In answer to the question, "What do you think of the new liturgy guidelines in Redemptionis Sacramentum?," a Novus Ordo presbyter at Catholic World News responded as follows:
Well, it's all quite lovely, I'm sure. I just wish these liturgy documents would specify the planet to which they refer. What strikes me most is the absence of any sense of crisis, beautifully captured in section four of the Preamble, the unintentionally hilarious quote from the Holy Father: "Certainly the liturgical reform inaugurated by the Council has greatly contributed to a more conscious, active, and fruitful participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar on the part of the Faithful" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia). There is a disconcerting disconnect from the observable situation evident in that sentence.
The "liturgical reform" of the Second Vatican Council produced nothing like the renewal of the Church hoped for, and predicted, by the scholars of the Liturgical Movement of the early twentieth century. In the United States, we have had a Mass attendance decline of more than sixty percent in thirty years. In my Diocese of Brooklyn, Mass attendance was at 18% a couple of years ago; in New York, 19%; in Chicago, 16% -- and these figures were recorded before the clerical sex abuse crisis. The collapse of the Church in her previous bastions of the Netherlands and Quebec, the situation in Western Europe: all of this is well known. Yet we are determinedly told that this is an age of renewal -- an age of more active, fruitful liturgical participation.
I am troubled by the absence of a sense of crisis in this document. It was written for a well-ordered Church which does not exist. It determinedly [sic] avoids dealing with the fact that there is widespread disobedience in the Church, and this document itself will fall on deaf ears for that reason. At some point, someone is going to need to say, "Hey, guys, we have a problem here and it needs fixing."
A very well-known presbyter-author once said to me, "The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (of Vatican II) was to liturgical reform what the Enola Gay was to urban renewal." That was more than just a clever comment: it was a wise, practical observation. When do we get a document that reflects that reality?
Wow! This presbyter seems to get it. He admits that the Church does not exist in the New Order. He admits that the liturgical revolution of Vatican II is a death-dealing bomb! Now the question is: what is he going to do about it? As usual, these Novus Ordinarians simply throw around words for rhetorical effect. They are do-nothings. This presbyter will go right along saying the Novus Ordo facade "mess," making the Novus Ordo counterfeit "cookie," and staying with the corrupt Novus Ordo clergy, in the diocese of Brooklyn yet, one of the worst. Words are cheap. Where's the beef, presbyter?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have heard that it is a grave sin to attend a church service, whether Christian or Jewish, outside the Catholic one. Why is this so?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Because you are committing the grave sins of sacrilege and scandal against the First Commandment by attending a false worship service. Christ established only one true Church, the Catholic Church. The others are heretical or non-Christian or pagan and must be scrupulously avoided by Catholics.
Why would a Catholic, who has the grace of the true faith, want to associate with "strange gods"? You are also committing a sin of ingratitude, as God has given you the true Faith, and instead of holding firm to that, you are "experimenting" with false religions. You might as well worship the Golden Calf, as the Jews did, when they fell away from the Old Covenant!
This pope is not some inconsequential bystander, some "prisoner of the Vatican" curia, some closet "traditionalist." No, he is a flaming proponent of the Church of the New Order, which a few throw-off lines about Latin or the Traditional Latin Mass for P.R. purposes changes not one jot or tittle. It is by his own example that he panders to the worst elements of the New Order. And don't think that that example isn't being followed around the world to justify the most unCatholic activities.
A case in point. More than 150 different Christian (not even necessarily Novus Ordo) groups will come together in Stuttgart, Germany, for an oecumenical "gathering" engineered by the St. Egidio Community on May 8. This gathering is a direct offshoot of John Paul II's visit to Assisi in 1968, at which he was pictured in a Vatican-arranged photograph holding a bonsai tree among clergy of heretical and pagan sects.
The St. Egidio community, one of the prominent "new movements" established in the Church of the New Order since Vatican II, was founded in Rome in 1968 by the Italian layman Andrea Ricciardi. Today there are about 40,000 members, primarily laymen, represented in 60 countries around the world. One of the St. Egidio Community's three main objectives is "to stimulate oecumenical activity." Members are not just Novus Ordiarians, but adherents of heretic sects, who meet regularly for "communal prayer."
