Sometimes a rather lame argument is made that the Church is in bad straits, but it isn't the pope's fault because he doesn't know what's going on. Doesn't he?
In a November 25 audience for Belgian Novus Ordo bishops, the pope described exactly the problem of the Novus Ordo Church. "One cannot hide a genuine concern in face of the significant decline in religious practice," true both for Sunday Mass as well as the sacraments of baptism and marriage, he said.
And who is responsible for this "decline in religious practice"? Why, it's JP-II himself! He's had control of the Church for 25 years, longer the almost any other pope in history. Virtually all the cardinals have been appointed by him. The vast majority of the bishops have been appointed by him. He's had personal access to Catholics all over the world by his travels; he has an internet site; he has a radio station. What more does he need: except the will to teaching the Roman Catholic Faith, complete and unadulterated. That he doesn't have.
A few years after Vatican II, the International Association of Sacred Music declared that the Council had been the death of Sacred Music. Although Vatican II gave a nod to Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony, and the organ as the Church's proper music, the Modernists have, of course, done nothing to carry out the Council's directive in the New Order, but have substantially substituted trash music. The Church that one gloried in Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli now panders Koombaya.
And what about JP-II? You mean the "Pop" Pope? The pope who claimed that although he liked Gregorian chant, he was "hip" to pop rock too? No wonder his papal Woodstock groupies act like barbarians. Who wouldn't, with that vulgarity pumped into their ears?
November 22, 2003, was the anniversary of the Pope-Saint Pius X's declaration on Sacred Music, Inter Sollicitudines, which fully restored Gregorian chant to the Holy Mass, in place of the inappropriate operatic-style music that was becoming more and more common. Not only did Pius X issue a document, but he put practical teeth into it. He was in fact the "pastoral" pope that the Vatican II popes claim to be, but are not. Pius X demanded, he chided, he encouraged. And within a few years, Gregorian scholae were chanting Masses, Vespers, Terce, and Benediction all over the world, from the smallest parish to the greatest cathedral.
And what did JP-II do to replace Novus Ordo trash music and vulgar instruments in his churches with the splendor of Gregorian chant, the purity of polyphony, and the regal sonority of the pipe organ, that is, truly Catholic music? Nothing.
It remains for the growing number of traditional Catholic churches and chapels that are preserving the true Mass to preserve as well truly Catholic music through the formation of scholae and the development of musicians. It's a big, but important, task. This pope has certainly failed in this duty, as he has failed in so many other duties of his office. That's all right, JP-II, we traditional Catholics will do your job for you, as we have had to do in so many other areas. If the Roman Catholic Church survives, it will be due to the faithful "little people," not to the petty potentate Philistines of white, scarlet, and violet, that's for sure.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Let me see if I have this clear. The New Order apparatus at the Vatican has awarded to a Greek Orthodox architect, in an international architecture competition that lasted four years, the $45,000,000 contract for an ultra-futuristic casino-like Fatima Interfaith Shrine Basilica, to be completed around 2007, with lots of computer programmed lights (Vegas Strip?), which will hold 10,000 Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Buddhist, African, Pagan, Protestant -- and perhaps a few "Catholic" pilgrims so that everyone can worship their various gods there and can take part in oecumeniacal "dialogue" there.
Any attempts to convert non-Catholics to the true Faith are forbidden because all religions are considered equal in the eyes of God, says the New Vatican, and all religions are inspired by the "Spirit of Vatican II" (to be starkly distinguished from the Holy Ghost, who flew past Vatican II as quickly as He could!) Moreover, since truth is relative and changes constantly in the eyes of man, every 25 years there will be renovations in the shrine to adjust to the ever-changing "truth." Quo vadis, Roma?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It will comfort you to know that the public school system is supporting the New Vatican in its campaign to put over the Modernist error that "everybody worships the same god" (though they never specify which god this is, as exemplified by the pope's bending over in reverence to kiss the blasphemous Koran.
A teacher at Covina, California's Royal Oak Intermediate School sent a note home to parents, telling them that Mohammedans fast from sun-up to sun-down during the month of Ramadan. The teacher then told parents that their children could earn extra credit by choosing to "fast for one, two, or three days."
"America's Christian children had better not even utter the name Jesus Christ in public schools without persecution and prosecution by the 'separation of church and state' zealots," a group called the American Middle-East Christian Association wrote in a press release. The group said it would "conduct a peaceful educational seminar."
A peaceful educational seminar? If that teacher had instead sent a note home giving extra credit for fasting in Lent and abstaining from fleshmeat on Fridays, he'd be out in a New York second. Those parents should be demanding that crucifixes be hung in every classroom next to the picture of Mohammed. To take a leaf from George Orwell, it seems that in the New Vatican, as in public schools, all gods are equal. It's just that some gods are more equal than others!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In response to the recent Commentary on St Mary's Oratory in Rockford, Illinois, and the hoopla about its possible historic designation, I had to ask myself why would a bishop, who for many years has supported the Traditional Latin Mass in many ways suddenly threaten to take away his support? The principal reason for his reaction is that he's getting the message that those who attend St Mary's do not trust him. Also, the ones who are going (with good intentions) for the historical designation do not even attend St. Mary's. No one went through the "chain of command."
The Bishop sent word to us many times during this ordeal to trust him. If, for some reason, we no longer have the use of St Mary's, he says that he will provide us with another place. But this historical-designation effort was "behind his back," he says.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, I'm sure the "chain of command" is very important to him. In fact, it's probably the most important thing, as control is the ultimate God for these Novus Ordo bishops -- not the Faith, not justice, not moral action.
The U.S. Bishops' chief investigator, an honest man with much experience in law enforcement and government, called these bishops "not my Church, but a Mafia." His was the only voice and the only statement that made any sense in the moral quagmire of the New Order with its cover-ups, cover stories, damage control, and spin. Why should anyone have trust in such people? Their record for forty years is plain to see.
Moreover, why shouldn't the good people of Rockford, whether they attend the oratory or not, whether Catholic or not, not want to save an historical church that is a blessing to the entire community? Isn't the New Order supposed to be so "oecumenical"? And yet here is a case where even a Lutheran minister wants to save this Catholic Church, and the Novus Ordo bishop turns his back. It's the usual New Order hypocrisy.
In the end, the reality is that St. Mary's is under the control of the New Order and its bishop. Just as in San Diego and many other places across the country, the Novus Ordo bishops can merely ad nutum episcopi wipe away years of dedicated work and donations made in good faith. In San Diego, the traditional parishioners had built an enviable traditional parish, only to have the bishop shut it down and consign them to "another place," the diocesan mausoleum. No wonder the people of St. Mary's are skittish. It's like placing trust in Adolf Hitler to ensure the continuance of the Berlin synagogue!
Surely, there are other options. This historical church could be placed in the hands of a nonprofit religious trust, out of the control of the bishop, with a charter that would mandate continuance of the traditional liturgy there. But the bishop wouldn't want to do that. He wouldn't have control.
From New Zealand comes our latest Novus Ordo Mess: the "Soda" Mess, held during the New Age "Parachute Festival." No, the presbyter didn't drop out of an airplane (that's our next Mess!): "Parachute" is the name of a New Age music group that does that disgusting stuff called "Christian rock." The presbyter makes his final announcements while the two girl "rockers" in the front row are so bored that they have fallen asleep. The dregs of the Mountain Dew used as the "juice of the vine" still remains upon the "table" in two plastic champagne glasses, while the empty soda can is disposed of below.
What's next in the Novus Ordo? Why not sell publicity rights to each Mess? We can have the "Coke" Mess, the "7-Up" Mess, the "Pepsi" Mess, and so forth. The New Order apparatus could extort money from these companies for Mess ups, much as these companies buy rights to place their vending machines in schools!
Here are a few of the Novus Ordo Messes previously documented in previous TRADITIO Commentaries (far from a complete list):
November 22 was the 40th anniversary of the death by assassination of the first Catholic President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It was about 11:00 in the morning on the feastday of St. Cecilia, November 22, 1963, a Friday that year, that Msgr. Oscar L. Huber gave the mortally-wounded and unconscious president conditional absolution -- conditional when a priest has no way of knowing the person's disposition or whether actual death has occurred: Si capax, ego te absolvo....
This was followed by Extreme Unction and imparting of the Plenary Indulgence, dependent for its action, of course, upon the unknown disposition of the soul. And finally were said the prayers for the Dying and for the Departed Soul:
Grant, O Lord, that while we here lament the departure of Your servant, John, we may ever remember that we are most certainly to follow him. Give us grace to prepare for that last hour by a good life, that we may not be surprised by a sudden death but be ever watching, for when Thou shalt call that soul, we may enter eternal glory through Christ, Our Lord. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. Amen.
On the following Monday, November 25, the President's Requiem Mass, in the traditional rite, of course, was celebrated in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Although he, as any Catholic, was properly entitled to a Missa Cantata, the president's widow requested a Low Mass because of the circumstances of the President's sudden death. Some months later, that Sung Requiem Mass was celebrated in regal style at the Boston Cathedral, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart's Requiem, and the seminary choir singing the Gregorian chant for the Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass.
At 12:15 on the day of the funeral, however, Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston and a close friend of the Kennedy family, celebrated the Low Mass. In accordance with the wise provisions of the Church, in which no eulogy is delivered at a funeral Mass -- for we are not the judges of the soul, but only God is --, the auxiliary bishop of Washington, D.C., Philip Hannan, after the Mass, simply read several scriptural passages that were favorites of the late President.
After the Final Absolution, the cortege exited the cathedral to the chanting of the In Paradisum, and the commital service, also conducted by Cardinal Cushing, took place at Arlington National Cemetery, watched by hundreds of millions around the world.
Subsequent information indicates that President Kennedy, like all of us, was not a saint, but a sinner. A recent author has called him a "flawed giant." His life was a combination of glorious highs, such as the uplifting Ciceronian rhetoric of the Inaugural Address and the Ich bin ein Berliner speech in West Berlin, as well as great lows.
That is why it is not for man to weigh the inner soul in the balance at death, but rather it is that soul itself, with Christ as its Judge, that will determine whether its final disposition is Heaven or Hell, or a period of purification in Purgatory.
I just returned a pilgrimage to Rome, where the group attended a 1962 Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. However, our Mass was, as are all Traditional Latin Masses there, condemned to the "Chapel of Hungary" -- a Modernist abomination.
Additionally, the priest must use the basilica's moderne-style vestments without the traditional maniple. One of the basilica's servers argued with me as I set up the table to be an altar (as the "Chapel of Hungary" has a table, not an altar). The crucifix was anchored into a piece of concrete so I could not move it to its proper location. The Novus Ordo probably planned it that way!
All this goes to show how evil the Novus Ordo apparatus truly is and how it will do anything to destroy any vestige of the true Mass.
As a resident of Rockford, Illinois, I thought that I should inform your participants that Bishop Thomas Doran, of Rockford, Illinois, a supposed friend of Indultarians, has "given with one hand" and threatens to "take back with the other."
In a public ceremony, with great hoopla carried in the "indult" press, he recently consecrated St. Mary's Shrine in downtown Rockford as an oratory and gave it to the Institute of Christ the King, an "indult" religious community, as well as to the "indult" Latin Mass Community of Rockford, which did an extensive and expensive (more than $400,000) restoration of the church's interior and exterior.
Now the Novus Ordo diocesan bishop says that he will end the 1962 Latin Mass offered at the oratory if the designation goes through? Why? What difference does it make to the celebration of the 1962 Mass there whether the church is declared an historic building or not? Sounds like petty revenge on the part of the bishop and is a good example of how much work the Indultarians can put into these buildings in good faith, only to have the Novus Ordo diocesan bishop give them the raspberry at his whim.
The Board of Winnebago County (of which Rockford is the seat) plans to build a new $115,000,000 jail in that area, which would mostly likely include the acquisition and demolition of St. Mary's. To prevent the church's demolition, a member of the County Board and a local architect are trying to have the Rockford Historic Preservation Commission declare the church an historic landmark, which would require the Commission's approval for any demolition or exterior renovation.
