August 2003

An Associated Press article of August 25 throws new light on the cause of the unprecedented pre-release criticism of Mel Gibson's literal and graphic film on the Passion of Christ particularly by radical Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League. This is no debate over the Bible, or scholarship, or doctrine.

As St. Paul warned us, the desire of money is the root of all evils (1 Tim. 6:10/DRV). And, according to the AP article, it seems that the radical Jewish groups, which have little connection with the religion of Moses, but much with the politics of Modern Israel, are afraid that Gibson's film will decrease their monetary income from Evangelical Protestant groups.

The AP claims that the uproar over Mel Gibson's upcoming film is testing the unusual partnership that has developed between American Jews and Evangelical Protestants, who have recently become among the staunchest supporters of Israel. According to the head of an Evangelical group: "There is a great deal of pressure on Israel right now, and [Evangelical] Christians seem to be a major source of support for Israel. For the [radical] Jewish leaders to risk alienating 2 billion Christians over a movie seems shortsighted."

The dispute is forcing both the radical Jews and the Evangelicals to confront the stark theological differences between them. In the past, these differences could be covered over to a considerable degree by the P.C. line of false oecumenism. But Gibson's film is too biblical and too graphic to let the Evangelicals get away with that.

The strongest pro-Israel sentiment comes from a subset of Evangelicals known as Christian Zionists, who see the existence of modern Israel as a precondition for the second coming of Christ, which is to be preceded by a period of extreme violence and the death of millions, including Jews. On the other hand, many Jewish leaders have been uneasy about accepting Christian support. Even so, radical Jews and Evangelicals have been working together for Israel more closely than ever. Last year, American Evangelical Protestants donated $20 million to help Jews resettle in Israel, said Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Wow! No wonder the radical Jews hate Gibson's film. No wonder they have unleashed upon him and his father a campaign of calumny that is unprecedented. A graphic presentation of the biblical account could mean a loss of millions of dollars for the Jewish political projects in Modern Israel. The carefully-designed propaganda from radical Jewish organizations such as the ADL -- not for the religious Judaism of Moses, but for the secular politics of Modern Israel -- is being blown to smithereens by Gibson and his Passion.

August 29, 2003 - Beheading of St. John the Baptist (Double Major)
Complete Friday Abstinence

The Novus Ordo Axe Falls Again

Cookie Monster Rears His Ugly Head
New Vatican and U.S. Bishops Change Novus Ordo Mess and Communion -- Again

Aren't you glad that as a traditional Catholic you don't attend the Novus Ordo Mess and that you don't have to be subjected to endless unCatholic innovations, modifications, and travesties applied to this Mess? Well, here they go again. While the pope, for P.R. purposes, "decries" the scandals of the Novus Ordo Mess, he allows his Vatican congregations to continue to trash more and more its Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service.

In any case, Novus Ordinarians in the United States will experience in November 2003 the next wave in the constant manipulation of the Novus Ordo Mess, according to Protocol 1383/01/L of March 22, 2002. The major change will require the Novus Ordinarians to break the habit of immediately returning to their pews to kneel in prayer after Communion. Communicants returning to their pews will be asked to stand and sing until everyone has received Communion, and the priest has sat down to pray. Moreover, the Novus Ordinarians will raise both hands upward at the Lord's Prayer and presumably sway like frenzied Charismatics.

In 1979 even the New Vatican had to warn, in a letter to the U.S. Bishops Conference, that many Novus Ordo services in the United States (and presumably elsewhere) are invalid. On the basis of the criteria expressed then, the pope admitted in his April 17, 2003, encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia that the situation has grown seriously worse. Even the pope has to admit that now, some 25 years later, putatively all Novus Ordo services are invalid. Most traditional Catholics have held that certainly from 1967, when the dogmatic form of the Apostolic Consecration was changed, the Novus Ordo service became wholly invalid.

So, no true Catholic should even think of attending the Novus Ordo Mess. Even if it weren't invalid with its cookie, as the New Vatican says, it unquestionably is sacrilegious, blasphemous, scandalous, unCatholic, and idolatrous. You may as well worship the Cookie Monster!

Traditional Latin Mass Need not Apply

It seems that even if you do everything right in the Novus Ordo sect, you're still treated like dirt. The Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), the major "indult" group, which swears allegiance to the Novus Ordo apparatus and thereby gets its Good Housekeeping Seal of "approval," nevertheless gets the church door slammed in its face, as a recent incident confirms.

It seems that the FSSP had applied to celebrate a Traditional Latin Mass on June 22 at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., after a seminarians' pilgrimage. The Shrine had granted permission. But then the Shrine discovered to its horror that the Mass to be celebrated was the Traditional Latin Mass, so the Shrine immediately canceled the permission.

The Shrine publicly admitted in writing that it "is familiar with Ecclesia Dei, and recognizes and respects the place of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in the Church." Nevertheless, the Shrine "presumed that the Mass to be celebrated was the Novus Ordo." (Was this out of ignorance on the part of the Shrine, or has the FSSP now been celebrating the Novus Ordo?)

In the past, the FSSP had been allowed in the Shrine to "conduct adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament rather than the celebration of Mass." It seems the Shrine had no objection if the FSSP used the fake Novus Ordo "cookie" provided for "adoration," but if the FSSP were actually going to confect the Real Thing, it would be banished out of hand rather than let such a "sacrilege" take place in a Novus Ordo-Masonic temple.

What's the moral here, folks? The Novus Ordo apparatus is totally untrustworthy. It seems to have learned its politics of deception at the very feet of Master of Deceit. Why people like the Chief Bishop of the SSPX, who should know better, still persists in trying to "negotiate" and "reintegrate" with the corrupt and unCatholic New Order is beyond me, beyond the other bishops of the SSPX, and beyond a growing number of SSPXers, not to speak of the multitudes of other traditional Roman Catholics who are not part of the SSPX.

Every time a traditional Catholic group has tried to affiliate with the Novus Ordo apparatus for "approval's" sake, it has rued the day. The FSSP was gutted by Protocol 1411 of 1999, which forced it to celebrate the New Order service. The traditional priests of Campos, Brazil, who sold out to the "indult" are now breaking up. The SSPX, and any other group that tries to make peace with the Novus Ordo apparatus, will similarly be squashed by the Novus Ordo apparatus like the proverbial bug (Beelzebug, perhaps?).

What is the mania that pushes supposed traditional priests and laity into the Novus Ordo "indult"? Do they, in the modern lingo, so lack "self worth" that they will sell out to the New Order to get meaningless "approval" even from their enemies? Let's take off the rosy-colored glasses, wake up, and smell the coffee. The New Order apparatus has no love for the Traditional Latin Mass, from the pope on down. To them, it is simply a poker chip in the great game of the New Order. Anyone would be foolish to sell out to this ploy.

"Take just a little bite of the apple; a little won't hurt." "An occasional Novus Ordo service won't kill you." Sure, negotiate with people who want to destroy the Roman Mass of St. Peter. Obey those whose purpose is to corrupt the Roman Catholic Faith and the Sacraments into some kind of Protestantized-Masonized counterfeit. And then, once the poison is introduced into your system, it's too late. In an instant, it's in your heart and in your mind, and then your Roman Faith is dead before you know it.

August 28, 2003 - St. Augustine, Bishop, Confessor & Doctor (Double)

Mel Gibson's Traditional Catholic Film Progresses - Update XXIV

One of the sanest commentaries I have read on The Passion controversy comes from Christopher Manion. Here are excerpts of his commentary on the Feast of the Assumption.

Many of Gibson's defenders, even some of his collaborators, have gone out of their way to insist that they only want to tell the story of Christ's final hours on earth. In fact, they have even tried to "adjust" the content of the film to accommodate the views of their attackers. They're wasting their time.

The plain truth, of the Gospels and of the controversy that has surrounded Christianity ever since Christ's death and resurrection, is simple. If a person does not believe the Gospel to be the word of God, the only alternative is to find it offensive. Very offensive. Fundamentally offensive. And for good reason. It is offensive.

Here's the rub: if you don't accept the truth of Scripture, you might read it as literature, or as cultural history, or poetry, or something. If you do, you're likely to read the Passion account in any of the four Gospels and conclude that many Jews of Jesus's time were tired of having him blast them as selfish, prideful hypocrites.

His attacks were certainly effective: the word Pharisee remains to this day in our language as proof of the staying power of Christ's unlovely depiction. So the unbelieving reader might logically conclude that these reactionary, vindictive Pharisees did Jesus in, with the timely help of a Roman procurator, an angry mob, and some sadistic soldiers.

Modernists nowadays view Jesus as a genial figure, a loving guy, better probably than the rest of us, really a bearer of "truth against power." Well, the Gospels pretty well spell it out: the powers that were didn't enjoy Christ's messing around with their little deal -- not at all. Too many average folks were swarming to proclaim him King, even Messias, which a lot of Jews really didn't believe in all that much anyway.

Of course, a lot of half-hearted "Christians" of all denominations don't really buy into it either. Put yourself in their shoes. Here's what you've got to believe if you take the Gospel seriously:

• There is a God.
• He created you.
• Sin lost us paradise and brought on death.
• You are a sinner, and you are headed to Hell, an eternity of suffering the pain of the loss of God, for whose company you were created (and for no other end) -- unless you accept the spiritual truth of the Gospel and embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer.

Why is this so hard to understand in the modern secular world we live in as an intellectual exercise, putting aside faith for the moment? Well, picture yourself a secular fellow. You know a little about the Bible, enough to know that you don't "believe" it. Yet you also know that millions, perhaps billions, of people do believe it. So where do you stand with those folks? These people actually believe that you are a sinner. That you are headed for Hell unless you repent. There you are, they're calling you pond scum, and you're seething, mad as Hell (oops!) at these presumptuous, parading holier-than-thou types who are telling you how sinful you are, and they don't even know you! If there weren't an Anti-Defamation League out there already, by golly, you'd sure want to go out and start one.

And with good reason. Why, some of these people might convince your friends, perhaps even members of your own family, that you are a "sinner," and turn them against you. Your whole little world, which you had spent a lifetime constructing far away from any aroma of religion (unless it happened to be pagan), might come tumbling down. The Christian notion of Christ's very existence as the spotless Lamb of God offered in sacrifice for our sins, His very existence, you see, is an insult, an affront, even an attack, on the unbeliever, and the little world the non-believer has constructed to protect himself from it all. Christians just have to re-learn, in every age, that, sooner or later, their faith is going to offend somebody.

After all, as St. Augustine's Civitas Dei so clearly explains, Christians have to spend their entire lives among people who believe that, whoever killed Christ, they did the rest of the world a favor. So are Christians to be silenced any time the truth might offend somebody? Quite the contrary. Tell the world the whole truthful story, so at least the objectors will know what they're rejecting.

All this teaches us a very simple truth, and both believers and non-believers must recognize it. Christ's passion, death, and resurrection either happened or they didn't. Believers cannot change the story, water it down, tell it selectively, or shrug off certain more "offensive" facets in order to please nonbelievers. Some non-believers will never be satisfied, no matter what changes are made in the details of the story or the manner of its telling. For it is not a painting, or a book, or a movie, but Christ Himself, the Alpha and the Omega, Redeemer of mankind, who is the problem. Not an iota can be changed. He is "the same, yesterday, today, and forever."

