From the mountains of Germany, we bring you the "Wildflower Mess," sponsored by the Jesuit Community University of Freiburg. On August 24, 2003, an "Ignatian Hike" was held, capped by a Mess. Here you see the "species," in this case German rye, served on the rocks amidst wildflowers. I've heard of "green," but this is ridiculous! For further information, click on the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery department.
From Houston, we bring you the "Pub Mess," in which, on December 26, 2003, a presbyter performed Mess in a pub, accompanied by guitars and saxophone. Just can't wait for Mess to come to your corner pub, eh? For further information, click on the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery department. [N.O.W.]
It's amazing how far this pope and the New Vatican have sunk in so short a period of time. Just twenty years ago, the pope presided while Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic offered Mozart's Coronation Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.
Now we've got the "Rock Pope," who uses the Basilica of the First Pope to sponsor vulgarity. According to an news report, "In an unusual spectacle at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II presided January over a performance of break-dancers who leaped, flipped and spun their bodies to beats from a tinny boom box. The 83-year-old pontiff seemed to approve, waving his hand after each dancer completed a move, then applauding for the entire group. He watched the performance from a raised throne. During the show, one dancer ... planted his head on the inlaid marble floor of the Vatican hall and spun to loud applause from his group and from Vatican officials. Another performer flung his body around in a series of spins and handstands." Shades of the "Papal Clown Mess"!
That earthquake you heard was all the popes buried in the Confession under St. Peter's altar simultaneously turning over in their graves. Would any one of them, many of whom heroically fought paganism in their pontificates, not want to disown this "Rock Pope"?
According to a biannual Zogby poll, Novus Ordinarians in the United States so strongly identify themselves first as Americans before they think of themselves as Catholics that the church is in danger of losing its identity. (I would say has lost its identity.) Especially among younger people, religion plays an increasingly smaller part in how people think of themselves.
The poll showed that 63% of Novus Ordinarians accept that "another religion is as likely to lead one to God as Catholicism is." They have swallowed the "we all worship the same God" line. 52% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 don't believe that there's anything "special about the Catholic Church that is not found in other religions."
Doctrinally, it appears that the vast majority of young Novus Ordinarians are at least material heretics. 71% deny the dogmatic teaching, expressed in the Apostles Creed, that Christ arose from the dead.
Surely no one can say that the New Order apparatus has not been diabolically effective in destroying the Roman Catholic Faith, not only of this generation, but of the next. Just another accomplishment that "St. John Paul II the Great" can have carved on his tombstone.
No doubt you've heard all the recent crossfire about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Did the pope see it? Did the pope say, "It is as it was"? Does anybody care? Now it seems that two leaders of extremist Jewish groups are peppering the media with reviews after posing as Christian pastors so that they could attend an advance screening. Perfidi Iudaei indeed.
According to a news report, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League of the extremist B'nai B'rith and Rabbis James Rudin and David Elcott of the American Jewish Committee paid their way into the Global Pastors Network conference in Florida. They sat unnoticed the evening of January 21 among thousands of Christian pastors, who had been addressed earlier in the day by Gibson himself. (It should be pointed out that other Jewish leaders have previously condemned Foxman and company.)
Foxman, who had been spared from the Nazi persecutions by a French Catholic family, who protected him during the War, and the other rabbis told The Washington Times that they registered for the conference under a fabricated church name and signed a non-disclosure agreement regarding contents of the film. Well, well. It seems that these three extremists are self-confessed liars and cheats. It appears that they follow not the Mosaic Law, but the Jewish Talmud, a latter rabbinical book, which permits Talmudists to cheat Gentiles. To be fair, one must point out that not all Jews are extremist Talmudists; there are many who follow the Mosaic (Old Testament) law.
But here's a real shocker from the gutsy Mel Gibson. In a New Yorker interview, he had previously said that he had eliminated the famous line from St. Matthew's Gospel: Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros [His blood be upon us and upon our children]. He had eliminated it because if he included it, he would be killed. But the Jewish leaders after the screening complained that the movie includes that very verse!
There has been a lot of loose talk going around, in the discussions of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, that Vatican II "changed" the Church's teaching on the Jewish people. That's the kind of ignorance or disinformation that marks uninformed newswriters or propagandists that abound today. Here is one translation of the actual text from Vatican II's Decree Nostra Aetate, para. 4:
True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (John 19:6); still, what happened in His Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.
The Modernists in de-facto control of the Council had tried to absolve the Jewish people of all responsibility for the death of Christ, but that position went too far in contradicting the constant position of the Church since Apostolic times, based on the eyewitness reports of the Apostles. Therefore, to garner a majority vote for adopting any decree, the document had to be changed. A draft passage proposed by the Modernists, absolving the Jewish people from deicide, was replaced by a simple direction to Catholics to avoid presenting the Jewish people as guilty of such a crime. The decree as adopted did not address the question of whether the Jewish people were actually were guilty or not.
It must be made clear, however, that we're not talking here about individual Jews. Christ was the Messias for both the Jews and the Gentiles. Many Jews, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, and the crowd shouting Hosannas, did come to accept Christ as the Messias. But it cannot be denied that, historically, the "Jewish people," that is, the people taken as a whole in biblical times (and even up to the present day) have not accepted Christ as their Messias.
Isn't the New Order ridiculous? We've had so many years of pointless "theological" debates over: Is the New Order schismatic/heretical, is the Novus Ordo Mess intrinsically evil or just evil, does the New Order have a priesthood any longer, is the pope the pope? Megalitres of ink have been spilled by "conservative" New Order periodicals over these issues and "conservo-traditional" periodicals that try to respond to them in an endless cycle of "debate." It reminds you of the mediaeval debates on how many angels can stand on the head of a pin, doesn't it?
Forty years of observation of this New Order, perpetrated on Catholics since at least 1965, have led me to a different conclusion. The New Order is all nonsense. It's not worth "debating" with. Anybody who wants to justify a Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo "service"; anybody who wants to justify the Balloon Mess, the Cardboard Box Mess, the Gay Mess, the Papal Woodstock Mess, and all the rest; anybody who wants to defend cardinals teaching blatant heresy, as that Our Lord Jesus Christ is not the Messias for the Jews, only the Gentiles -- well, let those people go pound sand. Don't give them credibility by trying to "debate" them. Just stand by your guns and call it what it is RIDICULOUS!
This latest story from the United States shows just how ridiculous the New Order is. At one time the Church stood for morality. Now we've got bishops embezzling, bishops fornicating, bishops sodomizing, bishops acting like barbarians in destroying churches and Roman Catholicism. The vaunted New Order Church of the "New Pentecost," the "New Advent," the "New Peace," or whatever they want to call their ridiculous apparatus has completely lost its sense of Catholic morality.
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, it seems that peace officers shut down Pastor-Presbyter (the news article uses the term "Reverend," but I refuse to apply that term) Prince of Peace New Order Parish for trafficking in marijuana on church property. What's next: the parish running an abortion mill?
Also involved was a second man (not a clergyman), unemployed and living at the rectory. This man was caught with two baggies of marijuana and $1,100 in cash. The suspicion is that the parish was selling marijuana from the rectory. Both the presbyter and the man were charged with felonies.
Now, we're not talking here about one plant, but 35, together with elaborate cultivation materials: grow lights, electric transformers, air purifiers, and books on growing cannabis entitled Opium for the Masses, Marijuana Growers Guide, Marijuana Medicine. And cultivated they were. Some of the plants had been grown to a height of well over a metre.
And now we get the Jeffrey Dahlmer defenses from the New Order parishioners. Said one parishioner: Pastor was such a "deeply spiritual man. I can't believe he would do anything that God wouldn't want him to do." PUH-LEEZ! This Novus Ordinarian is so daft that she would make God Himself out to be a trafficker of marijuana!
Said another parishioner: "I love pastor, and we have great faith in him, and we'll stand behind him all the way." No doubt this Novus Ordinarian will plunk even more money into the collection plate next Sunday to subsidize more trafficking!
Now, here comes the best one. "He lives out his religion." And what religion is that, pray tell? Well, as Paul Harvey says, here's the rest of the story. This presbyter-pastor is a -- YOGI. He brings new parishioners into the parish not through Catholicism, but through Sacred Ground Yoga. (Eastern pantheistic teachings have actually taken over Catholicism in many New Order churches.)
Why are these Novus Ordinarians so dense? The police admitted, "We heard whisperings for some time. This wasn't a fishing expedition. What we found in there is what we expected to find."
Wake up, Novus Ordinarians. Your pastor-presbyter is a felon! If you had any Catholicism left in you, you'd run him out of town on a rail, just as the early Christians did with their errant clergy.As I said, the New Order is not Catholic. It's not religion. It's RIDICULOUS.
It is amusing that one of the terms so often thrown around by Novus Ordo sectarians against traditional Roman Catholics is schismatic. It is amusing because the New Vatican doesn't recognize "schism" any longer. The term is not used by the New Vatican, but only by local Novus Ordo sectarians trying to win a propaganda war against the traditional Roman Catholic Faith by tiresomely trotting the old lie out.