Bishop Doran says that he opposes demolition of St. Mary's, but I think that "he doth protest too much," because he also opposes the effort to have the oratory declared an historic landmark to protect it, on the grounds that such an effort is a violation of the separation of church and state, in that the diocese would have to answer to a secular agency (the Preservation Commission) concerning the maintenance of the oratory.
Yet the pastor of another local church (Lutheran) declared an historic landmark supports the proposed designation for St. Mary's, on the basis of the experience at his church of few problems with the Commission (a group usually more interested in architectural preservation rather than innovation) and some benefits (such as tax credits for necessary repairs).
A similar situation occurs in France where the state (since the French Revolution in the 18th century) owns all churches, but allows religious groups (mostly Catholic) to use them. This situation has prevented any extensive renovation or demolition of churches and has also prevented the expulsion of traditional Catholic groups which have occupied some churches (such as St. Nicholas in Paris), despite the protests of the local Catholic bishops.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It is good to have your first-hand report from the area, so that TRADITIO does not have to relay on erroneous press reports and Novus Ordo diocesan propaganda, which is so rife in the semi-traditional sources.
Surely, one of the attributes of the Novus Ordo apparatus is the "bait and switch" tactic. Perhaps the best example is the 1988 Ecclesia Dei "indult." Give in 1988; take away (or modify it to obsolescence) in 1999.
Another example is the announcement a few months ago that the Traditional Latin Mass (well, at least the 1962 modified Mass) could be said once again in St. Peter's Basilica side altars. Then the Ecclesia Dei Commission and the cathedral administration won't give the necessary celebrets for more than a token one or two cases.
A third example is the much vaunted 1962 Mass celebrated by Card. Hoyos last in May at Santa Maria Maggiore basilica in Rome. Wow! ONE -- count it -- ONE fairly traditional Mass in almost forty years! Even Pope John XXIII's record was far better than that. He, a defender of the traditional Latin liturgy, brought personally the Pontifical Mass and Pontifical Vespers to the venerable basilica, where his predecessor, Pope St. Pius V, defender of the Church's true Mass, rests.
One does have to be concerned about imprudent intrusions of the state into religion. However, the example you raise of the French situation is interesting. As you say, the Catholic church buildings there have not been subjected to the "remodeling" and "deconstruction" that traditional church buildings in the United States have.Moreover, traditional Catholics in France have, as you say, physically taken possession of several great traditional churches and run them in opposition to the French Novus Ordo bishops, and the state does not interfere with such actions. In the United States, undoubtedly, the Novus Ordo bishops demolish beautiful traditional churches with the argument that they can't afford to maintain them, yet such bishops make sure that traditional Catholics, who are willing, cannot maintain them either.
The Novus Ordo bishops engineer it so that such churches are demolished, or turned into mini-malls or beer pubs. The policy is: if they can't be use for the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic service, they are to be razed or turned to secular purposes!
When will the Indultarians open their eyes and learn the lesson of the past 15 years? These Novus Ordo diocesan bishops are great game players. Sure, they'll let you do all the work and pour your hard-earned money into their coffers. But, in the end, they keep all the control. The "indult" is entirely at their whim. Sadly, it appears that the Indultarians of Rockford will soon learn their lesson firsthand.
The "indult" organizations that urge the faithful to "obey" these Novus Ordo bishops and venerate them on bended knee like demi-gods when they throw out a morsel should be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps if we were more like the French traditional Catholics, we might have grand traditional churches all over the world, saved from the Novus Ordo barbarian bishops.
The New Vatican made it clear from the beginning that the Ecclesia Dei "indult" was a temporary measure. Really, the 1988 "indult" resulted from the Vatican's panic attack over Archbishop Lefebvre's courageous action in 1988. The Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, supposedly containing an "indult," is clearly a patchwork document, poorly formulated and written. This fact is often obfuscated in vernacular translations, but in the original and official Latin text, it is clear that three different documents, in three different Latin styles, were patched together in haste.
Nor does the Apostolic Letter have a regular form for the issuance of an "indult" (as if one were needed in the case of the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of St. Peter, used for almost 2000 years by Roman Catholic popes, bishops, priest, saints, and laypeople). The pope merely makes a "request" to the diocesan Novus Ordo bishops, the vast majority of whom have answered the pope with a resounding NO!.
Cardinal Prefects of the Ecclesia Dei Commission in the past have stated publicly on the record that it is the intention of the New Vatican to dismantle the "indult" apparatus. The first major step toward that objective was taken in Protocol 1411 of 1999, when the Commission decreed that "indult" priests had no right to the "exclusive" use of the (at that modernized) 1962 liturgical books, as the "indult" organizations had consistently stated they had. The Commission further stated that no "indult" priest had the right to decline to say the Novus Ordo, but that the Novus Ordo is the standard rite (of the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church). If an "indult" priest, when asked by a bishop to say the Novus Ordo service, declined, he would be fired and defrocked.
That was in 1999. Now further developments down the path toward abrogating the "indult" have been revealed by, of all people, the Una Voce society, which has lately become a virtual arm of the Novus Ordo bureaucracy. A little-referenced Una Voce report of October 2003 admits that there are three leading cardinals, all thought to be sympathetic to what they call "the Mass of Pius V," who are actually died-in-the-wool adherents of the New Order, working to eradicate even the so-called "indult" of 1988.
Card. Hoyos, Cardinal Prefect of the Ecclesia Dei Commission
We have now learned that the Ecclesia Dei Commission is planning to dump the already "modernized" 1962 rite for the Novus Ordo prequel, the 1965 rite, which one pseudo-"indult" group, the Society of St. John of Scranton, has already adopted, at least in principle. Moreover, the Commission is planning to adopt the 1970 Novus Ordo calendar and such practices as communion in the hand.
Card. Arinze, Cardinal Prefect of the Divine Worship Congregation
We have now learned that in July 2003 Card. Arinze told Una Voce that if only the "abuses" of the Novus Ordo service are eliminated, "opposition to it [the Novus Ordo service] would cease, and so would the demand for the 1962 Missal." Again, this is the same Novus Ordo red-herring that the pope started with shortly after he sat in the chair. This very year, 25 years later, the same pope now admits that no progress has been made; that "abuses" continue unabated. So much for the "abuse" argument. In truth, the real "abuse" is the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service itself. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Card. Ratzinger, Cardinal Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith Congregation
We have now seen Card. Ratzinger's anti-traditional side again exposed. The report indicates that Ratzinger's "personal inclination" is not for the Traditional Latin Mass, even the modernized one of 1962, but "for a reform of the reform, and having the new Mass celebrated more reverently." How many times can these Novus Ordo bureaucrats drag out that red-herring! Even Una Voce had to admit: "Such practices [communion in the hand, communion under the species of wine, altar girls] are no longer considered abuses, and will never be changed."
In spite of its own report, Una Voce still had temerity to "offer public thanks to the Cardinal [Ratzinger] for his uncompromising defense of and affirmation of Catholic teaching on faith and morals." Moreover, Una Voce saw fit to give this man a tee-shirt from the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club! Well, I too have to give Ratzinger due credit. This Modernist fox has outfoxed Una Voce, disguising himself as an "angel of light" so as to get these poor, bereft Una Vocans eating out of his hand! At best they are groveling sycophants to New Order gauleiters.
I thought that I had heard every "historical revision" from Novus Ordo lips possible, but this one takes the cake! As a Vatican II peritus, was not "Father" Ratzinger the one who carried the proposal from the Protestant observer to declare that the Church of Christ merely "subsists in" the Catholic Church, not that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church of Christ! Was not Ratzinger the one who wrote, in a pontifical tome to boot, that the Jews should look for another Messias, not Christ. Is this not the Ratzinger who as recently as this month celebrated the Novus Ordo service before the eyes of the world at the installation of the new cardinals. Furthermore, he did not even use the "Roman Canon," but with the Novus Ordo "Presto" Canon II, full of Modernist errors.
TRADITIO has continually warned that the "indult" would eventually be rescinded, or reformed beyond recognition, as soon as the New Vatican figures out that the Roman Catholic Traditional Movement is neither going away nor going to accept the New Order. Rather, resistance to New Order services, sacraments, and theology will be more and more strongly resisted, whether it comes from the diocese, the Vatican bureaucracy, or even the pope himself.
Remember well, folks, when you read all those rosy articles written by semi-traditional Catholics trying to convince you that everything is hunky-dory with the "indult" and that everything is kopasetic with the Novus Ordo apparatus, TRADITIO will not sugar-coat the truth for you. You don't deserve to be deceived by the Novus Ordo bureaucrats and their fan clubs. TRADITIO will apply its biting analysis to get past the propaganda for you to the core of the reality. After all, if you're not a hard-headed realist, you aren't really Roman!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This piece of hate art is displayed proudly in the front yard of a local "artist" in my neighborhood. It has been up for about two months, and despite my courteous attempts to ask him at least to change his lawn art to something less offensive, it still stands. It is about 10 feet tall on a busy street.
If this were Mohammed or the Koran with a knife in it, you know there would be a huge uproar! Yet the local authorities are hog-tied when it comes to deal with something that ridicules the honor of the Christian God.
Fr. Moderator Replies:
Indeed there would be a huge uproar. The Mohammedans might just burn down the place, and the whole block with it!
Word comes from Lagos that on November 20 irate Mohammedan youths burned to the ground thirteen Christian churches after a Christian student was accused of blasphemy, that is, of insulting the prophet Mohammed. More than 5,000 people have been killed in violence since Islamic law has been imposed in the country.
Meanwhile, in the West, blasphemy against Christ, which was once a crime, is no longer a crime, and every insult against Christ is cheered by Leftist and Leftist courts. The Koran -- kiss it. ChristMass -- kill it!
Remember when the Catholic Church was the "one, true Church," and it was the Catholic's duty to convert non-Catholics to that one, true Faith? Well, it seems that this dogma of the Church, like so many others, is to be thrown over by the New Vatican.
And guess who's behind it? That same Novus Ordo Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who is going to save Fatima from the Oecumaniacs. If you believe that, I have some green cheese from the moon to sell to you!
This President of the "Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue" revealed in Buenos Aires, where he is "giving a series of talks this week on oecumenism, Islam and relations with Judaism," that the New Vatican is "preparing a new document on the spiritual dimension of inter-religious dialogue." DIALOG, the New Order's code word for SELL-OUT.
And look who this purpled patch is talking to in Buenos Aires: "Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Anglicans, Methodists, evangelical Baptists, Waldensians." Waldensians, for pity's sake. No wonder the New Vatican is taking the leadership in establishing on earth the One-World Religion -- and it's not Catholicism!
Our latest Mess comes from the land down under. No wonder Australia has one of the most vibrant traditional Roman Catholic populations, next only to the United States. Part of this is due to the activities there of Hutton Gibson, actor-producer-director Mel Gibson's father, who was a committed traditional Catholic publisher from the time of Vatican II.
Today we have "pets" participating in Mess. Well, why not? They're God's creatures aren't they? They can receive the Novus Ordo "cookie" like human creatures, right? This little birdie can nip at the cookie and swizzle a few drops of the liquid served in fine glass goblet on the table -- excuse me, "altar." After all, there are numerous stories about Novus Ordinarians taking their cookie home to give it to the family dog!
I'm thinking I might be left out here. Dogs, cats, and birds seem rather time. Do you think Presbyter Bono would give communion to my pet tarantula if I let him out on the "table"? I also have a pet flea I'm very fond of. Just how far down on the biological scale does this go? I also have a Venus Fly Trap I'm very fond of.
When you've been around a few years, you begin to see patterns in events. The report, and then denial, of the "oecumenizing" of Fatima certainly fits the common post-Vatican II propaganda pattern that we have seen used by the New Order time and again. First, you float your real plan. If it receives some opposition, deny the reality that it was ever your plan. Say that it will never happen, while at the same time continuing the planning under the covers. Then, when the controversy dies down -- ZAP! It done.