Those who are most stridently attacking Gibson appear to object to the elements of his film which correspond faithfully to the account in Sacred Scripture. Gibson has reached out constantly and openly to his detractors, to no avail. Make your movie, Mel, and we will come.

Is Anyone in Hell?

It is my understanding that the Catholic Church has never stated that any individual is in Hell. If that is correct, how can one conclude that any popes or bishops are in Hell?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

To the contrary, the Gospels, together with the writings of the popes and councils, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the Saints, indicate clearly that many souls, perhaps the majority, are in Hell. Of course, one cannot say that any particular individual is there, because no one on earth can make that judgment. However, we certainly have every evidence from the Church that many souls perish there. This should be no surprise with so much unrepented sin, proselytizing for sin, and encouraging others to sin.

As part of the Modernist campaign to turn against God, to do away with sin, and to found a New Order that is based on often corrupt secular leaders, the notion that you are repeating was concocted. Even the New Vatican had to deny the validity of this notion in 1975. It is pure Novus Ordo bunk.

Apparently, the Great Eastern Doctor of the Church, St. John Chrysostom, along with many other Fathers, both East and West, taught the truth of this matter when he said:

And he should know. In his time, heretic bishops were rampant -- St. Jerome says up to four out of five. It's happened before; it's happening now. Nihil sub sole novum.

SSPX Update XXIV

I was a member of the congregation at a fine independent traditional church in the Midwest, but recently had to move to the Southwest. I knew that it would be difficult to move to another parish. I didn't know just how difficult.

My only choice in the new location was an SSPX chapel. I follow your web site closely, so I know that each of the SSPX sites has to be evaluated individually. I thought that I would go see what was at this particular site, since the SSPX doesn't "officially" admit to having rejoined the Novus Ordinarians and the New Vatican, thank the Lord.

I was quite surprised when the sermon made several references to the New Vatican and what "John Paul tells us to do." In fact, there were five different references made to John Paul's direction. This priest made a point of saying in his very Hollywood-style homily (which he admits the diocese helps them put together) that if the Novus Ordo diocese wanted to shut that particular chapel down, it could if it wanted to -- in other words, there but for the grace of the diocese goes that SSPX chapel.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

As I've said before, the SSPX is a mixed bag. Some of the Mass sites are excellent; some are acceptable; others are not, as you have discovered. You have to check carefully. There is obviously a split of opinion among the SSPX from the top down. Some SSPXers are quite well aware that the Novus Ordo Vatican is not in communion with the Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments and want nothing to do with it. Others, unfortunately, would sell their souls for a crumb of false "reintegration."

SSPX laypeople and priests need to keep a backup plan available. It is just possible that the Novus Ordo-leaning elements in the SSPX may sell out if the New Vatican pushes their buttons enough. In that case, my sources inside the SSPX indicate that at least half of the SSPX worldwide will refuse to be associated with the Novus Ordo Vatican and that at least one of the four SSPX bishops will stay with the non-Novus Ordo half.

August 27, 2003 - St. Joseph Calasanctius, Confessor (Double)

Where Did It Go?

"When Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Catholic Church in America was in the midst of an unprecedented period of growth, Bishops were ordaining record numbers of priests and building scores of seminaries to handle the surge in vocations. Young women by the thousands gave up lives of comfort for the austerity of the convent. These nuns taught millions of students in the huge system of parochial and private schools. The ranks of Catholics swelled as parents brought their babies for baptism, and adult converts flocked to the Church. Lines outside the confessionals were long, and by some estimates three-quarters of the faithful went to Mass every Sunday [Jones]."

So, what happened? Pope Paul VI, in 1972, expressed it best. Just three years after publishing the Novus Ordo Missae, the pope was hit with the horror of what the Second Vatican Council had done. He selected an important date to announce to the world this horror: the Feastday of Sts. Peter & Paul, the ninth anniversary of his Coronation as pope:

Lest there be any confusion about what was the cause of this horror, he laid the blame directly at the feet of the Second Vatican Council. It was not inspired by the Holy Ghost, said Paul VI, but by Satan:

That this pope lacked the fortitude to act on his declaration was a disaster for the Church, but, then, Saints indicate to us that popes and bishops populate Hell because to "every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required" (Luke 12:48/DRV). In fact, only two popes in the last 700 years have been Saints, both of them Piuses (V and X), and both of them defenders of the Roman Mass of St. Peter, what we now call the Traditional Latin Mass.

We can well imagine Our Lord saying of Paul VI, as he said to the wicked and slothful servant of Scripture: "Unprofitable servant, cast ye out into the exterior darkness. There, shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 25:30/DRV)."

And if that can be said of Paul VI of infelicitous memory, one hesitates to imagine what Our Lord will say of John Paul II, who, given one of the longest pontificates in the history of the Church, has virtually destroyed the Roman Catholic Mass, the Sacraments, and Faith.

1962 - 2002. How quickly it can all go if we don't fight the New Order with the courage Paul VI lacked and utterly rip it out from its roots.

August 26, 2003 - St. Zephyrinus, Pope & Martyr (Simple)

SSPX Update XXIII

In the August 15 issue of The Remnant, the editor characterizes statements of the SSPX's Chief Bishop Fellay, who, by antonomasia we call "Richelieu" for the French cardinal characterized by his program of making alliances with Protestants, as being "almost too conciliatory" to the New Vatican. TRADITIO agrees.

The editor further quotes Richelieu as saying that Card. Hoyos and John Paul II are not "progressivists, not hard-core modernists, not at all." Has Richelieu now been associating so much with New Order bureaucrats that his senses have left him?

Who knows (or who cares) what Novus Ordo bureaucrats may or may not believe -- interiorly? What is important is what they do publicly. It is their public moral acts, after all, that are the basis of objective judgment. The pope -- and Hoyos too -- are public advocates of the New Order, the New Pentecost, the New Advent, or whatever other term they might dream up for their New Religion. Oh, sure, the pope will issue a little letter of greeting to an "indult" organization every once in a while, and every once in five decades Hoyos will say an "indult" Mass. (Where's that bridge for sale in New York?)

I'm always being told by conservative Novus Ordinarians how the pope is supposed to have all this power that we must believe in -- supreme jurisdiction and all of that that is found in the dusty tomes of Vatican I. True, but what difference does it make when the pope won't exercise that power (which it is unclear from his own Ut Unum Sint whether he himself believes he has it or not) even to defrock his own bishops when they engage in gross immorality and violation of their vows and oaths to corrupt youth and the Catholic faithful in general? When his own Prefect of Doctrine publishes, in the pope's own journal, one of the most vicious heresies of the Modernists, that Our Lord Jesus Christ is not the Messias for the Jews, but only for the Gentiles?

Richelieu, it appears, has himself now fallen victim to the New Vatican. But, then, the same thing happened to a a well-known traditional author when he started "negotiating" with the New Order. Neither of them seemed to know that when you expose yourself to a virus (Latin for poison), you're going to infect yourself. The best practice is: stay away from infection! In other words, avoid the near occasion of sin.

The encouraging word is what we hear from inside the SSPX: that because of his meanderings with the Novus Ordo bureaucracy, Richelieu is losing the confidence of the SSPX leadership. It seems that the rest of the leadership has told Richelieu in no uncertain terms that he is no longer to go off on his own tangent "negotiating" in the name of the SSPX.

Moreover, TRADITIO has learned from an Italian seminary source that Richelieu was approached by the influential Abbot of the SSPX's largest Benedictine monastery in France and told that if Richelieu wanted to sell out to the New Order, he could go packing on his own because that monastery, and others, would not be going down the path to perdition.

So much for "negotiating" with Mephistopheles. Maybe Richelieu should take a lesson from former U.S. President Ronald Reagan when the latter dealt with Communist Russia. Richelieu should just call the Novus Ordo the "evil empire" that it is and stand back while the New Vatican wall comes crumbling down just like the Berlin Wall. After all, it's crumbling already. Even the pope admits that -- in his more lucid moments.

August 25, 2003 - St. Louis IX, King of France, Confessor (Semidouble)

Texas Pastor Goes Traditional - Update IV

Dear Fr. Moderator:

With all due respect to Fr. Zigrang, the Novus Ordo pastor who finally went traditional against his bishop, I don't see why this man is being so lionized in the traditional press for doing what he should have done a long time ago. What gives?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Your point is well taken. It's nice that he's finally seen the light, but where has he been since 1962? Why, he's been promoting the Novus Ordo service to the parishes just like all of the other Novus Ordo presbyters.

On the other hand, we have the example of Fr. Gommar DePauw, who saw the light -- or, rather, showed us the light of Quo Primum -- in 1964! Without him, there would be no Traditional Catholic Movement. We have the example of Fr. James Wathen, who saw the light not long thereafter and showed us how the Novus Ordo had no legal basis in his Great Sacrilege. Then, long before Lefebvre, there were several independent bishops who kept the Apostolic Succession alive so that the United States, and other countries of the world, could have the true Mass, Sacraments, and Faith.

Why do we not hear of these courageous priests and bishops who exposed the New Order for what it was from the beginning, not 40 years too late. It's a hard question to answer. Is it ignorance on the part of many traditional writers, who are too young really to understand and analyze the Traditional Catholic Movement knowledgeably? Is it some sliver of the "respecter of persons" error that gives us papolatry and cardinalatial cults?

Whatever the reason is, our traditional publications ought to be ashamed of themselves for ignoring those who gave us back our Faith -- the DePauws, the Wathens, and the rest, when very, very few had the guts to speak out. Traditional Catholic have the right to know about these people. Maybe one day our traditional publications will get beyond their narcissism and give us the kind of broad coverage we deserve -- and need.

August 24, 2003 - St. Bartholomew (Double of the Second Class)

St. Bartholomew's Massacre of the Church

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that although the world, the flesh, and the devil tempt souls to fall into evil, most evils can be associated with the two former. But then there is that third one, the devil. Now, the modern mind doesn't like to deal with this concept. It's uncomfortable to think about. We don't want to say, "the devil did it."

And yet, the New Order seems to be driven not just by a desire to be "friends" with the world, to follow the world rather than to lead the world. The New Order has been imposed against Christ, against Catholicism, against Apostolicity. It has virtually destroyed the unity and holiness of the Church. The New Order, therefore, lacks the marks that identify the true Church of Christ: unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam.

The New Order has lost the Mass and the Sacraments because it has dared to change their form and matter from the dogmatic Catholic and Apostolic form, thus invalidating them. Thus, the New Order has lost the operation of Sacramental grace.

But perhaps the thing that disturbs Catholics most about the New Order is its malice. Why is it that Hinduism with its cow dung is okay, wicca (witchcraft) with its incantations is okay, Buddhism with its umbilical "rosary" is okay, but traditional Catholicism is vilified, hated, and condemned by the New Order? Why does the New Order accept those who encourage immoralities of all sorts, including bishops, cardinals, and popes, but condemn traditional Catholics to the Hell that the New Order doesn't even believe in! Sick, isn't it? Perverted, isn't it? Unbelievable, isn't it?

