What nation is more associated with Catholicism than the Irish? What people was more devoted to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass than the Irish? No longer. Vatican II and John Paul II have turned a majority of the Irish back into pagans, thus undoing the godly work of St. Patrick.
Until the Novus Ordo of 1970, weekly Mass attendance in Ireland was above 90%. Now, a face-to-face poll of 1000 adult interviewees found that only about 50% of people aged 18 or older attend even the Novus Ordo service, down 10% from a similar poll taken in 1998. In urban areas, the figure was worse. It was 43%, down 5%. Of course, we're comparing apples and oranges here, as the Novus Ordo service isn't the Roman Catholic Mass. So much for the vaunted "appeal to modernist Man" of the Novus Ordo service.
Moreover, two-thirds of the Irish Novus Ordinarians appear to be material heretics. Two-thirds want the church to have priestesses and thus revert to their pagan roots that St. Patrick fought so hard to civilize. On other key church teachings, 38% do not believe in the dogma of infallibility, 13% percent do not believe in the dogma of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 10% do not believe in the Most Blessed Sacrament. And here's a clincher: one out of 20 Irish Novus Ordo sectarians don't even believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! How they call themselves Christians, let alone Catholics, is beyond me.
"I think there is a greater freedom now amongst people to question beliefs and teaching of the Church," said Bishop Willie Walsh, one of the Novus Ordo Church's leaders in Ireland. "I think that, of course, one would like that everybody would believe every detail of church teaching. But that would be to live in an unreal world," Walsh said.
Wow! By what definition could you possibly recognize such an individual as a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church? And yet these are the "bishops" that the Novus Ordinarians keep telling us traditional Catholics we must obey. Obey heretics? Obey schismatics? Obey apostates? No way! The popes of the ages would kill us! The Saints of the ages would kill us! The dogmatic councils of the Church would kill us!
There is no way that a Roman Catholic (as opposed to a Novus Ordinarian) could justify obeying a heretic bishop. This is clear from the very beginnings of the Church, from the Great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who knew such heretic bishops. St. Basil would have nothing to do with them. St. Martin would have nothing to do with them. St. Augustine would have nothing to do with them. We must have nothing to do with them.
Today, the Feastday of St. Michael the Archangel, our patron, is the ninth anniversary of the TRADITIO Traditional Roman Catholic Internet Site. We have well passed reaching 550,000 participants in that time (our verified counter is actually low, since the University of Alberta, Canada, started it about a year after we first appeared on the internet).
TRADITIO was the first traditional Catholic site to appear on the internet. We were here even before the Vatican was! Originally, our apostolate focused on an E-mail list, with the web page supplementing that. Now our focus is the web site, with E-mail being moved to it as Commentaries from the Mailbox, together with a wealth of information on the traditional Roman Catholic Faith and its practice in our Library of Files, the traditional Divine Office for personal recitation, the traditional Mass-Sacraments-Gregorian Chant, the traditional liturgical calendar, special features, holy cards, California Missions, Stations of the Cross, the papal photo gallery, and much more.
Our participatory departments include Booksales, Confraternity of St. Michael, Prayers for the Living and the Deceased, and Traditional Catholic Priests Wanted and Available. Moreover, we offer the highly popular Ask Fr. Moderator department, in which our Fr. Moderator, an independent traditional Catholic priest, known as "the internet priest" and first Catholic chaplain to the internet (since 1994), provides personal answers by E-mail to inquiries on topics pertaining to traditional Roman Catholicism, including theology, the Bible, Church history, the Latin language, liturgy (especially the Traditional Latin Mass), and music (especially Gregorian chant).
At the heart of TRADITIO has always been the National Registry of Traditional Latin Masses, the only complete directory of Traditional Latin Masses published. Other organizations publish limited and selective directories for only their own traditional Mass sites, but the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses is the only complete compilation under one cover, which has now expanded beyond the United States and Canada to contacts for traditional Mass sites all over the world. We are now up to our Eighth Annual Edition, each annual edition being a major revision on even the previous year's edition, so fast is the traditional landscape developing.
What we did not understand when we started was the vast number of traditional Catholics who were cut off from the Traditional Latin Mass, but discovered the Traditional Catholic Movement through our Traditional Directory and maintained their connection with the movement through the TRADITIO website. It is humbling to realize that we have now touched well over half a million souls, many of whom would never have learned about traditional Mass locations and the traditional movement except from TRADITIO. From time to time we have shared their stories with you.
During our nine years here, we have tried to focus on the truth of what is said rather than who is doing the speaking. Our subtitle tells the story: An independent, balanced voice of traditional Catholicism. There are some differences of opinion in the movement, mostly matters of mechanics, but these pale in comparison with the Big Three on which we are all unified: the Traditional Latin Mass, the Traditional Latin Sacraments, and the Traditional Roman Catholic Faith.
We thank the Lord for our hundreds of thousands of dedicated correspondents from all over the world, who keep us current on everything going on in the bowels of the New Vatican, in the inner sancta of various traditional organizations, and at the many Traditional Latin Mass sites. To this raw data, we give in return a perspective not of some lay armchair theologian, but of our Fr. Moderator, a mature observer of many decades, even from before Vatican II.
If TRADITIO has been of assistance to you over these many years, please remember us prayerfully, particularly at this special time, and say a prayer to our powerful patron St. Michael, for all the traditional clergy, for the Church as a whole, and for our Roman Catholic civilization. Ad multos annos.
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio. Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur. Tuque princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.
Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
After the pope's pathetic admission in the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia that in the 25 years of his papacy he has been totally incompetent to stem the "abuses" in the Protestant-Masonic New Order service of Vatican II (as if that service in itself weren't the greatest abuse of all!), now the New Vatican is frantic to issue a "directive" document to Novus Ordo presbyters and bishops.
The document was drafted by a committee composed of four officials from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and four from the Congregation for Divine Worship. The document's working title is Pignus Redemptionis ac Futurae Gloriae (A Pledge of Redemption and Future Glory). The draft is a 200-paragraph text, which covers 37 "abuses" against the Novus Ordo.
Who cares anyway? The Novus Ordo service isn't even Catholic. It isn't even valid with its mangling of the very words of Consecration, with its use of cookies instead of bread, and with the unsacramental intentions of so many Novus Ordo presbyters -- any one of which invalidates the Mass. Even the pope's commission said so, yet the Novus Ordo presbyters and bishops go on their merry way, shoveling out to the Novus Ordinarians their "mess" like offal.
Now we start getting the rumors that the New Vatican's directive document is now in draft. The first piece of information, already reported on here in the TRADITIO Commentaries, was that the Traditional Latin Mass, the exclusive use of which is the only salvation for the Church, will barely be mentioned. There will be no "universal indult," as if that were needed to celebrate the Roman Catholic Church's true Mass. A number of European Novus Ordo bishops threatened that if such a thing were attempted, they would ignore it and go into formal schism. The same thing happened in 1986.
This document will be Dead on Arrival. Already many Novus Ordo bishops and priests have indicated that they will ignore it. The pope has given up his papal authority in word and deed (cf. his encyclical Ut Unum Sint of 1996). He long ago gave up his power in the Church to enforce a uniform discipline. In many ways, he is himself the worst violator of the Church's discipline with those papal extravaganza services held in racetracks, at which the uneaten "bread" (or rather cookie) is put into a burlap bag and thrown into the trash. That's what was done at the papal mess in New York's Yankee Stadium, as confirmed by the editor of a conservative Novus Ordo periodically, who was personally present there. What are the other rumors?
This draft document has already been seen as a criticism of even papal messes. In these, the pope himself connives, as he certainly has the power to control at least the Novus Ordo services that he celebrates. But, not to worry. The Italian press has already reported that "the initial reaction to the draft, circulated to the world's bishops, has been negative and the document may have to be at least partially modified." The draft version of the document was summarily rejected by the prelates who reviewed it as too conservative.
The paper reports that the text has been sent back for revision, and its appearance has been significantly delayed. New Vatican officials had suggested that the new document would be published in October 2003. Now, 2004 is looking optimistic. The pope and his minions have obviously lost control. Sacrilege in the Novus Ordo is so prevalent around the world that the Novus Ordinarians won't give it up. It's like trying to get a heroin addict to give us his heroin. He'll shoot up and shoot up until he kills his body in a drug-induced euphoria. A better description of the Novus Ordo I cannot conceive of.
So, you Novus Ordinarians, don't expect any "improvement." You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service will become more of a cesspool than it already is. That is what its planners intended, after all.
After reading of all these sacrileges, is it any wonder why so many traditional Catholics hold that the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service, by its very essence, is unCatholic, sacrilegious, scandalous, blasphemous, and idolatrous? No true Catholic would be caught dead at any of these services. Those that do need to have their head, that is, their faith, examined.
There was recently a news note about Card. Hoyos saying something generally supportive about The Passion to an Italian interviewer. Hoyos's statement was so couched in Vatican II-speak, however, that it was hardly a definitive statement. Now, that technique is very typical of New Vatican officials. They always want to leave open the option of later "deniability." Like Richard Nixon.
Just as TRADITIO predicted, now the other shoe has dropped. Another cardinal, a flaming radical oecumenist, Walter Cardinal Kaspar, attacked even this mild statement of his fellow cardinal, Hoyos, to, of all organizations, the radical Jewish Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith (who is really being defamed here?)! Kaspar pandered to these long-time anti-Catholic bigots by writing to the ADL on September 22 that Hoyos's statement "bears no official status."
