emperor. But he felt quite uncomfortable when he thought that those who were not fit for their offices could not see it. He believed, indeed, that he had nothing to fear for himself, but yet he preferred first to send some one else to see how matters stood. All the people in the city knew what peculiar power the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or how stupid their neighbors were.
"I will send my honest old Minister to the weavers," thought the Emperor. "He can judge best how the stuff looks, for he has sense, and no one understands his office better than he."
Now the good old Minister went out into the hall where the two rogues sat working at the empty looms.
"Mercy on us!" thought the old Minister, and he opened his eyes wide. "I cannot see anything at all!" But he did not say this.
Both the rogues begged him to be so good as to come nearer, and asked if he did not approve of the colors and the pattern. Then they pointed to the empty loom, and the poor old Minister went on opening his eyes; but he could see nothing, for there was nothing to see.
"Mercy!" thought he, "can I indeed be so stupid? I never thought that, and not a soul must know it. Am I not fit for my office? No, it will never do for me to tell that I could not see the stuff."
"Don't you say anything to it?" asked one, as he went on weaving.
"O, it is charming-quite enchanting!" answered the old Minister, as he peered through his spectacles. "What a fine pattern, and what colors! Yes, I shall tell the Emperor that I am very much pleased with it."
"Well, we are glad of that," said both the weavers; and then they named the colors, and explained the strange pattern. The old Minister listened attentively, that he might be able to repeat it when the Emperor came. And he did so.
Now the rogues asked for more money, and silk and gold, which they declared they wanted for weaving. They put all into their own pockets, and not a thread was put upon the loom; they continued to work at the empty frames as before.
The Emperor soon sent again, dispatching another honest officer of the court, to see how the weaving was going on, and if the stuff would soon be ready. He fared just like the first: he looked and looked, but, as there was nothing to be seen but the empty looms, he could see nothing.
"Is not that a pretty piece of stuff?" asked the two rogues; and they displayed and explained the handsome pattern which was not there at all.
"I am not stupid!" thought the man: "it must be my good office, for which I am not fit. It is funny enough, but I must not let it be noticed." And so he praised the stuff which he did not see, and expressed his pleasure at the beautiful colors and charming pattern. "Yes, it is enchanting," he told the Emperor.
All the people in the town were talking of the gorgeous stuff. The Emperor wished to see it himself while it was still upon the loom. With a whole crowd of chosen men, among whom were also the two honest statesmen who had already been there, he went to the two cunning rogues, who were now weaving with might and main without fibre or thread.
"Is not that splendid?" said the two statesmen, who had already been there once.
"Does not your Majesty remark the pattern and the colors?" And they pointed to the empty loom, for they thought that the others could see the stuff.
"What's this?" thought the Emperor. "I can see nothing at all! That is terrible. Am I stupid? Am I not fit to be Emperor? That would be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me. O, it is very pretty!" he said aloud. "It has our highest approbation." And he nodded in a contented way, and gazed at the empty loom, for he would not say that he saw nothing. The whole suite whom he had with him looked and looked, and saw nothing, any more than the rest; but, like the Emperor, they said, "That is pretty!" and counseled him to wear the splendid new clothes for the first time at the great procession that was presently to take place. "It is splendid, excellent!" went from mouth to mouth. On all sides there seemed to be general rejoicing, and the Emperor gave the rogues the title of Imperial Court Weavers.
The whole night before the morning on which the procession was to take place, the rogues were up, and kept more than sixteen candles burning. The people could see that they were hard at work, completing the Emperor's new clothes. They pretended to take the stuff down from the loom; they made cuts in the air with great scissors; they sewed with needles without thread; and at last they said, "Now the clothes are ready!"
The Emperor came himself with his noblest cavaliers; and the two rogues lifted up one arm as if they were holding something, and said, "See, here are the trousers! here is the coat! here is the cloak!" and so on. "It is as light as a spider's web: one would thin one had nothing on; but that is just the beauty of it."
"Yes," said all the cavaliers; but they could not see anything, for nothing was there.
"Will your Imperial Majesty please to condescend to take off your clothes?" said the rogues; "then we will put on you the new clothes here in front of the great mirror."
The Emperor took off his clothes, and the rogues pretended to put on him each new garment as it was ready; and the Emperor turned round and round before the mirror.
"O, how well they look! how capitally they fit!" said all. "What a pattern! what colors! That is a splendid dress!"
"They are standing outside with the canopy, which is to be borne above your Majesty in the procession!" announced the head Master of the Ceremonies.
"Well, I am ready," replied the Emperor. "Does it not suit me well?" And then he turned again to the mirror, for he wanted it to appear as if he contemplated his adornment with great interest.
The two chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stooped down with their hands toward the floor, just as if they were picking up the mantle; then they pretended to be holding something in the air. They did not dare to let it be noticed that they saw nothing.
So the Emperor went in procession under the rich canopy, and every one in the streets said, "How incomparable are the Emperor's new clothes! what a train he has to his mantle! how it fits him!" No one would let it be perceived that he could see nothing, for that would have shown that he was not fit for his office, or was very stupid. No clothes of the Emperor's had ever had such a success as these.
"But he has nothing on!" a little child cried out at last.
"Just hear what that innocent says!" said the father: and one whispered to another what the child had said.
"But he has nothing on!" said the whole people at length. That touched the Emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but the thought within himself, "I must go through with the procession." And so he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all.
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