So now the New Vatican trots out one Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, another one of those New Order bureaucracies constituted for the very purpose of pushing the oecumenical agenda, to assure everyone that "there is no question of the Fatima sanctuary becoming an interfaith pilgrimage center."
Now wait a minute here! Has the leopard changed his spots? Wasn't it this very council that was a sponsor of the assembly meeting in Fatima that pushed the idea in the first place? Wasn't the oecumenization of Fatima attested to by none other than the shrine's own rector? Something's rotten the kingdom of the Novus Ordo!
Remember the First Assisi Conference, when an image of Buddha was placed above the tabernacle? Didn't the New Vatican promise that such an oecumaniacal love-in would never happen again? And it didn't -- until the Second Assisi Conference! The pope himself pushed, and continues to push, "oecumenization" of the Church. It's on the record. Why shouldn't he and all the rest of the New Vatican bureaucracy want to see Fatima "oecumenized"? It fits the announced programme.
Remember the "New" Catechism fiasco? The New Vatican floated as a trial balloon some changes to Catholic doctrine in a draft version, which was issued only in a few vernacular languages. People thought that it was the "official" version and bought the deception. For Limbo or against? For capital punishment or against? For homosexuality or against? Some doctrinal changes roused no reaction; other changes were protested. After gauging the reaction, the New Vatican issued the "official" version! Can you picture St. Charles Borromeo doing such a thing when writing the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent! "Would you Protestants like to propose changes to my draft?"
When in the late 1980s, there was agitation to expand the "indult" of 1984 to allow more "Indult" Masses, and when Abp. Lefebvre forced the New Vatican's hand, another "indult" was issued in 1988, but then virtually retracted in 1999 with Protocol 1411. Just this year, a big hoopla was made about allowance being made to say the Traditional Latin Mass once again at the side altars of St. Peter's, then BANG!: those big bronze doors were slammed shut and no further permissions were given after a token one or two. More empty propaganda.
Traditional Catholics must wake up to the fact that they are being played for fools by the New Vatican. They are being mercilessly manipulated by the Vatican bureaucracy, which is undeniably committed to the New Order. Sure, Ratzinger or Hoyos will throw out an apparent snippet every now and again, but that is just to keep the natives calm. Then it's back to Novus Ordo business as usual, just like Ratzinger pushing a "new" Messias for the Jews.
So, don't think that the Fatima mess is over. In fact, the "denial" makes it even more certain that it will occur. The "denial" means that the New Vatican is engaged in the topic. It was ready for it: it was no surprise. This little drama will undoubtedly have its ups and downs, but eventually there isn't any question which direction the Fatima site will be going in: oecumenical!
Don't you just want to vomit when you hear the pope and the Novus Ordo sectarians praising some fictitious "New Pentecost" in the Church? Service attendance has plummeted from four in five to less than one in six since Vatican II. Novus Ordo clergy will be virtually extinct in a generation. Virtually every bishop and cardinal in the United States has either engaged in, suborned, or institutionalized the most vile immoralities. This is a matter of fact. It cannot be denied.
True, there are a dwindling number of Novus Ordinarians who keep going to the Protestant-Masonic New Order service because they think that they are "obeying" something, or merely out of habit, but far more are just leaving the unCatholic nonsense cold. Otherwise, why is it that Novus Ordo church after Novus Ordo church is being shut down because the Novus Ordo population has diminished so significantly in the post-Vatican II years?
As TRADITIO has cautioned again and again, don't listen to the words of the New Order apparatus, which are often designed to deceive you. Rather, open your eyes; look around you; comprehend the reality of what you see. This story from a local news station could come from any Novus Ordo diocese:
It's the final Sunday parishioners will celebrate the Novus Ordo service at St. Ann's Church. St. Ann's, St. Stan's [that's how the report refers to St. Stanislaus], and St. Joseph's Churches are merging to form the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity. Church leaders say they're merging because there aren't enough presbyters and parishoners to maintain the three churches.
Nothing lies like statistics. But when the statistics don't jibe with what you see, don't you doubt the statistics? The Novus Ordo bureaucracy keeps upping the number of "Catholics" in the United States, undoubtedly to increase its "political" influence and to keep up the lie of the "New Pentecost." God forbid their having to admit that the "New Pentecost" is a bust and that they were deceived into their apostasy from the traditional Roman Catholic Faith!
The reality is that Novus Ordo church after Novus Ordo church is closing, Novus Ordo presbyter after Novus Ordo presbyter is dying or leaving. There are very few schools or hospitals run by religious orders. What are you going to believe? Novus Ordo propaganda, or the evidence of your own eyes?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Think of all the topics that the pope should be addressing with the faithful: fidelity to the Roman Catholic Faith, uprooting heresies, protecting the flock from immorality, even in his own clergy. The "New Pentecost" is crashing down around him like the Tower of Babel, yet what topic does he chose to address urbi et orbi after the public recitation of the Angelus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Observance of traffic laws!
Not observance of God's law, but man's law! Upon hearing this absurdity, I could not help but think of Our Lord's words: "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel" (Matthew 23:23-24/DRV).
I am a traditional Catholic and teach religion classes for the fourth and fifth grades at our chapel. The text we use is the St. Joseph Edition of the Baltimore Catechism #2. This text indicates that the fast before Communion is one hour. I thought this might not be true, so I brought it to the attention of the nun who heads our CCD program. She said that the priest accepts this rule since it was brought in under Pope Pius XII. What is correct?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You present a good example why traditional Catholics must be very careful about the books they buy and use, since even the books supposedly from before Vatican II, but "reprinted" afterwards, have been "modernized." One prominent reprint house in the Midwest of the United States is well known for making these "updates" to the traditional versions. Caveat emptor!
The information you quoted below about the 1956 "mitigation" of Pope Pius XII is incorrect. See the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses for the correct version. That "mitigation" required a three-hour fast from food before Holy Communion. Even so, Pope Pius XII urged the faithful to maintain the fully traditional Eucharistic fast, which provides for no food or drink after midnight.
So this "St. Joseph Edition" is very sneaky. Under the aegis of being a "traditional" book, whereas it is really a Novus Ordo edition, it has introduced the untenable "one-hour" fast (which is really a fifteen-minute fast, since the time is calculated not from the beginning of the Novus Ordo service, but from the reception of the Novus Ordo "cookie"). It is much like these phony modern "translations" of the Bible, like the New American Bible the Novus Ordo uses, which are much less a translation than a Modernist paraphrase called a "translation." You should use a traditional version of the Baltimore Catechism, like the one put out by Seraphim.
The Pius XII mitigation might be most appropriate when, because of the dearth of Traditional Latin Masses today, one has to travel long distances, or receive late in the day, or has some medical difficulty. Otherwise, for the average person going to a Sunday morning Mass, the midnight fast does not seem impossible to follow. 2000 years of Catholics were able to offer it up; why not we?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I went to a Novus Ordo service. I know I shouldn't have. And I paid the price for my sacrilege.
Last Sunday I went to the Novus Ordo Mess at St. X's Chapel at the "Catholic" University of S. because I was too lazy to attend the fully Traditional Latin Mass that is celebrated in the same city under independent auspices. In effect, I spit on God's generosity in providing me the opportunity to worship Him at the true Mass and instead, out of laziness, worshipped man at this Masonic shrine of the Novus Ordo. I knew full well that the Novus Ordo Mess was manufactured by Hannibal Bugnini, exposed as a Freemason and exiled by Pope Paul VI to Iran, where, in 1980, he is said to have betrayed American hostage secrets to the Iranian ayatollahs.
I walked into the chapel. The first thing that struck me was that everyone was talking. No silence anywhere. The altar was in the center of the chapel, with chairs arranged in a circular form around it. Kneelers were nowhere in evidence. If there was a tabernacle there, I didn't see it.
The altar was "dressed" by a girl with dyed red hair, wearing a tight halter-top that pushed a substantial amount of belly through the gap between her shirt and her camouflage pants.
I sat down. A tall, white-haired, but still youngish-looking man sat in front of me, wearing a polo shirt and jeans. A couple of girls sat on the floor next to me and didn't want a chair when offered one. The Mess began. The presbyter told everyone to greet one another. The man in the polo shirt turned and limply placed his hand in mine, and introduced himself as a presbyter.
The readings for Mess were read by a couple of students. One of the girls had a hard time with her piece. "You are a priest forever, after the order of ... um ... WHATEVER." The presbyter looked up from his seat: "Melchisedek!," he hissed. "Yeah, what he said. The word of the Lord," she responded.
Yes, I sinned by going to the Novus Ordo. I knew better than that. I was lazy, and I made all kinds of vain excuses for doing so. But at least God was merciful enough to chastise me. He showed me the Golden Calf of a Mess that is not a Mass, to remind me of the true Roman Catholic Faith. Now I am confirmed again in the true Faith. I will confess, and never again enter the Novus Ordo snake pit.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
How anyone could call this a "Mass," consider it "valid," or regard it as anything but silly nonsense is beyond me. It is of interest that the site you describe is associated with a "conservative" Novus Ordo college, which touts its classical education! Just more wool to pull over the eyes of the Novus Ordo sectarians, who wish to blind themselves to the reality that is before their eyes.
How the Novus Ordinarians dare to issue all kinds of "anathemas" against the True Mass of the Roman Catholic Church for two millennia (don't they just love to throw the S word at you when it is the New Order itself that is schismatic!), yet try to maintain that this nonsense and all other Novus Ordo "services" are "Catholic." Yes, including the pope's own execrable "semi-nude" Mess, his "aboriginal" Mess, his "spearchucker" Mess, and all the rest -- well documented in photographs from the Vatican Press Office and published around the world.
To those of us who grew up on the original Disney, known for its wholesome, even innocent, productions that portrayed basic moral values like courage and continence, it is a particularly bitter thing to see Walt Disney's vision turned into the type of trash that the new Disney Corporation spits out, usually through its subsidiary, Miramax, which has given us such gutter propaganda as Priest and Stigmata.
Add to that an "updated" version of the classic film, Miracle on 34th Street, now titled Bad Santa, which depicts Santa Claus (originally Saint Nicholas) as a drunk, a letch, and a robber, spitting out vile language with obscenities and blasphemies throughout. According to the Drudge Report, the film will be issued in Thanksgiving week, just in time for Advent and St. Nicholas's feastday on December 6.
Remember, folks, the same people who have virtually destroyed the Roman Catholic Church and substituted for it a phony New Order religion and a phony Novus Ordo Mess, are working in other areas as well, certainly the film and music fields. It becomes harder and harder to deny that Post-Modernism has become highly organized to carry out its deconstruction of civilization in all its aspects: religious, artistic, legal, societal, and all the rest.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The recently-reported Assisi-type meeting at Fatima in October, which is developing the Fatima site a center of New Age religion, was held under the auspices of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP), an arm of the secular One-World Religion movement. The story is somewhat complex, though critically important for you to know, so I beg your indulgence.
The One-World Religion movement was given its official kickoff at the first Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago on September 11, 1893. James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore played a prominent part at the conference, following which Pope Leo XIII forbade all future Catholic participation in syncretic meetings. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII wrote Testem Benevolentiae to Cardinal Gibbons, correcting his errors under the general heading of "Americanism."
After the 1893 Parliament, there was an explosion in the number of syncretic organizations. In 1988 the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions was founded to continue the work of the 1893 Parliament. It sponsored the 1993 Parliament in Chicago, which celebrated 100 years of the highly-successful One-World Religion movement. At this conference a major, though unsuccessful, attempt was made to formalize the censured Hans Kung's Global Ethic as the Commandments for the New World Order.
Carrying on the mission of the One-World Religion movement, the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP), a scandalous "papally-approved" vehicle for apostates wishing to destroy the Church from within, was founded in 1960 by four American religious leaders: John Cardinal Wright, then-Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts; a Unitarian-Universalist pastor; a Jewish rabbi; and the Methodist Bishop of Boston.