And putting the Nihil Obstat on this "oecumenical gathering" that was condemned by Catholic popes through Pius XII, is -- guess who? -- the Prime Oecumenist of the Church of the New Order, one Walter Cardinal Kasper, familiarly known as Kasper the Friendly Ghost of Vatican II, who will hobnob there with Bartholomew I, the oecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Kasper hasn't yet found an "oecumenical" meeting he didn't like!
Who appointed Kasper in the first place? That's not hard to figure. It was JPII himself!
Surely a distinction is to be drawn between the behavior of this pope and that of St. Peter.
Although he recently declined a second "appearance," John Paul II was allegedly the first pope since St. Peter to visit a Jewish synagogue, when he visited the Roman synagogue in April 13, 1986. Yet St. Peter did not go to the synagogue as an "oecumenical gesture" to the error of Judaism. Rather, he went there to convert the Jews to Christ! And he was most successful at this, for Sacred Scripture records: "they [St. Peter and St. Barnabas] entered together into the synagogue of the Jews and so spoke that a very great multitude both of the Jews and of the Greeks did believe" (Acts of the Apostles, 14:1/DRV).
Furthermore, the Vatican Press Office is careful to note that during the visits of John Paul II with the Jews, he has never once dared to pronounce the name of Jesus Christ! It is, therefore, clear for all to see the difference between the nature of Peter's visit to the synagogue and that of the present pope. As the saying goes, this pope and St. Peter are not singing the same hymn book.
Well, it's finally out! That "instruction" that was supposed to correct the "abuses" of the Novus Ordo Mess (as if the Novus Ordo Mess itself weren't the abuse!) has been released under signature of Francis Cardinal Arinze with the Latin siglum, Redemptionis Sacramentum. Originally, the instruction was supposed to instruct, but this pussycat of even a Novus Ordo document has been gutted to slobbering inanity because the liberalists in control of the New Vatican didn't want their precious Novus Ordo Mess touched by the "conservatives" (there are, of course, no traditional cardinals or bishops Catholics left in the New Vatican).
As one commentator put it, the New Vatican ecclesiocrats are preposterously trying to "clarify" something that is so muddled by their own making that it is impossible to fix, unless they throw the whole thing out and return to the true Mass. But these blind men will continue to ride the old nag of the Novus Ordo Mess, praising it to the skies, while out of the side of their mouths, they are now admitting publicly that Vatican II has produced the worst disaster in the Catholic Church since the early Roman persecutions.
The New Vatican has in effect established a new religion, and this new religion, after forty years of trying to fix the unfixable, is tinkering yet again with the latest bandaid, which will never cure the malignant tumors of Modernism, Humanism, Oecumenism, Pluralism, and Paganism that have infected the Mystical Body of Christ. They must be driven out of the Body by the only antidote available, the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments.
Just the length of the document would seem to confirm the futility of Newchurch, which cannot seem to understand the wisdom of the Doctors, Saints, and Pontiffs that preceded this modern age of pseudo "enlightenment." For now we will leave it to others to plod through the verbose 70-plus-page document with 298 footnotes, only 25 referencing any document before Vatican II, and that includes ten scriptural sources, four from Saint Thomas Aquinas, five from Pope Pius XII, and only three from the dogmatic Council of Trent.
Thanks, Cardinal Arinze, but no thanks. We traditional Catholics will stick with Roman Catholic Tradition and with Pope St. Pius V's Quo Primum, which tells everything any Catholic needs to know in a mere three pages. When will these Novus Ordo scribblers realize that it's not length that counts, but truth!
TRADITIO previously reported that on April 16 the Pontifical Commission of Historical Sciences released a statement warning that the decreasing knowledge of ancient languages -- such as Latin and Greek -- is jeopardizing serious historical studies.