In a letter to the ADL, Walter Cardinal Kasper, President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, indicated that "the view expressed by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos is a purely personal one and bears no official status." Now, of course, that is true because the Vatican was hardly given by Our Lord the tiara of a movie critic, any more than it has been given the miter of an astronomer. There is no "infallibility" here!
Frankly, this whole thing smells like a setup. Is it possible that Hoyos's statement was made so that it could be in short order denied so as to play up to the radical Jewish ADL? It's not that the New Vatican hasn't done such things before. In fact, the New Vatican often issues contradictory statements days apart. For example, one day the pope will praise the Traditional Latin Mass; the next day will praise its replacement by the New Order service.
It's an old trick. Anyone that has followed the duplicity of the New Vatican since 1964 knows full well that it is no better than common secular politicians, who speak out of both sides of their mouths. Unfortunately, we have come to accept this from common politicians. It is disgusting that the once Holy See has taken a page out of the secular politicians' book rather than setting a Christian example of Christlike honesty and Thomistic clarity.
It's hard to know what this gizmo is. About the last thing one would think of is a tabernacle in a Catholic Church.
In fact, it is the tabernacle in Card. Mahony's "Taj Mahony," the monstrosity that this flaming Modernist cardinal built to the tune of $200,000,000 to replace the beautiful traditional cathedral of St. Bibiana.
I have said many times that the Novus Ordo "cookie" is no more than that. It is not the Sanctissimum. It is a fraud, nor does the Novus Ordo pretend it to be otherwise by the way they treat "it." You don't kneel when you receive "it." You touch "it" with your filthy, unpurified hands. In some cases, you even dispose of "it."
Look what happened in Australia recently. Some Novus Ordo presbyter insisted that a woman consume the cookie before returning to her seat, as is the practice. The Modernists in the parish, fanatics of the "Neo-catechumenal Way," screamed "sacrilege" -- not against the woman, but against the presbyter! The presbyter quite properly explained his action by saying: "I am trying to be faithful to the practices of the Church. I asked that they consume communion in front of me because I became aware people were going down the back of the church with the eucharist and I don't know what goes on down there."
Too bad the presbyter was trying to protect only a cookie, but his heart was in the right place. No doubt he'll be canned in a few days because the aborigines involved will call for his scalp. Maybe he should go to Houston and join Fr. Zigrang!
In the Novus Ordo sect, can we not see before our very eyes the working of God's Providence? How a wise God has allowed those sectarians to have the "desire of their hearts," a counterfeit service with a void "cookie" instead of the Catholic and Apostolic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with His true Body and Blood, thus avoiding formal sacrilege. God is not mocked.
How fitting and awful a lesson before our very eyes that God is not mocked! In the words of the Psalmist: "The Lord shall be known when he executeth judgments: the sinner hath been caught in the works of his own hands" (9:17/DRV).
While "conservative" Novus Ordo periodicals bought into the rumors over the possibility of a "universal indult" for the Traditional Latin Mass -- as if any such indult were needed: the Traditional Latin Mass, the Apostolic Roman Catholic Mass, is the Mass of Sacred Tradition and has been dogmatically canonized in perpetuity --, TRADITIO expressed great skepticism. Now we have confirmation of that skepticism from Card. Ratzinger, who spoke as follows in an interview on September 5:
Interviewer: I know you are working on those new liturgical, this new liturgical piece of legislation that the Pope previewed in his encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia of last April. We've been hearing a great deal from Cardinal Arinze and in some publications that this may be a precursor to a "universal indult" for the Tridentine Mass [this is what the Novus Ordinarians erroneously call the Traditional Latin Mass, the Roman Catholic Mass]. Do you foresee that at all?
Ratzinger: I would distinguish between the future document and the problem of "indults." The future document is not a new legislation, but interpretation of given norms. So, we have only to interpret or clarify what is abuse and what is really the application of the liturgy. In a sense, it is a very limited, the possibility of this document -- a clarification of abuses, and clarification of norms, at this moment. The other is a different problem. I think generally, the old liturgy was never prohibited. We need only norms how in peace, apply it so that the reformed [Novus Ordo] liturgy is the normal liturgy of the community of the Church, but the other is always a valid use of the Church can be used, but in obedience to the bishops and the Holy Father.
So here we have the same old story from the Novus Ordo. There will be no "universal indult," for whatever good that would do. Moreover, the important statement is that the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Mess is the "normal" liturgy of the Novus Ordo sect, and that no Novus Ordo presbyter better dare attempt the Traditional Latin Mass unless he salutes the New Order apparatus.
That is absolutely not what the dogmatic Council of Trent decreed, nor Pope St. Pius V putatively infallibly in Quo Primum. The "conservative" Novus Ordinarians are still being blinded by the external "whited sepulchre" of the New Order, "which outwardly appears to men beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness" (Matthew 23:27/DRV).
The September 2003 issue of The Catholic Voice reports a conversation between two traditional Roman Catholic nuns and a Protestant businessman. When one of the nuns, in answer to his question, indicated that the changes of Vatican II "have causesd the modern church to cease being the Roman Catholic Church," the Protestant, far from being shocked by such a statement, agreed with her! The Protestant went on to say:
We Protestants have always known where the Catholic Church stood on various issues of the day, but now we are confused.... For all our disagreement with the Catholic Church, we always looked to it as a moral leader -- an organization with a moral compass. But it has changed, and changed for the worse.
After speaking with you, Sister, I am comforted (in one way) to know that the real Catholic Church still exists. However, it would be better for modern Catholics who follow the changes to admit to the fact that the Church brought forth after Vatican II -- their Church is a new Church, sharing few of the ideals that Roman Catholics have traditionally held. If they would do this, at least modern Catholics would be more honest.
You see, even Protestants know that the New Order Church is a counterfeit, that it is not Catholic. We Catholics used to have at least respect, if not agreement, from many Protestants. Now, with the New Order Church, that respect is gone, as are the Protestant converts that came from it. The New Order Church has sold these good Protestant souls down the river, since "one religion is as good as another."
God forbid! Each Catholic has to try harder to get the word out for the salvation of souls. The Novus Ordo Church is not the Roman Catholic Church, but the Roman Catholic Church -- its Traditional Latin Mass, its Sacraments, and its Faith -- exist in hundreds of locations in the United States, and more around the world. We have an obligation to comfort those souls who, for the present, linger in an heretical faith, but who may, because of the very existence of traditional Roman Catholicism, be moved to the true Faith.
The Catholic Voice is one of only two traditional periodicals recommended by TRADITIO. For further information click on FAQ05: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend?
The truth will out. After the slash job done on Mel Gibson and his father, Hutton Gibson, both traditional Catholics, by a Novus Ordo shill named Christopher Noxon in the New York Times Magazine, we now find out the truth about Noxon. (By the way, the New York Times Magazine is not the New York Times, but given the fact that the New York Times has been involved in a number of admitted falsifications of the news, over which some very high editors were fired, I doubt that anything in the New York Times can be trusted.)
At any rate, Peter Boyer in the New Yorker magazine of September 15, has done a balanced piece on Gibson, his father, and The Passion. In it, we find out just how biased the newspaper reporting has been on this issue, as has been noted by TRADITIO in several of our past 28 articles on this topic.
These "anti-Semitic" charges that radical Jewish groups have concocted against Gibson are pretty silly. After all, the Gospels were written by Jews about a Jew and their fellow Apostles, also Jews. Mary was a Jew. Mary Magdalene was a Jew. Joseph of Arimathea was a Jew. Nicodemus was a Jew. Paul was a Jew.
Isn't this sounding like an internecine battle within the Jews themselves? After all, the Orthodox Jews don't even consider "reform" Jews like Foxman (head of the ADL) to be Jews. The "reform" Jews are a little like the Novus Ordinarians -- with a very "lite" veneer of religion, but not practicing their faith and not acknowledging its tenets.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I've been reading the accounts of Fr. Zigrang for some time now, and the whole situation is absolutely absurd. It's not the least bit surprising, but indicative of just how evil the Novus Ordo is.
How deeply has anybody contemplated the awful truth that we face with this: the Novus Ordo will depose a priest who has chosen to feed his flock with the sweetness of grace and truth, but goes out of its way to hide priests who have chosen to feed their flocks with the foulness of cockle and falsehood.
Fortunately, these cockle-sowing Novus Ordo presbyters were hung out to dry when the public and press came down on their evil affairs. It's a sad commentary on those who remain over there in the Novus Ordo sect and have allowed this to happen by their inaction. God help them, sometimes they even try to justify miscreants like Archbishop Weakland, who not only had a paramour on the side, but used church money to pay him off! (Well, I suppose Jeffrey Dalmer's mother said that he was the nicest young man you'd ever want to meet!)
The New Mess and its false sacraments would never have taken hold had people spoken up with righteous indignation forty years ago. Granted, one could say, "Where was Fr. Zigrang thirty years ago?" After all, Fr. Zigrang adhered to the New False Religion and "god" of Vatican II, whereas Fr. Gommar DePauw already in 1964 saw where Vatican II was leading and got out of the New Order to found the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in New York. At least some people are waking up now and doing something. And -- have no doubt -- traditional Roman Catholics who are calling them and their New Order "counterfeit" -- are shaking these rogue "bishops" to their core.