The WCRP was officially launched at its first meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in 1970. Novus Ordo Archbishop Angelo Fernandes of New Delhi, a leading Indian syncretist, was the WCRP's first international president. The WCRP helped to organize the pope's first Assisi meeting in 1986. The 1994 convention of this syncretic organization at the Vatican (a first in Vatican history) was its sixth general assembly and was aided by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was opened by Pope John Paul II. Hans Kung, discredited as a Catholic theologian by the same pope (will these popes ever learn?), was a guest lecturer, invited to promote his Global Ethic. His importance was underscored by the subtitle of the assembly: Isolation and Indifference: Searching for a Global Ethic.
The WCRP is a United Nations non-governmental organization headquartered at the UN in New York. It is one of three partners that have successfully founded the UN's one-world religion, or church, the United Religions (UR). The UR, following the plan of New Age leader Alice Bailey, was institutionalized by the signing of its charter in June 2000. The WCRP's partners in bringing the one-world church to life were the Gorbachev Foundation/USA and Bishop William Swing of the Episcopalian Diocese of California.
(Mother Teresa threw her support behind its founding. Her "beatification" is getting shakier and shakier. There is all too much evidence that she was a syncretist in her work. Now we know why the New Vatican wanted to push her beatification through without requiring even one legitimate miracle and without hearing the doctors and faithful, who had much information in opposition to her doctrinal sanctity.)
At the 1993 Parliament for the World's Religions, UN spokesman Robert Muller said that by 2013 we should be in a "united" world community, having a "common spirituality," thanks to the cooperation of the world's religions with the UN. That's a scant 10 years from now. New Agers have made it clear that our choice is between pantheism and death. In fact, Alice Bailey's Plan, which is followed religiously, astonishingly called for the atom bomb to be used against the Church of Rome if Rome didn't cooperate. The bomb subsequently became unnecessary because the "New Rome" of Paul VI and John Paul II was only to happy to throw over the Catholic religion and adopt syncretism with a veneer of Catholicism to fool the Novus Ordo sectarians.
The New Order apparatus, from the pope on down, has obviously made its choice. This is the context in which to view the destruction of our shrines. Visitors to the shrine at Fatima, Lourdes, Knock, etc., comprise the remnants of simple, faithful Catholics, often deceived by the deceptive New Order veneer of Catholicism. They have to be hustled into the universal synthesis if the "New Rome" is to survive.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It has become tiresome for the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians to berate traditional Catholics because they don't "obey" this pope who is supposed to have, in their papolatrial theology, an autocratic and dictatorial papal power over every aspect of the Church. Fine, if he is in fact that powerful, why doesn't he just stop this conversion of the Fatima site to the secular One-World Religion? Supposedly, with the stoke of his pen, the plot is halted.
The answer is obvious. This pope is one of the syncretists! Remember, the Vatican Press Office has proudly distributed news stories and photographs of this pope engaging in pagan rites: smearing tree pitch on his face in aboriginal Australia, being marked with cow-dung in India, worshipping in the sacred grove of the island nativists, watching as semi-nude Pacific aboriginals read the Sacred Scriptures in the semi-nude.
These "conservatives" can propagandize all they want about "John Paul the Great." But the acts and the photographs tell the true story -- unless they deliberately want to turn a blind eye to reality.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I discovered that St. Rita's nearby was having a mess with potato chips and grape soda. The exterior and interior of the church is beautiful, but what goes on inside is an abomination!
It seems that the U.S. bishops, having concluded their meeting in Washington, D.C., are setting the foundation for the next phase of Protestantizing the Novus Ordo. First of all they substituted the vulgar tongues for Latin; then they forced through communion in the hand; now they are going to turn the Novus Ordo non-Mess, presbyter-less "celebrations" over to lay ministers.
The biennial meeting adopted, by a vote of 221-2 no less, a revised edition of Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest. This new "liturgical" book for Sunday worship when no presbyter is available includes liturgy texts and adaptations for the United States. And who is to "perform" these Novus Ordo "celebrations"? Probably the same "eucharistic ministresses" that were previously introduced to replace de facto the presbyters. Can priestesses be far behind?
The U.S. bishops have, by their introduction of the New Order Faith, reduced the number of new vocations to a mere handful. There are about 13,000 fewer Novus Ordo presbyters now than there were 20 years ago, and some 3,000 of the nation's 19,500 parishes are without a resident pastor.
I strongly suspect that these Novus Ordo bishops never for a moment thought of recommending that in such cases the faithful be sent to the nearest traditional Roman Catholic church or chapel so that they could be served by a real priest! Nevertheless, traditional vocations and the desire for the true Mass are on the increase while the Novus Ordo counterfeit service decreases, now down to 17% attendance.
By the way, if Vatican II and its aftermath have been such a "New Pentecost" for the Church, as the present pope continues to profess, why has the number of vocations hit rock bottom? Why are there so few women entering the convent? Why are Novus Ordo schools not being taught by presbyters or nuns, but by lay leftists?
Is it just possible that the Novus Ordo hierarchy is lying to the public? I daresay that Adolf Hitler was praising the benefits of the Nazi regime to the skies while those on the inside knew full well the horrors that were going on. Remember: the U.S. bishops' own hand-picked investigator called the Novus Ordo bishops, in public, "a Mafia, not the Catholic Church"!
The Catholic faithful must be very, very cautious to close their ears to the Novus Ordo propaganda machine. Machievelli could take lessons from its proven and exposed lies and deceits and cover-ups over the last forty years.
You've heard all that anti-Western Civilization propaganda before. How the Europeans brought disease to the Americans and killed off the natives (no one talks about the endemic American native diseases). How the Europeans killed off the peace-loving Aztecs (who were still practicing human sacrifice). How Columbus tried to impose the Christian religion on upstanding pagans (who ran around naked and tortured each other, and the Christians). How the Holy Crusaders killed and pillaged the Holy Land (who, to the contrary, were only trying to protect Christians in the Holy Land from being slaughtered and enslaved by the Mohammedans).
You'd never know that Western Civilization, beginning with the enlightened Greeks and Romans and carried on through the Roman Catholic Church, brought more civilization to the world -- philosophy, medicine, law, art, music, architecture, and literature -- than any other civilization on the face of the earth. It seems the fashion today to disparage Western Civilization, without whom we would have no philosophy, medicine, law, art, music, architecture, and literature.
This month, thanks to Associated Press, we got a look into just why the spread of Western and Catholic Civilization throughout the world was so necessary. Far from being the idyllic "native peoples" the leftists picture today, we see that the non-Western pagans were in dire need of civilizing.
Just 166 years ago, Fiji natives ate a British missionary. Yes, that's right: ate. Now, this would not ordinarily be a problem for the cannibals, except that they think that they have been cursed ever since. Presiding over the apotropaic ceremonies was the village chief, great-grandson of the chief responsible for cooking the missionary. Yes, that's right: cook.
One only has to think of the human beings sacrificed to the god Quetzalcoatl, the Jesuit martyrs flayed by the Iriquois, and the missionary Brit cooked by the Fijians to know why Western and Catholic Civilization has no need to apologize. Rather, it should be hailed as the true guardian of civilization against the "native peoples" that it has been.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am confused about the fixation some people seem to have about Fatima, and I am confused about the term "Fatimism." Also, some people say that this apparitions are "approved"; others say not. What does this mean?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
First of all, the Church cannot "approve" any post-Apostolic apparition, as such a judgment is not a matter of the Catholic and Apostolic Deposit of Faith, but only of private revelation. All the Church has authority for in such a case is a "negative option"; that is, it can find that something about a claimed apparition contradicts the Catholic and Apostolic Deposit of Faith and reject it on that basis. Such a condition exists, apparently, for the Medjugorje fiasco, which has been disclaimed by both Novus Ordo and traditional investigations.
No one is obliged, as a matter of Faith, to accept any claimed post-Apostolic apparition. If a particular claimed apparition is not contrary to the Faith, it may be venerated as a private devotion. The trouble with Fatima is not in itself so much as that it has led to a derivative new cult of Extreme Fatimism, which has been associated with the anti-Catholic charismatic cults and Novus Ordo false oecumenism. You have some, including a clergyman or two, who have gone so far out on a limb as to propose that Fatima is tantamount to Catholic and Apostolic doctrine. Any Catholic must be wary of any such claim, as being against basic Catholic dogma.
This was not the case before Vatican II, when Fatima was accepted in a very balanced way, in the same way as was Lourdes, Guadalupe, Knock, etc. A good example of this balance was exhibited in a fine book about the principal apparitions of Our Lady entitled A Woman Clothed with the Sun, a collaborative effort written in the 1950s by several of the United States' best contemporary writers and published in the excellent Doubleday Image series of significant Catholic works. It is rock-solid in its Catholic approach to these Marian apparitions in a balanced, classical, Catholic way.
The term "Fatimism" was originated a few years ago by a Catholic author who was concerned to see the traditional balanced devotion turned into some kind of an extremist caricature that borrowed significantly from the heresy of Charismaticism, a known error originating in Protestantism. One definition of this extremist cult has been given as:
Fatimism. An erroneous belief, or vice of excess, which arose in the 20th century and finds a new basis of faith in private revelations, latter-day prophecies, visions, and "signs and wonders." The term does not refer to balanced private devotion, but is a catch-all term for extremist, off-balance, devotions of all kinds, such as those that would elevate Fatima to the level of a dogma or subordinate Catholic and Apostolic teaching to Fatima or make a virtual "goddess" out of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This error is closely associated with the heresy of Charismaticism. Our Lord Himself, popes, and the Saints, such as St. John of the Cross, perhaps the Church's greatest mystic, warned against these excesses.
At the present time it appears that the cult of Extreme Fatimism is being pushed by two principal groups:
In accordance with the wise counsel of the popes and the Saints, TRADITIO was one of the first to warn balanced traditional Catholics against the cult of Extreme Fatima, about making Fatima the center of the Faith, instead of a balanced, private devotion, as it should be. TRADITIO's warnings have apparently hit the mark in a much shorter time than imagined. Now Fatima is being hijacked by anti-Catholics, as has been reported just this month in the Portuguese press.
Our age is an age of extremism. Novus Ordoism and Modernism have replaced classical, balanced, Thomistic Roman Catholicism. In a few short days from now, on the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Holy Mother Church will be proposing for our edification Our Lord's own warning, as recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel:
For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. Behold I have told it to you, beforehand. If therefore they shall say to you, Behold he is in the desert: go ye not out. Behold he is in the closets: believe it not. (Matthew 24:24-25, 27)
How do we recognize a false Christ and a false prophet? It's relatively easy, although, as Our Lord says, the confusion of the times will blind many. We find the truth where the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that it lies: in the teaching of Christ (handed down to us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition), in the Sacraments (especially the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass), and in the Church.
A simpler way of putting it can be found in St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (1:23/DRV): "But we preach Christ crucified." The center of the Roman Catholic Faith is Our Lord Jesus Christ, and particularly his salvific Passion and Death on the Cross to redeem mankind. It is this basic truth that is so threatening to anti-Catholics, as we are seeing in the vitriol and hatred of the radical anti-Catholics being dumped upon Mel Gibson and his nascent film, The Passion of Christ.
The Church has always taught that only God is to be worshipped (latria). The Saints, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, may be venerated (dulia and hyperdulia, respectively), but if they are given worship, this is a serious sin of idolatry against the First Commandment. Any Catholic knows this from his early catechism.
So, true Catholics, yield not to such extremism, which is not pleasing to Our Lord and certainly not to the Blessed Virgin, who calls herself his ancilla, his servant. Have a private devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, if you wish, just as you might venerate Our Lady under any of her other titles: Lourdes, Guadalupe, Knock, La Salette, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, etc. But in so doing, keep your focus upon Jesus Christ, for, as Scripture teaches us, there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved, a name that itself means Savior.
In opposition to the New Order's attempt to "oecumenize" Fatima, traditional Catholics, including the Society of St. Pius X and others, distributed "more than 12,000 tracts all over Fatima informing the faithful of the gravity of the blasphemy committed by the organization of this assembly to turn Fatima ... into a single world religion, a Mecca of neutral global religion, to revamp Fatima every 25 years to reflect modern day trends and beliefs."