On the very same day, the pope seconded this warning by his commission and prescribed that for candidates to the priesthood:
A solid knowledge of Latin and Greek is absolutely indispensable, without which access to the sources of the ecclesiastical tradition is precluded. Only with their aid is it possible, even today, to rediscover the richness of the experience of life and of faith that the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, has been accumulating in the course of 2,000 years.
Now isn't this a case of the pope's locking the barn door after the horses have already gotten out? Do you think for a New York second that the schismatic New Order bishops of the United States will immediately implement the pope's directive? Of course not.
While the Novus Ordo bishops loosely and erroneously throw around the S word to frighten traditional Catholics, whose only sin is that they practice the Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments, it is these Novus bishops, in fact, who should be considered schismatics, since they obey nothing legitimately Catholic that the pope prescribes. Apparently, in their warped minds, what's sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the gander!
One of the most despicable actions (or rather inactions) of the New Vatican, and even the current pope, has been its support of perverts in its hierarchical ranks. I am still waiting for the pope to express outrage against his men, who have spit on him and violated their sacred oaths by personally deflowering Catholic youth and conspired with other hierarchs to turn seminaries and dioceses into virtual brothels.
Everyone knows that the reason beautiful traditional churches are being gambled away like Christ's vesture is to get quick money to pay off lawsuits against the New Order dioceses for these crimes. Now word comes that the New Vatican is suborning perversion in its highest ranks yet again by granting a request by the U.S. bishops, who are behind the perversion of the New Order, to increase the dollar amount of property a diocese can sell or otherwise transfer ownership of without prior Vatican approval. Vatican approval, however, was virtually a token authority, since the Vatican never countermands a New Order bishop. It wouldn't be "collegial"!
For two years, New Order archdioceses and dioceses with more than 500,000 sectarians will be able to transfer ownership of property worth up to $10,000,000 -- yes, that's seven zeroes! -- without getting Vatican approval first. For dioceses with 500,000 or fewer Catholics, the limit will be "just" $5,000,000 million. The previous limits were $5,000,000 for larger dioceses and $2,500,000 for smaller ones. This process is quite suitably called, in canonic terms, "alienation," as it betrays to outsiders (Latin alieni) religious property, as in the recent case of a cathedral in New York City being turned over to the government to be made into a post office. Other cases have turned churches into bars and mini-malls.
The lawsuits are increasing, not abating, as the U.S. New Order bishops' own committee recently reported, and the dioceses need more hush-money fast. Okay, so the bishops are playing their usual criminal game to cover up their crimes, but what floors me is that the Novus Ordo sectarians keep funding the perversion by plunking their dollars into the collection plate with even more fervor than before. Now here's a thought. Have we been looking in the wrong place for the root cause of this perversion? Has it all along been not just among the hierarchs, but actually has its foundation in pervasive perversion among the Novus Ordinarians themselves? Hmmm. Food for thought.
My mailbox is full of babbling about denying U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry "communion" at the Novus Ordo Mess. Of course, we know that this is all a tempest in a teapot because neither is "communion" involved, nor is a "mass" involved. It is all part of the Counterfeit Church, the Great Facade. Who cares whether Kerry has a cookie with his grape juice at his Sunday morning mess?
And what has Mr. Kerry done to deserve the condemnation of the pseudo-righteous Novus Ordo "conservatives"? Why, his position on abortion isn't to their liking (curiously, they don't seem to mention his position on "gay marriage"). Now, isn't that a one-sided perspective! These "conserative" "Catholics" would like to ignore the fact that the most mortal of sins is what the U.S. bishops and their minions (yes, including the "beloved disciple of the New Order," Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska) have perpetrated: the grossest sacrilege against the majesty of God .
The evil of abortion, great as it is, is way down on the list (#5 isn't it?), and doesn't even hold a candle to the grave sin of sacrilege that is condemned in #1 (at least it was #1 when I studied theology). These Novus Ordo bishops (we won't even speak of their gross moral improprieties) have spit on the God they swore a solemn oath to, have vomited on his Holy Mass, have fornicated with His Sacraments. And what is worse, they have dared to fob of this phony, simulated, Protestant-Masonic-Pagan offal and call it "Catholic."