Well, one author has proposed an explanation in a book to be released next month. One doesn't want to believe it, but there is growing evidence in favor of its thesis: the Novus Ordo is gradually sinking into Satanism. So argues William Kennedy in Lucifer's Lodge: Satanic Ritual Abuse in the Catholic Church:

The recent resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston for operating a paedophile ring in the Archdiocese of Boston sent shockwaves throughout the world. However, the popular media failed to report on the fact that many of the pervert Novus Ordo presbyters are practicing Satanists. Through interviews with victims and social workers Kennedy demonstrates that an underground cult of Luciferian presbyters operated within the Boston Archdiocese and the greater Novus Ordo Church and had the tacit support of Novus Ordo bishops, cardinals, and even popes.

Now, if Kennedy proves his thesis, this proposes a particular problem for those who continue to argue for the "validity" of the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service. They would have to argue for the validity of a "Black Mass" celebrated by a "priest" who used even the corrupted form and matter that they are willing to accept as a "valid" in a Novus Ordo "mass." You can't have it both ways, folks. You opened the door to this corruption in 1967. Now you are drawn to its logical conclusion.

You don't believe it? Well, just look at your "remodeled" local parish. See its layout -- not cruciform in honor of Our Lord's Cross, but labyrinthine and circular, after the wicca principle. (Wicca is often taught and practiced now in parish churches under various names.) Altars of the Roman type are gradually being replaced with "sacred stones." In witchcraft these represent the pagan umbilicus, or navel, of the world. The Crucifix, representing the redeeming Passion and Death of the Lord is being replaced with scrawny stick figures, which show Our Lord demonized and twisted beyond all human recognition.

And we have to take part of the blame for this; we let it happen. Our mouths supported, and many continue to the Novus Ordo hierarchy, whose agenda is clear: pervert Catholic morals, pervert the Catholic Faith, pervert the Catholic Mass and Sacraments. And we serve Mephistopheles by doing the dirty work for them. They don't have to argue for the validity of the New Order counterfeit; we do it for them!

Sorry, folks, you can't have it both ways. You are either with Christ or against Him. You are either for the Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments -- unadulterated -- or you accept this or that part of the soul-destroying New Order. Did the Holy Maccabees accept some of the pagan practices for the Temple? Did the Holy Martyrs put that pinch of incense in to worship the emperor? Did the Fathers accept parts of the Arian heresy so they could get by with the state? No, they condemned these things totally and completely. Moreover, they wouldn't even associate with people who compromised with evil, but shunned their company, including bishops and popes who were tained by the heresy.

Today is the Feastday of St. Bartholomew, the Apostle. Tradition tells us that he was flayed and then nailed to a tree and crucified in this way. Did He compromise the Faith? What would he tell you when you -- very reluctantly, of course -- attend the Novus Ordo counterfeit service because it is closer or because it is more convenient or because your family and friends attend it or because the local Novus Ordo bishop that celebrates Gay Masses wants you to do it?

And, of course, you must obey. Don't consider whether you are obeying what is good and true and beautiful or what is evil and false and ugly. Just obey. As one demented "lay theologian" put it, "obedience is the Catholic virtue." And we wonder why the Church is in the condition it is? Now, whose fault is that? God's? Or ours?

August 23, 2003 - St. Philip Benizi, Confessor (Double)

A Question of Validity

You seem to disagree with the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebve on the issue of validity of the New Mass. The Archbishop required his priests to sign a statement that the New Mass is valid. How do you weigh in against this?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Abp. Lefebvre himself waffled on this issue. In his later works, he seemed to be leaning more toward the outright invalidity of the Novus Ordo service. It has now been twelve more years since his death, so what has gone on in the interim could well have pushed him over clearly to the invalidity side that he was already leaning toward.

The statement you mention was, at the time, less a matter of theology, I think, than a matter of organizational uniformity. There was a contingent of priests in the SSPX then (as there are now), who held the Novus Ordo to be invalid. In the mid 1980s, the leadership of the SSPX wanted to present a united front.

When the leadership of the SSPX forced the matter to a head, in the United States a number of priests formed the SSPV, which holds to a more traditional position that eschews any part of the Novus Ordo. It is reported that there is a growing contingent of priests now with the SSPX who hold the invalidity position. And why not? It's self-destructing before their eyes, even more clearly than in the archbishop's time.

Even the New Vatican admitted in a letter to the U.S. Catholic Bishops that many services in the United States (and presumably elsewhere) are invalid through defect of matter. This situation is far worse now than when the Vatican said so in 1979. P.H. Omlor proved back in 1967 through the authority of the popes and councils, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, that the vernacularized Novus Ordo consecration was invalid. And the intention of the Novus Ordo presbyters is becoming highly questionable, when viewed in terms of Pope Leo's holding of invalidity in Apostolicae Curae.

The argument for validity, in view of such explicit rejection on the part of the Novus Ordo of clearly valid form, matter, and intent, is extremely weak. Even if it were theoretically valid under some idealized conditions, the saying of such a service would be blasphemous, sacrilegious, and scandalous, so it could really never legitimately be said, "valid" or not.

But let's look at reality. Novus Ordinarians at parish churches are not participating at some idealized Novus Ordo service. They are getting the Gay Mess, Guitar Mess, Kissy Mess, Indian Mess, Cookie Mess, Clown Mess, and all the rest. Bad as the Novus Ordo service was in 1969, it is far worse in 2003. No true Catholic can have anything to do with it, any more than with a Protestant or Jewish service.

August 22, 2003 - Immaculate Heart of Mary (Double of the Second Class)
Complete Friday Abstinence

Is Anyone Home at the New Vatican?

Dear Fr. Moderator:

I recently discovered that E-mail sent to the pope bounces back with the following message from the web server:

I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to this address. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

It appears that the Angelic servers know more than the New Vatican. True Catholics have given up on the New Order and all its tentacles. It's a waste of time to send messages to the New Vatican anyway, for this and other reasons. You might just as well try to persuade Beezeboob to buy a fly-swatter!

August 21, 2003 - St. Jane Frances de Chantal, Widow (Double)

Mel Gibson's Traditional Catholic Film Progresses - Update XXIII

Is Mel Gibson beginning to cave in to the Jewish extremists of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)? An Icon Productions "spokesman" has supposedly claimed that Gibson "softened the story" and made changes to make The Passion more palatable to critics.

One source indicates that Gibson is in the midst of a civil war within Icon Productions. Apparently, he is being pressured by his own production company to compromise. Gibson has vowed that he would not change the film, no matter who tries to put pressure on him. We can only hope that Gibson will do the right thing and hold fast against those who are trying to sabotage him within his own company, just as he has held fast against the extremist Jewish ADLers.

Well, if the film has been "softened," it hasn't been softened much, to hear the comments of those who have seen preliminary cuts. My suspicion is that Gibson is playing games with the ADL and the rest by "talking the talk." It smoothes things over with people without changing the substance of the film. Gibson is very adept at this kind of thing, knowing Hollywood as he does. In other words, the talk is for the P.R., while the film goes on basically as planned.

Gibson is a sharp cookie. He must know that nothing he can do, other than pull the film entirely, will satisfy the ADL extremists. So, he gives out with "touchy-feely" P.R. to allay any P.R. fears, but the film stays pretty much the same. Gibson is probably having a good laugh behind the scenes as he exposes those ADL extremists, who don't want the name of Christ even mentioned in society, for the anti-Catholic bigots they are. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and Gibson is cooking up quite a stew!

How to Sell the Faith -- Gut It!

Catholicism, and even Christianity, is sinking in Europe. Here's what has been suggested by the Modernists there to rectify the situation: sell out the faith!

Churches are being urged to drop the image of the crucifixion and instead highlight the social attractions of filling the pews in an effort to boost Sunday attendance. Traditional approaches such as showing Christ on the cross and Bible quotations are a turn-off to non-churchgoers, according to one of two suggested advertising campaigns drawn up by agencies. Instead, advertisers say that churches should highlight community life, the chance to sing, hear a good sermon, and have a heart-to-heart chat. Christians should highlight the "social" event. "We don't think people want to be preached at, and we didn't want traditional images like pictures of Jesus on a cross. The key is to get people through the door of the church and let them make up their own minds."

Ah, yes, the Modernist Christ, the "social" Christ. The pacifist, the tolerant, the milquetoast, the warm-and-fuzzy rabbi. Let's have him strap on an apron and serve donuts, shall we? Let's not have any doctrine, because doctrine sets people at odds. Let's not have any preaching because someone might have to learn something or change his ways. Let's just sing "God Bless America" while we adulterate, fornicate, homosexuate and do all the other wonderful things that Modernism encourages us to do without any guilt. And we wonder whatever happened to goodness, beauty, and truth in the world!

This isn't God-centered religion at all. It's not even religion. It's Narcissism. And remember what happened to Narcissus. He became so self absorbed that he withered away and died. That same end awaits the Modernists. Their advertising campaign won't save them. Yet, they won't need to worry about future employment. They'll be plenty of work where they are for them to write advertising copy promoting fire and brimstone.

August 20, 2003 - St. Bernard, Abbot & Doctor (Double)

Yes, There Is Hope

Dear Fr. Moderator:

I read your web site regularly and it seems that there is no hope for the Church. Are there any signs that things are going to change for the better? Is there any thing positive that we can look forward to?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

I can't imagine how you could read this web site and come to that conclusion. We are constantly making clear how you can bring the true Faith back. I have pointed out many times in the past that we traditional Catholics are 15,000,000 strong. We just don't use our power. We sit back and wait for someone else to do something, or for events to "happen." This is nonsense. Christ went out to the world. His Apostles went out to the world. They didn't just wait for things to "happen."

Why do we do so little? Because we are pusillanimous. Because our faith is weak. Because we play into the hands of the Novus Ordinarians: we look for "indults," "approval," and "recognition" from a New Order system that is thoroughly corrupt and unCatholic. Instead, we should be developing our traditional churches and chapels, and reaching out to those who by the hundreds of thousands would support the Traditional Catholic Faith if someone informed them that it is here, as it always has been.

Positive signs? There are many. The health and growth of traditional Catholic churches and chapels all over the world, and the increasing outspokenness of traditional Catholics against the New Order are very positive signs. The plethora of traditonal Catholic books, audiotapes, and videotapes, and numerous sources for them is another indication. The vaunted New Order is crumbling before our eyes. Remember, it isn't numbers and organizations that that are important in the end, but commitment. Only twelve Apostles changed the world.

Don't look for "outside" solutions. The solution is first in your own spiritual life and then in the Catholic action that you take out to the world to spread the true reign of Christ. If you don't do that, don't expect anything to happen. The moral in this period of the Church is that Christ is testing His Church, as He often does, to see how strong its faith and zeal are. If our faith isn't tested, it never becomes strong.

August 19, 2003 - St. John Eudes, Confessor (Double)

Beware the Lay Theologians and Papolators

Dear Fr. Moderator:

I have had a long-standing debate with some Novus Ordinarians concerning what we have to accept from Vatican II and the pope. They continue to tell me that we have to accept everything, including all disciplines enacted at that council and after that council because Vatican I says we do.

Now, how do I respond to this statement? If Vatican I does say this, then why aren't we bound to accept "communion" in the hand, altar girls, vernacular, religious freedom, etc.? I have disagreed with all these novelties, and my answer is that they go against the teachings of the Church. But is there another way of responding what these people have to say trying to connect the novelties of Vatican II with the decrees of Vatican I?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Yes, there is. Devious, isn't it, how these Novus Ordinarians quoted from chapter 3 of a Vatican I document and completely omitted mention of chapter 4, which qualifies it significantly and puts it into context. These Novus Ordinarians are nothing if not maliciously devious.