A priest who dares to celebrate the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven, the Traditional Latin Mass, which has nourished and inspired paupers and princes, the likes of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and all Christians for 2000 years, is considered evil and deposed immediately, while a priest who commits sexual sins against minors is hidden in what amounts to a bishops' conspiracy of silence in crime. These rogue "bishops", who have given up any claim to be paid any attention to as Roman Catholic bishops, wouldn't dare depose a Novus Ordo presbyter who commits any of many faith-destroying travesties one sees today. The chief investigator for the U.S. Conference of [Novus Ordo] Catholic Bishops, before he was ejected for his candor, intimated that these bishops were racketeers no better than the Mafia.
No, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church right to its summit. Few Novus Ordinarians of any age know of this important observation from Pope Paul VI. Even if they did, I somehow think they would say that such smoke infected everybody else's parish, but not theirs!
And what does the pope do about all of this? Why, he has tea in the library with the corrupt cardinals and refuses to clean his house of the ilk that he himself appointed! Even Our Lord finally got fed up with the corruption in His Church. He didn't issue all kinds of warm and fuzzy, lovey-dovey words. He got violent. He overturned the tables and chairs there and, according to St. Luke's account, physically "cast out the thieves." Pray God, one day He will give us a tiger who will act like a real pope and cast out the thieves who have stolen the Roman Catholic Faith from hundreds of millions of Catholics.
TRADITIO's predictions were right on the money again. In our last Commentary on the subject, we smelled a rat when Fr. Zigrang met with the Novus Ordo bishop of Houston, Joseph Fiorenza. Our instincts and long experience told us that Fr. Zigrang was being drawn into the spider's web, along with some SSPX priests who accompanied him.
Sure enough, after a falsely glowing report in a "conservative" Novus Ordo periodical by a naive columnist, Fiorenza pulled a fast one. The whole tete-a-tete was staged to trick Fr. Zigrang into resigning his pastorate in writing. Once he foolishly did that, all Novus Ordo hell has broken loose upon him.
In a letter of September 15, Fiorenza specifically refers to that signed letter of resignation and takes the following actions:
Well, maybe Fr. Zigrang and the SSPX priests are babes in the woods, but TRADITIO is not. We saw this treachery from the beginning. While Zigrang schmoozed with the Novus Ordo bishop and the naive SSPX priests gave him wine and chocolates, the bishop was preparing the deadly venom, as these Black Widow bishops do for all traditional Catholic priests. Now the web has been sprung, and the trusting flies have been gobbled up.
My advice to Fr. Zigrang at this point is to send one loud raspberry to Fiorenza who, you will remember, is currently promoting a "gay activist" Protestant speaker in his diocese. Fr. Zingrang should go about his pastoral work as if this Judas bishop didn't exist. From the point of view of Roman Catholicism, he doesn't exist; he gave up any right to be called a Roman Catholic bishop long ago. He is a minion of the New Order, not a promoter of Roman Catholicism. Fr. Zigrang should feel a great sense of relief and freedom in not having anything to do with the New Order Counterfeit Church and its functionaries.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I had heard about the "Polka Mess" before, but I never knew that it had violated the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica! Do these Novus Ordinarians know no shame? Dancing on the altar above the Holy Confession, where many of the popes, from St. Peter on, are interred.
In 1983 one Presbyter Perkovich, of St. Joseph's in Minnesota, "danced" the "Polka Mess" to the polka and waltz stylings of Joe Cvek and his orchestra the Polka Masters, on the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica. The pope was present and -- would you believe? -- commended and encouraged Pres. Perkovich in his "endeavors" with the Polka Mess. The benighted Perkovic, you see, believe that profane dancing "enhances the solemnity of the Mass," even at the ancient altar of St. Peter's. What's next? Vestal Virgins dancing on the altar to the tunes of the Egyptian flute?
Time was when priests did not dance. It is not becoming to their calling. It apparently is becoming to the calling of Novus Ordo presbyters, however. TRADITIO correspondents have relayed a number of scandals of presbyters dancing to the rave at wedding receptions and giving the bride (and as many other women as possible) a prolonged smackeroo.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
When an article entitled "Episcopalian Consecration in Catholic Cathedral" appeared in the local newspaper, out of curiosity I wrote the following to a Novus Ordo website:
As recently as 1996, a [Novus Ordo] Catholic bishop allowed an Episcopalian bishop to be consecrated in a Catholic cathedral. The Catholic bishop also took part in the ceremony. Was this a violation of [Novus Ordo] canon law?
I suppose that it shouldn't have surprised me when the following "politically correct," "oecumenical" answer was posted on the website:
There really isn't a problem with a [Novus Ordo] Catholic bishop allowing Episcopalians to use his cathedral for a ceremony. Something similar to what you described happened here in Pittsburgh not too long ago. Bishop Wuerl, who is a very good and faithful bishop, allowed an Episcopalian bishop to be consecrated in St. Paul's Cathedral in Pittsburgh. Bishop Wuerl was present for the ceremony. Bishop Wuerl is undoubtedly one of the best bishops in the country, and he wouldn't have allowed this if it was a violation of [Novus Ordo] canon law.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I have to admit to being somewhat amused at the example given. The writer might as well have called Abp. Weakland of Milwaukee "one of the most moral bishops in the country"! A few years ago, Wuerl was called on the carpet by the New Vatican for his ignorance of canon law. He had illegally stripped a conservative Pittsburg presbyter of his pastorate, and the presbyter appealed to the New Vatican. The New Vatican overruled Wuerl's action and sent him a letter informing him that his ignorance of canon law was scandalous and that he should take a canon-law course! Although the letter was supposed to be private, it was leaked out.
Of course, we know that the Novus Ordo sect is not Catholic, but, if it were, it would certainly be scandalous to have an invalid Protestant "consecration" service held in a Catholic cathedral. You can sometimes work it the other way around, just as early Catholics used the pagan Roman temples for their Masses, but you can't have Catholics loan out their cathedrals to heretics for an invalid service. Pope Leo XIII should be turning in his grave! Why not loan out the cathedral for a priestess mess or a wicca (witchcraft) mess? (Oh, sorry, that's already been done!)
I have received a few letters recently, from Australia of all places, desperately trying to prove that the New Order is Catholic. It isn't. It's schismatic from the Roman Catholic Church and heretical, at least materially. And events like this clearly indicate that it is simply posing as Catholic and is a counterfeit, a facade, as recent books and articles have clearly proven, as if there were any doubt. The fact of the matter really undeniable at this point, forty years after Vatican II. All you have to do is open your mind and open your eyes and look at the facts straight on, rather than through those rosy-colored glasses that make Masonic-Protestantism appear Catholic.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Does an anticipatory Mass satisfy our Sunday obligation?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
By "anticipatory" Mass, I assume that you mean a Sunday Mass that is held on Saturday, alternatively known as a "Golf Mess," so people can play golf on Sunday, or otherwise totally overlook the Lord's Day, thereby violating the Third Commandment and seriously failing in the proper worship of the Lord on the day He set aside for this purpose.
First of all, no traditional priest would offer such a Mass, so the point is moot. Therefore, I have to assume that you are referring to the Masonic-Protestant Novus Ordo service, which isn't even Catholic and can fulfil no obligation of proper worship.
Such an "anticipatory" Mass has never been used in the Roman Catholic Church. Saturday has a Mass appointed to it, just as Sunday has a Mass appointed to it. Even in the case of a vigil to the Sunday, there is an entirely separate Mass for the preceding Saturday.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am having a discussion with a non-Catholic, and when a particular topic comes up like salvation, modesty, or contraception -- you name it -- I find myself saying, "Well, the Catholic Church says ...," but I don't understand where all of these rules are written down.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This is a surprisingly common question, but it belies an unCatholic wrongheadedness. It seems that some people think that all the "rules" are laid down in some "rulebook" somewhere, and if only they can find the right book, they will understand everything. Now that I've put it that way, doesn't it sound ridiculous?
Remember that Christ never wrote a word. He left oral teaching that was handed down to His Apostles and, through the Church, to us. He never commanded His Apostles to write anything down. Rather, He told them to act: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:20).
What we call Sacred Scripture (the Bible) comes out of that oral Apostolic Tradition, not the other way around. Christ never said: "Here, read this rulebook, and you will know everything." That sounds like a Protestant notion, and also like the temptation in the Garden of Eden. It appears that Christ intended that the Faith not be written down in that way, and in fact the Bible is really not a "rulebook" in that sense, but a collection of different kinds of revelations through poetry, history, psalms, proverbs, letters, apocalyptic visions, etc.
What Christ did leave us is His Church, which was to carry down, unchanged, the Deposit of Faith. That is where we are to look for help with such answers. The greatest teachers are traditionally not some numbered "rules" in some "rulebook," but the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which teaches us everything we need to know about salvation, sacrifice, and resurrection, and the Divine Office, which, throughout the Hours of the day, surrounds that Mass and teaches us the richness of the understanding of God through the Faith.
The public liturgy of the Church, the Holy Mass and the Divine Office, then, are the two pillars of education in the Church -- not with the bias of modernistic man, who is always asking "in what book does it say so," but where it counts: in action, by example, before our eyes, as we participate in it and develop the Christian virtues by imitation.
It's just like the secular law. You can't go to one book to find all the laws in force. Nor are all the laws written down. Many principles of law are traditional; they are common law. You have to understand these principles, as well as the history of the law. Even the words of a particular law aren't enough; they need to be understood in their proper context. Someone who plucks a lawbook off a shelf in the library and thinks that he knows everything about the law is deceiving himself, especially when that lawbook is in a language that is specifically honed for legal meaning.