The New Vatican has "reconciled" itself to Old Catholics, to the Polish National Church, and to the Eastern Orthodox. Excommunications for schism not longer exist for these organizations from the New Vatican's perspective. So, as if it meant anything to traditional Catholics anyway (it shouldn't), the New Order "recognizes" and is "reconciled" to them.
An even more salient proof case is that of the Communist Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association Church. This Church is (or at least used to be) traditional Roman Catholic, offering the Mass and Sacraments in the traditional Roman Rite throughout Communist China. It is recognized by the Communist government. The only provision the government makes is that the Church can't have official contact with the Vatican. In other words, it traditionally would have been considered schismatic.
Moreover, that Church has from time to time consecrated bishops, without the Vatican's approval, of course. Such a consecration happened a year or two ago. Now, if the New Vatican were to be believable as a Roman Catholic organization, it would excommunicate the new Chinese bishops and their bishop-consecrators, just as it purported to "excommunicate" Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop de Castro Meyer and those whom he consecrated.
But the Vatican did not do so. The pope simply stated that he was "sad." If anything, this papal failure to act confirms what nine prominent New Vatican canonists have publicly stated, that Archbishop Lefebvre and company were never legally "excommunicated" either.
Now word comes that the New Vatican has de-facto "recognized" and "reconciled" with the Communist Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association Church. Fr. Francis Wang Yijun, who died on January 16, 2004, at age 86, received papal "recognition" shortly before his death. If anyone is a schismatic in the traditional definition, Fr. Wang certainly was. He specifically and publicly affiliated himself with the government-approved, "schismatic" church in his last years. Yet he received an Apostolic Blessing from Pope John Paul II congratulating him on the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination. Fr. Wang was at the time still a member of the schismatic Communist Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association Church.
So, what is all this nonsensical, loose talk by a vocal few Novus Ordinarians of the "schism" of traditional Roman Catholics? The only schism is the New Order apparatus, which has cut itself off (Greek schízein) from the Roman Catholic Church by rejecting the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Catholic Mass and purporting to impose a Protestant-Masonic-Pagan "New Order" service on the Church, which action doctors of the Church define as a schismatic act on the part of a pope.
No, Virginia, traditional Catholicism is not "schismatic." It is Roman Catholic -- which is more than can be said about the Novus Ordo! [From CNS sources]
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I would like your opinion on the matter of the Ecclesia Dei Commission in general, given that it could be just another "optics" group created by the Vatican to make it appear as if the concerns of traditional Catholics were being seriously addressed, but are in fact not.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Ecclesia Dei Commission is an organ of the New Order. Its purpose is clearly expressed by the fact that the Apostolic Letter was issued just two days after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops to hand down the traditional Roman Catholic Faith. If the pope and the New Vatican were in any way attached to the Traditional Latin Mass, this letter would have been issued in 1970, when the New Order service was introduced, or in 1984, when a general "indult" was first given, not in 1988, almost twenty years after the damage was already done.
No, the New Vatican was scared to death by Archbishop Lefebvre's action, afraid that their Novus Ordo jig might very well be up. So, two days after that courageous action, the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei was released. That it was written in great haste is quite obvious. There are clearly three Latin styles in the original, indicating that it had not been polished or fully vetted. (This difference is not apparent in translations.) Nor is it in the usual form of an indult. Its authority is quite unclear and, as subsequent developments have proven, subject to 3000 different interpretations by each of 3000 diocesan bishops.
The Commission was established at the same time, but shortly it was very clear that it was simply a paper tiger to keep traditional Catholics from finding the true Mass and to force them into a Novus Ordo parish situation with a little occasional Latin "frosting." The Cardinal-Prefect of the Commission made it clear publicly that the Commission and the "indult" were only temporary and that the work of the Commission would be shortly wrapped up. Here is the report of Bishop Diarmaid O'Sullieabhean, Irish bishops' representative on the International Committee for English in the Liturgy (ICEL):
I must tell you that, when on an official visit to Rome last September [1992], other Irish bishops and I visited the Commission, Ecclesia Dei. The President, [Antonio] Cardinal Innocenti, opened the discussion by telling us that this was a temporary Commission, which is to work itself out of existence.
Basically, as you have expressed it, the "indult" Mass is a loyalty test. Catholics going to an "indult" Mass (more and more of which our correspondents around the world are telling us are really pseudo-traditional Masses, not following even the "modernized" rubrics of 1962) are generally ignorant of the fact that in doing so they are publicly stating by their action that they accept the unCatholic New Order, represented in the fabricated Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo service of 1970, since the very terms of the "indult" provide:
a) that it be made publicly clear beyond all ambiguity that such ["indult"] priests and their respective faithful in no way share the positions of those who call into question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970 [translated from Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale (LXXVI, 12) 12/01/84].
Curiously, even the Cardinal-Prefect of the Holy Office at the time, the #3 man at the Vatican, "called into question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude" of the Novus Ordo Missal!
I think that the Ecclesia Dei Commission would have been wrapped up by this time, except that everything has been in limbo for several years because of the pope's medical condition. That is why Cards. Hoyos and Kaspar are playing Dungeons and Dragons with one another over the issue. In effect, the Commission has been wrapped up in all but the legalities since its issuance of Protocol 1411 of 1999, which dictated that no priest, not even priests of the "indult" societies, could be "indult" only, but had to perform the Novus Ordo service when requested by the diocesan bishop.
I have no doubt that there will be no "indult" left after the next pope, so "indult" Mass attenders ought to be transferring now to a non-"indult" Mass, while they still can. The day is fast approaching, so all the reports say, when the "indult" rug will be pulled out from under them.
I have recently received from TRADITIO correspondents a number of news articles indicating that the New Vatican and the pope are losing their grip. Actually, this has been evident for quite some time -- at least since 1995, when the pope said in Ut Unum Sint that he was willing to find a "new situation" for exercising the papacy, if that would satisfy oecumenical goals.
Now the process of disintegration is in full swing. The current pope has de facto ceded his authority, and Modernist cardinals are not even observing the normal etiquette toward the pope (yet that's what they always accuse us traditional Catholic of!) and are not loathe to assume publicly that authority for themselves.
For example, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who is supposed to be acting as the Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, is teaching his own heretical doctrine that Our Lord Jesus Christ is not the Messias for the Jews. Or take Walter Cardinal Kaspar, who is teaching that all religions are salvific and is promoting sharing the Novus Ordo cookie with Protestants and even Jews and Mohammedans.
Even in trivial matters like what reaction the pope had, if any, to a private DVD of a pre-release version of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, the New Vatican can't get its story straight. Did he say something? Did he not say something? (As if it the papacy were to stoop to movie criticism.)
Actually, for those of us who lived through the death of Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul I, we have seen a growing disintegration of the papal authority in the latter period of the pontificates. For example, in the latter-day illness of Pope Pius XII, Hannibal Bugnini was able to squeak through abominable changes to the rites of Holy Week in 1956, which a vigorous Pius XII would have condemned, just as he did in 1947. In the latter-day illness of Pope John XXIII, Vatican II strayed from its original purpose and placed itself in the hands of the Modernists, not the original presidents of the Council that John XXIII had selected.
The latter days of Pope Paul VI most closely matched these latter days of Pope John Paul II. At that point the Vatican was in almost total meltdown. Chaos reigned as conservative ecclesiocrats tried to beat back the Modernists, and Paul VI was said, according to one of his closest friends, Jean Guitton, to wander the halls crying, "I do believe, I do believe," as he saw himself guilty of undoing so much of Roman Catholic belief and worship.
But the current situation far surpasses that. The question is: have things gone so far in the New Order Vatican that the genie cannot be put back into the bottle, that any pope's authority has been frittered away, that Modernist cardinals and bishops will be unstoppable in their "dissing" of the pope and the Vatican? And to cover their tracks, these Modernists will "create" John Paul II a "saint" so fast that Mother Theresa's almost presto "beatification" will seem like a leisurely stroll in the park.
Several correspondents are curious about an article that appeared recently by one Kevin Orlin Johnson, who tries to paint traditional Catholic Mel Gibson with that old New Order bugaboo word, schismatic. Johnson identifies himself as a member of the New Order establishment, so naturally he never addresses the question of whether he himself is the schismatic, since Gibson is only adhering to the bimillennial Roman Catholic teaching, while Johnson professes a new religion.
None of this is news. The Novus Ordinarians don't have a leg to stand on, so they like to call traditional Catholics names. What is news is the degree to which this self-described New Order "canonist," who appears not to know even the Novus Ordo canons, and certainly makes no claim to knowing Dogmatic Theology, as that decreed by the Council of Trent, admits:
Ah, Mr. Johnson, you've got the seeds of the truth here. Would that you had the guts of a Mel Gibson to get off the New Order merry-go-round and return to the Roman Catholic Faith.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I went to the Pacific Northwest for a couple of weeks, and the unexpected snow gave me much time to view the cable programming. I had never seen the EWTN "Catholic" cable channel before, and I am truly glad that the Lord sent the cold so that I would see it with my own eyes!