What you are getting is "lay theology" and "papolatry" from these Novus Ordinarians. They are like Protestants, who will selectively quote a Bible verse without understanding its context or its meaning in the tradition of the Church, and leave out any mention of other verses that clarify its meaning and put it into proper context.

The theology on the office of the papacy is delicately balanced. The papolators (those who attribute to the pope even divine powers that he does not have -- which is idolatry) will always quote (usually in a purported "translation") only one side of the balance, having to do with universal jurisdiction. However, they fail to quote the other side of the balance, which puts the office into its proper context, which is:

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.

In other words, the office of the papacy, and thus its jurisdiction, is limited to valid actions within the constitution of the office. Whenever the pope acts outside that constitution -- whether it be in contravention of Scripture or Tradition or even justice --, the action is null and void.

I draw an analogy. In the United States, the President is the head of the Executive department. He has the fullness of Executive power. He can hire and fire the members of his cabinet, for instance. However, if he should issue an executive order that taxes should be raised by 10%, that order would be null and void, as it exceeds the constitution of his office.

As Vatican I dogmatically states (and it was very careful to do so, fearing a misinterpretation -- into which the post-conciliar papolators fell anyway), the pope has no authority to teach novam doctrinam [new doctrine], but must religiously guard traditam per apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum [revelation transmitted through the Apostles, or the Deposit of Faith], in other words, Apostolic Tradition.

The post-Vatican II popes are well known for teaching new doctrines, or at least obfuscating Catholic dogma so that the faithful no longer understand what the dogma really means. The popes and councils, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, are quite clear about what the Catholic faithful must do in such a case. They must disobey such a pope. We have not just the words, but, more importantly, the example of many great Saints of the Roman Catholic Church disobeying the popes of their time who had fallen into personal heresy or the "odor" of it: St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Basil the Great, etc.

And while I am on the topic, I should point out that there are a number of these Novus Ordo "lay theologians" around now in the service of the New Order, who are falsely quoting purported "translations" of various Church documents. They will quote the decree of some council and leave out significant words, as these Novus Ordinarians did to you. Or they will use a purported "translation" that does not represent the original. If these people do not understand the Latin or Greek original, or if they do not understand the theological and historical context of the statements, they are only "the blind leading the blind." Always ask them for the Latin original!

These Novus Ordo "lay theologians" prey upon the Catholic people, who are more and more ignorant of their Sacred Languages because of the phony Vatican II "vernacularization." These "lay theologians" might even sport some kind of Novus Ordo "license," but remember that the Novus Ordo now hands these "licenses" out like candy, with the recipients never having really studied true canon law, and certainly not in the traditional way. Even for the Novus Ordo, things got so far out of hand that the pope recently required a extra year of Latin, but even that is not enough to dispel the general phoniness of these Novus Ordo "license" mills, which have been used to undermine the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Sacred Liturgy.

That is one of the reasons why Pope St. Pius X prohibited the Church's Canon Law from being translated. He wisely understood that if someone couldn't understand the Latin original, with its meaning steeped in centuries of careful analysis and interpretation, he had no business with it. And yet you see a number of "lay theologians" these days, sporting these phony "licenses" and purporting to "translate" and "interpret" canon law, about whose history and principles "they know not what they do."

August 18, 2003 - Within the Octave of the Assumption (Semidouble)

True Colors Exposed

Dear Fr. Moderator:

The following comes from a Novus Ordo question-and-answer forum. Sometimes traditional Catholics, like me, can be overwhelmed by manipulators like this. It is important that traditional Catholics, especially young ones, know their faith well in these troubled times. Thank you, Father, for being a voice of reason for the traditional Roman Catholics in the world.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

This Novus Ordo source first makes the flatly erroneous statement:

The number one tradition of the Church is obedience. That is the foundation upon which faith is built.

This is not only incorrect theology, but is based on some perverse notion of Catholic doctrine. Any intelligent Catholic knows, if he thinks about it, that moral conduct is based upon a hierarchy of virtues. At the top of that hierarchy are the God-centered, or theological, virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Next are the Cardinal Moral Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Obedience is, according to the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, a secondary virtue, as it may also be a vice, depending upon the object to which it is directed. Obedience to evil is not a virtue. Obedience to a self-proclaimed New Order religion is surely a vice, as it goes against both fonts of the Deposit of Faith: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Faith is not based on obedience, but upon grace, reason, and will.

This Novus Ordo source goes on to say:

There is no such thing as a Protestant Mass. To call the current Mass Protestant is untrue, a slander, and spits on God. The Roman Missal [sic] of 1970 (there is no such mass called Novus Ordo) is a holy Mass and Vatican II is a holy Council.

Well, this source can't even rely on his vaunted post-conciliar popes to support him in these statements! The Novus Ordo service (it isn't a Mass) was written by a Freemason and six Protestant ministers specifically to make the new service palatable to Protestants, some of whose sects are even now using it themselves. "If it walks like a duck...."

No such mass called Novus Ordo? When the Novus Ordo service was first issued, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (Vatican Press) issued a large-format paperback, bound in red paper, upon which is clearly imprinted Novus Ordo Missae. I still have it in my library as proof. Obviously this source, who is so eager to throw around terms like "schismatic" (which even the New Vatican has not used in this context) doesn't have his basic facts straight! Instead, this source sounds like one of those "lay theologians," who in their blindness lead other blind people.

Why Do We Do It?

Sometimes TRADITIO is questioned about its outspokenness. Some people seem to think that a Catholic priest should be silent and obedient in the face of vice and error among the hierarchy of the Church. Such a notion is distinctly unCatholic and is countered by the words and example of some of the greatest Saints: St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, among others.

On the contrary, a Catholic priest must speak up in the face of evil in the Church. He cannot hide cringing when confronted with error even when dressed in purple and scarlet. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's principal theologian, formally declared as such by Pope Leo XIII in Aeterni patris, goes so far as to declare that even the pope himself should be corrected if he is in error.

Those Novus Ordinarians who constantly scream: "Obey, obey" are themselves the worst offenders. They think nothing of disobeying the commandments of God Himself, just so long as they maintain "control" in the Church. They are quite willing to accept, and even argue for, the most bizarre unCatholic notions just so long as everybody "obeys" popes who do nothing to discipline religiously and morally perverted bishops and so long as everyone "obeys" bishops who openly advocate and participate in every religious and moral perversion of which one could conceive.

One pope, a Saint at that, told us priests that we couldn't sit by quietly like Casper Milquetoasts while the Catholic Faith was being undermined by Modernists within the hierarchy of the Church itself. In his time the evil of Modernism reached to the second highest office in the Church. Now, of course, Modernism is infecting virtually every corner of the Church structure.

This pope, St. Pius X, rallied his priests to action against corruption of teaching in the Church with these words:

Priests much watch, for the faith is threatened, less by open denial than by the subtlety and falsehood of those perfidious Liberal-Catholics, who, stopping scarcely on the brink of condemned error, find their strength in the appearance of pure doctrine.... Liberal-Catholics are wolves in sheep's clothing. The priest must unveil to the people their perfidious plot, their iniquitous design. You will be called papist, clerical, retrograde, intolerant, but pay no heed to the derision and mockery of the wicked. Have courage; you must never yield, nor is there any need to yield. You must go into the attack whole-heartedly, not in secret but in public, not behind barred doors, but in the open, in the view of all.

Now there was a pope who didn't mince words! Moreover, his vivid description of corrupted teaching in the Church in his time (1903-1914) is even more descriptive of the time of Vatican II and its aftermath. Don't we have the same Liberal-Catholics, as the pope called them, plying their perfidious designs upon the Church, while at the same time they give the "appearance of pure doctrine" -- doctrine all nicely buttoned up in post-conciliar encyclicals that confuse, and sometimes even appear to deny, the Roman Catholic Faith?

Didn't the pope hit the nail on the head when he said that true Catholic priests will be called all kinds of names? Anyone priest who sticks his neck out for the Faith, these Liberal-Catholics, these immoral prelates, these wolves in sheep's clothing will try to assassinate with calumnies and malice, whether it be a Fr. DePauw, a Fr. Gruner, or an Abp. Lefebvre. Look for this sign: the more a priest is maligned by the Novus Ordinarians, the more he is likely to be just the effective, faithful priest he should be. Those, on the other hand, who are praised by the Novus Ordinarians are likely to be the Partisans of Error, to use the pope's own phrase.

August 17, 2003 - 10th Sunday after Pentecost (Semidouble)

The Force of Quo Primum

Dear Fr. Moderator:

Is it correct to say that Pope St. Pius V's solemn papal bull Quo Primum held firm for only "two hundred" years and could be changed after the two hundred years?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Who were the "Catholics" on the "Ad Hoc Scholars Group" with five Jews, who objected to Mel Gibson's literal biblical account of the Passion?

1. Mary Boys. Protestant Union Theological Seminary, New York. She is pushing an heretical agenda including positions that (1) Christianity does not replace Judaism -- a surprise to St. Paul, the other Apostles, and the Great Fathers and Doctors of the Church; (2) Christ was not the Messias for everyone and was a "faithful Jew" -- a surprise to the Pharisees, who considered him a blasphemer; (3) Jews should not be converted -- a surprise to Christ and His Great Commission.



2. Philip Cunningham. Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston. He rejects St. Paul, specifically the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the Saint clearly preaches that Judaism has been superseded. He also teaches the heretical writing of Ratzinger: "You cannot just say all the Jews are wrong and we are right. It means it would be wrong for a Catholic to wait for the (first coming of the) Messiah, but not for a Jew."



3. John Pawlikowski. Catholic-Jewish Studies Director, Chicago. He teaches the heretical opinion that "the New Testament is fraught with human error and opinion."



4. Lawrence Frizzell. Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies, East Orange. He questions the integrity of the Evangelists and rejects the perennial teachings of the Church in the name of "friendship" with those who deny the Divinity of our Redeemer. He even wants to muck with the Sacred Liturgy of Good Friday, perhaps the earliest and most Catholic and Apostolic liturgy in the Missal.

These Novus Ordinarians are so far out that even the secular media have charged that their assessment was based on personal exegetical theories or idiosyncratic views of biblical interpretation or history. They, of course, deny this charge, citing "magisterial" documents. And which are these? Why of course: the un-magisterial Vatican II! No quotations from Trent. No quotations from Florence. No quotations from Nicaea.

You see, folks, how dangerous the New Vatican is to the Roman Catholic Faith. You have a pope who preaches false oecumenism on Monday and withdraws it on Tuesday. He likes the Anglicans on Wednesday, but not on Thursday. He schmoozes with the Mohammedans on Friday, but not on Saturday. He allows cardinals to publish heresy in papal organs without a word of correction.

For you legalists out there, the legal principle is: Qui tacet, consentire videtur [He who is silent appears to consent]. The feet of John Paul II, the Ungreat, can therefore be held to the moral fire since by his silence he consents to the heresies propounded by his underlings. Will someone send him Harry Truman's plaque: The buck stops here?