If you really want to know and practice the truths of your Faith, attend Holy Mass as "worthily, attentively, and devoutly" as you can. Pray the Divine Office or parts thereof or abridgements (like the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary) whenever possible. Read the writings of the Saints and learn from their example. Review the basic principles of your Faith through the catechism. Ask your traditional priest.
In addition to the passages from the prophet Daniel, analyzed in a previous Commentary, Psalm 73 is chillingly descriptive of the activities of the Novus Ordo sect in our time, even though this description was written 3000 years ago!
Lift up thy hands against their pride unto the end: see what things the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary. And they that hate thee have made their boasts, in the midst of thy solemnity. They have set up their ensigns for signs: and they knew not both in the going out and on the highest top. As with axes in a wood of trees, they have cut down at once the gates thereof: with axe and hatchet they have brought it down. They have set fire to thy sanctuary: they have defiled the dwelling place of thy name on the earth. They said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together: Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land. (vv. 3-8)
After describing the sacrilege that these destroyers of God's sanctuary have perpetrated, the Psalmist echoed the desperation of so many traditional Catholics today:
How long, O God, shall the enemy reproach? Is the adversary to provoke thy name for ever? Why dost thou turn away thy hand? (vv. 10-11)
And for what did the Psalmist pray? Did he counsel "obedience" to those who destroyed God's sanctuary? No. Did he counsel "charity" toward those who destroyed God's sanctuary? No. Here is how the Psalmist prayed in the name of the Church:
Remember this, the enemy hath reproached the Lord: and a foolish people hath provoked thy name. Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee: and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor. Arise, O god, judge thy own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man hath reproached the all the day. Forget not the voices of thy enemies: the pride of them that ascendeth continually. (vv. 18-19, 22-23)
He calls those who engage in destroying God's sanctuary just what they are: "the enemy," "beasts," "foolish," "prideful." Let no traditional Catholic fail to realize that outrages to God such as the New Order represents are already foreseen in the Old Testament. We need only pray perseveringly to God for just redress and stand firm in the true Faith that He has given the world -- not the Novus Ordo counterfeit faith, but the traditional Roman Catholic Faith.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
It seems that the true Faith can touch even the most unlikely soul. The painting above was done by what most people would think the most unlikely of persons, yet the Virgin Birth, the coming of the Messias, and the Incarnation inspired this artist to render these mysteries in a very touching manner. It is said that this artist missed by just one position getting into art school, where who knows how he might have developed as a religious artist.
And, yet, history took another course. He entered politics, was jailed for his political beliefs, wrote a best-selling book on his political philosophy, organized a political party, and eventually became the head of his government.
This man wrote, on the eve of the Second World War, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." It is a sad fact of history that this man became, instead of a great religious artist, the Fuehrer of the Third Reich, Adolph Hitler. What might have been....
Novus Ordo Bishop Matthew Clark had decided to "wreckovate" Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, New York. Apparently, he received so much flack even from Novus Ordinarians in the diocese that he has issued a "defense" in the diocesan newspaper. That's what the newspaper calls it, a "defense."
Perhaps the Novus Ordinarians of Rochester should take a page out of the book of their predecessors. Another bishop of Rochester tried similarly to wreck a church in that diocese, and that bishop was the renowned Fulton J. Sheen, who, though he might have been a great orator, was one lousy diocesan bishop, even from the Novus Ordo perspective. He didn't even last three years there before he begged Paul VI to let him off.
Sheen was installed as bishop of Rochester on December 15, 1966, and one of his first attempted acts was to wreck a church that was dear to its parishioners, mostly of Italian descent. These gutsy Italians were not going to allow anyone, including some Novus Ordo bishop, to wreck their church! They took seriously the words of the Psalm: "I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth" (Psalms 25:8/DRV).
As reported in Thomas Reeves' biography of Sheen, entitled The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen, America's Bishop, when Sheen drove up to the church in his episcopal car, the parishioners surrounded the car and pounded on it shouting (and I report here, for accuracy, the actual words used, as quoted by Reeves): "You son of a bitch! Give us our church back! Sheen was so chastened that he immediately withdrew plans to destroy the church and never attempted to pull such a thing again.
There is nothing sinful about righteous indignation. Christ Himself set the example for us when He became so livid at seeing High Priest (might we say "pope"?) Caiphas's minions turning the forecourt of the Holy Temple into a place for filthy lucre that he used violence in order to restore the place to its sacred use. He shouted, "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves" (Matthew 21:13/DRV), overturned the tables and chairs there and, according to St. Luke's account, physically "cast out the "thieves."
Nor did Christ hesitate to use strong language Himself. He called the Pharisees, the "prelates" of the Church at the time, every foul name in the book! If you doubt that, reread His Seven Curses of the Pharisees in St. Matthew, chapter 23.
Is Christ, for these and other actions, "uncharitable"? Of course not. He is teaching us what true charity is. It isn't some prissy "social etiquette" that the New Order tries to make of it, whereby we do not stand up steadfastly for goodness and truth. Rather, it is that burning love of God and the things of God. We all know the definition: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. (Mark 12:30/DRV).
Perhaps if we Catholics from the first had stood up with indignation toward the unCatholic, immoral, and unjust, even criminal, actions of these counterfeit bishops, large sections of the Church wouldn't have lost its Mass, its Sacraments, and its Roman Catholic Faith.
It seems that Joseph Fiorenza, the Novus Ordo Bishop of Houston, thought it necessary to do some P.R. control on the Fr. Zigrang matter. Fr. Zigrang, if you remember, was the Novus Ordo pastor who decided one Sunday to switch to the Traditional Latin Mass and was exiled from his pastorate the next day by this Novus Ordo bishop.
The bishop had taken a hit from the local press (of all sources!) and received letters. So he decided, in good Novus Ordo style, to have a "dialogue" on September 10 to make everybody "feel good," but in no way changed the reality of the situation:
Already the conservative Novus Ordo press is praising Fiorenza to the skies for even talking to Fr. Zigrang. Recommendations are made that obeisance be done to Fiorenza for his charity in suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass and expelling Fr. Zigrang from his pastorate, whereas the bishop probably realized that if he hadn't been able to connive Fr. Zigrang into signing a letter of resignation, Fr. Zigrang could have appealed his expulsion through the New Vatican, which might very likely have overturned it and left Fiorenza with even more egg on his face.
And who is this Novus Ordo bishop Fiorenza? Why, he is the same who is sponsoring yet a second appearance of Episcopalian minister Eric Law at a Novus Ordo conference in his diocese this month. Law is a noted "wreckovator," as well as a promoter of immorality that cries to heaven for vengeance, having most recently appeared at a Protestant conference called to reaffirm practicing "gays, lesbians, bixsexuals, transsexuals, and queers."
Could it be that Fiorenza was anticipating an attack by conservative Novus Ordinarians about his involvement with Law and so decided to preempt that strike by schmoozing with Fr. Zigrang to dampen the opposition to his New Morality program? If so, he seems to already to have partly successful, as the Novus Ordo conservative press has already blunted its former virulent position against him and his New Morality.
These Novus Ordinarian bishops are very shrewd in P.R. and, just as in secular politics, conservatives fall time and time again for their ploys and even become their apologists. But, as Our Lord sternly warned us, "No man can serve two masters.... You cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24/DRV). Anyone who attempts in any way to share the polluted waters of the Novus Ordo will eventually die from that pollution. Catholics must stay with the pure waters of the traditional Roman Catholic Faith if they wish to live.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
God help me, I attend a Novus Ordo service in English according to the 1970 rite, although it is not one of the most extreme forms. Just because the service is not in Latin, does that mean that it lacks the presence of the Holy Spirit?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
A few Novus Ordinarians try to excuse their untenable situation by forwarding the idea that the Novus Ordo service is tolerable as long as it is not too extreme. I guess the same people would argue that arsenic is healthful as long as you coat it in chocolate!
Seriously defective as is the use of the vulgar tongue at Mass in itself, such use being condemned by a dogmatic council, some self-avowed "New Order" service, that is, not Catholic and Apostolic, fabricated by a Freemason and six Protestant ministers with the avowed purpose of rejecting Roman Catholicism and making the service palatable to Protestants, is not even defined as a Mass in its own documents and can never be tolerable, whether clothed in Latin or not. To use the old aphorism, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
The Novus Ordo service is unCatholic, unApostolic, sacrilegious, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid. The Novus Ordo service is an abomination that must be rejected by any true Catholic. It fails to meet every criteria of a valid Mass. It fails the test of Catholicity and Apostolicity. It fails the test of the dogmatic Council of Trent. It fails the test of Pope St. Pius V in Quo Primum, and De Defectibus. It fails the test of Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae. It fails the test of Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi.
Now, over thirty years after the Trojan Horse (as Dr. von Hildebrand called it) was introduced, its deadly poison can no longer be doubted. The Novus Ordo apparatus that adheres to it is virtually dead. Even the pope admits that. Those who continue to take the arsenic with their chocolate are killing their souls; it will just take a little longer for the poison to bring about its inevitable outcome.
Word comes from France that the observance of Christian feastdays there is declining rapidly, with more citizens citing Ramadan as a key event. The poll by the Novus Ordo La Croix daily says that only 37% per cent, and fewer than two-thirds of practicing Catholics, now mark Easter. Meanwhile, fewer than one in 10 citizens observe All Saints Day, a public holiday in France. (In the United States, one might mention the Novus Ordo has this year suppressed All Saints Day.)