Let's not lose sight of what's really important here. It's not the political games, even those involving important moral issues, but the very denial of God and His true Church that is the central issue. For that, these counterfeit Novus Ordo bishops should cast the beam out of their own eyes and excommunicate themselves! To the Least Reverend Bruskewitz and his cohorts, as Our Lord said: "Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5/DRV).
The dogmatic teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that Our Lord Jesus Christ founded one true Church, the Catholic Church, and that salvation is only through this Church, whose marks are unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. This is a perfectly reasonable doctrine. Why would God found many different Churches, all teaching different doctrines and worshipping Him in different ways?
This dogma is a matter of divine revelation. It is part of the Deposit of Faith, which not even a pope can tamper with. Oh, yes, the Novus Ordo sectarians of the "spirit of Vatican II" have tried their damnedest [sic] to change that doctrine, but they are powerless to do so. Any other teaching is not Catholicism; it is heresy.
The New Order desperately wants to corrupt the process of canonization so that "oecumenical saints" can be made. In the millennial year the New Vatican even went so far as to compile a list of them, including:
It appeared that the New Vatican want to recognize these in some official way, so that it would appear to be "kissing up" to the heretics, but even the Novus Ordo public outcry was too great, so the plan was shelved. But you can bet that it will return!
Just look at how corrupt the current pope has made the process of canonization. He has virtually eliminated all of the protections that his predecessors wisely established to ensure that never would an unsaintly person be erroneously canonized. He eliminated the opposing Devil's Advocate and diminished to the level of a joke the requirement of a significant number of miracles. Catholics cannot know any longer whether a post-conciliar "saint" is actually a saint or not. One might be relatively sure, for example, of someone like a Padre Pio, but Mother Theresa's status has been questioned so widely that one cannot at all be certain of her.
Thank the Lord, the Church's principal theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, foresaw, as he did so many things, that the process of canonization could be corrupt because of factual inaccuracy when the hierarchy didn't do its job. So, he left a theological loophole that appears custom made for Catholics of this era, that canonizations could be invalid because of errors of fact. Whew, saved by the bell!
We frequently hear the propaganda about how the Novus Ordo is the "Church of Love." It is clear that the Novus Ordinarians love perverts, love thieves, and love child-molesters, but do they love a mater dolorosa?
Above is pictured the mother of the man run down and killed by Thomas O'Brien, the Novus Ordo ex-bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, like (in the bishop's own words) "a dog." She weeps, like Our Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross, for the injustice done to her son. This bishop, who killed her son, raced away in his car without even giving the poor man Last Rites, and later tried to conceal his guilt, wasn't sentenced to even one day in jail. Thus, the mother weeps. Even the thieves at Calvary paid the penalty on their crosses.
Did the Novus Ordinarians attending the sentencing take pity on Lille Reed, a native American? Oh, no, the Novus Ordo Church of Love couldn't be bothered with what the Good Thief called "the due reward of our deeds" (Luke 23:41/DRV). Did one Novus Ordinarian console the poor woman who had lost her son? Certainly the bishop-criminal didn't. All local reports indicated that he remained steel-faced during the whole trial and spoke not one word of consolation to the poor mother, as if a secular court had no authority to try his august person!
In fact, Novus Ordinarians showed up at the sentencing wearing buttons with the bishop-felon's picture and the words: "I Love My Bishop." Yes, they love the man who engineered the defloration of their Catholic youth. They love the man who persecuted their presbyters who dared to stand up against the bishop's corruption. They love the man who killed another human being and called him a "dog." This is the love that Christ taught?
I used to pity the poor Novus Ordinarians who had been deprived of the Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments. I used to say: "It's really not their fault. They're just ignorant, being preyed upon by a Novus Ordo clergy that was out to murder their faith." But now I'm not so sure. It is becoming only too evident that these Novus Ordinarians are knowingly participating in the corruption of the Novus Ordo hierarchy.