Says the Roman poet Horace, Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus [Sometimes even good Homer sleeps]. In another revelation, it seems that at least in one aspect Gibson may be pandering to all this nonsense. One of the film's consultants has said that Gibson omitted accounts in the Gospels that would be especially offensive to Jews. That included the crowd shouting, "His blood be upon us and upon our children" (Matthew 27:25/DRV).

Classical or Ecclesiastical?

Dear Fr. Moderator:

The audio CDs that we use for home-schooling use classical Latin pronunciations. Is the pronunciation of a few vowels and consonants the only difference between classical and ecclesiastical Latin, or are there other differences, like grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure? It is more important to us that our children understand the Mass, than that they can read Cicero. Is it okay to teach them to use ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations in their speech while still learning grammar and vocabulary with the course, or is that a no-no?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

I tend to look at Latin pronunciation more as a matter of period. The classical Latin pronunciation (which is typically used in the schools) is a simplified reconstruction of the pronunciation used at the height of the classical period, roughly 100 B.C. to A.D. 100. That period includes both the Golden Age (Cicero, Caesar, Vergil, Horace, etc.) and the Silver Age (Seneca, Tacitus, Pliny, etc.).

The way the classical Romans pronounced their language is rather well known. There is ample evidence from the Roman grammarians, inscriptions, literature, etc. "Ecclesiastical" Latin is a mixed bag. Some of it is classical, like the Collects and many of the prayers of the Sacred Canon of the Mass. Some of it is Vulgate, like the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels. Then there are the mediaeval hymns, like those of St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi.

It is clear that the pronunciation of Latin had changed somewhat by mediaeval times. The main differences being that stress accent had entirely replaced vowel quantity, long and short (although the vowel quantity was still used in the classical way to determine on which syllable to place the stress accent).

Some consonants weakened, so that, for instance, the c, which was always hard in classical Latin, weakened before high vowels (ae, e, i). Therefore, the c in caelum, which was classically pronounced as k, weakened to the sound of the ch in the English church.

"Ae, which was a true diphthong in classical Latin (pronounced as the ai in the English aisle), became a monophtong in later Latin (equivalent to simple e).

However, it wasn't that simple because there was never any standard "ecclesiastical" pronunciation. Each national country pronounced some consonants differently according to its own tongue. For example, the Germans pronounce the c in caelum, not as the classical cats.

Although it has never been really official, there is a tendency to standardize on the "Italianate" pronunciation for ecclesiastical Latin, that is, pronouncing Latin pretty much as it would be pronounced in modern Italian, perhaps because that is the practice in Rome or perhaps because Pius X expressed a preference for that pronunciation in a letter to a French archbishop.

Since the ecclesiastical pronunciation (whichever one you use), is a simplification of the classical, there is no difficulty in starting with classical Latin. In many ways, that is the best technique. As to pronunciation, I use the classical one for the classical authors and the early Christian authors, such as St. Augustine. For mediaeval and later authors, I use the Italianate pronunciation. One reason for this is that sometimes the rhymes in the hymns don't work if you use the classical pronunciation for the later literature. For example, there are lines in the Dies Irae that won't rhyme with the classical pronunciation.

August 13, 2003 - Sts. Cassian & Hippolytus, Martyrs (Simple)

Mel Gibson's Traditional Catholic Film Progresses - Update XXI

Does the Jewish Anti-Defamation League target Lutherans, or just traditional Catholics? With all the publicity for Mel Gibson's uncut, unreleased The Passion, the slick, full-of-stars Luther: Rebel, Genius, Liberator, slated for release this fall, has sneaked in under the radar.

Here is a sampling of Martin Luther's teaching on the Jews from his 1543 tract, The Jews and Their Lies:

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong.

Therefore, be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously.

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. (Luther's Works, Volume 47 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971], pp. 268-293)

Why is the ADL not screaming to the high heavens about Luther? Why is the ADL not stealing the script for Luther to expose it to the world? Why is the ADL not coming down on Peter Ustinov as it came down on Mel Gibson?

Mel Gibson has never said anything at all like Luther. Quite the opposite. Do we smell the stink of hypocrisy and anti-Catholic bigotry here in the position of the ADL?

TRADITIO Made a Believer out of Him

Dear Fr. Moderator:

I attend an "indult" Mass myself, but when I read your account of all of the different "messes" encountered, I didn't believe that such abominations could truly be happening in other supposedly Catholic churches. But just the same, I started attending the Novus Ordo service at other Catholic churches, and sure enough I found that they were messes.

At one mess all the people present (there weren't very many) came up on the altar and joined hands before receiving "communion." I was astounded to see that the host was Wonder Bread and the wine was grape juice. Worst of all, when I knelt before the presbyter and opened my mouth to receive "communion," he looked at me as if I were mad. This all was just too much for me, so I vowed never to attend a Novus Ordo service again. You were right, Father Moderator! I'm sorry I ever doubted you.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Yours is just one of hundreds of such cases I have been sent by TRADITIO participants. Bad as the situation was in 1965 when the vulgar tongues were introduced into Holy Mass, bad as the situation was when a "mess" fabricated by a Freemason and six Protestant ministers was attempted to be imposed on the Church, the situation 35 years later is infinitely worse, if that is possible.

If there was any question about pre-Novus Ordo services being invalid in 1967 (which P.H. Omlor proved even at that time), there is no doubt that they are now. If you want to participate in sacrilege, idolatry, blasphemy, and scandal, by all means, you can attend the Novus Ordo service. If you want to be a Catholic, you can't.

Episcopalians Descend to Avernus

Last week we were regaled with the consequences of deserting the Tradition of the Church. Episcopalians, who once claimed to be the third arm of the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican) and who once, like all good Protestants, cried "Bible only" and abandoned Sacred Tradition that alone gives meaning to the Bible, have now dumped the Bible too and have nothing left.

The Episcopalians, who now countenance every wacko idea under the sun -- labyrinths, priestess, bishopesses, rave drug "masses" a lá Matthew Fox --, at last week's triennial convention embraced openly gay ministers and bishops, who have the gall to call sodomy a "sacrament." The Episcopalians at their convention last week also passed a measure affirming that blessing ceremonies for "same-sex" unions are "an acceptable practice in the church." By doing so, they placed themselves under the condemnation of St. Paul:

Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death: and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1:32)

No surprise there. As the Roman poet Vergil wrote 2000 years ago: Facilis descensus Averno (Aeneid VI:126).

As a former Anglican (Episcopalian in America), now a Traditional Roman Catholic, wrote TRADITIO:

That the Anglicans are going the way they are cannot surprise me. Centuries of picking the elements they liked best from Catholicism and Protestantism weakened their faith, which was further corrupted by a desire to appropriate anything from the New Age Movement that looks attractive. As you've mentioned, Anglicanism is about ten years ahead of Catholicism in its self-destruction. Having been there and seen how low the attendance of their services is (this was before gay bishops), I am developing a very uncomfortable feeling of déja vu.

What is much more interesting is that the traditional Episcopalians have now recognized beyond doubt that they have a Counterfeit Church too. There are many vipers in their bosom that aren't even Christian. Fortunately, like the traditional Catholics, they have an out. When the priestess business got going, back in 1989 (a year after the infamous Ecclesia Dei "indult"), traditional Episcopalians formed the Episcopal Synod of America, and broke away from the liberalist American Episcopal Church.

Bet your bottom dollar that the New Vatican is going to be watching this drama very carefully, as in October it is the traditional Episcopalians that have their convention, when they will likely have a bevy of synods dissenting from the liberalist Episcopalians to add to their growing numbers. A few years before the Novus Ordo hit Catholics, the Episcopalians had gone through an equally horrendous trashing of their Book of Common Prayer. Many Episcopalian parishes broke away from the liberalistic Episcopal Synod of America and refused to give up their traditional Book of Common Prayer, just as traditional Roman Catholics later refused to give up their Roman Catholic Mass.

I expect to see the Episcopalians ripped apart over this -- which will bring more exposure to the traditional Catholic position. Currently, the anti-Catholic bigots in the media portray traditional Catholics as "nostalgia" kooks, who believe in Purgatory and whose women wear veils in church. Just look at the hatchet job the media are trying to pull on Mel and Hutton Gibson. It may be that the Episcopalian contretemps will force a change to that view, and traditional Catholics will come into their own.

Will the traditional Episcopalians provide a model for traditional Roman Catholics? Will the New Vatican have a cow? Stay tuned, folks. This promises to be a very interesting year!

August 12, 2003 - St. Clare, Virgin (Double)

Franciscan Sisters Go Pagan

On this, the Feastday of St. Clare, the Foundress of the Franciscan Order for Women, we acquaint you with the Direction Statement of the Novus Ordo Franciscan Order:

Nurture cosmic awareness, develop right relationships with all creation, and promote sustainability of Mother Earth.

Are these Catholic Franciscans or pagans? The photograph above from the Order's "liturgy," indicates that not only does the order worship Goddess Mother Earth, but uses a Priestess to do so. Does it surprise anyone when I say that this new direction was "approved" by John Paul II in 1989 and 1999? I guess not. Nothing that man does to establish the New Order religion in place of the Roman Catholic Faith can surprise us any longer.

St. Clare, a great devotée of the Most Blessed Sacrament and its use against the pagans that threatened to invade her monastery, must be turning over in her grave to see how the New Order has defiled her Order.

August 11, 2003 - Sts. Tiburtius & Susanna, Martyrs & Virgin (Simple)

CBS News Doesn't Have a Clue about Vatican Document

I have received several inquiries about a story by CBS News on August 7, which claims to have uncovered some "sex crimes cover-up" in the Vatican in 1962. Any intelligent person has come to expect a deep-seated ignorance -- even anti-Catholic bigotry -- on the part of the media, and this story is no different. CBS News got the story 180 degrees wrong. God help those who rely on these media ignoramuses for their news!

The key words here are "crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship." This is a unique matter that has nothing to do with civil crimes by the sports coach, civil crimes of Boy Scout leaders, civil crimes on the Protestant picnic, civil crimes in the Hebrew schul, civil crimes in the public schools, and, yes, civil crimes in the rectory. This unique matter pertains to the ecclesiastical crimen of solicitation in the confessional.

The Church has always taught that the seal of the confessional is inviolable, with no exceptions permitted whatsoever on the part of the priest. Otherwise, the Sacrament would become the same laughing-stock that civil laws undermining the medical seal have become. Remember the travesty that occurred during the Menendez Brothers murder trial when the psychiatrist Oziel broke the medical seal, and the State Supreme Court upheld his despicable act? No way, José, for the traditional Roman Catholic Sacrament.

Priests, at least traditionally, were schooled in the grievous nature of this ecclesiastical crimen. The Church had very strict methods to deal with such a grievous sin on the part of a priest, and the heaviest moral burden was placed on the penitent to reveal in the canonic way -- not hide -- what the priest had done, and to do it promptly. The Church is bound, in such Sacramental matters, to keep the matter strictly confidential.

As an indication of how seriously the traditional Vatican addressed such issues, to work against such crimina, the Holy Office bound Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and Other Ordinaries of Places, even those of the Oriental Rites. Moreover, it imposed a disclosure provision that the New Order bishops have yet to accept: if a priest should ever be found guilty (God forbid!), his bishop had to reveal his status to the bishop of any other diocese he might come to.