The traditional group actually confronted various participants in the oecumenical assembly being held at Fatima to "oecumenize" the site away from Roman Catholicism to the One World Religion of the Novus Ordo Seclorum. They went to the doors of the Pastoral Center and began by reciting the Rosary on their knees and then chanted the Kyrie Eleison and the Credo in Latin. The sight of a priest in a cassock even seemed to frighten the three coordinators of the "oecumeniacal assembly."
What has the pope said? Nothing. What has the Roman curia said? Nothing. What has the bishop of Leiria, who oversees Fatima, said? Nothing. Undoubtedly, they all approved the "assembly" to deconstruct Fatima. Traditional Catholics can expect nothing but empty words from this pope and his Vatican. His policy, very clearly enunciated in recent years is: Oecumenismus über alles, including the Roman Catholic Faith! This pope is the Koran-kisser, the heretic-schmoozer, the Luther-lover. It is all a matter of record. Only those with their blinders on can't see it.
What is the remedy? As the Doctor of the Church, St. Robert Bellarmine, said: "Resist him [the erring pope] by not doing what he commands and by hindering the execution of his will" (De Romano Pontifice, Liber II, Capitulum 29). Isn't it amazing what a few traditional Catholics with one cassocked priest can do when they finally show a little courage? Why, it seems this little traditional group literally put the fear of God into these Modernist Oecumeniacs by a public protest and some flyers!
As I've said before, you traditional Catholics don't realize what power you have -- if only you would stand up for the Roman Catholic Faith the way your predecessors did. The Lord will be with you. Whom do you need to fear?
The notion of "conservative" Novus Ordinarians (which some have taken to call "Neo-Cons") is really quite phony. Given enough time, their leftist sentiments always break through. Take the "conservative" archbishop of Denver, Colorado, Charles Chaput. That description evaporated in smoke when he presided over the "Indian Feather" Mess, in which he sported Indian feathers to the accompaniment of tom-toms like a nativist pagan.
Now The Australian reports that the new "conservative" George Cardinal Pell of Sydney spurned the Mass (or rather the Novus Ordo Mess) and substituted Novus Ordo "Evening Prayer" (what is traditionally called Vespers), so that "representatives of Protestant faiths, including Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen and Rev. Alistair Christie from the NSW Uniting Church, could join the occasion" of his installation as cardinal. The Australian specifically notes that this is a "departure from tradition."
And what is Pell's prime objective as cardinal? To restore to Roman Catholicism the New Order Counterfeit Church that has so strayed into false doctrine? No. To root out the corrupt morality that has gripped the New Order hierarchy from the top down? No. To extirpate the spurious New Order Protestant-Masonic worship service that has replaced the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? No. His prime objective is -- "to strengthen oecumenical relations."
I guess denying the Apostolic teaching of the Church in the Filioque, working to make the scurrilous Martin Luther a Novus Ordo saint, and arranging the next "Cookie" Mess trumps Pell's episcopal oath to guard the Roman Catholic Faith with his life and to inspire it in the people by his example. What do oaths mean today anyway, when Presidents perjure themselves, and Novus Ordo bishops routinely forswear themselves before God?
Some have said that the New Order is really a form of Satanism. No matter how silly and stupid the Novus Ordo is, maybe that is going too far. Maybe. On the other hand, the deceit and malice, not to speak of the moral corruption, that are the trademarks of Satan are now so endemic in the Novus Ordo hierarchy and even lower clergy that one is forced to consider the possibility.
And now, according to the October 31 Times of Trenton, New Jersey, we have the "Dracula" Mess. The "Basketball" Mess, the "Beach" Mess, the "Bicycle" Mess, and all the rest are sacrilegious, blasphemous, and scandalous, but at the same time laughable. We say, "They can't be serious." But with the "Dracula" Mess we start toying with forces that are really dangerous beyond our human understanding.
It seems that a presbyter of the Diocese of Trenton, does the Novus Ordo service in a Dracula cape -- undoubtedly with the full knowledge and "approval" of his Novus Ordo bishop. This Mess is described as a "melding of Gnostic paganism with Catholicism."
Is this the ultimate in the laughable Novus Ordo? Or is it something much more dangerous? After Vatican II the Conciliar Catholics objected to the vernacular instead of Latin; now they accept it. They objected to communion in the hand; now they accept it. They objected to lay mininstresses and lectoresses; now they accept them. They objected to altar girls; now they accept them. They objected to standing the "Eucharistic prayer"; now they accept it. Sin grows.
The Novus Ordo service has been in a constant state of change, deceiving the Novus Ordinarians into unCatholic practices and beliefs one after the other. When they look back over the 40-year record (if they ever do), they must be shocked at how far they've come, and how much they have come to accept that they previously objected to as evil. Sin grows.
It's that way with sin. First of all, it's a little white lie, then it's a lie of convenience, then it's detraction (truth, but no one's business), then it's gossip and backbiting, then it's calumny. Pretty soon it has grown to the point where lies are being told about a person that ruins has reputation, his profession, and his family. And it all started out with a little white lie. Sin grows.
Where will the Novus Ordo Mess lead? It's already Protestant and Masonic, not even validly Catholic. Then it got silly. Is this all a deceitful and malicious ploy to get the Novus Ordinarians so desensitized to the evil of the Novus Ordo that the end product is the Black Mass? Will the Novus Ordo, which already worships man rather than God, eventually, at first more subtlely like the "Dracula" Mess, end up worshipping Satan rather than God? So said the late Fr. Malachi Martin, whatever you think of him. So say various members of the Vatican hierarchy. Sin grows.
At first it might seem like a far-out notion, I grant you. But look at what happened to the Protestants. First they denied Sacred Tradition, more recently they've denied any meaningful understanding of Sacred Scripture. The Protestants are now accepting priestesses, bishopesses, divorce, birth control, homosexuality -- at all of which their Protestant forebears would have been scandalized, and would have called them heretics. Sin grows.
Sin grows. The only answer is to "avoid the near occasion of sin." It is becoming harder and harder to deny what traditional Catholics say, that the Novus Ordo itself is a near occasion of sin -- a danger to one's Catholic Faith, of sacrilege, of blasphemy, of scandal, of idolatry. Not peccadillos, these sins! Dante places such people in the bowels of Hell, while even sins of the flesh are closer to the entrance.
Sins against God by their genus, so the Fathers and Doctors tell us, are the worst -- worse even than such moral sins as abortion -- and the Novus Ordo is undeniably an objective sin against true religion and the true God.
According to an article in the November 11 Australian Times, even the New Vatican has had to admit that this pope has essentially broken the Church's mechanism for determining who is a Saint and who is a sinner.
Since Pope Urban VIII's bull of 1634, the popes have used a very solid, essentially error-free process, in which strict standards of Catholic belief and practice are applied to those proposed for canonization. In most cases, commission after commission, over a period of centuries, would sift and resift and resift the evidence. If a scintilla of doubt remained, the candidate was eliminated.
Of course, this was all before JP-II made canonization a P.R. game rather than a serious religious object. "You want a woman saint? We'll make one. You want a black saint? We'll make one. You want a Polish saint? We'll make one. You want a 'gay' saint? We'll make one. You want to make Martin Luther a saint? No problem."
Now the New Vatican's saint-making bureaucracy has broken down, says the cardinal responsible for priming the saint pump. He's had to go out and pull in unqualified people from the highways and the byways to do pro-forma, rushed "investigations." Too much horse-meat is being forced into the grinder, so what's coming out is definitely not kosher sausage!
Of course, JP-II has seen to it that the deck is stacked, so that more and more unqualified persons can be injected into the saint mill. Case in point: Mother Theresa was rushed to beatification so fast (JP-II wanted to skip beatification and go straight to canonization, but the curia put its foot down, saying that it would not be following tradition!) that the investigation apparently accepted a medical "miracle" that the doctors at the scene dispute.
In the past, no fewer than four squeaky-clean, legitimate miracles were required in support of sanctity. JP-II reduced that to one. He did away with the Devil's Advocate, whose role was to raise every possible objection to the canonization, much as we have a prosecuting and a defense attorney in courts. He did away with the right of any Catholic to be heard before the commission against the proposed canonization.
No longer. He's making these Novus Ordo "saints" almost at the snap of a finger. 477 of them at last count. What's going to happen when some of them turn out to be a mistake? And this is the post-Conciliar Vatican that dares to reject those Saints whom the Universal Church has accepted for two millennia: St. Christopher, St. Barbara, St. Nicholas -- and even, more recently, St. Philomena, for whom there is actually tangible, physical archaeological evidence.
Thank God for St. Thomas Aquinas. He stated that canonizations are not infallible (certainly beatifications are not) because they could rest on errors of fact. Boy, did he had that nail on the head for our benefit 700 years in advance.
I am always amused by those Novus Ordinarians who suggest in answer to all the Novus Ordo "abuses" to send letters and faxes to the Vatican. "If only the Vatican knew," they say, "it would do something about this." These people must be either blind as bats or wearing glasses more rose colored than Dorothy of Oz. They want to ask the fox please to guard the hen house for them!
Now we have the New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership who want to oust Bishop John McCormack and Francis Christian because "they are unfit to lead the Church." Where have these people been? All the Novus Ordo bishops are unfit to lead the Church. They have pandered the New Order Protestant-Masonic religion to Catholics in lieu of the True Faith, and they have personally prostituted the moral teachings of the Church. They are a Mafia, pure and simple, religiously and morally. They run a protection racket. Even their own investigator, Governor Keating, admitted that. That's why they had to fire him. They didn't want an honest investigation.
So, where does this NHCML turn? Why, to the very New Vatican that has been supporting the perversion of the faith and morals of the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II! There is a much simpler answer: get out! The New Order apparatus can't survive without bodies and dollars. No doubt the NHCML members are still "obediently" forking over their hard-earned dollars into the Novus Ordo collection plate to support the very structure they deplore. Now there's real stupidity for you!
The Novus Ordo needs to be treated like a whining child. The more the parent cajoles and remonstrates and threatens, the more the child howls. After all, as St. Augustine says, it's all a matter of Original Sin pridefully wanting attention, good or bad. The moral of this story is to pull the plug. Ignore the Novus Ordo bullies. When there's nobody else in the sandbox to pick on, these bully bishops will disappear. They won't have any masochists to pay attention to their vain taunts.
More and more Catholics are beginning to hold that the Novus Ordo Church has no priests or bishops, just "presbyters" and "overseers."
It is a principle of both secular and canon law that a person's intention is exhibited by his external acts. That is one of the most convincing arguments for the Novus Ordo service having a "cookie" rather than a sacrament. It is the Novus Ordinarians who treat it like a cookie. If it weren't a cookie, but a real sacrament, they would kneel for it, be horrified to take it into their dirty hands, not drop cookie crumbs all over the floor, not stick it in their purses to take home to feed to the dog, etc.
The New Order clergy tell us that they don't want to be called "priests," but rather "presbyters," the latter being an ambiguous word that can mean simply "elder," much as certain Protestant sects have elders in their churches. But what about bishops?
Well, here too we can draw conclusions from external acts. Do these people act like bishops? The answer is obviously no. Many of them deny outright the tenets of the Roman Catholic Faith, whether it be the denial of Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior for the human race, not just the Gentiles, whether it be participation in pagan Novus Ordo services like the Basketball Mess, the Dance Mess, and the Gay Mess, or whether it be oecumenically schmoozing with heretics, schismatics, and pagans who "all worship the same god."
How do these Novus Ordo bishops act? Are they examples of Roman Catholic morality for the faithful? Here again we have to answer obviously no. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops made the "mistake" of appointing an honest man to investigate the corruption within the episcopal ranks. This man, the former governor of Oklahoma, a deputy attorney general, and FBI investigator, after a few months could not withhold the judgment that has been obvious to many of us for decades. He called the American bishops "a Mafia, a criminal organization, not my Church." To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a Novus Ordinarian has publicly stated what we traditional Roman Catholics have said for quite a while: the Novus Ordo is not the Catholic Church, but a Counterfeit Church, a Great Facade.