It's bad enough for a man to murder. But if you provide the gun, knowing that it will be used for murder, morally you're a murderer too. I'm beginning to believe that the Novus Ordinarians, who deliberately play into the hands of theit corrupt Novus Ordo hierarchs, are getting just what they deserve: a phony Mess, phony sacraments, and a phony religion, a Great Facade, a Counterfeit Church.
There is increasing evidence that the New Vatican is coming to realize that it has created a disaster in the Church by pushing the New Order. For the last forty years the popes and the curia have tried to dismantle Roman Catholicism, and now they are seeing the devastation they have caused.
On April 16, the Pontifical Commission of Historical Sciences, founded in 1954 by Pope Pius XII, released a statement on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, warning that the decreasing knowledge of ancient languages -- such as Latin and Greek -- is jeopardizing serious historical studies.
"Since historical sciences must face the ever growing problem of ignorance of the classical languages, which is starting to threaten their very existence, the Pontifical Commission is taking upon itself the duty of stopping this unfortunate void. A historical science that, instead of basing itself directly on the Latin and Greek sources, trusts only more or less reliable traditions, can not be considered serious and this would involve, at the same time, the end of western culture and learning itself," the Committee's statement warns.
This Pontifical Commission must have been reading TRADITIO these last ten years! This is exactly what we have been constantly saying. Relying on "translations" is folly and misleading. Look what happened to the Novus Ordo Mess. The "translations" that replaced the Latin Mass of Sts. Peter & Paul were a counterfeit, a great facade, which allowed all kinds of heresy and paganism to enter in.
Well, you boys of the New Vatican in purple and scarlet, you did it to yourselves and to us. Now how are you going to fix it? With just more idle talk, after the manner of Ratzinger and Hoyos? Or are you going to go back to what Pope John XXIII commanded: that all priests have many years of Latin and Greek and that seminary courses be taught in those languages. If you had heeded John XXIII then, and his precedessors, the Church wouldn't be in the pickle it finds itself in now.
"But if thou forget the Lord thy God, and follow strange gods, and serve and adore them: behold now I foretell thee that thou shalt utterly perish" (Deuteronomy 8:19/DRV). That is the word of the Lord, yet so many these days, more and more Novus Ordo sectarians are falling into the soul-destroying occult.
On March 1, 2003, the New Order Church of the Resurrection, in Solon, Ohio, hosted a Future Church conference to promote New Age spirituality, priestesses, and worship of the Mother Goddess. To accommodate the radical conference, the church was stripped to its bare walls. Then a several large silk banners of the Mother Goddess were hung in the church, depicted first as enormously pregnant, then as giving birth to Creation, including male-female twins.
At a Novus Ordo school in Indiana, advertised as the nation's premier "Catholic" college for women, freshmen were introduced into witchcraft during a literature course, where they were tested on a book by a witch named "Starhawk." An altar was set up in the front (when a pagan priestess dressed in robes was invited to address the class). For opening ceremonies at the school, the college removed statues from the church and replaced them with a shrine to the Earth, where a "circle of blessings" was conducted.
In Colorado "nuns" prayed to the East and West each morning, a New Age invocation geared to the gods of nature. In New York, a crystal was placed by a "nun" in a Blessed Sacrament chapel. You will find these and similar symbols of the occult in every Novus Ordo parish.
The occult is gaining currency all around us, as it always does in confused times. Astrology, ouija boards, witchcraft (both white and black), wicca, charismaticism, Fatimism, labyrinths, enneagrams, Tantra, Taize, yoga, Zen, higher consciousness, self-realization, centering prayer, visions, apparitions, rolfing, gurus, Eckhart, cults, New Age.... On and on it goes.
To the contrary, during this last Holy Week, we heard Our Lord speak against occult (hidden) doctrine, in the Passion as reported by St. John 18:20/DRV):
I have spoken openly [the Latin palam means "publicly"] to the world. I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither all the Jews resort: and in secret I have spoken nothing.