It gave me a good lesson, a clear reminder of why I turned my back on the Novus Ordo. The New Order of their Mess seemed very dignified, but it frightened the innards out of me. It had just enough prima-facie "reverence" to lend it a false credibility for the unwarned and uninformed. To me, it reeked of the false reverence of Protestant Anglicanism, which looks almost Catholic on the outside, but within is only rot.
The Traditional Latin Mass at the SSPX chapel I attended on Sunday was not "floor managed," and the fluidity of the celebrant's Latin left something to be desired. It was, however, authentic, genuine, and most decidedly the Catholic Mass. My aesthetic preferences happily took a back seat to all else, and I am grateful to God for a timely reminder that really "all that glisters is not gold."
Fr. Moderator Replies.
EWTN, since its inception, has been New Order. However, in many instances, Mother Angelica, in her prime, stood up for traditional principles, and that was reflected in the programming at that time. I remember her half-hour expression of outrage in the mid 1990s when the pope allowed a female mime to perform the Stations of the Cross during his visit to Denver. So outraged was Mother Angelica that she said her nuns would go back to their traditional habits, and they did. Today you still see the brown Franciscan habits.
It was widely rumored that Mother Angelica wanted to broadcast the Traditional Latin Mass instead of the Novus Ordo Mess, but the local bishop wouldn't permit it. Many of us were hoping that her influence on television was great enough that she would tell that bishop to pound sand. Unfortunately, she capitulated, so the Novus Ordo Mess continued.
Two years ago Mother Angelica suffered a second major stroke, which has forced her to the sidelines. The impact that her absence from active management of the station has had in further degrading the programming on EWTN is obvious.
The station has gradually replaced its more traditional hosts and replaced them with open "Charismatics," like former Protestant Fundamentalist ("the pope is the whore of Babylon"), now New Order Arch-Charismatic, Scott Hahn, hawking his teaching that is still Fundamentalist-Charismatic Protestant, "spiced up" with a veneer of Novus Ordoism. Many programs originate, in one way or another, from the Charismatic University of Steubenville. This condemned Charismatic Novus Ordoism now imbues virtually all the programs, certainly the EWTN web site and its answers, and certainly its "services."
So blatant has EWTN become as a proponent of the New Order, with a heavy dollop of Protestant Charismaticism, that one should make liberal use of the OFF switch on the TV set, so as not to become polluted with raw New Order propaganda. Our sympathies go to Mother Angelica, and the truly Catholic station that EWTN could once have been under her leadership.
I am a devout traditional Roman Catholic who, along with many other orthodox Catholics, prays for the day when our Church's chastisement will end, the Vatican II tree will be cut down, all that tree's poisonous fruits removed from the Church, and our Faith fully restored to its pre-conciliar glory.
From firsthand experience I wanted your readers to be aware of yet another New Order fraud: the "Neo-Catechumenal Way." Among the most poisonous of Vatican II's fruits is its false oecumenism. The Neo-Catechumenal Way currently enjoys a fairly large following. Much of this following is completely unaware or naive to the explicitness of this cult's self-proclaimed heresies, among them:
The collective ignorance of the Neo-Cats (as cult members are known) is largely attributable to the fact that its 1972 Manual on Mission Statement and Methodology was purposefully withheld from the Catholics at large because of the manual's blatant heterodoxy, which the movement's founders (Kiki Arguello and Carmen Hernandez) perceived to be so contrary to Catholic orthodoxy that even the most liberal and open-minded of the faithful would summarily reject it if the founders' doctrines were not spoon-fed to all newly accepted Neo-Cats.
And, not unexpectedly, dating back to at least 1990, these self-proclaimed heretics were given papal approbation to spread their new catechism and gospel to all corners of the world. Papal endorsements and accolades from thence to now continue to occur and appear in many global multi-media forums. I believe that it is imperative to disclose and to expose this increasingly influential non-Catholic cult, which is infiltrating the New Order, and traditional Catholics may run into this Neo-Catechumenal Way mentality among New Order family members and acquaintances.
One of the best and most innovative analyses that I have read recently on the current situation of the Church appeared in the January issue of Catholic Family News from the pen of Edwin Faust in an article entitled "Living the Faith in Exile." Faust gives as honest an analysis as I have ever seen of the current situation of the Church from the perspective of the common man. He does not speak for any organization or "party line," but views the situation head on, from the evidence of his own eyes and the application of his mind.
Moreover, he carries that analysis into a proposal, which is based on an historical analysis that parallels the current age to that of St. Benedict, when the Roman Empire had fallen, and the transition to what is commonly called the "Dark Ages" was under way. In the sixth century St. Benedict came up with a strategy for Catholics "living the faith in exile," which Faust thinks can serve as the basis of a strategy for our time.
It has been my opinion that an understanding of what is going on in the Church today cannot be understood as much from tomes of dogma as from Church history. Yes, the current age has its unique problems, as all ages have, but in many ways this age is not so different from many other troublesome ages of the past. Probably the most analogous age was that of the fourth century, so brilliantly documented by John Henry Cardinal Newman in his Arians of the Fourth Century, in which, on the authority of St. Jerome, the vast majority of the bishops were heretics, and even the pope was at best colluding with heretics, if not fallen into the heresy himself.
However, although the Church was in dire straits with a pope in the odor of heresy and most of the bishops flaming heretics, it is from this period that we get more great Saints than at any other period. This is the Age of the Great Fathers. Their names have resonated ever since in the Catholic Church: St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Anthony of the Desert, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Hilary of Potiers, St. Jerome, St. Martin of Tours.
But Faust does some quite original analysis in seeing the seeds of the resurrection of the true Roman Catholic Church in that earlier movement of St. Benedict, which is arguably the greatest religious movement in the Church, responsible for preserving both her Roman and her Catholic quality for some 1500 years. Is a neo-Benedictine strategy the solution for our own dark ages? I leave you with a taste of some of Faust's arguments.
My greater patria is the Church. I have from earliest memory loved every part of her: from what Cardinal Newman called "the smells and bells" to her most sublime teachings. The Church is my home, even more than my country. But I, and those who share my feeling, have been dispossessed of that home. We are exiles in a double sense, secular and ecclesiastic; neither our country, nor the institutional Catholic Church any longer offer us a homeland.
Cultural disintegration is so advanced within the Church that when someone tells you he is Catholic, the statement contains no more certainty about his creed than if he had told you he is a Unitarian.
Young Benedict knew that Roman civilization was finished and the institutional Church corrupt.... But Providence had a grand plan called Christendom, and Benedict was to be its chief architect. To counter the great cultural disintegration of Church and Satate, Benedict eventually created a world within a world; a group culture within the general culture.
My interest is in the strategy of St. Benedict as a possible help to us in our present circumstance, for we stand on our own Hill of Shards. The inertial force of Christendom has run out. Our world -- the Catholic world -- is finished. Western culture is finished. The barbarians are in charge -- everywhere. A new dark age is in the making: a world not only contemptuous of the Catholic Faith, not only indifferent to the Catholic Faith, but almost wholly ignorant of the Catholic Faith.
We know, of course, that the Church, in some manner, will persist until the end of time, but we also know that Our Lord asked the haunting question, "When I come again, will I find any faith in the world?" So, the size of the Church, her structure, the extent to which she will remain a notable presence in the world are made open questions by the very words of her Founder.
I do think it necessary that we periodically remind ourselves of the gravity of our situation; we live in a time when the institutional Church is in a state of advanced decomposition, and many of her prelates and priests can no longer be trusted to be Catholic.
As we cling to the Faith, we will be attacked, and the attack will come heaviest from those quarters where we should ordinarily find support. This will be painful and confusing.
It wasn't too long ago that the Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, was being hailed as "traditional." That was on the basis of a statement that he would excommunicate within 90 days "Catholic" Masons in his diocese. "Wow," some Catholics thought, "is there really a traditional bishop left?" There was something fishy about the story, so our local correspondents in Lincoln filled in the picture for us.
The activities of this "traditional" bishop, all covered in the local press, included:
According to Tradition in Action, which distributed a courageous book, We Resist You to the Face, by Atila Guimarães, Michael Matt, John Vennari, and Marian T. Horvat, taking on the New Order apparatus in the manner of St. Paul, Bruskewitz was the real instigator of the offensive to halt the growing tide of support and discussion generated by the book, by surreptitiously engaging a well known anti-traditional periodical to attack the authors with the following goals:
It's the New Order's favorite "When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?" tactic. And it speaks volumes that an "indult" seminary was relocated into his diocese from the East Coast. Hmmm.
This is old news, so what brings his name to our attention again? The Lincoln Journal Star now reports that Bruskewitz is the only bishop in the United States who has refused to participate in the Novus Ordo sex-scandal tracking to which the other U.S. bishops finally capitulated because of the great public outcry.