At the same time, Ramadan is recognized as the year's most important festival by 97% of Mohammedans and 6% of the overall population. Is it any wonder that Mohammedanism has recently surpassed Catholicism as the most populous religion of the world? Is it any wonder that the Mohammedans know exactly what they are about religiously, while the "Catholic" pope stoops to kiss the Mohammedan Koran, which contains such blasphemies against Our Lord? What better sign could one seek for proof that the New Order apparatus has in fact given up the Roman Catholic Faith?
This is just clear significant sign of how the New Order Church and its bishops and popes have destroyed Roman Catholicism, here in a country that was once called the First Daughter of the Church. It is also significant to note that France is one of the countries in which the Traditional Roman Catholic Movement is strongest. As a matter of fact, in the past, traditional Catholics have physically taken over churches in France and ejected the Novus Ordo personnel.
In France, apparently, the law yields to the will of the sincere Catholics in these matters. In the United States, when this has been tried, the Novus Ordo bishops get out the sheriff and the fire hoses and throw the Catholics into jail. We've seen it before. It's just the New Order Church of Hate, which is determined to crush any vestige of the Roman Catholic Faith and to exalt the New Order Masonic-Protestantism.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been reading lately in several periodicals about a certain "Fatima priest," who is described as a "renegade priest." The phrase "renegade priest" comes up over and over again. They point also to the Depositum Fidei, saying that Fatima is not a part of that Deposit of Faith, but rather is a "private revelation," which the Catholic faithful may or may not believe in or accept. What is your opinion, Father?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
As to Fatima, I have covered this many times in the TRADITIO Commentaries, which you should read to brief yourself on the topic. In short, yes, Fatima is private revelation, not part of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith, which consists of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. In these times of extremism, some people (known as "Fatimists") push Fatima beyond its proper place into the sphere of dogma, as if the Roman Catholic Faith were centered on Fatima. This is ridiculous, of course. That Faith centers around Christ, and Him crucified, as St. Paul put it.
I consistently argue for the proper balance: the restoration of the Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, and Faith. The rest may have its place, but is second to these. That is Catholic doctrine. What shows up the error of the Fatimists is that many of them attend the Novus Ordo Masonic-Protestant service. If Fatimism leads to that conclusion, it surely is a serious error, because nothing is more important than Christ and, sacramentally, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that He left us.
As to the "Fatima priest," it is very common that the New Order Counterfeit Church uses such words to disparage traditional Roman Catholic priests and laymen. It is an old political technique that is rife in secular politics today: call someone a name so as not to have to answer his arguments. I have seen no evidence but that this man is a very dedicated, serious priest, who tries to promote the Roman Catholic Faith, eschews the New Order sect, and for that he is viciously persecuted. As was Christ. As were His Apostles. As are traditional Roman Catholics today.
The true renegades are the New Order sectarians, who have turned their back on the Roman Catholic Faith and have substituted for it a vernacularized Masonic-Protestant "service," pseudo-sacraments, and false doctrine. Yet the same Counterfeit Church that is now paying hundreds of millions of dollars for its unCatholic actions still has the religious press by the throat, and these newpapers break any sense of objective journalism by using such colored words. Yet, whatever the newspapers may say (and what do they know anyway? -- I know many of these columnists, and they don't have a clue!), the emperor, that is, the New Order, has no clothes!
I am always amused when (much more rarely these days, to be sure, because the counterfeit nature of the Novus Ordo apparatus is becoming widely apparent), New Order sectarians ask traditional Roman Catholics, "Are you in communion with Rome?" The answer to this question is, of course, "What is 'Rome'?"
Well, here is a significant part of that answer, released by a Eurisko poll of 5000 Italians just one month ahead of the 25th anniversary of the John Paul II's papacy. In many respects, it is a report card on this pope and his New Order apparatus -- and his grade is a failing one.
According to Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, the number of those who regularly attend church or wed at the altar is falling dramatically. "Children ... don't even know how to make the sign of the cross." Regular Novus Ordo service attendance has fallen yet another six points from 35.7% (1985) to 29.3%. Think of it: in the Bishop of Rome's (that is, the pope's) own diocese, fewer than one-third of Catholics actively worship. The report also said that religious marriages among Italians fell 10 percent in 2000-01.Are we indeed getting dangerously close to that time predicted in the apparition of Our Lady of La Salette (1846):
Several will abandon the faith, and the number of priests and religious who will separate themselves from the true religion will be great. Among these persons there will be found even some bishops.... Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist....
Just when you thought that the Novus Ordo couldn't sink any lower, particularly in the archdiocese of Milwaukee, we present for your revulsion the Novus Ordo "Bikers Mess."
Milwaukee is arguably the nadir of the Novus Ordo apparatus in the United States. Its recently retired archbishop Rembert Weakland was well known for teaching heresy. If it had anything to do with Roman Catholicism, he didn't want any part of it. Oh, of course, he always couched his comments in the pseudo-academic verbiage that always deceives the Novus Ordinarians. But then what lay behind his hatred of things Roman Catholic was exposed. He had been shacking up with a paramour and was paying him off for his silence allegedly with church money in a perversion of Robin Hood: rob the poor to give to the rich.
Even when all of this was exposed, John Paul II, who rivals the Bad Popes of the Renaissance in his collusion by silence in the gross immoralities of his cardinals, bishops, and priests, did not fire the Bad Thief, but was allegedly going to keep him on after his 75th year! In the end, this pope allowed him to retire quietly. No censure, no dismissal, no public penance -- just silent collusion in a Novus Ordo system so rotten that a former federal prosecutor and attorney general dubbed it "no better than the Cosa Nostra." And Archbishop Lefebvre was "excommunicated"? Give me a break!
Well, now the pope had a chance to do his own penance and appoint an exemplary archbishop to replace Weakland the Weak. And whom does he find? One Timothy M. Dolan. Now this is not the first time that Dolan has been a party to scandal. As reported here previously from the Milwaukee Catholic Herald, Dolan stood by while a self-proclaimed priestess, Ginny Kiernan Dahlbert, was allowed to "preside" at a prayer service at St. Matthias "Catholic" parish in Milwaukee on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now, on August 30, we find him "presiding" over an outdoor Novus Ordo Mess for hogs. According to the Milwaukee Catholic Herald, the diocese's periodical of record, church bells were replaced by the deafening roar of motorcycle engines. Instead of kneeling, the bikers reclined on their hogs. The dress of the day was "T-shirts and jeans, bandana head coverings, boots and lots and lots of black leather."
The place known as "Holy Hill" was certainly desecrated this day. Dolan chose personally to preside over one of those Novus Ordo "concelebration" messes, demonstrating that the cookie-and-grape-juice service is really a community hoopla. The archbishop was powerless to offer the service on his own, but needed the assistance of "10 concelebrating priests and 12 deacons who arrived at the altar for the Mass atop a wagon pulled by a large red tractor."
Among them, were two Novus Ordo presbyters on their personal hogs: Pres. John Schreiter, pastor of St. Bruno Parish in Dousman and Pres. Robert Stiefvater, director of the archdiocesan office for vocations. Is it any wonder that vocations are down? Any true Catholic would be scandalized to have anything to do with these people, let alone the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church.
Nor were the hogs wanting for music. Gregorian chant? You've got to be kidding! No, a group known as the HOG choir "kept the theme of the day, with many dressed in black, white, orange and leather."
That any Catholic would have the temerity to be associated with the New Order in any way is unbelievable. Those of you traditional Catholics who keep writing me about how to defend the traditional Roman Catholic Faith, my answer is: "Don't!" You have nothing to defend. Put the Novus Ordinarians on the defensive. They can't possibly defend any of this as "Roman Catholic."
And to think that Dolan was being touted as one of the more prayerful and "orthodox" of the very few who could be found to pass muster for consideration. If this is the best that the American Novus Ordo can come up with, pity the other 299 dioceses that have the dregs of the episcopacy!
Lest you think that the Milwaukee scandal is an exception, we present yet another Bikers Mess. This one was staged by Novus Ordo Presbyter Mark Giordani, of Paterson, New Jersey, and was personally "blessed" by the active presence and involvement of Novus Ordo Bishop Rodimer.
We have said before here that the Novus Ordo is, of course, not Catholic, but we might have to stop calling it Protestant as well, because most serious Protestants would be scandalized to call it even Christian. This Novus Ordo excrementum is pagan in its genesis, first cousin to the Priestess Messes, the Wicca (Witchcraft) Messes, and even Black Messes, which it is well known are going on underground, and even above ground now. Cardinals at the New Vatican have admitted publicly to this fact, and the pope wrings his hands over "abuses," but no one really does anything to stop them. You see, they are part and parcel of the New Order. They are "approved" by Novus Ordo bishops. How can you stop them?
When you turn your back on true Roman Catholicism and choose to associate in any way with the unCatholic New Order, you can't go just a little way off; you are falling off the precipice entirely.
Mel Gibson sure has guts! He is taking on the radical Jewish lobby directly. In a scathing statement in reply to the leader of the Jewish ADL, Abraham Foxman, who holds the very story of the Passion of Christ to be "anti-Semitic," Gibson stood up in a New Yorker interview for the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, whom Foxman had trashed (anti-Catholicism is perfectly okay to these radical Jews, but just you watch "anti-Semitism"):
Why are they calling her a Nazi? Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it's revisionism. And they've been working on that one for a while.
I didn't realise it would be so vicious. The acts against this film started early. There is vehement anti-Christian sentiment out there and they don't want it.