Occultism, in all its forms, is a very serious sin against the First Commandment and can utterly destroy one's Faith and reason. I have seen lives ruined by it. For the sake of your immortal soul, stay away from it entirely.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Can the damage to the Catholic Faith perpetrated by the New Order ever be reversed?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Modern-day Catholics seem pretty ignorant of the grave difficulties the Church has gone through in the past. In the Protestant Revolution alone, half the Catholics in the world became heretics. There is nothing new about trouble in the Church, just differences between the centuries. The Church will get through; we have Christ's promise on that, but certainly the Church will be impacted, just as it has been on previous historical occasions.
Modern-day traditional Catholics seem to whine a lot about their state. Rather, they should unite themselves spiritually with Catholics of so many previous centuries of the Church, who have gone through their own serious difficulties, sometimes lasting for a century or more. At that rate, we've got sixty years or more to go!
We have so many benefits that previous centuries did not. We have unparalleled means of communication: books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, audio and video, and the internet, which have all helped significantly to keep the traditional Roman Catholic Faith alive. We should count our blessings and thank God, rather than carp because things aren't "easy" for us any more. We became soft in the Faith, like the Laodiceans described in the Apocalypse of St. John. Maybe having to drive a half hour or more to the true Mass will make us appreciate the Mass more. We're lucky to have it at all. The English recusants in the 16th century didn't.
Frankly, it occurs to me that the virulent challenge to the Faith that the New Order slaps us with is good for us. We needed a wake-up call to jolt us from the complacency of the first half of the 20th century.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have a question about something that happened to a person I work with. Just after he became engaged to his fiancee (now wife), they found out that she was pregnant. To make a very long story short, he was unable to find any presbyter to perform a "quickie" marriage. The man, whom I work with was baptized as a Catholic, but doesn't practice the Faith. The woman has no religion. All the presbyters he consulted required that the couple be members of the church for at least four months. Eventually, he went to a Protestant church and was married there after about eight weeks of marriage classes. He now goes to church there. I was very surprised that he was not able to find a Catholic presbyter to marry him. Is this normal?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Why are you surprised? Sorry to be blunt, but this fellow turns his back on the Catholic Faith after his baptism, and all of a sudden he expects that everyone will bow to a hasty decision that is the result of living in sin (at least there are no claims here that this was a virgin birth!)? I read nothing here about contrition or firm purpose of amendment on his part. And the proof of the pudding is that fact that, in the end, this fellow converted his vice and irreligion into excommunication by entering into a sham marriage before a heretic minister. I don't wonder that even a Novus Ordo presbyter thought that he was unsuitable for Catholic marriage, as now he is neither Catholic nor married!
Is this situation the basis of a sacramental, maturely-considered marriage, entered into for life? Doesn't it sound more like a quickie "marriage" that will soon result in a just-as-quickie "divorce"? The Church has the obligation to protect the sacramentality of Catholic marriage by ensuring that the parties are serious Catholics, with a serious purpose in marriage, and, if God so favors them, suitable parents for the raising of a Catholic family. One can only wonder what price any children of such a marriage (if it lasts that long) will pay in religion and life.
Sacramental marriage is not something that you enter into hastily because you had an "accident." Sacramental marriage is a mature choice, entered into after sufficient reflection and in the natural course of a life lived as a Catholic. If these two people were practicing Catholics, and yet fell into the sin of fornication, of which they repented and which they sincerely determined to amend, that would be another case. But in this case the parties seem to have no sincere respect for the Sacrament of Matrimony. Not the basis of a Catholic marriage, is it?
I worked for Tom Monaghan for about 6-1/2 years at "Domino's Farms," the World Headquarters for Domino's Pizza, on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, Michigan. At that time he had a presbyter in his employ, who said the Novus Ordo Mess at 8:00 a.m. each workday. At the present time I understand there are three such Messes there each workday, at 8:00 a.m., 12:00 m., and 5:00 p.m. These Messes are attended by those working at various companies in the building, including the major tenant, Domino's Pizza, along with some people from the adjacent Ann Arbor area, who in the past were principally "Catholics" from Opus Dei, a large "oecumenical community" of Catholics and non-Catholics, which has since broken down into two smaller groups.