Somehow the words of the U.S. bishops' own investigator, Governor Frank Keating, former FBI agent and associate U.S. Attorney General, describing the Novus Ordo bishops still ring out: "a Mafia, a criminal organization, not my Church".
Now here's another TRADITIO prediction -- and we've been right on the money with these so far. In the next few weeks, a few Novus Ordo bishops might take tentative steps against politicians supporting abortion or "gay marriage." Some "conservatives" are going to get all juiced up about this and praise these bishops to the sky.
When you see this fulsome praise, remember that these are the same bishops who destroyed Roman Catholicism in their diocese, who suppressed the true Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, and who habitually persecute traditional Catholics standing up for their faith. They too are probably among those who have suborned or (God help them) participated personally in the Novus Ordo sex scandal.
"Too little, too late," just doesn't hack it for a bishop. [From reports by Lincoln Star Journal, Catholic Family News, Tradition in Action, Ecclesia Militans]
Back in the 1970s, sensing that my children in a "Catholic" grade school were not getting any dogma, morality, or worship in their religion classes, I agreed to teach the 7th grade CCD. The texts were abominable -- nothing but "Be nice to each other on the playground."
And so I began to teach them the basic Catholic prayers (which were not being taught to them), the meaning of the Sacraments (which was not in the curriculum), the Ten Commandments (which they had never heard of). As a result, I was asked not to come back the following year as an instructor. And I have an M.A. in (pre-Vatican II) theology!
Our bishops and presbyters have a lot to answer for. I just wanted to let you know that I can resonate with your recent remarks about catechism teaching in these Novus Ordo days. I still personally refer to the Roman Catechism (of Trent), but the New Order will never teach from it since it is based in Sacred Scripture, Catholic Tradition, and the authentic Sacrifice of the Mass!
TRADITIO reported here previously (January 13) that the New Vatican has given up trying to regulate the New Order Mess "abuses." The bishops want the abuses and have told the pope and the Vatican to "get out of their faces."
Hot on the heels of this announcement from the Vatican, Alfred Hughes, Novus Ordo Archbishop of New Orleans, chairman of the New Order U.S. Bishops' ad hoc committee for the Implementation of the Catechism, reported the results of the committee's evaluation of catechetical books at the bishops' conference last fall: nearly two-thirds of high-school catechetical materials used throughout the United States are not in conformity with the [Vatican II] Catechism of the Catholic Church. Of course, we traditional Catholics know that the situation is much worse than that: 100% of the New Order catechetical books used throughout the United States are not in conformity with the Roman Catechism.
So unCatholic has the New Order become that even this archbishop has to admit what traditional Catholics have been saying all along: "a religious illiteracy ... is all too prevalent in the [New Order] Church today."
We traditional Catholics know that it is the ecclesiocrats like this archbishop who have overthrown the Roman Catholic Faith in their dioceses and installed an unCatholic New Order sect. Now some of them are just beginning to realize the horrors that they have perpetrated. Yet, like heroin junkies, they can't kick the habit. They change the bore of the needle; they choose a different location on their arm to shoot up. But they still inject the poison of the New Order into their veins. Their only cure is to kick the New Order habit entirely and to purge their systems entirely of their false faith. And, to do that, they're going to have to go through a very painful withdrawal.
Abp. Hughes has now officially admitted that the errors in the New Order catechisms are exactly what traditional Catholics have claimed all along:
Do you get the idea that the New Order sect is totally out of control? After this Novus Ordo archbishop's admission on behalf of the U.S. Bishops, do you really think that the New Order is teaching the Roman Catholic Faith? [Zenit, 12/24/03]
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am a practicing Novus Ordinarian and trying to find something other than the Novus Ordo Mess. I have attended the Traditional Latin Mass a few times and am edified by it. However, I wonder why is it necessary to be in Latin. I am not talking about the words or ceremony, only the language.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
By a disposition of Divine Providence, the Latin language, the immemorial language of Rome, is the vehicle through which the Roman Catholic Faith has been expressed and carried forth. Its precision and grace uniquely has suited it to this role. This fact has frequently been defined by popes, councils, theologians, and even secular writers, and is part of the dogma of the Church. In a real sense, without Latin, it is not Roman Catholic.
The New Order, which espouses vulgar tongues in worship, has essentially lost the Roman Catholic Faith. Its vernacular expression has led to the most bizarre forms of Messes sauvages [wild Messes]. The doctrine of the Church, so clearly and succinctly expressed in Latin for 2000 years, has become deliberately muddled and error-filled in the vernacular. Most Novus Ordinarians have really little knowledge of the Faith because of the confusion of the vernacular.
In rejecting the vulgar tongues for sacred services, the Roman Catholic Church follows the virtually universal disposition of all religions. The Jews use Hebrew, which was no longer a vernacular language since before the time of Our Lord. The Hindus use Sanskrit, an ancient language. The Mohammedans use a Classical Arabic, which is not a vernacular language.
All too many people have a wrong notion about language. They have been misled into the erroneous notion that "one language is as good as another (which, interestingly, parallels the modern error that "one religion is as good as another"), that one language can be "translated" into another. The reality is that, in the words of the old saw, "the translator is a traitor." Your statement about changing the "language" without changing the "words" is an example of this confusion.
If you change the language, of course you change the words -- and the meaning. The situation of the vernacularized New Order service, in which the basic dogmata and doctrines of the Catholic Church have been corrupted beyond recognition to a Protestantized, Masonized, even paganized service, clearly demonstrates that a change in language can change the meaning 180 degrees.
Aside from the actions of the Sacred Liturgy, the most important component is the form, the words. By dogma, this must be Catholic and Apostolic. You can't change the language, the very essence of the words, and call it "traditional." The Church of England tried that. The High Church has an English service that is very close to the traditional Roman Catholic Mass. But it is not Catholic, it is not a Mass, and the Anglicans have subsequently fallen into one heresy after another.
Whether you realize it now or not, the spiritual angst you are feeling about the New Order service is substantially based in its vulgarization into a vernacular language. With the Latin language of the Roman Catholic Church, you are united with 2000 years of your forebears in the Faith. Without it, you are cut off from the Roman Catholic Faith and participate in a Counterfeit Mess, devoid of any real Catholicism. To use Our Lord's words, "a hard saying," but nevertheless true.
Last month TRADITIO reported on the plans of Francis Cardinal George and the Archdiocese of Chicago to destroy the eighty-year-old St. Gelasius in Woodlawn, a suburb of Chicago. St. Gelasius, originally St. Clara, was designed by Henry Schlacks, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was the architect of some of the most beautiful churches in Chicago. It was built in 1923 in neo-Renaissance style, with tall bell towers.
This is an instructive story about how a local group of traditional Catholics, assisted by good-willed Protestants and others in the Woodlawn Coalition to Save St. Gelasius, beat back the cardinal's plans to destroy one of the most beautiful historic churches in Chicago. Preservation Chicago, LPCI, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation also stood up to the archdiocese. Alderman Troutman even vowed to stand in front of bulldozers. Now there's an example that traditional Catholics can follow!
In June 2002 the archdiocese closed the church because of "declining attendance." Later the archdiocese announced plans to demolish the church because of "rising maintenance costs." When the demolition was announced, traditional Catholics allied with others in the community to have the church declared a public landmark. Rather than embrace the vox populi, which it is supposed to do under the "spirit of Vatican II," the archdiocese fought the preservation of the historic church tooth and nail. Yet many angry letters against the cardinal flooded into Chicago papers.
But there was a catch. As in some other jurisdictions, houses of worship are exempt from the ordinances governing historic landmarks. These exemptions were forced through primarily by Novus Ordo bishops, who would rather destroy traditional churches than preserve them. They are too much a reminder to the New Order of what the real Roman Catholic is. But the archdiocese was hoisted by its own petard. The city contended that St. Gelasius was no longer a "house of worship" because the archdiocese had shut it down!
Just days before the Landmark Commission was to designate the church landmark status, the archdiocese, fearing embarrassment after almost two years of its obstructionism, announced that it had withdrawn its request to destroy the church. The church will now be taken over by a group that will offer the Traditional Latin Mass daily. [AP and local reports]
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Your readers will remember that members of this beautiful, historic Oratory wanted to protect it by having it named an historical-preservation site. Opposed to these were others who trusted certain "assurances" given by the local Novus Ordo bishop, Thomas Doran. The preservationist side had serious doubts about the bishop's credibility, and we were given further doubts when an article appeared in the local newspaper, in which the bishop seemed to be issuing contradictory, even hostile, statements toward preservation of the Oratory. It sounded to us more like a power-play on his part than genuinely religiously-founded desire to save a beautiful historical church and the "Indult" Mass.
Well, our worst fears turned out to be true. All the praise of this bishop as "conservative" (notice not "traditional"), even from some of the people at St. Mary's, who showed nothing but malevolence against those who honestly thought that historic preservation was the prudent way to go, was proven to be rot. This was the same bishop who, on a local radio program, praised Freemasons. This was the same bishop who, when conferring supposedly the traditional sacrament of Confirmation, slipped in elements of the Novus Ordo.