Look at the Novus Ordo "consecration" depicted above. First of all, the New Order doesn't call it a consecration; it's an "ordination." One has difficulty figuring out whether this is some kind of a floor show, a sports game, hardly something religious. This event, to "ordain" Michael Guyard of France, was not held in the cathedral, but rather on the docks, complete with giant sports screen!
Observe the "altar" above. It looks more like a kite. And there are other kites at the far side (seen in the previous photograph). There is absolutely nothing on the altar: no crucifix, no tabernacle, no candles -- just a bare white cloth, or perhaps a ship's sail.
What does this scene tell you? Does it sound "Catholic"? Of course not. It's some kind of a Broadway farce devoid of religious significance. Intention is exhibited by acts. "He [God] is not here" (Matthew 28:6/DRV).
Your house catches on fire. What do you do? Throw gasoline on it. Your child is hooked on drugs. What do you do? Give him money to buy more.
Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Yet this, according to a wire report is just what Novus Ordinarians are doing. They contributed 4.9% more last year to the Novus Ordo parishes, which were promoting a phony "liturgy," corrupting the youth, and destroying churches like there was no tomorrow.
Is it any wonder that the Novus Ordo is so shot through with corruption? It's not just the bishop and the presbyters any more. The people themselves are bringing on themselves the wrath of God. You might as well make donations to your local mosque. Well, at least the Novus Ordinarians did something right. They cut their bishops' funding by 2.3%.
One cannot help but think of St. Paul's words about the pagans of his time:
[They] became vain in their thoughts. And their foolish heart was darkened. For, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21-22)
As the Novus Ordo house comes crashing down upon them, they will have been the ones responsible. They saw the false religion, corruption, and destruction, and yet they poured their denarii into Caiphas' coffers to fund more of the same. That's not ignorance; its plain old garden-variety culpable stupidity!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attend an "indult" Tridentine Latin Mass on Saturday evenings. The same site offers the Novus Ordo Mess in Polish and English on Sundays. Are we parishioners being led astray with this "Indult" Mass? Is this just a crumb tossed to the parishioners to keep us coming? To keep the revenues coming? I have noticed that as soon as the "Indult" Mass ends, they strip the altar of all elements of that Mass and put plants in front of the altar to impede any further approach.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, you parishioners are being led astray by such a service, which is what is known as a "pseudo-traditional service." The flags to identify such service are detailed in the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses, to which I refer you for further information. A clear give-away in your case is that the service is on Saturday evenings. According to the authority of the New Testament, Saturday is not the Lord's Day for Christians. It is the Jewish Sabbath. Even the Latin word used in the Missal and Breviary for this day is Sabbato! By making the one and only "Indult" Mass available on a day other than Sunday, particularly on the Jewish Sabbath, the New Order is not so subtly forcing you to renounce Catholicism and embrace a kind of Judaism.
Remember, the New Order Counterfeit Church is now teaching that Our Lord Jesus Christ was not the Messias for the Jews, but only for the Gentiles. This, of course, is madness and heresy. It flies in the face of Apostolic Tradition, Sacred Scripture, the Father and Doctors of the Church, including the popes, and too many Saints to name. To shift Novus Ordo services to Saturday evening is a ploy to impose this New Theology and to undermine what little remains of the Catholic faith of the people.
Of course, everyone knows that the serious obligation to worship Almighty God publicly in His Church on His Day, the Lord's Day, Sunday, cannot be met by attending the Protestant-Masonic Novus Ordo service on Sunday. Neither can it be met by worshipping like a Jew on Saturday evening, even if it is an "Indult" Mass.
By the way, the term Tridentine is also a misnomer used by the Novus Ordo to deceive Catholics. The New Order likes to talk about the Mass of Pius V or the Mass of Paul VI, as if any pope can fabricate a Mass and as if the True Mass and the Counterfeit Mass were of one and the same authority. This is balderdash.
In fact, the best term for the True Mass is the Traditional Latin Mass. This is the Mass of Apostolic Tradition, otherwise known in pre-Vatican II works as the Mass of St. Peter. It is the Mass that originated in Apostolic Tradition at the See of Rome, was elaborated by the Apostolic Roman Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Its Sacred Canon was virtually complete by the 2nd-3rd centuries, and its entirety was substantially complete by the 4th-5th century and ultimately canonized by Pope St. Gregory the Great. (It is interesting to note that the Eastern rites, though they might have started a decade or two earlier, have experienced radical modifications over the centuries, modifications from which Providence protected the Roman Rite.)
This Mass was not "authored" by the Council of Trent. It had already been celebrated for more than a millennium when the regionalisms that had crept in over various areas were eliminated to maintain its pristine Roman purity. The Mass of Paul VI, actually the Mess of Hannibal Bugnini and Six Protestant Ministers, was an utter fabrication. More than two-thirds of it cannot be found in the Apostolic Roman liturgy. Bugnini's own book proves that.
TRADITIO was one of the first to speak out about "Fatimism," defined as an erroneous belief, or vice of excess, which arose in the 20th century and finds a new basis of faith in private revelations, latter-day prophecies, visions, and "signs and wonders." The term does not refer to balanced private devotion, but is a catch-all term for extremist, off-balance devotions of all kinds, such as those that would elevate Fatima to the level of a dogma or subordinate Catholic and Apostolic teaching to Fatima or make a virtual "goddess" out of the Blessed Virgin Mary. TRADITIO has consistently pointed out that this error is closely associated with the error of "Catholic Charismaticism," which leads the devotees to writhe like snakes on the floor under the inspiration of the "spirit."
There were those who didn't like TRADITIO's forthrightness on this point and took exception to any demotion of Fatima as being tantamount to Catholic doctrine and Sacred Scripture. And yet -- TRADITIO's canny analysis of modern-day trends in the Church have proven right once again. While other sources rely to their embarrassment on Church propaganda, TRADITIO uses plain old common sense, and some fifty years of experience in observing Church developments, from before Vatican II to the present day.
What is going on is a virtual "Third Assisi," referring to those abominable Assisi conferences, in which this pope personally participated, where the Buddha was placed above the tabernacle in St. Francis's own church.
In another famous photograph from the conference above, JP-II is shown as a virtual pantheist, holding a sapling next to pagan Buddhists, Animists, and Indians.
Delegates attending the Vatican and United Nations-inspired annual interfaith congress, "The Future of God", held during October in Fatima, heard how the Fatima Shrine is to be developed into a center where all the religions of the world will gather to pay homage to their various gods. The Congress was held in the Paul VI Pastoral Center and presided over by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon Jose de Cruz Policarpo. For the first time in the 86-year history of Fatima all of the Pagan and Christian delegates were invited to participate in the Oecumenical celebrations.
The Shrine's rector, Monsignor Luciano Guerra, told the Congress that Fatima "will change for the better." Addressing Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox, Buddhist, and African Pagan representatives he stated:The future of Fatima, or the adoration of God and His mother at this holy Shrine, must pass on to the creation of a shrine where different religions can mingle. The inter-religious dialogue in Portugal, and in the Catholic Church, is still in an embryonic phase, but the Shrine of Fatima is not indifferent to this fact and is already open to being a universalistic place of vocation.
Knowing that traditional Roman Catholics will be outraged over this profanation of the Shrine, Guerra launches a pre-emptive strike:
Traditional Catholics opposed to the Congress were described by the Monsignor as "old fashioned, narrow minded, fanatic extremists and provocateurs."
Well, "Monsignor" Guerra, may I say that it is you who are the fanatic extremist and provocateur! It is you who are deconstructing the Roman Catholic Faith and profaning sacred shrines to serve the Counterfeit God of the New Order. Lest there be any confusion that the New Vatican and its minions are promoting an abominable One World Religion that is not Catholic, listen to what the Jesuit theologian presbyter Jacques Dupuis proclaimed at the Fatima interfaith congress:
The religion of the future will be a general converging of religions in a universal Christ that will satisfy all. The other religious traditions in the world are part of God's plan for humanity and the Holy Spirit is operating and present in Buddhist, Hindu, and other sacred writings of Christian and non-Christian faiths as well.
This is outright heresy. There is only one true Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the traditional Roman Catholic Church. All others, to one degree or another, are laced with error in doctrine, morality, and worship. As an example, just look at what the U.S. Episcopalian Church is going through today if you need any proof of that fact.
What is being promoted here is tantamount to Unitarian Universalism. Make God whatever you want. Make him after your own image. After all, you are the creator of God. You can have a veneer of Christianity, Islamism, Buddhism, even Agnosticism and still be a Unitarian Universalist. It is the New Religion of the One World Government. One size fits all. And this pope and this Vatican are right there promoting this Masonic/Universalist New Religion. Do you think it was an accident that Hannibal Bugnini, the Chief Architect of the Novus Ordo Mess, was a Freemason and was lauded by the Grandmaster Mason of Rome for his work in establishing the New Order?
An official statement put out by the Congress called for a non-proselytizing approach by all religions. "No one religion can irradiate another", it said, "or strengthen itself by downplaying others and an open dialogue is the way to building bridges and tearing down walls of centuries of hate. What is needed is that each religion be true to its faith integrally and treat each religion on the same footing of equality with no inferior or superiority complexes." It emphasized that the secret to peace amongst all religions is admitting that contradictions exist between creeds, but to concentrate on what unites them as opposed to what separates them.
At the assembly, one presbyter Depuis stated: "On the point of 'outside the Church there is no salvation,' there is no need to invoke here that horrible text from the Council of Florence in 1442." Of course not, presbyter, not when you are creating a New Order Church, a New Order Mess, and a New Order Theology that is not Catholic and Apostolic, let alone Christian!
So now we have the flagrant promotion under "Catholic" auspices, of the very proposition condemned in Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors, that error has equal rights with truth. It doesn't matter that these others are false faiths, leading people astray. We are simply to ignore that fact in the context of the Modernist Mantra, "We all worship the same god." By the Living God, no, we don't!
And now for the clincher:
Delegates agreed that religious shrines, including Fatima, should be revamped every 25 years to reflect modern day trends and beliefs. The Shrine of Fatima is about to undergo a complete reconstruction.
The New Order and its Heretic Henchmen are preparing to destroy not only the traditional Shrine at Fatima, but you can be sure the Lourdes, Knock, Guadalupe, and all the rest have already been set down for the chopping-block.
What will now be interesting to see is whether the Fatimists will fight for Fatima or will go along with the New Vatican's plan to rape Our Lady of any Catholic significance, turning her instead into a Pagan, Universalist Goddess of the New Order. My bet is that, after a few minor objections on their part, they will "obey" the New Order and kill the very object of their devotion, just like the Black Widow consumes her unsuspecting mate, after little Black Widows have been conceived to spread abroad. Let's wait and see if TRADITIO has hit the nail on the head once again with this prediction!
For those of you who think that this pope doesn't know the depravity that is going on in the New Order, for those of you who think that this pope is "traditional," or even "conservative," for those of you who think that the Novus Ordo service is anything but a joke, take a look at these pictures from World Youth Day 1997, at which the pope personally "presided." These World Youth Days have been compared to the 1969 drug and sex festival in Woodstock, New York, in 1969, the same year the Novus Ordo Mess was introduced.
You Novus Ordinarians need to know from the outset that the following images are all "approved" by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and provided by the USCCB.
First of all, we have the youth greeting the pope's Mess. We've come quite a way from suits and ties here, folks. We're lucky if we can get the men to put on a T-shirt! Would this oblivious youth greet the President of the United States in only a baseball cap and shorts? No, but this is now quite acceptable attire for a papal Mess. Now, help me here, folks, what is his title again? No, not President. Isn't it Supreme Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Patriarch of the West, something like that? Hmmm.
Now, aren't we always being told how the New Mess is so stimulating? That it isn't "boring," like the traditional Roman Catholic Mass. Well, here is a group of Novus Ordinarians who look they're half asleep, sprawled out on the ground. I guess JP-II's New Mess is already getting tiresome after 30 years, while the Traditional Latin Mass remains timeless. Let's bring out the dancing nuns around the altar! Let's get rockin'! Ho, hum.