Even in the Novus Ordo sex scandal, I have not heard of a single case of the few hundred alleged that even hinted at this crimen. It appears that the strict policies enunciated by the Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, which simply restated the consistent policy of the Church on the Sacrament, were eminently successful. Would that the New Order bishops had taken such a strong stance and been half as successful!

Cardinal Ottaviani was a courageous tiger for the Roman Catholic Faith. Not only did he insist in this document on the strictest action against priests in those rare cases where they might have incurred the ecclesiastical crimen, but he also was one of only two cardinals who publicly and in writing stood up against Paul VI and his phony "New Mass." His theological paper was so devastating that the pope had to recall the "New Mass."

It is quite obvious that CBS News is abysmally ignorant of the difference between a religious crimen and a civil crime. I'm not even sure that CBS News has the foggiest idea of the nature of the issue it purports to be reporting on. I'll certainly bet that CBS News doesn't have on staff a Latinist/Canonist who could educate CBS News the true meaning of the Latin document that CBS News, in its ignorance, is purporting to analyze. CBS News might as well try to explain the subtleties of Freudianism without knowing either German or psychology!

August 10, 2003 - St. Lawrence, Martyr (Double of the Second Class)

Texas Pastor Goes Traditional - Update IV

It has been reported to us that the Novus Ordo pastor in the Houston diocese, who converted his parish to the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively and was the next day booted out by his Novus Ordo bishop, has apparently left the Novus Ordo apparatus entirely and is now stationed at Queen of Angels Church (SSPX), where he will also teach a high-school class at the academy there. It is also reported that a number of members of his former Novus Ordo parish have followed him to Queen of Angels.

August 9, 2003 - St. John Mary Vianney, Confessor (Double)

Novus Ordo Contemplates Animal Sacrifice in Its Service

One of the most abominable notions that was stashed into Vatican II documents was that of inculturation, a rejection of the Church's oneness in Romanitas, the standard of Rome and the Roman See, in favor of injecting local practices, even pagan practices, into the Novus Ordo "liturgy." You know the fare: dancing, cookies, swinging and swaying, hand-clapping, mariachis, voodoo, cow dung, and all the rest.

The Novus Ordo has been seriously considering introducing real blood into its "service" in Africa. I kid you not. The proposal has the support of the highest authorities in the African Novus Ordo Church. Praetoria News indicates that Archbishop Buti Tihagale, of Bloemfontein, supports a proposal to include elements of animal sacrifice in the Novus Ordo liturgy.

Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, a Novus Ordo presbyter who is also the deputy Minister of Education in the South African government, was the first prominent figure to come out in support of the calls -- first introduced by some black presbyters -- for the incorporation of animal sacrifices into the liturgy. Some pagan Africans eat their dead ancestors or engage in animal sacrifice in their honor. Opponents of the practice have raised the objection that these sacrifices are elements of pagan worship, which have no place in Christian practice. (Can you believe that there is even a debate going on about this? How low the Novus Ordo has truly sunk since the likes of such Africans as the great St. Augustine!)

In response to press inquiries, Mkhatshwa said that he supported the calls by some African clerics, including Archbishop Tihagale, to incorporate some form of animal bloodletting into the Mass. (Pretoria News suggested that Archbishop Tihagale was among those calling for such a step.) On a practical note, he admitted that the architecture of Novus Ordo church buildings might have to be "reviewed" in order to accommodate the requirements of animal sacrifice. Now there's the best argument I've ever heard from the Novus Ordo for the deconstruction of churches: to make them suitable for animal sacrifice!

You see, folks, where the Novus Ordo is tending: backward. St. Paul makes it crystal-clear that the Old Testament Jewish practice of animal sacrifice had been replaced in the New Covenant by the unbloody Sacrifice of Our Lord in the Holy Mass. Bishop Sheen once noted in one of his sermons that the streets of Jerusalem literally ran with blood on the Passover, when animals were slaughtered by the thousands.

The Jewish law detailed the methods that were to be used during the ritual slaughtering of animals, known as shechitah. During shechitah the animal is killed with a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness. The draining of all the blood is part of the shechitah ritual, which was considered necessary by Jewish law.

The New Covenant abhors such practices, which it views as paganistic and superseded. The Novus Ordo, however, is reverting back to this pagan practice and thereby is showing that at base its theology is just paganism of the worst kind.

(Traditional) Mass Appeal

As I have told you, folks, the worm is turning. The AARP Magazine, which boasts a readership of 35,000,000, in its September-October 2003 issue, features "Mass Appeal: A Latin Lover Laments the Loss of Magic and Mystery in the Liturgy of Today's Catholic Church." Although the semi-liberalist author is confused in other ways about his Catholic religion, he beautifully sums up the fallacy of the vernacularized Novus Ordo Mass:

When I returned to the Church about 10 years ago, ... what had been done to the Mass while I was away was vandalism bordering on desecration. Latin was gone entirely, replaced by dull, oppressive anchorman English carefully translated from its sonorous source to be as plain and direct as possible. It never seemed to have occurred to the well-meaning dolts who'd thrown out baby, bath, and bath water that all ritual is an attempt to reach out to the unknowable. It can be accomplished only by the non-cognitive, by evocation, allusion, metaphor, incantation, the tools of the poet. The last thing anyone wants in a religious experience is the language of commerce and work, with its leaden, material thud forcing you back into the tedious continuum you're trying to escape.

This is an analysis that could easily have come out of any pre-Vatican II text. I have never heard a Novus Ordo bishop or presbyter express anything like it. To them, their service is supposed to be congruent with the materialistic, the here-and-now continuum, not something supernatural, partaking of the divine. Doesn't an understanding of Divinity need a special language, a special vocabulary, not the day-to-day language of one's shopping list?

This author represents a significant number of people with whom I come into contact. These are people who dropped out from the Church in the 1960s, either because they were repelled by the New Order or for other reasons, but are now desiring to return. However, when the come back to the Novus Ordo, they realize that in their absence, they lost what they had. These are the people that must be drawn into the traditional Roman Catholic Church and back to the true Faith.

August 8, 2003 - St. Cyriacus & Companions, Martyrs (Semidouble)
Complete Friday Abstinence

Our Lord Has not Abandoned His Church

Dear Fr. Moderator:

Didn't Our Lord say: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gate gates of hell shall not prevail against it?" Have the gates of hell prevailed, and therefore Our Lord has failed to keep His promise?

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Not at all. Although you have quoted a translation, I think you can still see in the translation that Our Lord said that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it, that is, His Church, not against him, that is, St. Peter or any pope. It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that the pope may personally fall into heresy or teach heresy, but not define in the extraordinary manner heresy. Vatican I found about 40 popes of some 260 who had personally fallen into heresy of some kind.

As usual, one cannot take, like a Protestant, a biblical verse out of context. The Fathers and the Doctors of the Church have clearly informed us what the meaning of such verses is, and the Church turns to them for an authentic interpretation. St. Augustine, perhaps the greatest Doctor of the Church, personally took a public oath against the pope of his time when that pope started to verge into the heresy of Donatism. So the Great Doctor of Grace, whom St. Thomas Aquinas quotes more than any other authority in his Summa Theologica, certainly understood that the pope could err personally.

Yet we have nothing to fear. In fact, Our Lord's words have remained true, even in our troubled Post-modern age. The gates of Hell have not prevailed against His true Church. As in many times in the past, orthodox Catholics, in these times traditional Catholics, have maintained the Catholic and Apostolic Faith. Our Lord never promised that the Church would be the majority belief of mankind or particularly large. In fact, His teaching, as one finds in chapter 24 of St. Matthew's Gospel, which is appointed to be read at Holy Mass on the last Sunday of Pentecost, seems to indicate that only a remnant of the faithful may exist at the end.

August 7, 2003 - St. Cajetan, Confessor (Double)

Novus Ordo Church of Hate at It Again

It is a characteristic of the New Order sect that the more it talks about love, the more it practices hate. It is just another feature of the hypocrisy of the Great Facade. Any traditional Catholic who has stood up to the Novus Ordo has experienced this hatred. Rather than treating you with its vaunted "pastoral solicitude," Novus Ordo presbyters and bishops will damn you to Hell, threaten your job, undermine your reputation, and engage in whatever other malignities they can think of.

It is no wonder that more and more the Vatican II "Church of Love" is being called by its true name, the "Church of Hate." The New Order sect hates the Roman Catholic religion, hates the true practitioners of it, hates the Roman Catholic Mass and Sacraments.

Lest you think that the Novus Ordo hatred extends only to traditional Catholics, you should know that it treats its own in the same way. Now, the right to join a labor union should be big with the liberalist New Order, shouldn't it? It isn't. Not when it involves the New Order bureaucracy itself. Remember: the First Principle of the Novus Ordo bishops and dioceses is absolute control.

According to the National Catholic Reporter of August 1, the Novus Ordo dioceses have been hypocritical in producing documents strongly arguing the right of workers to organize, yet often acting with severity against their own workers who unionize.

One Novus Ordo bishop determined that no funds be awarded while a parish is affiliated with the union. Funding to the parish was cut off. Employees involved were "laid off." The bishop wrote that the downsizing was "made in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council."

Well, at least we know now what the real "spirit of Vatican II" is!

August 6, 2003 - Transfiguration of Our Lord (Double of the Second Class)

Mel Gibson's Traditional Catholic Film Progresses - Update XX

Nuntium de cinematographica Passione a Sociis Productionis "Iconis" Latine editum est ut sequens:

PASSIO VITAE JESU CHRISTI

NARRATIO

Passio est ecphrasis cinematograhica actuosa atque vivida, ostendens ultimas duodecim horas vitae Jesu Christi.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Jesus Christus: James Caviezel
Maria: Maia Morgenstern
Maria Magdalene: Monica Bellucci
Gesmas (Latro Malus): Francesco Cabras
Satana: Rosalinda Celentano
Pilati Uxor: Claudia Gerini
Pilatus: Ivano Marescotti
Dismas (Latro Bonus): Sergio Rubini

SAEPE INTERROGATA

Quaestio. Ubi cinematographica Passio in theatris exhibebitur?
Responsum. Forsitan in mense Junii 2004.

Quaestio. Dramatisne personae Latine et Hebraice loquentur?
Responsum. Omnia in cinematographica Passione locuta Latine vel Hebraice loquentur. Adhuc erga editionem ultimam disputatur utrum subtitulis utendum sit necne.

August 5, 2003 - Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows (Major Double)

Novus Ordo "Conservativism" is a Counterfeit

I had been attending daily services at a conservative Novus Ordo chapel. However, one Sunday morning, perhaps by the grace of God, for no reason at all I went to a different church that is a few minutes from my house. Upon entering the church, the first words that were spoken to me were from a young man dressed in shorts and sandals: "Why are you wearing a tie? Do you just like to wear ties or something?"

After being appalled that I was questioned about my motives for dressing up for services, I entered the chapel to notice its striking resemblance to a Protestant chapel. The holy water bowl was not a bowl at all, but a four-story fountain of holy water. There was no tabernacle, no crucifix (a large glass cross, not a crucifix, was brought out for the service), no statues, and no candles. There was also nowhere to kneel, as they do not kneel, but sit, during the Consecration.