In the end, this bishop's colors were revealed. Seeing that his arguments were not winning over the preservation side, nor that was he getting "obedience," the diocese stooped to strong-arm the women who were leading the cause to preserve the Oratory, fine Catholic women who were deeply devoted to this historic church of traditional architecture, so that they withdrew their application.
This was after the women had suffered from the diocese's attack squad, such as one of our locals, Scott Richert, who has acted like the bishop's personal Minister of Disinformation in publicly attacking those who suggested that the historical-preservation route was the prudent way to go. Again, these Novus Ordo bishops just can't stand to have anyone question their autocracy, regardless of how reasonable the position is.
Now the future of the Oratory is not guaranteed. We are totally reliant on the whim of this Novus Ordo bishop, who can -- and in fact has already threatened to -- pull the rug from under us at any time. [Local correspondents and local news reports]
Yes, you read it right. Right there, on the New Vatican's official web site, under the seal of the papal keys. Right there, under The Roman Curia, at the Fifteenth Plenary Session (April 29-May 1, 2002) of the Pontifical Council for the Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Circus & Carnival People Sector, is a Presentation containing the following instruction:
In this "domestic church" [the parish] and through it, the chaplain plays his role of "ministry of presence" devoted to interpersonal relationships. There are then moments reserved for the entire community such and Eucharistic celebrations under the circus tent and on particular occasions and the administration of the Sacraments.
You Novus Ordinarians can't say that these sacrileges are "abuses unknown to the pope." JP-II is approving and even leading them! Peter denied the Lord only three times. JP-II seems to be going for a new record!
Remember all the P.R. on correcting the "abuses" in the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service -- as if that service weren't itself the abuse? JP-II issued an encyclical in April 2003, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, making a passing reference to "abuses," so the incompetent ecclesiocrats were supposed to get together to issue "regulations" against these "abuses." Well, now word come that things are so bad that they couldn't even do that!
A draft was debated and recalled because its mild provisions were "too conservative" for the Novus Ordo bishops. Several more drafts were made, all rejected by the Novus Ordo bishops as "too conservative." So, the New Vatican has now simply caved in. There will be no "regulations" against the "abuses." The document will simply summarize the "regulations" already in effect.
All this is, of course, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And the chairs don't even get new upholstery! The reality is clear to all, including the New Vatican, that for all intents and purposes, the Novus Ordo service is an ad-libbed, anything-goes affair. Regardless of what the Novus Ordo presbyters may be supposed to do (and nobody seems to agree even on what that is), they are in reality allowed to do whatever they please. You can quote "documents" until you're blue in the face, and it will make no difference: "this is how we do it here" is always the response.
Vatican II and the post-conciliar popes, by attempting to recreate the Roman Catholic Mass with a Novus Ordo service, have let loose a Frankenstein, which no one -- certain not the pope or his New Vatican -- can control. The Novus Ordo service must be killed; it cannot be cured.
As one Novus Ordo presbyter at Rome put it, "From an excessively rigid framework, we have passed over to an excessive freedom,... spontaneity without restraints." But the Novus Ordo is dead afraid of the true Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass -- which is what the "excessively rigid framework" phrase refers to or, in another of his phrases, "a nostalgic return to formalism." Of course, he wouldn't want that. He might have to get rid of his Balloon Mess or Cardboard-Box Mess or Sponge Bob Mess or Witch Mess!
They just don't get it, these Novus Ordinarians, do they? If they need any further proof of the fact that the Novus Ordo service in and of itself, in any form, is unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid, they should just click on the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery department. [CWN]
Because of the fixation on the sex side of the Novus Ordo scandal, many Novus Ordinarians are unaware that their presbyters and bishops are engaged in an even worse scandal: rampant embezzlement of Church funds, their donations! In view of these embezzlements, the fact that Novus Ordinarians last year increased their donations to the New Order Church, which is out to destroy their Faith, makes them a pitiable lot indeed. The Novus Ordinarians just don't get it, do they?
On January 7, a Novus Ordo presbyter from San Francisco, who was charged with more than 200 (!) felony molestation charges and spent three years in jail, according to a local news report, pled guilty to "embezzling more than $260,000 from parishioners and the Archdiocese of San Francisco."
And he's far from the only one. Remember the Novus Ordo bishop of Santa Rosa, Patrick Ziemann, who resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, but, more importantly, left behind a diocese that was $30,000,000 in debt? According to ABC7 News (May 22, 2002), Ziemann had spent the money on "risky investments and payments to the victims" of corrupt presbyters.
Remember the Novus Ordo archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, that virulent enemy of the traditional Roman Catholic Faith, who, according to a National Review (May 22, 2002) release, "paid $450,000 in hush money to buy the silence of an apparent former male lover"? According to the article, Weakland "threw [his paramour] nearly half a million dollars of money that didn't belong to him."
Isn't it interesting that the most corrupt Novus Ordo bishops are the most hostile to traditional Roman Catholicism? Perhaps they, in Shakespeare's words, "protest too much" against what is right in perverse compensation for their personal guilt.
And let us not forget JP-II's collusion in these crimes. What has been his response to rampant corruption in the bishops that he himself has appointed? Did he depose, for example, his archbishop of Milwaukee and strip him of his crozier and mitre? No. What did he do? Nothing. The man was 75, so he was simply allowed to retire quietly. Well, not quite. JP-II at first refused his resignation, and he had to stay in Milwaukee a few months longer before he was finally "allowed" to go. The pope similarly was willing to let the "Hit and Run" Bishop from Phoenix stay on until the locals told the pope "nothing doing," so he was removed.
Isn't it interesting that whenever one stands up to these Novus Ordo ecclesiocrats, they always give in? It makes you think that if only Catholics had "just said NO" to Hannibal Bugnini's and Paul VI's New Mess, the Church wouldn't be going through the agony that it is going through. Even now, that course of action is open, but all too many in their pusillanimity are inclined to "obey" a Novus Ordo apparatus whose goal in this life is to destroy the Roman Catholic Church and replace it with a Protestant-Masonic-Pagan One-World Religion, a Novus Ordo Seclorum, whose "god," in the words of St. Paul, is its belly.
Is it any wonder that crime is rampant in JP-II's Church of the New Order? Where is the exercise of that vaunted "absolute authority" of the pope with which the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians speciously try to deprive Roman Catholics of the Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and Faith? Apparently, it can't be exercised in the moral sphere. This pope might just as well have done the criminal acts himself, for all the interest he seems to take in remedying the criminality of his own men.
After all of this, what conclusion can be reached other than that the Novus Ordo apparatus is thoroughly corrupt and that the Novus Ordinarians are addle-brained, if not morally corrupt themselves, to contribute money to the institution that the bishops' own investigator called "a criminal organization, a Mafia"? Next time a Novus Ordinarian tries to give you a hard time about your right to the Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and Faith, throw this one back at him!
What is it with this pope and clowns? Is there a subtext here? Is it his way of saying that the Roman Catholic Faith is a joke? That the papacy is a joke?
Here we have the weekly Papal General Audience of January 7, 2004. These audiences used to be rather solemn affairs, which pilgrims from all over the world felt privileged to attend. Now, they have been turned into entertainment of the basest sort. A clown from the American Circus plays with a juggling yoyo commonly known as El Diablo [The Devil], as John Paul II looks on.
It used to be that at these audiences the pope used to recite the Pater Noster with the pilgrims. Now, few of them know it. The General Audience has become a hoot. Reports from the Vatican indicate that now people eat, drink, chatter, and in general have a grand old time. You see better behavior from those in a movie theater -- which is certainly not saying much.
In 2002 a "Papal Clown Mess" was performed. Novus Ordo "Clown Messes" are now performed all over the world. For further information, click on the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery department.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This is a statement by a "conservative" Novus Ordinarian. What would be an appropriate Catholic response?
In any event, this does not matter (i.e., the changes in the Mass). Liturgical form, except for the words of consecration of the Eucharist, and the substance of the bread and wine, is a discipline, not a dogma. It can be altered, modified, or completely changed anytime the Church feels it is necessary. When the Church does this we, as Catholics, have a duty to accept it, respect it, and obey it. The Roman Missal of 1962 was abrogated by the Roman Missal of 1970, and this the Roman Missal of 1970 became the norm, and no other Missal was legal to say without an indult (even though earlier Missals were still valid).
If we were to agree with this approach, than the pope can change anything he wants to, and we should accept it, even if the Vatican were to say that Jesus Christ is not the Redeemer? Sounds like spin to me.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It is worse that spin; it is deliberate disinformation. The Novus Ordo has tried to put that one over from the beginning of its phony existence: nothing is permanent in the Faith; everything is changeable. This is pure Modernism, the heresy specifically condemned by solemn papal documents and Dogmatic Council Vatican I from the mid 19th century, when it originated.