Bravissimo, Mel! You've hit the nail on the head. Even most Jews don't agree with Foxman. He is not representative of what Gibson rightly calls "modern secular Judaism," but of a radical fringe that is born of Zionism. Numerous surveys show that only a small minority (17%) of Jews in the United States, most of whom are in the liberalist wing called "Reform Judaism" (very much like Novus Ordoism), identify their Judaism primarily with the Mosaic Law. Most of them, like the Novus Ordinarians, identify their Judaism with politics rather than religion.
Foxman himself was shielded, at the pleading of his parents, from the Nazis by a very charitable Catholic family, who took him in and saw to it that he was baptized. Foxman would most likely be dead today if it were not for the charity of Catholics. Yet, does he acknowledge that fact? No, rather, he has turned on his saviors, and his Savior. Abraham Foxman has been exposed.
Even those Jews who are "observant" are not always observant of the Mosaic Law, but call themselves "Talmudic." That is, they subscribe to the laws and writings of the later rabbis, who are often virulently hostile to Christianity and blaspheme against Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, and the Saints in their writigns. That, for instance, explains why many Reform Jews support the liberal politics of homosexuality and "gay marriage," which is condemned in the Mosaic Law under the strictest penalties.
Let's cut to the quick here. From the perspective of the radical Foxmans of this world, Jesus Christ is the ultimate anti-Semite, and the Novus Ordo apparatus, from the pope on down, are the Judaizers of this age, whom St. Paul so roundly condemns in the Scriptures.
Here we are not speaking of latter-day visions and apparitions, but the Deposit of Faith, Sacred Scripture itself, the bedrock prophecies of the inspired writers of the Bible. Most traditional Catholics are aware of the first set of prophecies, coming from the book of Daniel, pertaining to the "abomination of desolation":
And they shall defile the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the continual sacrifice: and they shall place there the abomination unto desolation. (Daniel 11:31/DRV; also referred to in 8:11, 9:27, 12:11 and in the Prophet Osee 3:4).
Now, it is well established that the "abomination of desolation" refers to the profanation of God's temple when it fell into the hands of infidels. The daily sacrifice of the temple came to an end for about two hundred years, until a small band of the Machabee brothers and their followers fought against great odds to restore the temple and succeeded in taking possession of the temple and restarting the sacrifices again in 165 B.C.
This great saga is recounted in the Old Testament in the First and Second Books of the Machabees. Every traditional Catholic should study their example. It will answer many questions about what they are to do in the present time, in which, like the time of the Machabees, the leaders of the church were cowardly, evil, and in retreat. We are not to follow them, but to follow the example of the Machabees, who stood for Truth and Tradition, and succeeded because, even though their forces were small, they were with God.
Even pre-Vatican II scriptural commentators have pointed to the possibility that Daniel's prophecy could refer to a future time in the New Covenant as well. Have we seen Daniel's prophecy fulfilled before our very eyes by the New Order, which has been the abomination of desolation to Roman Catholicism?
Yet another prophecy, by the principal prophet of the Old Testament, Isaias, is even more detailed:
Offer sacrifice no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, and the sabbaths and other festivals I will not abide, your assemblies are wicked. My soul hateth your new moons, and your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me, I am weary of bearing them. And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood (Isaias, 1:13-15).
The passages follows an allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah. As in many biblical passages, names and places are often to be taken (as St. Paul says) by similitude. Is it possible that the hands of the Modernists and Novus Ordinarians, which are full of the spiritual blood of many souls lost to Roman Catholicism in the last forty years, are being alluded to here, let alone the blood of children and adults who have been sodomized by Novus Ordo presbyters posing as "Catholic"?
Is the Novus Ordo "sacrifice," which uses not an altar, but a table, not a priest, but a presbyter, not bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ, but cookies and grape juice, is what God is turning away from -- gutting the Novus Ordo presbyterate and religious, gutting the ranks of Catholic schools and hospitals, gutting once Catholic churches, both in number and architecture, gutting the existence of once Catholic countries?
It is certainly something to think about. And, if the prophecy is true, the Scriptures give us two solutions.
First, the example of the Machabees. A small band of brothers and followers, standing firm in the traditional faith, who determined to overthrow the powerful "abomination of desolation" and were successful in doing so because they stood with God.
Second, as Daniel indicates, God chose St. Michael the Archangel to be the protector of his Church and its faithful: "But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people" (Daniel 12:1/DRV).
Isn't it interesting that although we hear so much about the Rosary, we hear virtually nothing about the one whom God has specifically set to protect his Church? In fact, the Novus Ordo apparatus suppressed even the recitation of the St. Michael Prayer after Mass (Sancte Michaël Archangele, defende nos in proelio....), which eminently suits this purpose.
Moreover, this prayer was specifically written and ordered to be said by Pope Leo XIII, who is supposed to have seen a vision of the Church being overwhelmed by the powers of darkness, only to be saved at last by St. Michael the Archangel. Even Fatima devotees rarely mention what could be the most salient part of that apparition. Again, we have a problem of balance with those who in excess push secondary elements of the True Faith ahead of the primary elements.
How did it start? With several visitations of the Holy Angels, and particularly St. Michael the Archangel, adoring the Precious Blood. Yet we do not hear of the Fatima devotees promoting the recitation of that Angelic Prayer. Again, an issue of balance in the Faith. Fatima devotees should give much greater emphasis to the fact that the center of Roman Catholic teaching is not the Rosary, of course, but the sacrifice of Christ to redeem mankind, which is continued among the traditional faithful through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, not a counterfeit New Order, Masonic, Protestantized, vernacularized service -- an abomination of desolation.
Yet we find many Novus Ordo Fatima devotees (I use Fatima as an example, but the point applies to anything of the secondary category) perfectly happy to eat the Novus Ordo cookie and drink the Novus Ordo grape juice, just as long as they say their rosary. Of course, this is totally backwards, one True Mass is worth infinitely more than a million beads. Our Lady would be horrified that these people have replaced the True Sacrifice of the Mass with her beads.
"We were hurried down the Vatican staircase, eased along the front portico of St. Peter's and injected into the procession ahead of the cardinals and the Holy Father on his sedia gestatoria.
"What a sight greeted our eyes as we entered the basilica. The nave of St. Peter's had been turned into a vast meeting place called by the Latin name aula. The nave had been curtained off from the aisles, and on either side serried ranks of seats mounted upwards, leaving a passage in the middle, creating a wonderful ocular framework for the sanctuary at the far end, dominated by the famous baldachino of the 17th century architect Bernini soaring above the altar.
"By the time our group of archbishops entered the basilica, close to 2000 bishops had already reached their places and the scene, as I described it in a letter of that time, resembled a mighty canyon of white mitres. Archbishops, because of their hierarchical seniority, had places fairly close to the altar. I found myself on the right side (right looking down from the altar) very close to the cardinals.
"I looked with some apprehension at the television camera very close to me, fearing that in the long drawn-out service that was to follow I might indulge in a liturgical snooze and have it recorded on celluloid for posterity.
"Whatever danger there may have been of that, the talk that the Holy Father, Pope John XXIII, gave towards the end of the celebration, dispelled all possibility of slumber. He spoke in Latin of course, but with seven years of Latin as a student in Rome behind me and the experience of several meetings of the Central Preparatory Commission, all conducted in Latin, I had no difficulty with the language. The Holy Father spoke deliberately and clearly and every word came across magnificently."
As I have pointed out before, the Novus Ordo is rotten to the core: its counterfeit mess, its false doctrine, its phony sacraments, and all the rest. It can't be fixed. Everything in it is broken. It needs to be thrown out with the trash, with no regrets.
Today's photo feature illustrates what goes on in a Novus Ordo "Ignatian Retreat." One should never participate at any Novus Ordo retreat: Ignatian, marriage, or otherwise. And this photo tells why. St. Ignatius would vomit such a thing out of his mouth. A semi-nude male danceur prances around the altar doing his "thing." That this travesty takes place in front of the Novus Ordo table and a crucifix of Our Lord makes it just that much more blasphemous. And here's the real shocker: the semi-nude danceur is a Novus Ordo Jesuit, the "Reverend" Robert Ver Eecke, S.J., of the Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble!
How disgusting does it have to get before those "obedient" Novus Ordo people get the message? Their mess is phony, their sacraments are phony, their doctrine is phony. Only in the Roman Catholic Deposit of Faith, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, can the truth be found. All the rest is Novus Ordo trash.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I can't even begin to count how many Hollywood films I have seen, produced by Jews, that have been demeaning to Christians and to Christianity. I recall one particularly disgusting movie, which opened with a scene set in a church, showing a couple having sex up in the choir loft, while a Christian prayer service was being performed below by the clergy. Talk about vulgarity. This was truly obscene and grossly offensive.
Movies with bloody shoot-outs and murderous mayhem in a church, Catholic and Protestant alike, are legion, too. Strange, however, considering how many films have been made in old Tinseltown, but I don't ever recall seeing one, where a couple had sex in a synagogue and/or there was a shoot-out in a Jewish house of worship. I wonder, why not? Could there be a double standard?
Thankfully, there is Michael Medved. He is one of my favorite people. He's Jewish, a gutsy film critic, and the former president of his synagogue. He has dared to criticize Jewish-dominated Hollywood for being "anti-religious," citing Miramax's film Priest as an example of its bias. Medved has seen a preview of Mel Gibson's The Passion, and he thinks the radical B'nai B'rith's Foxman & Co. are being "unfair and inappropriate." Way to go Michael Medved!