Now we come to the good part. Slouching in the grass has made the youth hungry. Is it peanut butter today? Perhaps a sugar cookie? You Novus Ordo clergy, throw that red sash over your shoulder and start the cookie feed. Don't bother to get out of your shorts; it doesn't matter what you wear when you distribute what you claim to be the "Body of Christ." "Body of Christ" in the Novus Ordo? If you don't act like it is, why should I believe it? Your whole demeanor tells the world that it's just a piece of bread -- sorry -- cookie.
Remember, folks, this is not just some presbyter's Mess. This is the Pope's Mess. And this pope has the gall to talk about "abuses" in the Novus Ordo service. He's the Arch-Abuser himself! What is that old saying about the fish rotting from the head?
How can any Novus Ordo sectarian justify this nonsense? How can anyone take this pope seriously? How can anyone believe that the Novus Ordo service has anything to do with "validity," or even of God, at least the true God. As if that weren't bad enough, this man would corrupt the youth, and we all know what Our Lord said about that: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6/DRV). At least Socrates got hemlock for the same offense.
We are what you once were.
We believe what you once believed.
We worship as you once worshipped.
If you were right then, we are right now.
If we are wrong now, you were wrong then.
SEEK OUT EXCLUSIVELY THE TRADITIONAL ROMAN CATHOLIC
LATIN MASS, SACRAMENTS, AND FAITH IN YOUR AREA.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have read some of your comments regarding music, such as rock music being "pagan" or the guitar being "profane." What is the Catholic perspective on music? Does it have a moral dimension?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Very much so! "Profane" in this sense means "not sacred," "secular." The modern guitar is not an instrument that is suitable for sacred services, although its predecessors, having a much subtler tone, like the archiliuto, may have been used centuries ago as a continuo instrument for the sonate di chiesa (church sonatas).
There is a modernistic idea abroad that "music is simply a matter of taste." Nothing could be far from the truth. Music has from ancient times been associated with questions of aethetics, and morality as well. Anyone who doubts this fact should familiarize himself with one of the great classics of western philosophy and literature, Plato's Republic.
The exemplar of music in the West is, of course, the monodic chant that we know today as "Gregorian." This music had its roots in the Holy Land and reaches a sublimity that is unsurpassed. There is nothing better to raise the mind heavenward, to soar with the Divine through the purity of word intimately associated with music.
From Gregorian chant came that development of music exclusive to the West, that is, harmony. Starting first with the chant sung in organum, that is, the same melody sung at different intervals (at the fourth, fifth, or octave), and then developing into the rich chordal harmonies that reached their peak in the 16th century in Palestrina's Masses, this harmony developed in the Church into what is known as Sacred Polyphony.
Polyphony developed, both in sacred and secular music, through the baroque, then the classical, then the romantic, and finally the modern periods. During that time, secular music became increasingly brasher, more self-focused, more distracting, but in the sacred realm still found inspiration in the Divine and produced such treasures (although they are concert works rather than works to be used in church services) as Bach's B-Minor Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Verdi's Requiem, and, in more modern times, Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor. (There is a parallel development of authentic folk music, but I won't go into that here.)
Meanwhile, on the secular side, western harmony developed into the classical forms of such composers as Mozart and Haydn (who also wrote music for church services), then to the more elaborate symphonic forms of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and others. Although this music was founded in the secular world rather than the Church, it still appealed to the mind (but more and more to the emotions) in its balance, its form, and its harmony.
The 20th century began to introduce forms that broke from the spirituality or the classicism of its past. This music was much more overtly rhythmical, intended not for the higher faculties of man, but for the lower faculties. It focused on a "beat" and movement that substantially emphasized mindless, pagan elements. Even jazz originated in this way and was condemned as such by Pope St. Pius X.
Increasingly, we find modern music serving the worst elements, starting out somewhat more tamely with pop, then rock and roll, then to the more bizarre, loud, blasphemous types that are not infrequently found on stages and CDs today. Surely, these cannot be said to have a positive moral quality. More and more, we find leaders, even leftist leaders, of the secular society speaking out against the worst forms of modern music, as being morally degrading.
So, we have come full circle back to Plato and his description of how powerful music is on the psyche, more powerful even, as scientists have found, than libido. Such a power has its moral aspects. We cannot just say, "it's a matter of taste." The more we fill our minds with unaesthetic trash, the more we fill our souls with the perverse, the more we lower our wills to the basest elements of our human nature, the more we see civilization, culture, and society deconstructed. Even science agrees, as study after study has shown.
It is hard to deny that higher tastes and culture are much less evident today. For all too many, music is not Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (let alone Palestrina), but primal wreck music. For all too many, literature is not Shakespeare, but some trashy sex novel. Even the body, far from the Christian or even classical ideal, becomes a pincushion for pagan talismans stuck into every member, or a blackboard on which pagan monikers are etched for a lifetime.
As Kenneth Clark explained so well in his noted Civilization series, civilization (and that includes true religion) hangs on a slender thread. The nature of man, and the nature of the Original Sin that has marked out souls, is liable to fall when not actively propped up.
The Church of the New Order deliberately ignores that reality and fills the mind with the debasing drivel that turns minds into mush and souls into corruption. It uses music as just another arrow in its quiver to debase minds and souls into its political programme in ways that are so much like Nazi and the Communist propaganda techniques as to be truly scary. Yet Plato warned us all about this 2500 years ago.
Our moral responsibility is to keep our minds and hearts fixed ultimately on the Divine end in everything. To borrow a phrase from the computer field, "garbage in, garbage out." We are children of God, not of Lucifer. We must educate ourselves and improve our tastes. A child, left to itself, will fill itself with candy. An adult learns a taste for more nutritious food that is good for both the mind and the body.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I noticed my young neighbor in the pew -- she was 15 or 16 years old -- toying with the Novus Ordo cookie she had received at "communion." The young lady had nibbled one of the edges of the cookie, had apparently either disliked the taste or else wished to carry it home where she might spread some jam on it, and so was flipping it around between her fingers to while away the time.
I have seen people leaving the altar carrying the cookie in their hands, staring at it with either amused or perplexed looks. Almost invariably I notice someone leaving the front of the altar without consuming the cookie, but with the cookie either in hand or dropped surreptitiously into a pocket.
The Novus Ordo Mess is moving in the direction of the carry-out cookie. Living in a country of fast-food restaurants and Chinese take-out, I suppose this trend is inevitable. Clearly, there is the possibility of scandal or misuse of the cookie for those choosing the take-out service. Satanists -- we have quite a coven of these here in our county -- might steal the cookie for inclusion in their Black Mass. Other parishioners may get home, feel disinclined to consume the cookie, and feed it instead to their dog.
In the old days, we might have declared the abuser of the cookie to be anathema; today, however, such a warning simply wouldn't take. Most Catholics don't know what anathema means, and many won't bother to look it up. Given the widespread lack of regard for other Church teachings among modern Novus Ordo sectarians, as well as the modernist proclivity for rebellion, I'm not sure this would deter anyone from sacrilege anyway.
As to the grape juice, four weeks ago, a Mexican deacon helped serve the Spanish Mess. After "communion," the deacon glanced into the chalice in his hands, swirled it a few times, then called parishioners back to the altar for seconds on the juice. "We have some left," he said, "so come on back." Though our presbyter looked somewhat surprised, he didn't attempt to stop the deacon. Our presbyter is an Anglo and perhaps felt uncomfortable correcting the deacon before his countrymen. Or is theology at work here? The presbyter must consume the remaining juice; he, therefore, gets "seconds." We are all presbyters these days; therefore, we should all get "seconds."
Let me suggest, however, that if this action constitutes a new trend in the Novus Ordo Church, if indeed we are going to begin offering seconds, then we need to ensure an ample supply of victuals. My mother always said that if you're going to offer more food, make sure there is enough for everyone at the table. [Excerpted from Chronicles]
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Scripture tell us: "Give not that which is holy to dogs" (Matthew 7:6/DRV). Your tongue-in-cheek, but nevertheless eyewitness, report of what happens at your former parish (I know that you have left there for good and now attend the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively) would be sacrilegious, if we did not realize that the Novus Ordo does not confect the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the species of bread and wine, as the dogmatic Council of Trent describes it, but rather has only a common cookie and common Welch's grape juice.
The Novus Ordo is not sacrilegious; it is laughable. Even the bishops and the presbyters and the Novus Ordo laity laugh at it. It's a hoot! It's a mess. No one can take it seriously. Trying to correct its "abuses" is like trying to make drug-free heroin. Heroin is heroin; you can't make it what it isn't.
It doesn't matter how "devout" some of the Novus Ordo "conservatives" may think they are. Devotion doesn't change bread into the Body and Blood of Our Lord; God does through the ministry of a priest, not a presbyter. Wishing it so doesn't change the reality.
John Henry Cardinal Newman was fond of quoting the Angel at the empty tomb when he saw an Anglican church. No matter how beautiful the interior of the Anglican church seemed (a characteristic of very few Novus Ordo churches these days!), he said of the Mass-less, Sacrament-less Anglican Church and said, "He is not here" (Matthew 28:6/DRV).
Here's a thought from a 16-year-old young man who, entirely on his own, found his way from Novus Ordoism to traditional Roman Catholicism. After witnessing a Novus Ordo "communion" incident handled carelessly, he finally rejected the Novus Ordo service and its "cookie". "I decided," he writes, "that the greatest mercy Our Lord Jesus Christ could give the Counterfeit Church would be if He were not truly present in the Novus Ordo cookie. Otherwise, the abominations, blasphemies, and sacrileges taking place are too horrifying to imagine."
A salient and comforting thought indeed. Would that adult Novus Ordinarians were as mature in the Faith as this young man.
On All Souls Day, November 3, the leftist Episcopalian Church viewed its own death. On that day, Eugene Robinson, a public advocate of immorality and perversion, was "consecrated" in a sham ceremony as a bishop of the Episcopalian Church of the United States.
Minutes after Robinson was consecrated, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said that the divisions caused by Robinson's elevation "are a matter of deep regret." After Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold asked whether there was "any reason why we should not proceed," a traditional part of Episcopal consecration services, Assistant Bishop David Bena of Albany, New York, spoke for 38 opposing bishops in the Episcopalian Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. He said that his group and most bishops in the international Anglican Communion will not recognize Robinson as a fellow bishop. Indeed, the world's Anglican leaders affirmed their opposition to same-sex relations at an emergency meeting in London last month."
Reading from a statement, Bena said Robinson's "lifestyle is incompatible with Scripture and the teaching of this Church." The Rev. Earle Fox from the Pittsburgh Diocese also objected. The protest, which went on for ten minutes and which was ignored by the leftists, confirmed the fact that conservative/traditional Episcopalians are already moving toward a break with the leftist Episcopalian Church.
A national association for conservatives opposed to ordaining "gays," the American Anglican Council, says that parishioners already were drifting away in protest of Robinson's elevation. It plans to hold the denomination's conservative flank together by building a network of "confessing" dioceses and congregations. The network will exist more or less separately from the national denomination, claiming to preserve the traditional beliefs of the Episcopalian Church and the Anglican Communion of which it is a part. Some predict that this will develop into the worst Episcopalian split since the U.S. denomination was founded in 1789.
Are the conservative/traditional Episcopalians pointing the way for traditional Roman Catholics? What will Catholics do when the New Vatican and its bishops start ordaining married presbyters, priestesses, and bishopesses, embraces the "gay" lifestyle as moral, approves of abortion, and accepts the Islamism that Pope Pius XI condemned as "worshipping the same god as Catholics"? Has a turning point been reached? Have we finally reached the beginning of the end? Stay tuned to the uniquely hard-hitting TRADITIO Commentaries for developments.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This past Saturday I attended a Mess at a local parish church. I have for some time separated myself completely from the Novus Ordo and had not been to it for some time. The only reason I (misguided as I was!) went was that it was for All Souls Day, in remembrance of those who had passed away over the past year from that parish, and a family member of mine was one of those being remembered -- although as a result of this experience, I might say disremembered!