You know what? Never -- let me repeat that -- never has a "liturgy" such as the Novus Ordo been fabricated in the Church before. There is no other example of it. No example of someone sitting down and "composing" a new liturgy. All authentic liturgies of the Church are Catholic and Apostolic in origin.
The Mass of St. Peter in Rome, what we now typically call the Traditional Latin Mass, was well established by the 3rd century from Apostolic Tradition and was canonized before the reign of Pope St. Gregory the Great circa 600. This Mass of the Apostolic Roman See, already enshrined from Sacred Apostolic Tradition, was explicitly canonized for all time by the dogmatic Council of Trent.
It is interesting to note that the Novus Ordo service has never been legally mandated. Fr. James Wathen, O.S.J., who was present at the time of Vatican II, in his 1971 work The Great Sacrilege, demonstrated that Paul VI officially directed part of the text (the Ordinary) to be published, but never mandated its use. The rest has been imposed by force, not by law, as it could never be imposed by law in any case. Therefore, the New Order bypassed law and went directly to force.
So well has the New Order propagated this disinformation that many have come to believe that the Novus Ordo service was somehow mandated; legally, it never was. This fact was confirmed by a high-level Commission of nine cardinals appointed by John Paul II to study the matter. They concluded, unanimously, in the mid 1980s that the Traditional Latin Mass could never legally be abrogated -- and in fact never had been abrogated.
The pope's powers are in fact limited. This has always been the teaching of the Church and was explicitly confirmed by Dogmatic Council Vatican I. He is not legally authorized to act by his personal whim in such a matter. Specifically, the Doctors of the Church teach that if the pope were to attempt to change the Catholic and Apostolic rites, he would be a schismatic, and no Catholic should obey him.
Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus sanctus promissus est, ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente traditam per apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent. --Concilii Vaticani Primi, Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi (Pastor Aeternus), capitulum 4
[For the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Apostles.]
But to Modernists, these arguments are never persuasive because the Modernists don't respect the objective authority of Catholic and Apostolic Tradition or Sacred Scripture. To them, everything is in flux and is subject to whatever political whim is popular at the time, to whatever "charism" moves someone, even if that "charism" leads him to writhe on the ground like a snake, as it does the "Catholic Charismatics."
The best argument against the Modernist position on the Holy Mass is its fruits -- a reductio ad absurdum. The Novus Ordo sect is going the way of the mainline Protestants, who today accept notions that King Henry VIII and Martin Luther condemned vehemently. Divorce, priestesses, homosexuality: the Protestant sects get farther and farther from any standard, even of the Biblia sola that they are supposed to respect.
Their religion is really not a religion because it is man-centered, not centered in worship of God. The Novus Ordo sect has gone the same way. It allowed a Masonic "archbishop" to fabricate a "New Liturgy," which is not even defined as a Mass, with the assistance of six Protestant ministers. His work amply satisfied the Masonic Grandmaster of Rome at the time, who wrote a very friendly personal note to this Hannibal of the New Order, praising his work.
No, the fruit of the Novus Ordo service is best rebutted by the evidence of something like TRADITIO's Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery. No further argument is needed; the photos speak for themselves. The Novus Ordo service in and of itself, in any form, is unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid. The examples in the Photo Gallery show the even greater evil -- if that were possible -- as expressed in the local "variations" that have been "approved" by the Novus Ordo bishops.
It seems that even the ancient Hebrews were plagued with "visionaries" who taught doctrines contrary to the Faith. God's will, as revealed in Deuteronomy, is lethal against such people because they lead others astray. In fact, it is a test of your faith whether you follow such "visions" or whether you "follow the Lord your God." So, next time you are tempted to follow "signs and wonders and visions," remember Deuteronomy. Don't! Follow the Lord your God.
13:1
If there rise in the midst of thee a prophet or one that saith he hath
dreamed a dream, and he foretell a sign and a wonder,
13:2
And that come to pass which he spoke, and he say to thee: Let us go and
follow strange gods, which thou knowest not, and let us serve them:
13:3
Thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer: for the Lord
your God trieth you, that it may appear whether you love him with all your
heart, and with all your soul, or not.
13:4
Follow the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and
hear his voice: him you shall serve, and to him you shall cleave.
13:5
And that prophet or forger of dreams shall be slain: because he spoke to
draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage: to make thee go out of
the way, which the Lord thy God commanded thee: and thou shalt take away the
evil out of the midst of thee.
If you're a Novus Ordinarian, don't count on the First Amendment saving you -- unless you're a pervert, a child molester, a blasphemer, or a priestess-advocate. Don't expect "love" either. Novus Ordo bishop Joseph Gossman, of Raleigh, North Carolina, fired John Strange, editor of the NC Catholic, a week before Christmas from the position that he had held for almost a decade.
What was the horrible thing that Strange did? Did he engage in perversion, as some Novus Ordo presbyters have? No. Did he molest a child? No. Did he blaspheme God? No. He published an interview in which the interviewee, author-historian William Powers, was quoted as saying: "To me, the [Novus Ordo] Catholic Church is sick." For shame for stating the obvious and embarrassing the poor Novus Ordo bishop! This bishop, by the way, is known as a "liberal."
Why should we expect anything different? The Church of the New Order, which describes itself as the Church of Love, is constantly exposed to be the Church of Hate, which will do anything it needs to -- lie, calumniate, cheat, steal, rape -- to stay in power. Novus Ordo bishops show themselves as nothing other than petty potentates, who care not a jot for the Roman Catholic Faith, but only for their own power in the New Order -- even against the New Rome.
Our latest Mess comes to us from South Philadelphia, where on the eve of the New Year, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Novus Ordo Church staged its "Mummers" Mess, performed by Presbyter Robert Feeney.
What is a mummer, you ask? Good question! "Men in feathers and sequins. 'String' bands that are mostly saxophones. Blood feuds in a place called Two Street you can't find on a map. 'Wench' brigades that bar women. Trio pantomime clowns. Golden slippers."
It is also scatological. (If you don't know what that means, look it up!) At the Mess, "mummers from the four parade divisions will participate as lectors and gift bearers. Music will be provided by the Mummers Choir and representatives from the various string bands." Oh, yes, did I mention that this travesty is fully "approved" by the Novus Ordo Archbishop of Philadelphia?
I always wonder why the Indultarians make such a fuss about "approval" by Novus Ordo bishops for the Traditional Latin Mass. The latter needs no permission; it is the bimillennial Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, perpetually approved. The Mummers Mess, on the other hand, isn't even a Mass -- "episcopally approved" or not.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Before I became a traditional Roman Catholic, after the death of my parents, I went to two T.V. psychics and was amazed at what they knew. My question is whether the occult is against Catholic belief? I know that the examination of conscience that we use mentions ouija boards, etc. Is it sinful to go to any of these events or "readings"?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, it is. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament warn seriously against any involvement with the occult. Even small involvements can easily lead to serious dangers to the Faith. I personally know of people who thought such things were not a danger and ended up getting swallowed up in witchcraft.The prevalence of witchcraft is astonishing today. Black witchcraft still pretty much hides out, but so-called "white witchcraft," which its practitioners prefer to call "wicca," is widespread and open. Even military chapels that turn down the requests of traditional Roman Catholic soldiers for the true Mass there allow witches to have their services there. No Catholic can have anything to do with this dangerous temptation to the "dark side," if you will.
Reports from the Vatican indicate that the New Order apparatus, in spite of worldwide outcry, is proceeding with its plans to destroy the Fatima Shrine and to replace it with an "pantheistic" structure acceptable to Protestants and Mohammedans.
Elements of the Traditional Roman Catholic Movement have been fighting to thwart this plan of the New Order so that the traditional shrine will remain for Roman Catholics. The Catholic Youth Group of France (M.J.C.F.) organized the distribution of 35,000 pamphlets in Fatima denouncing the destruction. As a result, the group was denied admittance to the shrine unless accompanied by church police.
In addition, a well-known traditional Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Nicholas Gruner, who leads the Fatima Crusade, has been an outspoken opponent of the destruction. He continues to take a critical stance toward John Paul II's "oecumenism."
The crusade against the destruction is gaining more widespread support as time goes on. Even the Portugal News has begun to support the traditional position, and the New Order apparatus is panicking. That apparatus, exposed once again for its anti-Catholicism, is at a loss for to answer the expressions of outrage throughout the world for its barbarism against a place held sacred by many. You can bet your bottom dollar that if Mecca were proposed for destruction, JP-II would be very publicly condemning the idea, but he remains mute on the destruction of Fatima!
Therefore, because the New Order Vatican and its minions cannot answer the charges of traditional Roman Catholics, it does what it always does. In the case of the courageous Fr. Gruner, it retreats to talk of "suspension," "schism," etc., etc. You all know the litany. The New Order condemns everything and everyone that is traditionally Roman Catholic. This is a ploy to cover up the fact that since 1964, the Novus Ordo structure is so out of line with the Catholic teaching and practice of 2000 years that it reeks of schism and anti-Catholicism.