America is still a predominantly deeply Christian country. I'm convinced that its members will bitterly resent an elitist Jewish clique, via their huge commercial power, censoring and/or blocking them, from seeing a movie of their choice. This will be especially so, since the disputed film, The Passion is about the founder of their religion!
Christians will be even more outraged when they find out that the heavy censoring hand comes from a coterie within the Jewish community, that has also been silent about the contents of other movies that have for so long viciously disparaged Christianity. [Media Monitors]
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Could you clarify how popes are elected purportedly "under the guidance of the Holy Spirit." If this is indeed the case, how could an unfit person be chosen?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Obviously, that phrase, if even legitimate in that form, must be interpreted in the proper way. We start with Peter. Why did Christ select for the first pope a man whom He called "Satan," a man who denied Him in public three times, a man who perjured himself before God (as his denial was under oath), a man who three times rejected Christ's command to convert the Gentiles, a man who fell into the error of Judaizing and had to be rebuked for it in front of the Apostles by St. Paul?
As for all prayer, sincerity and contrition are required. There seems to be a lot of evidence that these cardinal-electors are not contrite at all for their evil deeds and that their prayers are not sincere, not being in conformity with God's purposes, but only for their own personal and political ends. Therefore, it is fair to say, as the Bible shows us over and over again, that we get out of prayer exactly what we put into it.
If the age is weak and faithless like our own, ready to accept, with barely a whimper, a Protestant-Masonic New Order Church in place of the Roman Catholic Church, then we get what we deserve. There is nothing stopping us from fighting like tigers for the True Faith and getting it back all over the world. Most "Catholics" are too lazy and too weak -- pusillanimous is Our Lord's word -- to do anything, so they justly get the invalid Novus Ordo Cookie mess, which offers no grace to them.
Traditional Catholics, on the other hand, who fought for the Roman Catholic Faith, still have the True Faith. There are some 600 Mass sites across the United States and Canada, not to speak of the other numbers in Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. Since these Catholics fought for the True Faith, they got to keep it. It would be even more populous should more fight for it, and fight harder.
It's all in our hands. It's not God's fault that the Roman Catholic Faith has been abandoned for the New Order nonsense by so many once-Catholics. As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Do animals go to heaven?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No. Animals have only an anima, a life force. When they die, they have no further existence. Man (as the angels) has an animus, a rational soul. Only the rational soul is immortal as it partakes in the nature of God. "And God created man to his own image; to the image of God he created him" (Genesis 1:46/DRV).
Nor should we have difficulty with this reality. In fact, we should be all the more thankful to God that not only is our soul immortal but also our bodies, in the resurrection of the dead.
Furthermore, we can only imagine that if we should merit being for all eternity in the presence of Him Who is All Good, All Beautiful, All Perfect, and All True, we won't even be thinking about what now seems to be so important to us here on earth, but we will be totally absorbed in contemplation of the Godhead and its infinite goodness, beauty, perfection, and truth. Read the Apocalypse of St. John, last book of the New Testament, to see just how complete is the activity of the blessed in heaven in constantly adoring God.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
According to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., it turns out that the Executive Director of the Jewish Anti Defamation League (ADL), Abe Foxman, who has been so viciously hostile toward Hutton Gibson, Mel Gibson, and his nascent film The Passion, was actually the recipient of great charity during the Nazi period from Catholics, who in effect saved his life. In addition to his viciousness, Foxman appears to be a major ingrate as well.
Abe is the son of Polish Jews, who, like so many Jews in Nazi lands, escaped from that area, but pleaded with a Catholic family to take their baby, Abe, and adopt him as their own child. This Catholic family, as an act of Christian charity and not wanting to see anyone killed, took the child, had him baptized in the Church, and gave him their name. When the war was over, the parents came back and demanded return of their son.
As I understand the situation, it was litigated in court, and the parents won. And little Abe turned out to be one of the most anti-Catholic of anti-Catholic bigots, even though his very life had been saved by Catholics. This appears to be a clear case of the worm turning.
Regrettably, the nonsense of the Novus Ordo service goes right to the very top, the pope, who had been semi-conservative when elected in 1978, but now has given up any pretension to even a conservative approach and bangs out the Masonic-Protestant Novus Ordo service like the best of them. The photographs above tell the story.
In the first photograph, the pope purports to consecrate a gigantic "sugar cookie" (who knows what foreign ingredients must be in it; it's certainly not just wheat flour and water, as the only two valid components) twice the size of his own head. I guess this is supposed to feed the cardinals, who since Vatican II swarm around the papal altar like bees to "concelebrate" the counterfeit service with the pope, another practice that turns its back on the traditional liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. A priest celebrates Mass alone, and only the pope celebrates Mass at the papal altar.
In the second photograph, the pope waves the chalice around like a shillelagh instead of elevating it reverently in the traditional manner, with the right hand holding the node of the chalice and the left hand supporting it underneath. Note too that the pope does not keep his thumb and forefingers together in the traditional way after he has touched the Sacred Host, not to be parted until the ablutions after Holy Communion under pain of grave sin.
Some say he might do that because he's handicapped by his disease. If that is true, he should stop saying the service and let a cardinal do it in his place. He should not be elevating what the Novus Ordo purports to consider the Precious Blood. What if he spills and drops the contents of the chalice all over the altar? Maybe they just don't care about these things in the Novus Ordo.
Even the pope, it seems, has forgotten how to say a real Mass. It is a fact that he has not once said the true Mass since he became pope. There were one or two reports that he had once or twice said the true Mass not in public, but in a private chapel, but upon investigation it turned out that these alleged instances were the Novus Ordo service in Latin.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
For the past 33 years, "gay pride" parades have distinguished major and minor cities across the country. On June 29, I was present to videotape and document with a small group of Catholic and pro-family journalists the parade and events at the Civic Center rotunda in San Francisco. This parade included public acts of extreme lewdness and perversity. Moreover, the Novus Ordo archdiocese flew the "gay" rainbow flag on its flagpole that day.
In that parade I filmed at least one New Order presbyter and members of his parish in the parade, advertising their affiliation with a parish church in the city. I contacted the archdiocese to inquire about the participation of a Novus Ordo parish and pastor in his clerics in a "gay pride" parade. I asked whether that New Order archdiocese was giving at least tacit approval to the "gay pride" parade by allowing this presbyter to participate in it. I asked, "Can there be any justification for a presbyter and his parish to participate in a blatantly pornographic public display? Would German Catholic bishops and priests have marched with the National Socialists and saluted Hitler in 1939, or Lot and his family cavort with the perverted and decadent people of Sodom?" I received no response from the archdiocese.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Did you really expect an answer? What answer is possible? This is not the Catholic Church, it is the New Order Church, the Counterfeit Church, the one that has no Mass, no Sacraments, no Catholic doctrine. Thank the Lord, in the city that bears the name of one of the greatest Catholic spiritual reformers of the Church, God has placed a fully traditional oratory, where not only the true Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, and Faith are offered but also the Divine Office and the Sacred Chant of the Church, outside the perversion of the New Order around it. Too bad you were too busy filming the parade to take the time to worship almighty God in the manner that He requires. Your prayers would have had infinitely more merit before the divine throne than a videotape.
It seems not uncommon that in those areas that are the worst cesspools of the New Order, there are also churches, chapels, and oratories that stand in stark contradiction to the faithlessness and immorality around them. We should never cease to thank God for these oases of true faith and sanity in the midst of perversity, for "Be not deceived: God is not mocked" (Galatians 6:7/DRV).
The liberalist Hispanic news La Voz de Aztlan has taken on the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is trying to interfere with Mel Gibson's production of the biblical account of the Passion. Rarely has one liberalist organization so publicly excoriated another. In a highly-critical article dated August 13, in answer to the question, "Who crucified Jesus?," the news stated:
Mel Gibson's The Passion, in its present form, depicts the truth. There is danger, however, that Mel Gibson may be forced to edit out the truth by present day Pharisees. Mr. Gibson is presently under intense pressure to leave out certain scenes that modern-day Jews find objectionable.
The Passion started filming on October 2002 and immediately the ADL of B'nai B'rith ... sent out its agents to attempt to sabotage the film project. Some unknown spies went to the filming location in Matera, Italy, in November 2002 and stole a copy of the script. These agents are now making Mr. Gibson's life very difficult.
Mel Gibson said on a Fox News Channel talk show interview that a reporter from a reputable publication was sent to attempt to "dig up dirt" on him in order to discredit him and his film. [It later turned out that the "disreputable publication" was the New York Times, which shortly thereafter was embroiled in a scandal about its phony reporting, which lead to the firing of several leading Times editors and columnists.]
"Whenever you take up a subject like this, it does bring out a lot of enemies," Gibson said. Mel Gibson said that his private life, his banking records, the charities he supports, friends, business associates and family members have all undergone scrutiny. He added that his 85 year old father has been approached and harassed. When asked if there was a connection between these incidents and his film The Passion, Mel Gibson said: "I think there is."
La Voz de Aztlan understands and greatly sympathises with Mel Gibson and his present predicament. The two Jewish organizations that have vehemently attacked him, the ADL of B'nai B'rith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have also attacked us. Both organizations have written extensively against us simply because we are Christians and because we dare to write the truth in articles such as this one. We are not deterred, however and pray that Mr. Gibson does not change the script of his film as he originally wrote it. We are convinced that these hypocritical and self-righteous [radicals] are of the same mold as those Jewish Pharisees responsible for the cruel crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the Modernists of the New Order Church, the 1969 Novus Ordo service was not enough. It has to be changed again and again and again. New words, new translations, new ceremonies, sit, stand, kneel, cookies and grape juice -- the Novus Ordinarians' heads are spinning.