I attempted to begin my prayers before the service, but was interrupted as a seven-man band was practicing in the corner. This band consisted of drums, an electric guitar, bass guitar, two acoustic guitars, piano, and a fiddle. After practice, the musicians all joined hands and prayed the Our Father (in the Protestant fashion), making no sign of the cross. The service began by clapping to welcome the visitors and then by shaking hands to "greet our neighbor." The service was sung with the band, and the congregation and presbyter all swayed together to the music. After sitting through ten minutes of this, I had to leave and come home.

At this moment, I realized that the "conservative" Novus Ordo service that I usually attended was the exact same service as this service -- just as sacrilegious and just as wrong. In a sense, the "conservative" Novus Ordo service is essentially none other than this "liberal" one that I attended, but the conservative one is disguised by bells, incense, and other things that make one believe it to be "conservative" and "traditional." It is not.

I wrote a stern letter to the presbyter, as well as to the bishop of that diocese, and told them exactly how I felt. The presbyter replied by calling me judgmental and self-righteous, and told me that he intended to send a copy of my letter to my school, to let them know that they had "someone like me in their midst." He also urged me never to come back to his church again. That's fine with me: I don't ever intend to go back to a Novus Ordo or even "indult" mass under the auspices of a New Order diocese.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Well, John, you have come face to face with the Novus Ordo "Church of Hate," posing as the "Church of Love." Yet you had more intelligence and guts than most: you quickly saw the counterfeit and left. Most Novus Ordinarians, although they know that they are suborning irreverence and sacrilege, nevertheless stay glued to their pews, afraid to "disobey" or that God's hand will come down from heaven and slap them for not fulfilling some misunderstood letter of the "Sunday obligation." Whereas God is a lot more likely to apply the torch to them for suborning the sacrilege of the unCatholic New Order by their presence!

Although you are a young man, you have a maturity greater than many chronologically older. Perhaps it is your relative youth that allows you to see the truth of the matter so clearly. You have discerned quite properly that a "conservative" Novus Ordo service is no different from a "liberal" Novus Ordo service. One may be slower-acting arsenic and the other may be faster-acting strychnine, but both a deadly poison and will surely kill the Roman Catholic Faith of those who partake.

August 4, 2003 - St. Dominic, Confessor (Major Double)

"Indian Feather" Mess

Desperate Novus Ordinarians try to point to "good" Novus Ordo bishops, "conservative" ones, that say the Novus Ordo abomination "in a reverent way." Well, one of those "conservative" bishops was supposed to be Charles Chaput of Denver. It appears that the worm has turned. Chaput has flaked out. That's what association with the Novus Ordo does to one.

This Novus Ordo archbishop personally presided over an "Indian Feather" Mess, in which he waved a feather over incense on the table. But wait for the finale, folks.

Then, like the rumbling of a coming storm, the Indian drumming began. Picking up speed and punctuated by forceful pounding it built to a steady rhythm accented by singing, then faster intense pounding and final singing. As the song concluded, the congregation responded with raucous applause.

Now, all of you who can't get to a Traditional Latin Mass, be sure to fulfil your "obligation" by attending an "Indian Feather" Mess in your neighborhood. (Not!)

Other "Messes" previously documented here:

1. "Bagel" Mess -- in which bagels are used as the invalid matter of the "sacrament"
2. "Ballet" Mess -- in which young girls dressed for a ballet dance up the aisles of the church (St. Anthony Daniel Church, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, March 10, 2000)
3. "Basketball" Mess -- in which the presbyter walks around the "altar" and the "sanctuary" bouncing a basketball while giving Mess play by play into a wireless microphone (Long Island, New York, May 2003)
4. "Black" Mess -- in which Satanic principles or forces are invoked
5. "Candy" Mess -- in which candy is used for "communion"
6. "Camouflage" Mess -- in which vestments of camouflage material, designed by a Lutheran minister, are used (Iraq, April 2003)
7. "Clown" Mess -- in which the celebrant is "vested" as a clown and engages in "sacred laughter"
8. "Coffee" Mess -- in which coffee is used for "communion"
9. "Cookie" Mess -- in which invalidating ingredients are used (said to characterize the majority of messes held in the United States)
10. "Dance" Mess -- in which natives dance around the altar, like the one over which John Paul II "presided" in Africa, February 1982 and August 1985
11. "Elvis" Mess -- in which a portrait of Elvis Presley was displayed around the altar (Portugal, 1982)
12. "Fruit" Mess -- in which fruit is used as the invalid matter of the "sacrament," and Buddhist chant and local pagan practices are also incorporated into the mess (celebrated at a Jesuit college)
13. "Gay" Mess -- in which the immoral homosexual lifestyle is glorified
14. "Gym" Mess -- in which "a joyful and creative liturgy designed by and for families with Gospel-centered messages geared toward children," while children crowd around the Novus Ordo table Indian-style (St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis, July 2003)
15. "Gingerbread" Mess -- in which the invalid matter is baked in the shape of a gingerbread man, and when communicates tear off a piece of Mr. Gingerbread, the presbyter yells "ouch"
16. "Girl Scout" Mess -- in which Girl Scout medals are given out, with an all-female cast: Eucharistic ministresses, altar servettes, etc.
17. "Golf" Mess -- a Sunday mess scheduled on Saturday afternoon and erroneously called "vigil," to allow people to devote Sunday to playing golf and other non-religious activities; also done in an effort to Judaize the Church
18. "Indian Feather" Mess -- in which the Novus Ordo Archbishop of Denver sported Indian feathers and tomtoms (July 2003)
19. "Jazz" Mess -- in which pagan "jazz" music accompanies the service (Sundays at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, New Orleans, Louisiana)
20. "Mariachi" Mess -- in which sacred music is replaced by the profane mariachi
21. "Picnic" Mess -- in which french bread (invalid matter) was used while a priestess performed the mess (San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas, April 29, 2003)
22. "Polka" Mess -- in which sacred music is replaced by polkas, and the polka is danced around the altar
23. "Pontoon" Mess -- held on a pontoon raft lurching back and forth on a river at a summer camp
24. "Priestess" Mess -- in which a woman plays the role of a Novus Ordo presbyter and performs the mess
25. "Pumpkin" Mess -- in which white witchcraft (wicca) is introduced, this time in the form of a giant pumpkin on the altar
26. "Rock" Mess -- in which a rock band takes the place of a choir and organ
27. "Seance" Mess -- in which, held at 11:15 p.m., all the lights are dimmed, and candles of various colors and shapes with various non-religious symbols on them are used as the only light
28. "Servette" Mess -- in which girls take the place of altar boys or men (this mess is quite common in the United States)
29. "Sponge Bob" Mess: in which an "altar girl," wearing Sponge Bob flip-flops, assisted the Novus Ordo presbyter, who delivered a homily with a Winnie The Pooh puppet. (July 2003)
30. "Tango" Mess -- in which danceuses cavort to the beat of a steel drum band (St. Monica's Church, Rochester, New York, June 2, 2003)
31. "Voodoo" Mess: at which witch doctors of voodoo participate, and animist (pagan) practices are included (celebrated monthly in Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2003)
32. "Womyn" Mess: at which altar servettes, lectresses, gift-bearers, etc., were all adult womyn, vested in Novus Ordo albettes (National Council of Catholic Women, Washington, D.C., October 31, 1999; et al.)

A True Pope

Dear Fr. Moderator:

August 4th marks the centenary of election to the papacy of Giuseppe Sarto as Pope Pius X. As a church musician, I have been inspired by his stance on music in the liturgy and his efforts and writings to support the traditional music of the Church, the Sacred Chant. Even in the early 1900s there was a problem with music in the Church. What would he make of the guitars and trite pumped out weekly in the Novus Ordo churches throughout the world? I'm sure he'd be running as fast as he could to the nearest Traditional Latin Mass available. Thank goodness for TRADITIO and its stance.

By the way, if anyone wants a first class holiday I can highly recommend nothing better than following in the footsteps of Giuseppe Sarto. In the northern area of Italy called the Veneto, you can visit all the places and churches that saw him gradually rise to the throne of Saint Peter. Riese - birthplace, Asolo - confirmed, Castelfranco Veneto - ordained priest, Tombolo - first curacy, Salzano - parish priest, Treviso - canon of the cathedral, Mantua - bishop, Venice - Cardinal Patriarch. I have just returned from following in the Saint's footsteps, and this has deepened my devotion to him and the traditional faith.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

It seems to be a modern fallacy that all popes are good and holy men. The Church says the opposite. Only two popes have been canonized in the last 700 years: Pope St. Pius V and Pope St. Pius X. Both were absolutely dedicated to the traditional Sacred Liturgy against those who would destroy it. Both stood firm in the Faith against heresy: Pius V against the Protestant heresy and Pius X against the Modernist heresy, while the post-Vatican II popes welcomed both heresies. Thank the Lord that He gives us Saints to show us the way of the real Faith. Too bad we don't always listen.

It's No Secret

One of the New Order Church's spokeswomen is Sister Mary Collins, O.S.B., a feminist theologian prominent in Church institutions. She is Prioress of the Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Atchison, Kansas, past chairman of the department of Religion and Religious Education at the Catholic University of America, a longtime advisor on feminist theology to the journal Concilium, and past president of the North American Academy of Liturgy. It can hardly be said, then, that she is on the fringe. No, she is speaking with the approval of the New Order Church.

Sister Collins is a champion of women's ordination. She also takes a congregationalist view of the priesthood. In a 1997 address to the "Catholic" Theological Society of America, she criticized Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII's 1947 encyclical on the sacred liturgy, as theologically defective for speaking of the Mass as a "sacrifice." Using the word sacrifice, according to this mouthpiece of the New Order Church, reinforces a "cultlike" notion of the priest's action and "marginalizes the role of the people in the Mass."

Well, there you have the essence of the New Order: it's no secret. It denies the Catholic priesthood, rejects a traditional pope, rejects the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and proclaims a Protestant priesthood of the people. Sounds like Sister Collins is disobeying the pope, doesn't it? And yet where are her excommunication papers? She is lionized by the institutions of the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church, while one courageous archbishop, whose only "crime" was not to foreswear his episcopal oath to guard the Roman Catholic Faith, is the only one since Vatican II who has been allegedly "excommunicated." Not even the Communist-Catholic Chinese schismatic bishops were excommunicated, because the New Vatican wants to schmooze with the Communists, but not with traditional Catholics.

It's a joke, isn't it? The New Order service, the New Order sacraments, the New Order theology. I think that it's time we stopped getting all hot and bothered about what the New Order is doing and just laugh. Laugh at Novus Ordo bishops who can't keep their cassocks buttoned, Novus Ordo bishops who can't keep their dirty hands out of the Church's till, and even popes who can't find it within themselves to expel their own appointed bishops and cardinals who engage in the most slimy immoralities. Laugh at the Novus Ordo service that features tables for altars, guitars for organs, vulgarity for sacredness, and cookies for bread. Maybe by laughing, we'll keep our sanity.

My criticism is not of "Sister" Collins. She's a Novus Ordo liturgiac, whose mind, as St. Paul puts it, has been "darkened" because of rejecting the true God and replacing His Church with the Counterfeit Church of the New Order. I don't expect any more from her.

What I do criticize are those Catholics who, knowing that it is ungodly and unCatholic, still patronize the New Order services and their hierarchy. For some unfathomable reason, they think they have to "obey" this unCatholic structure. Would these same people have argued that they must "obey" Hitler, the legitimate head of the German government?