The "oecumenical" conference at Fatima starred celebrities of the New Order. Conferees included Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; José da Cruz Cardinal Policarpo, Patriarch of Lisbon; Bishop Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, of the Leiria-Fatima Diocese; and Monsignor Luciano Gomes Paulo Guerra, Rector of the Shrine.
The next thing the New Order Vatican and its minions do after calumny against traditional priests is to issue denials and lies to confuse the faithful. Fitzgerald, a rabid promoter of Protestant-Masonic-Pagan New Order "oecumenism," tries to deny the fact that the new structure is planned to be "oecumenical." "As far as I know, there are no plans that the building is designed specifically for inter-faith purposes," the lying archbishop is quoted as saying.
This Novus Ordo archbishop's nose must be as long as Pinnochio's! Does he think that Catholics are idiots? The architect's drawings are now public, and the structure looks nothing like a Catholic church, or a religious building at all, for that matter. It looks like a giant tennis racket. Perhaps it is a pagan altar to that modern god, the Great God of Sport!
Fitzgerald is also trying to "spin" deceptively even the apparition at Fatima itself. Surely the apparition was Catholic, not "oecumenical." Many forget that the beginning of the apparitions had nothing to do with the Blessed Virgin, but were Christ-centered, shown by the adoration of the Holy Angels, led by St. Michael, toward the Most Holy Eucharist -- which has nothing to do with anything other than the Roman Catholic Faith. Moreover, Our Lady of Fatima allows the children to see the soul of a child, one of their friends, in the flames of Hell. The Church of the New Order denies the scriptural and dogmatic teaching on Hell, at least implicitly. No wonder the New Order wants to change the Catholic meaning of the apparition!
TRADITIO has been asked by many correspondents what they can do. First of all, forget E-mails and faxes to the New Vatican. They just end up in the garbage can. Force that unwieldy bureaucracy to listen to you: spend a few cents and phone the Vatican at 011 +39 (06) 6988-5255. That's the Office of the Vatican Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, who controls these subagencies and ecclesiocrats. Speak to as high an official as you get hold of. Who knows: maybe you can tell off Sodano himself! He's so eager to be the next Novus Ordo pope that he might even listen to you.
Don't debate anything. You're not calling to engage in "dialogue" or to hear once more the discredited Novus Ordo line. You're calling -- keep it brief and succinct -- to express your outrage as a Roman Catholic to the sacrilege that the pope and his subordinates are perpetrating. Say that you're not going to give one red cent to this Vatican or its local dioceses. Then hang up.
Vatican City is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and 9 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. So you can call early in the morning Eastern or late at night Pacific to use cheaper phone rates.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Please let your readers know that while attending Novus Ordo services, they are being videotaped in many dioceses by surveillance cameras, at entrances and also inside the buildings. In one instance I have seen, there was a large surveillance camera pointing directly at the people kneeling in front of the side tabernacle. Another place had a full 180-degrees camera mounted on the wall.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
If you are one of those who has lost his senses and actually sets foot in a Novus Ordo church, you'd better not be too conservative. Big Bishop is watching you! I wonder what's next for the Novus Ordo: video cameras in its "reconciliation rooms"? This story has the same moral as all the others: Stay away from the Novus Ordo entirely. It's unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid. More than that -- it's now a Peeping Tom!
The following story, received via our French correspondent, François, concerning a situation in Holland, illustrates why the "indult" and the Novus Ordo apparatus are certainly not the way to go when you want to have a Traditional Latin Mass!
Una Voce Holland is a "conservative" association of laymen who try -- a wrong-headed effort! -- to collaborate with the Church of the New Order. They asked the "most conservative" bishop in the country, Msgr. Henricus Bomers (1936-1998), to allow them the use of a church once a year to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. Msgr. Bomers answered that he wants to allow the Traditional Latin Mass, but that it is not possible because he would have too many problems with the Modernists (the "8th May Movement") who do not want any concessions given to the conservatives (let alone traditional Catholics)!
The bishop said to go to the schismatic Syrian Orthodox in Amsterdam because the Church of the New Order now has agreements with the Eastern Orthodox schismatics! This agreement stipulates, among other things, that the Eastern Uniates in Holland must receive the sacrament of Confirmation from the schismatic Eastern Orthodox bishops.
Una Voce officers went to the schismatic Syrian deacon of Amsterdam in charge of the Eastern Orthodox properties and asked to get a church for one Traditional Latin Mass during one afternoon. This schismatic deacon agreed, if Una Voce would pay for it. Una Voce was willing to pay, but in the same Orthodox church every Sunday was also Opus Dei with the Novus Ordo Mess. Opus Dei was not allowed a church in Holland from the so called "most conservative" bishop because even Opus Dei was "too conservative" (even though Opus Dei is a Novus Ordo organization, deeply steeped in "oecumenism").
These Opus Dei members were paying the schismatic Orthodox deacon for the weekly use of the church. But Opus Dei heard about the new agreement and said to him that they did not want Una Voce to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass in the same church. The Opus Dei authorities gave the deacon an ultimatum: "Opus Dei or Una Voce, but not both together." Because the deacon received more money from the Opus Dei presbyters (because they were there every Sunday), he decided to refuse Una Voce.
Una Voce is again in the street without any chance to get a church in the whole country. They are persecuted by their own "conservative" brethren (Opus Dei).
One wonders how long these "indult" groups will beat their heads against the wall, pandering to the Church of the New Order, which we know is not Catholic. Why do I say that? Among many other reasons, because the Church of the New Order sends Novus Ordinarians to the Eastern Orthodox schismatics! If the Church of the New Order does that, it has not a leg to stand on with respect traditional Catholics, who are not schismatic, but the only true Catholics left!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am puzzled, while reading the "Divine Mercy" diary of Sr. Faustina that some paragraphs appear to justify unCatholic practices. Could such paragraphs have been inserted by the Modernists?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Absolutely. Remember that this "Divine Mercy" diary was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum [Index of Forbidden Books] and was specifically condemned by Pope John XXIII. There is much evidence that from that time the diary and associated "Divine Mercy" prayers have been tampered with to conform with New Order Modernism. More recently, "Divine Mercy" has been turned by the New Order into some kind of "charismatic" cult. For further information, click on the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery department and the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ11: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Practices?
This is a very real problem with modern "apparitional" devotions, even Fatima, let alone the obviously false cults such as Medjugorje. People are not getting the original, authentic information, but only secondary and tertiary versions that are "spun," often by the New Order or even by demented "visionaries." For this, among other reasons, I'm sure, St. John of the Cross, the Church's greatest mystic Saint, warned us:
The desire for private revelations deprives faith of its purity, develops a dangerous curiosity that becomes a source of illusions, fills the mind with vain fancies, and often proves the want of humility, and of submission to Our Lord, Who, through His public revelation, has given all that is needed for salvation. We must suspect those apparitions that lack dignity or proper reserve, and above all, those that are ridiculous. This last characteristic is a mark of human or diabolical machination. STAY AWAY FROM VISIONS, APPARITIONS, AND MIRACLES AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. BE CAREFUL OF VISIONS, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE AUTHENTIC.
How prescient this warning has turned out to be in our own postmodern age!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I had to pass this along to you. I found it in Treatise on the Spiritual Life by St. Vincent Ferrer. He discusses exactly what you have been warning us about in the charismatic movement and those who receive visions and "messages". I hope you will post it in your TRADITIO Commentaries so that everyone can read it. Certainly it could do a lot of good for those who are caught up it this sort of thing.
I shall teach you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the remedies against certain spiritual temptations that are very common in these times and that God permits for the purpose of purifying His elect. And although they do not appear to attack faith directly, yet they who carefully examine them cannot fail to see that they destroy the chief dogmata of religion and set up the throne of Antichrist.
The first remedy against the spiritual temptations that the devil plants in the hearts of many persons in these unhappy times is to have no desire to procure by prayer, meditation, or any other good work, what are called revelations, or spiritual experiences, beyond what happens in the ordinary course of things; such a desire of things which surpass the common order can have no other root or foundation but pride, presumption, a vain curiosity in what regards the things of God, and, in short an exceedingly weak faith. It is to punish this evil desire that God abandons the soul, and permits it to fall into the illusions and temptations of the devil, who deduces it, and represents to it false visions and delusive revelations. Here we have the source of most of the spiritual temptations that prevail at the present time, temptations which the spirit of evil roots in the soul of those who may be called the precursors of Antichrist, as we shall see by what follows. Alas! How many souls have been seduced by these deceitful consolations?
The majority of raptures and ecstasies, or, to call them by their proper name, the frenzies of these forefunners of Antichrist spring from this cause. Hence, the only consolation you should admit into your soul in time of prayer is that which is produced by the consciousness of your nothingness and misery; consolations such as these cannot mislead you.
The third remedy is to have a horror of every thought and sentiment, however elevated it may be, which gives indications of a desire to penetrate into the secrets of God when you perceive that they are capable of wounding any article of faith.