Now the New Vatican's #2 man, the Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, rumored as a possible replacement for the present pope and perhaps now acting as pope behind the scenes in view of the present pope's grievous medical condition, told Italy's National Liturgical Week conference ended August 29 in Acireale, that he wants to "relaunch" the Novus Ordo service yet again. Wasn't one launching of the Novus Ordo enough to destroy most of the Roman Catholic Church? Now this Novus Ordo bureaucrat wants to drive the knife deeper into the cadaver of the Church?
And what is the result? The exodus of members from the New Order is staggering, cunningly hidden only by the fact that Hispanics, many of them illegal and criminal aliens sheltered by the United States' Novus Ordo apparatus, just as they sheltered the Novus Ordo presbyter-predators, are being added to the New Order Church's rolls in California and the Southwest United States. That ploy won't last for long, and the New Order in the United States will visibly take a membership nosedive that can no longer be concealed.
"Life Teen" is one of those Charistmatic operations that the New Order is pushing, in this case to convert teenagers away from true Catholicism. The EWTN Charismatic cable station is filled with this condemned nonsense, shoveled out by Charismatic authors like Scott Hahn and supported by Charismatic institutions like the University of Steubenville, Ohio.
No longer are teenagers encouraged to reverence and virtue in the traditional Roman Catholic Faith, but some sick perversion of it, which draws its inspiration from the lowest forms of Protestantism. It is this type of counterfeit that leads to the disasters at the papally-encouraged Novus Ordo World Youth Conventions, which have rapidly become known as "Catholic" Woodstocks because of the kinds of vile and irreverent things that go on there.
The Novus Ordo apparatus is nothing if not smart. Having already corrupted the adults into the Counterfeit Church, having already corrupted the seminaries into the Counterfeit Church (and worse), it now is going after the youth. Parents, keep your children away from this stuff. It's deadly.
It is a little reported fact that the Novus Ordo "sex scandal" has been grossly overblown in the media because of its anti-Catholic bias. There is no doubt, from objective studies, that the supposed problems among a few Novus Ordo presbyters is a drop in the bucket compared to what is going on among Protestants and Jews, let alone among relatives. In fact, if you want to worry about your child, he's 100 times more likely to be molested by his father or a close relative than a clergyman.
Moreover, the Modernists in the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church are trying to use the media exaggeration to their own purposes to undermine Christ's evangelical counsel in the Bible and the consequent Catholic and Apostolic Tradition of celibacy for priests. And yet there is no evidence that celibacy has any part in these matters. In fact, the problems are worse among the married clergy of the Protestants and Jews, and significantly more among married laypeople.
U.S. sources are too intimidated or too biased to report on these matters honestly, so we have to go to an Israeli publication, Forward, to find a report that an American-born rabbi and educator accused of sexually molesting his yeshiva students over a 25-year period failed to appear at a rabbinical court hearing convened to consider the accusations. There is acute sensitivity within the Jewish Orthodox community over accusations of rabbis abusing minors, and in some cases enjoying the protection of a wall of silence put up by other Orthodox rabbis and Orthodox institutions.
Another rabbi, formerly a regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, was sentenced last year in New Jersey to seven years in prison for abusing two teenage girls while serving as a yeshiva principal. A special commission appointed by the Orthodox Union, which sponsors the youth group, had concluded in a December 2000 report that the rabbi had been abusing both girls and boys over two decades and that other union officials had known of the suspicions and covered them up.
Another rabbi pleaded guilty last week in a New York state court to attempting to disseminate indecent material to a minor and attempting to endanger the welfare of a child. The rabbi admitted that he sought sex with a girl named "Katie" in an Internet chat room, who he believed was a 13-year-old girl, but turned out to be an NYPD detective. In a plea bargain, he was sentenced to five years' probation and treatment in a sex offenders' program.
Some Orthodox Jews say the cases are part of a pattern of abuse and cover-up. One Web site lists 42 cases of rabbis and cantors accused of abuse, and another 40 involving other trusted Jewish officials. And this is just the tip of the iceburg, according to the Forward report.
And what the Israel report says about the Jews is equally true of the Protestants. And more true of lay relatives. So the serious studies show.
Sounds just like what has been made of the Novus Ordo situation, doesn't it? And yet where are the great headlines in the New York Times? Where is CNN? Where is NBC, CBS, and ABC? Of course, nowhere to be found. You see, anti-Catholic bigotry is the last acceptable bigotry in the United States. You wouldn't dare to say anything about a Jew, a Latino, a Black, or an Asian because you'd get the boom dropped on your head. But blaspheme the Catholic religion, and you're automatically fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
The moral of this story is: don't believe what you read or hear in the media about religion. If these people aren't just plain bigoted, they are at least biased and ignorant. I know. I frequently encounter them. They can never get a story right even if you give them the facts.
The News Telegraph, a U.K. source, reports that a Novus Ordo bishop, Vincent Malone, auxiliary bishop in Liverpool, has written in a new book that the Church should consider choosing laywomen to hear confessions and grant absolution "because some people might prefer disclosing their sins to a woman rather than a man."
This same bishop also said that other sacraments might be opened to administration by laypeople, including the anointing of the sick. (The anointing of the sick is the "blessing" that in the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church has replaced the Last Rites, or Extreme Unction. Novus Ordinarians since the 1970s have faced the Judgment without the spiritual strength of the Sacrament.)
When the Episcopalians started consecrating "gay" bishops, they lost the last shred of being able to call themselves Christians. The Novus Ordo, having in the 1960s lost the ability to call itself Catholic, is rapidly trying to catch up to the Episcopalians in losing the ability to call itself even Christian.
The Novus Ordo bishops just make this stuff up as they go along. Notice that there is no attempt to justify such notions through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, but only by the whim of this or that bishop. These Novus Ordo bishops have bamboozled even "conservative Catholics" by ensuring that they "obey the pope," even when the pope is pushing a New Order agenda. Sure, this pope says that he won't permit priestesses dancing around the altar, but if your supreme principle is "obey the pope," it is easy for these heretic bishops to change popes, and then Novus Ordo doctrine is changed.
Of course, there is nothing Catholic about any of this. It is pure bunk, pure counterfeit, pure manipulation. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church would (and did!) spit on bishops who fell from teaching Catholic and Apostolic doctrine, because such bishops are the true perverts (from the Latin meaning "to turn one's back completely [on what is right]").
Since the Novus Ordo's "Mass" has become an invalid "mess," its Sacraments tampered with to invalidity, and its doctrines rejecting Catholic and Apostolic doctrine, the New Order cannot be treated as Catholic or even as Christian, in many cases. True Catholics must totally shun it so that they do not expose themselves to the near occasion of sin of losing their Catholic Faith or participating in sacrilege, blasphemy, and scandal. Going to the Novus Ordo churches these days is worse than going to the Methodist church down the street, which at least the Methodists has a "reverent" service and recognizes the Bible.
Aren't you thankful that you are a traditional Catholic and haven't lost your Catholic Faith the way your Novus Ordo friends and family have been forced to, whether they know it or not? Don't forget today to thank God for the gift of the true Faith He has given you.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What is the traditional Catholic outlook on bringing crying babies to Mass? As a convert from Protestantism to (traditional) Roman Catholicism, I am always stunned that traditional Catholics think nothing of bringing a disruptive infant (and sometimes, unruly children, who should know better) to Mass. I have attended traditional Masses in different states, in both independent and SSPX chapels, and this seems to be an unpleasantly ubiquitous feature, regardless of the location or sponsorship of the Mass. This type of thing would never be permitted in the Protestant churches I attended.
I cannot collect my soul, maintain proper reverence, or immerse myself in the Holy Sacrifice when there are babies screaming at the top of their lungs in the adjacent pew or children flinging books onto the floor. At the Mass I attended this past Sunday, a woman allowed her infant to scream all through the words of Consecration and during the elevation of the Host. I was so angry at her that I almost refrained from communicating, because I felt I was bringing my Lord into a heart compromised by my anger. Am I wrong to feel this way?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You are absolutely not wrong. Are there no ushers, are there no adults in these churches or chapels that you go to? Has your priest not given proper direction to his congregation? What you describe is intolerable. No parent has the right to foist his infants or children off on an entire congregation in this way as some kind of "training exercise."
If the church has a "crying room," where infants can be taken so as not to disturb the congregation, that is what should be done. In the absence of a crying room, such infants and children should not be brought to church until they are old enough or mature enough to act appropriately in the House of God. Some infants and children are capable; others are not. The age of seven for reason is not an absolute. I think that there is strong evidence that in our religiously immature society, many children don't reach the age of reason until later. I can't imagine any child acting in this way -- or any parent allowing it -- when I attended Holy Mass in the 1950s.
Parents certainly have no right to foist unruly and disruptive children off onto an entire congregation. In such cases, the mother or father or some other person should stay home with the wailing infants and unruly children. One couple I know having young children alternate Masses, or even Sundays, so that each spouse has the opportunity to assist at Holy Mass properly. They are considerate and charitable parents who are concerned not to desecrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for an entire congregation.
You should definitely speak to your priest about this. Perhaps, for some reason, he is hesitant to deal with a very real problem and needs your support. For example, why don't you offer to be the usher, and then you can handle the situation in the way it ought to be handled?
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