I still get questions -- much fewer now -- to the effect that if a person is unable to worship at the Traditional Latin Mass, should he go to the Novus Ordo service? The answer is obvious: a flat NO! It is like asking whether, if a person is unable to eat healthy food, should he eat tainted food and die of food-poisoning. Better to eat nothing for a while, until he can get healthy food.

The handwriting is on the wall, folks. Sure, you may seem to get a glimmer of hope every one in a while, like the recent document against "gay" marriage, but Sister Collins in the one who speaks for the future of the Novus Ordo Church. When the current pope becomes John Paul II of Infelicitous Memory, it will be the Sister Collinses who will be leading the Church.

August 3, 2003 - 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Semidouble)

Cardinal Arinze Just Doesn't Get It

Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Nigerian-born prefect of the Novus Ordo Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, who is touring the United States, perhaps trying to build up brownie-points for a papal campaign, just doesn't get it. At a conference at Louisville on July 18, he said that, in his opinion, the demand for, as he so inaccurately put it, the "pre-1970 way of celebrating Mass" is:

generally the fault of those who have introduced abuses and their own idiosyncrasies into the Mass, contrary to the clear directives of the Second Vatican Council. If the Mass is celebrated with faith and reverence, and sung also in Latin sometimes, people's Catholic faith and piety will be adequately nourished. People seek the old form of the Mass because they are sick and tired of abuses.

So, in Arinze's half-cocked opinion, all you have to do is fix the "abuses" in the Novus Ordo service, and there is no need for the Roman Catholic Mass! But what do you do when the whole Novus Ordo service is an abuse by its very existence, purporting to replace the Roman Catholic Mass with a Protestantized, Masonized counterfeit? Ah, there's the rub, and Arinze is blind to it, as are all Novus Ordinarians.

The very purpose of the Novus Ordo service is to permit the abominations of "inculturation" and "oecumenization." That is what Vatican II opened up. That is how Freemason Bugnini & Co. wrote it up. That is why is so easy to give the Novus Ordo service the form of a Ballet Mess, a Basketball Mess, a Clown Mess, a Coffee Mess, a Cookie Mess, an Elvis Mess, a Fruit Mess, a Gay Mess, a Gingerbread Mess, a Mariachi Mess, a Picnic Mess, a Priestess Mess, a Rock Mess, a Servette Mess, and all the rest that have been documented here.

Arinze seems to be living in fantasy land, when he says that:

Catholics are also called to show reverence to the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass, in such public acts as Corpus Christi processions, by making the sign of the cross when one passes by a church, by visiting the Blessed Sacrament during the day, or night.

Is he so oblivious to reality that he really doesn't know that the New Order has seen to it that:

• Corpus Christi processions are infrequently held, as being "too traditional"
• many churches have been converted from architecture honoring Our Lord and the Saints into modernistic monstrosities that are not even identifiable as churches (e.g., the Taj Mahoney in Los Angeles)
• churches are locked tight outside of the times for the Novus Ordo service, and the purported Novus Ordo sacrament is locked away somewhere, as Eucharistic worship is "too traditional"

Another speaker at the conference, Novus Ordo Bishop Thomas Doran (Rockville, IL), showed some rare insight. But was he merely quoting TRADITIO? His topic was obedience, during which he said: "We do not obey unjust laws. Everything done by the Nazis when they were in power was completely legal, according to the civil law." Interestingly, that is a direct quote from TRADITIO, which is the only source that has, from the beginning, consistently compared the illegal imposition of the New Order on Catholic people with the imposition of the Nazi laws on the people of Germany. You see, TRADITIO is reaching the consciences of the Novus Ordinarians.

But Doran didn't draw the necessary conclusion: the New Order laws are unjust, because they are against Catholic Tradition and dogma. Therefore, according to the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the New Order laws must be disobeyed in justice, just as the Nazi laws should have been disobeyed in justice.

Undoubtedly, you will read accounts of this conference from the Novus Ordinarians that extol its various statements to the heavens. Yet TRADITIO gets you to the heart of the matter. TRADITIO skims the frosting off the cake, the fancy words and traditional consoling traditional allusions, to show you that the cake underneath is rancid and that no amount of sugar-coating can counterbalance the poison underneath. These Novus Ordo cardinals, bishops, and all the rest cannot fix the problem of the New Order Church, because they are clueless about what the problem is.

Fighting for the True Faith

Dear Fr. Moderator:

I do a lot of research into Church tradition, and I am fully respectful and observant of the Magisterium and the Apostolic Tradition, and follow St. Thomas Aquinas. I respect your efforts to maintain the integrity of the Church, but I am troubled by your criticisms of the Novus Ordo, suggesting that someone should stay away from it. Now if the Eucharistic Prayer had somehow been invalidated, I could understand.

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Apparently, you are not as observant of the Magisterium (teaching of the Catholic and Apostolic Deposit of Faith) as you think. Eucharistic prayer is a term used by the New Order to replace the Apostolic Canon of the Mass, which goes back to the Apostles. The word canon is the Greek word meaning standard or rule, as the Sacred Canon was established as early as the second century.

In 1967, the most abominable and scandalous thing happened. A pope purported to change the Sacred Canon of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, even the Apostolic words of Consecration themselves, by adding and subtracting other words. This action violated Catholic and Apostolic Tradition that you prize, which it is a dogma of the Church that no pope has the power to do (Dogmatic Decree Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I). No other pope in the history of the Church had dared to do such a thing.

Moreover, three phony "Eucharistic prayers" were added, which are in the Novus Ordo almost exclusively used in place of even the modified version of the Canon. Phony, because they were concocted by the Freemason Hannibal Bugnini and his six Protestant minister-assistants, for the explicit purpose of changing the Roman Catholic Mass into a Protestantized service that Protestants could use (several in fact do now use the Novus Ordo service).

The dogmatic Council of Trent and Pope St. Pius V, who promulgated its decrees, condemned any notion of tampering with the Catholic and Apostolic Mass. Yet, here we have Paul VI violating this Catholic dogma. Soon did he learn the error of his ways. Just five years later he realized what he had done and stated publicly that the "New Mass" after Vatican II, instead of doing any good, had actually admitted the "smoke of Satan" around the altars of the Church. Unfortunately, Paul VI had set the wheels in motion too successfully. A courageous pope would have tried to undo the evil he set in motion, but Paul VI knew that if he tried to do that, he would be crushed by the very mechanism that he had set in motion. And he didn't have the courage to attempt that.

TRADITIO is not content to play ecclesiastical politics with the New Order, but instead tries to dig down to the fundamental Catholic truth, with a rhetorical approach modeled after the Roman satirist Juvenal, with the purpose of shaking people out of their easy compromises with Modernism, against which popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, and even John XXIII warned. Unfortunately, the New Order has rejected the Magisterium of the Church and the wise teaching of those popes to end up swallowing Modernism hook, line, and sinker. The Novus Ordo scandals of recent years were predicted by those popes. They were right on the money in their prediction of the dire consequences of denying Apostolic Tradition and the Magisterium.

St. Thomas Aquinas would have been the first to reject the simplistic and unCatholic theology of the New Order, its abandonment of the Catholic and Apostolic Mass, and the Sacraments. Like St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Catherine, St. Gertrude, and so many other Saints, who were not wishy-washy and passive, but cried out against the errors and crimes of their day against the Catholic Faith, we must fight for our Catholic Faith.

St. Paul certainly made no mistake when he compared the life of Faith to a fight. St. John in the Apocalypse talks about zeal for the Faith. Unfortunately, Our Lord's jibes at his Apostoles for being "pusillanimous" fall all too readily upon us of the Modern Age, who are all to ready in our laziness and love of passivity to sell out the true Mass, the true Sacraments, and the true Faith. It is any wonder that, therefore, that so many souls of our age are "darkened" and have used pretty words to sell themselves on a New Order that is in no way Catholic or Apostolic? And because it is not Catholic and Apostolic, it has become disunified and unholy as well.

August 2, 2003 - St. Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, Bishop, Confessor & Doctor (Double)

Novus Ordo "Sponge Bob" Mess Features Cartoon Character

Dear Fr. Moderator:

We drive 30 miles to attend Mass in a real church, with real priests, and real altar boys, but sometimes the drive is too much. We dread going to services here in our Novus Ordo parish, but with a family of seven, sometimes we compromise. We always regret it, and this weekend reminded us why.

At one Mass, a typically undisciplined altar girl, wearing Sponge Bob flip-flops, assisted the Novus Ordo presbyter, who delivered a unique homily. Sermonizing during the usual ballet in front of the altar, his right hand gradually emerged from under his vestments. Out came -- Winnie The Pooh.

Hand-puppet Pooh observed that we are all God's puppets, or some such nonsense, then the presbyter, morphing back to his real self, finished with a few lines that bordered on pantheism. Stay tuned for next week's sermon, he said, "same Bat time, same Bat channel." This, fellow Catholics, is the Newchurch. (Chronicles Magazine, July 26, 2003)

Fr. Moderator Replies.

Are you out of your mind? By what rationale do you justify exposing your wife and children, as well as yourself, to the disgusting, unCatholic sacrilege and blasphemy of the New Order? That presbyter has a "darkened" mind, but you sound rational. If you can't make it to that church that has the true Mass, you dare not take your family to the Novus Ordo perversion. You are showing the worst possible example to your family by exposing them to this very real danger to their Faith.

To our knowledge, TRADITIO has been the only site honest enough to pose the question: "Is the pope compos mentis?" If he isn't, then his actions are legally invalid. After many years of denying it, Vatican News has reported that the Vatican has finally admitted that he has Parkinson's Disease, a debilitating, progressive, systemic disease that worsens year by year.

Last year, at the ceremonies for Padre Pio, the pope could barely pronounce the few words of the ceremony, which only he was supposed to pronounce. The poor man was obviously reduced to a very sad state by the disease, but is his mind affected? According to a standard diagnostic text, as many as half of Parkinson's patients suffer mild dementia, which becomes severe in a few. Depression is even more common. The treatment for the disease is even worse. Levadopa's side effects include mania, depression, and toxic delirium. But is the poor man taking such potent medication? The Vatican has never admitted it -- until now.

The Vatican has now admitted that the Pope had some difficulty with breathing and reading as he gave a public audience at Castel Gandolfo last week. He is reported to have looked more tired and unwell in the past week than he has for some time. But in order to conceal this fact, the Vatican has given out that it is "no cause for alarm, as Vatican officials attribute it to the fact his doctors have reduced his medication."

So, the Vatican now admits that the pope has been taking medication and that it was having so many grave effects, it had to be reduced (a common situation with Levadopa). Has the pope been suffering other side effects of the drug: mania, delirium? Naturally, the Vatican wouldn't admit it, any more than the U.S. government would indicate that President Wilson was incompetent for weeks after his stroke or that President Reagan was incompetent for weeks after his attempted assassination.

But that doesn't change the principle that the acts of an incompetent person are not valid, any more than an idiot can contract marriage. If it turns out that the pope signed documents in a state of mental incompetence or that Pope Paul VI was suffering manic-depression that clouded his judgment, the whole house of cards on which the Novus Ordo is based, comes tumbling down for yet another reason.