The fourth remedy is not to attach yourself to any person, notwithstanding the apparent sanctity of his life, or the capabilities he possesses, when you have reason to doubt that his advice is not according to God, that it is not regulated by real prudence or taught by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers. Fear not to sin by pride or presumption when you despise such counsel, for such is due to zeal and to the love of truth.
The fifth remedy is to shun all intercourse and familiarity with those who sow the temptations of which I have spoken; [or] with those who uphold or commend them. Neither listen to their words, nor be desirous to witness what they do; for the devil will avail himself of that curiosity to captivate you by the sublimity of their speech, and by their outward show of perfection, that you may be led to adopt their evil principles.
I shall further instruct you in the remedies to be adopted in regard to those who propagate, by their lives and teaching, the temptations to which I have referred above. First, then, take little account of their visions, their extraordinary sensations, their ecstasies and raptures, and should they assert anything contrary to faith, Holy Scripture, and morals, despise their visions, look upon them as pure follies, and treat the ecstasies and raptures of such people as the result of a diseased mind. [I]t frequently happens, and especially in spiritual temptations, that falsehood is concealed under the appearance of what is good and virtuous.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Before becoming a traditional Roman Catholic, I was a huge "fan" of Presbyter X. I was just wondering whether you've heard of him and whether you have any clue why someone who seems so knowledgeable on basic moral issues could support the New Order so completely as to say that if you aren't in union with the New Order, you aren't Catholic. He constantly refers to that corrupt version of the Catholic Faith that is in the Vatican II so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church. I suspect that many Novus Ordinarians respect such Modernists in sheep's clothing and choose stay with the Novus Ordo simply because these foxes delude them.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
He is one of those on that Charismatic cable station, EWTN, which in recent years has become a menagerie of birds of the oddest feather in the New Order. It is a sad commentary on the great evil intrinsic in the New Order that even otherwise good people fall into it. That is why the New Order must be completely avoided, even in what the "conservatives" call a "reverent" form. Actually, such a form is even more deceptive to lead people astray. No New Order can be "reverent." It is a contradiction in terms.A better example would be Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Here was a man of intellect and talent who knew better, but fell in with the New Order, at least for a time. My personal opinion is that he did so out of "human respect" for Paul VI, whom he knew personally. Human respect is, of course, a wrong-headed guide, as Our Lord, our exemplar, was admitted even by the Pharisees not to be "a respecter of persons."
Sheen's tenure as Archbishop of Rochester in the late 1960s was a disaster while he tried to enforce the New Order onto the Rochesterians. Actually, they revolted and physically attacked the car in which he was riding when he tried to close down a traditional church. This incident scared the Gehenna out of Sheen, and he backed off. This is how real Catholics treat a bully bishop who is trying to defraud them of their true Faith. The early Christians did the same thing. If one of their bishops departed from teaching the Catholic Faith, they ran him out of town and got a new bishop!
It appears that Sheen eventually realized the error of his ways and spent the latter part of his life in the 1970s and early 1980s condemning the various errors that had been introduced in the name of Vatican II. Unfortunately, however, the man who was so outspoken against the evil of Communism in the 1940s and 1950s was too much a "respecter of persons" and an "organization man" to have the courage to raise his voice against the even more evil New Order that has been attempting to destroy the Church since Vatican II.
But why should we be surprised? Remember that in Our Lord's order knowledge does not necessarily lead to right action. Just look at what has happened to the Novus Ordo cardinals and bishops! Whether they have much knowledge any longer, I don't know, but many of them have been exposed as leading immoral lives and seducing others into the same immorality.
Scripture teaches us that often the humble, with less such knowledge, lead the more virtuous lives. As Our Lady said in her Magnificat: Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
As I briefly surfed the television selections early Christmas Eve day, I came across an excellent example of one of your constant teachings about the Novus Ordo and the scandal that is its calling card to the world.
On the almost always unreliable PBS television station was a program called Christmas at the Vatican. And, I am sad to report, morbid curiosity got the better of me. This "show" was held in the shockingly ugly Pope Paul VI hall. And if it weren't bad enough to strain your eyes with the hideously pagan architecture, the "artists" began to play a veritable cornucopia of Novus Ordo "sacred music."
Musical giants such as Bryan Adams, Dionne Warwick, and Tom Jones belted out renowned secular standards like White Christmas, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, and the ever popular Jingle Bells. Nary a mention of Our Lord or the Blessed Virgin Mary. The front row was well populated with corpulent bishops rocking along like children watching cartoons.
As I brought up the program guide on the way out of this silly show, I noticed that directly following this travesty was a program called Christmas with Chanticleer. What a revelation!
This amazing choral group solemnly processed into the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's statuary room immaculately dressed in black tuxedos with each man bearing himself with dignity and decorum. So sublime were their selections of the Church's deposit of Sacred Music that I was moved to tears with love and gratitude for Our Lord's Incarnation. The camera moved around the room capturing the beauty of one statue after another of Our Lady, the Holy Angels, and Our Lord himself.
The group performed in front of an 18th century crèche and a 7-metre-tall tree adorned with dozens of angelic icons. The audience listened with rapt attention, and not a single one was seen dancing in the aisles. Even on television, one could sense the reverence and awe for the holy and sacred music and what it led your mind to: Our Lord.
Please forgive my rambling but, I was so stunned with the juxtaposition of the two events that I felt compelled to share it with you. Odd it was to see the secular musicians honoring God, while His bishops mocked Him and scandalized the world. To see the secular museum full of religious statues, while the Vatican hall was devoid of them. To hear the hauntingly sublime Gregorian chant sung by laymen in a temple of man's tribute to himself, while popular music blared in very home of the Vicar of Christ.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Surely Roger Mahony of Los Angeles is one of the most unCatholic bishops in the United States. He issued a statement on the Novus Ordo "Eucharist" that even many Novus Ordinarians called outright heresy. The "Taj Mahony," his new cathedral concocted at a cost of $200,000,000, is clearly pagan. Not even visitors know what to do with it. They throw coins in the baptismal swimming pool as if it were Trevi fountain!
It should not be a surprise, then, to find out that Mahony is a blatant promoter of the "gay" agenda. The photo above is officially described as a "picture of priests [presbyters] gathered around the bishop [Mahony] at the 15th anniversary Mass". Notice the rainbow-colored flag, the Radical Gay Movement's war banner.
Obviously, this guy is on an entirely different wavelength from even the New Order "Catholic" Faith, as the pope himself has been personally campaigning against the Gay Agenda. Why doesn't JP-II can this guy? Well, JP-II is no Pope St. Pius X; that says it all.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The position of the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians is untenable. They defend Vatican II versus Trent, and the current pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests, while at the same time defending also the very doctrines of the Church that Vatican II and its aftermath have undermined. This contradiction exists in groups like Adoremus, Catholics United for the Faith, Wanderer, and even the "indult" organizations.
The Novus Ordo personnel, whom the "conservatives" defend with blind obedience, are the very ones reversing as rapidly as they can the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. You can't defend perpetual Catholic truth through the whims of The New Order, and the whims of the New Order through perpetual Catholic truth. It can't be done!
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In the last couple of years, I have seen a decided turn against Novus Ordo "conservatism." More and more of these "conservatives" are seeing the light and publicly calling the New Order apparatus what it is: a "Great Facade," a "Counterfeit Church," engineered by Modernist bishops, cardinals, and even popes, with the assistance of the likes of Protestants, Masons, pagans, and so forth.
The conservatives are beginning to realize that they cannot conserve the Roman Catholic Faith through an anti-Roman Catholic hierarchy. The have seen more than a decade of New Order connivance to delude them into thinking that "Rome" supports them. The truth is out, though. "Rome" has been captured by the barbarians. Even the "conservative" cardinals speak out of both sides of their mouth. These Novus Ordo prelates care not one wit for truth; they care only for power, influence, and ecclesial peace at any price.
The position of a "conservative" group such as Adoremus is increasingly seen by people as laughable. According to this group, the Novus Ordo Mess is perfectly all right; it just wasn't "translated" properly, and they think that they can do a better job. That's like saying that the sugar coating on the arsenic pill is the wrong color, without addressing the important thing: the pill is poison! Just as the New Order Mess, Sacraments, and doctrine are a poison pill -- intended to destroy the Roman Catholic Faith.
The New Order is the spiritual equivalent of the "Mad Cow" disease that is now spreading through the United States and Canada. This New Order disease makes Catholics mad (in the sense of "crazy"). To adhere to the New Order, one must give up reason and pledge allegiance to what the U.S. Bishops' own investigator called "a criminal organization, a Mafia."
Even the secular press is waking up to this fact. A recent article in the Washington Times openly recognized that there is a significant contingent of Catholics who don't hold with the "modernizing" of Vatican II and its aftermath, who question the pope when he speaks of a "New Pentecost." Such articles are becoming more frequent.
Something is obviously afoot, and people are finally waking up to the reality: Vatican II is not the panacea that the Modernists have been trying to put over these last forty years. The New Order ship is sinking, and the people are more vocal than ever in reclaiming their Roman Catholic Faith.
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