At least my attending this average Novus Ordo Mess from the perspective of some gap of time, it finally dawned on me just how laughable, yet at the same time sad and disgusting, the New Order Church really is. What I sat through was truly a total "Mess", as you often call it.
First, the presbyter was 30 minutes late, with a female "pastoral associate" trying to entertain the people every so often, assuring them the Mess would start soon. Then it all started with an elderly woman at the piano singing, in a manner similar to Edith Bunker, the Byrd's pop song Turn, Turn, Turn. Her singing was so horrible that half of the congregation was laughing as the presbyter processed up the center aisle. We had to endure throughout the service some of the most horrible music I have ever heard.
Most people do not realize just how much of the Traditional Latin Mass was cut out with the New Mess of Paul VI. But what amazes me is that many presbyters take it even a step further: they barely use Paul VI's New Mess "Missal" at all. This memorial for the dead that I attended had almost no use of that Missal, just spontaneous, made-up prayers at the beginning and end.
Most of the Mess consisted of the presbyter entertaining and speaking to the congregation. Then, as the New Bible were being read out, invariably by lectoresses, the presbyter was turning on air-conditioning units up and down the side aisle, producing "beep beep beep beep beep" as he played with the thermostats!
In his sermon, the presbyter assured us that all our loved ones are in heaven, as if Hell and Purgatory aren't even possibilities. Also, of course, there were many "ministresses" gathering around the "table" to help distribute the cookies and grape juice. And everyone, whether they were Catholic or not, were invited to partake. I did not partake, of course, but I had to sit there and watch people that I know live a life of public sin, such as cohabitation and divorce/adultery, not to mention the non-Catholics, go up to receive the cookie.
As we know, a few Novus Ordo "conservatives" try to pretend that the Novus Ordo is Catholic. The EWTN Cable Network, for example, lives in a Fantasyland, putting out that John Paul II is totally orthodox, while he himself "presides" over "liturgies" that are spectacles of clapping, dancing, semi-naked natives, and pop entertainment. The EWTN crowd tries to dress up the Novus Ordo with a little Latin and chant, but it's a counterfeit. It's like putting a little gilt on a cigar-store ring band. It tries to make the Charismatic movement compatible with Catholicism, which is impossible, as Charismaticism is a heresy, and one of the most stupid heresies at that.
I know that your readers know all of this, but some of them still don't have the courage to turn their backs completely on the Counterfeit Mess and Counterfeit Church. They are like heroin junkies, who know that the drug is no good for them, but they still feel compelled to keep "shooting up" anyway.
I felt the need to say that I finally "get it". U.S. Novus Ordo parishes have no resemblance to true Catholicism. The thing is, as Catholics we have no obligation to put up with all of this, that we do not need to support heresy, schism, and nonsense. We need not obey those who would dilute or totally destroy the true Roman Catholic Faith. I'm certainly not going to!
Our Church used to be the inspiration for the best art the world has ever produced. Musicians were inspired to create their most glorious works, such as Bach's B-Minor Mass. Architects were inspired to create their most magnificent structures, such as Chartres Cathedral. Artists were inspired to create their most inspiring masterpieces, such as Michelangelo's David or Pieta. These were works that Catholics could point to with pride as the sublime beauty produced under the influence of the True Religion, the Roman Catholic Religion, which carried into Christian times the best of Greco-Roman classicism.
Now the Church of the New Order is the panderer of the most vile trash-art. Many critics have pointed as examples to that scrawny, even devilish-looking crucifix-staff that the post-Vatican II popes carry around, or to the trash-pop music of Koombayah, accompanied by the profane guitar.
And then there are the great modern New Order cathedrals, prime among them the Taj Mahony in Los Angeles, the most ghastly, pagan structure yet conceived by the mind of the Novus Ordo Seclorum. Such trash art speaks volumes about the Philistine cesspool that produced the New Order.
First, let me introduce to you the Electric Chair, complete with chest band to restrain the occupant. This object is actually the episcopal throne in the cathedral. Perhaps in this case the artist was prescient. If he had only hooked it up with electricity, he might have gotten rid of some of the "Mafia" bishops of the U.S., who have suborned, and even participated in, perversion and corruption of all kinds!
Now, let me introduce you to the object above. I doubt that any of you have the foggiest idea what this "objet d'art" is supposed to be. Believe me when I tell you that this is the cathedral's tabernacle of reservation! Now we know why the Novus Ordo sectarians don't believe in the Most Blessed Sacrament any more. This looks like some slimy monster from the film Alien!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You don't have to argue against the Church of the New Order. In the Latin legal phrase, Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. If it looks like trash, acts like trash, sounds like trash, it's trash.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The Associated Press and the Washington Post are reporting that the New Vatican and the Eastern Orthodox have signed an agreement settling their differences over the Creed. This settlement was apparently reached by the New Vatican's totally caving into the false theology of the East and agreeing to adopt the schismatic Eastern Orthodox Creed. The New Vatican has apparently abandoned the idea that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son (Filioque), which was the final theological point on which the Eastern Orthodox went into schism from Roman Catholicism in 1054.
Word is that this schismatic form will now be the Creed used in all Novus Ordo sect churches. This abomination still needs Vatican approval, which I am sure it will receive. If so, will this act officially put the New Vatican in schism with itself? Will we finally have the situation of the Mystical Body appearing as dead and in the tomb as was Our Lord's physical body was for those three days before a miraculous Resurrection?
Fr. Moderator Replies
More and more authors are beginning to posit that the Vatican has been in schism with itself since 1964, when Vatican II said that the Roman Cathollic Church is only a part of "the Church of Christ," not "the one true Church of Christ," as has always been held.
Yes, you will see the Novus Ordo sect departing farther and farther from Roman Catholicism. It's about at Pluto now; pretty soon it will hurl itself outside the realm of the Solar System entirely. It will patently become part of the New World Religion (if it hasn't become so already), the Novus Ordo Seclorum, as our federal seal puts it.
What is really laughable about all of this is that the Filioque is in the Athanasian, or Quicumque Creed, which derives from the teaching of school of the Eastern Father and Doctor of the Church, St. Athanasians, eponymized as the Defender of the Faith. So, the Easterners that went into schism in 1054 were spurning the teaching of one of their own greats!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been reading more and more statements by conservative columnists in supposedly traditional publications that appear to give a downright false history of the Traditional Catholic Movement. I look in vain for the names and descriptions of the real founders of the Movement: DePauw, Wathen, Omlor, Fenton, etc., but never find these names mentioned. Instead, aside from a passing mention of Abp. Lefebvre, all they talk about are names of very recent reverts from the Novus Ordo, like Fr. Zigrang, who served the New Order for many years. What is going on here?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I've noticed that myself, and indeed the Traditional Catholic Movement is not well or accurately represented by these columnists. Their problems arise from several causes, I think:
I think that your point is well taken. When these semi-traditionalists write a laudatory piece featuring the contributions of our "pioneers": DePauw, Wathen, Omlor, Fenton, etc., then I'll begin to believe that the semi-traditional columnists are truly sincere rather than merely propagandists for a narrow vision of the Traditional Catholic Movement, who do not do its breadth and depth the justice it deserves.
It seems that the New Vatican has a blind spot when it comes to Communist China, which has a "Patriotic" Catholic Church, answering to the government of China rather than the New Vatican (as opposed to the Chinese "underground Church," which does not answer to the government) and preserving traditional Roman rites, exclusively up to a few years ago. According to CN, Roger Cardinal Etchegaray now says that the Chinese "Patriotic" Church is "part of the Universal Church." China has one Catholic Church "with two faces, that's all." Compare this situation with that of traditional Catholics, and you'll easily see the hypocrisy of the New Vatican.
The New Vatican, of course, cares nothing about Catholic doctrine, only about power politics. Communist China persists in publicly murdering and imprisoning Novus Ordo presbyters and religious, but the Vatican raises nary a word. Why? Because of politics.
When the Chinese Patriotic Church consecrated bishops without the New Vatican's approval, you would have thought that they would be excommunicated, right? After all, that's what the New Vatican purported to do to Archbishop Lefebvre. Wrong! The pope wrung his hands a bit, but no excommunications. Why? Because of politics. Poor Abp. Lefebvre just didn't have as much political clout with the New Vatican as the Chinese Communists!
So, those that hang on every word of the New Vatican now need have no problem with the Chinese "Patriotic" Church, or, for that matter, with the Polish National Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, or Old Catholicism. For traditional Catholics, these are all fully valid sacramentally, but are to be avoided because formally schismatic. Apparently, the New Vatican considers them schismatic no longer.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
In the Latin version of Lumen Gentium, the word that is always translated into English as catholic is spelled two different ways. In one instance it is spelled catholicam as in Haec est unica Christi Ecclesia, quam in Symbolo unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam profitemur.... In another instance it's spelled catholica as in ... subsistit in Ecclesia catholica..... I'm ignorant of Latin and so would like to know the purpose of the different spellings.
Fr. Moderator Replies:
It is not really a question of spelling. Unlike English, for the most part, Latin is an inflected language; that is, the inflectional endings of words show the syntactical relationship of the words to each other in a sentence.
For example, in English, man bites dog and dog bites man mean two different things because of the different word order. In Latin, the inflectional endings of the words determine the meaning, and the order is immaterial. So, in vir mordet canem, the man is doing the biting, even when the word order is canem mordet vir. To reflect the opposite meaning, the endings have to be changed: canis mordet virum.
In your first example, catholicam is the direct object of profitemur, and so is in the accusative (objective) case, which typically ends in -m. In your second example, catholica is the object of the preposition in, which requires a different case (the ablative), which ends in -a for this word.
In English, we have some inflections remaining. For example, the 's in dog's indicates that the dog possesses something. Dogs indicates the plural: more than one dog.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What is the difference between correcting someone for what he does and judging him -- which we're not supposed to do? Are they the same thing or not? The line between the two is not clear for me.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It's surprising how many people don't think this basic principle through. It is really quite clear when one understands the meaning of the Scriptures, not just reads the mere words. That is where the guidance of the Church is so necessary. As the Ethiopian said to St. Philip: "How can I [understand the Scriptures], unless some man shew me?" (Acts of the Apostles 8:29/DV).
Of course we must judge, and it is quite proper and necessary to do so. Otherwise, we would have to adjourn the courts indefinitely, open all the prisons, let children disobey their parents, allow murderers to go free, and so forth. Everyone judges his own and other people's actions a thousand times a day. We all know this. It is perfectly right and natural.
We do not, however, have the ability to judge the internal, subjective soul. Only God can do that because we have no way of knowing for certain what a person knows or thinks internally. We can, and must, judge his external, objective acts -- to ensure that they conform to true religion and civil law.
A deceptive, unCatholic interpretation of this principle is being spread around by the New Order Church. "Don't judge immoral acts," it says. If a Novus Ordo presbyter engages in the corruption of youth, don't judge. If a person engages in perverted acts, don't judge. If a person engages in paganism, don't judge. Nonsense! The Roman Catholic Church has never proposed such an erroneous teaching.
On the contrary, the great theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, teach clearly that we must judge and correct to rout our error within the Church. To do otherwise would be to let error perpetuate itself and would result in the destruction of the Church. And that is about where the New Order Church is now.
It has been taken over by false doctrine ("the Jews don't need to recognize Christ," "all religions are equal," "we all worship the same god") and immorality (yet another bishop has been deposed because of an incident related to drunk driving, the U.S. bishops act like a "Mafia" according to their chief investigator, etc.) No wonder there are so few "vocations" to the New Order presbyterate. What person in his right mind would want to join a Mafia!
And can't the lion's share of the blame for this shameless state of Holy Mother Church be laid at the feet of him who is most responsible for it? The one who, having the "fullness of jurisdiction" can't seem find the words to decry the corruption of the U.S. (and other) bishops? Who can't judge them and exile them to the outer darkness where they have placed themselves? The one who allows his cardinals to propagate the most unCatholic doctrines to confuse the faithful, without a word of correction?
No wonder St. Thomas Aquinas envisaged the necessity of correcting even the pope when in error!
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