I believe that Tom Monaghan could be described as "conservative," and even to some extent "ultra-conservative," but he is definitely not a traditional Catholic. He has always been very "tight" with the Church of the New Order, personally and through his organization Legatus, which he started for Catholic CEOs and which now has chapters around the country, and perhaps beyond at this point. One of the things that Legatus does to make an annual pilgrimage to Rome, and Monaghan's donations to the Church of the New Order guarantee an audience with John Paul II.
I've always seen Monaghan's adherence to the Novus Ordo Mess and his "tightness" with the New Order hierarchy as his way of trying to buy himself salvation. He needs the security blanket of the purples, reds, and whites giving him the assurance he seeks and needs to get through the "eye of the needle." It is obvious from his statement in the Palm Beach Post that Monaghan has a very confused notion of the Roman Catholic Faith.
Some New Order sectarians try to make of this Sunday into a so-called "Divine Mercy" Sunday, and this cult has drawn in even some "traditional" Catholics. But what do we really know about this devotion?
A local devotion under this title, which is associated with one Sr. Faustina and a chaplet of the Divine Mercy, was approved by the Ordinary of Vilnius in 1936 and from there spread rapidly, especially after World War II in the United States. It appears that Sr. Faustina could not write, save a few lines phonetically. Most of her "diary" was concocted by her sisters after her death. Because of the incongruities of the dairy (different handwriting, different use of terms), the devotion was suppressed, and the book of her diary was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. This decision was upheld by Pope John XXIII in 1958/59. In early 1978, a Polish cardinal petitioned the Vatican to remove the suppression of the devotion, which was being practiced without sanction in his diocese, and the Vatican replied in the negative, confirming the suppression.
Moreover, when the Novus Ordinarians tried to insinuate this new feastday, they again spurned the traditional calendar. The Sunday after Easter, the Octave Day of Easter, is known in English-speaking countries as Low Sunday, or in the Roman Missal as Dominica in Albis, because this was the day on which those baptized at the Easter Vigil put aside their white baptismal garments (albae).
Now, the Octave Day of a feast, particularly of the greatest feast, Easter, is a significant day in itself. The Divine Mercy cult is thus in total contravention of the focus of the traditional liturgy for that day, which is on the Resurrection of Our Lord and faith in His Divinity. As Dom Gueranger, the noted Benedictine liturgical scholar, commented in his fifteen-volume Liturgical Year: "Such is the solemnity of this Sunday that not only is it of greater double rite, but no feast, however great, can ever be kept upon it." That is the Roman Catholic attitude.
Furthermore, the version of the "Divine Mercy" cult that people know of today is not even the original one of 1936, but an oecumenized version corrupted by the Novus Ordo -- with substantially changed prayers to promote non-Catholic beliefs and the heresy of universal salvation. Is it any wonder that elements of the New Order push this bowderlized devotion over the traditional devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus? To these Modernists, anything new is preferable to anything established.
Moreover, the devotion in post-conciliar times seems to be increasing in its association with unCatholic Charismaticism. This Charismatic Movement is far from true Catholicism, but is a derivative of the Protestant heresy, based on the erroneous notion that emotional experience always accompanies the conferral of grace, whereas the Catholic doctrine is that the only sensible indication of the conferral of grace is the Sacramental sign itself. Perhaps the devotion's association with New Age ideas is why it has become lionized in recent years, whereas popes up to the current one have condemned it.
The question often arises whether Thomas S. Monaghan, founder and former CEO of Domino's Pizza, and one of the principal funders of the new Ave Maria University in Florida, is a traditional Catholic or just a Novus Ordo "conservative." He himself has now publicly answered that question in a recent Letter to the Editor of the Palm Beach Post.
Monaghan says, "I am not now nor have I ever been a "Traditionalist [sic] Catholic." It is clear, however, that Monaghan is ignorant of the correct meaning of that term, since he falsely defines it for himself as describing "one or more schismatic groups denying the validity of the Vatican II Council and of the Holy Father."
Of course, TRADITIO readers know that a traditional Catholic is a true Roman Catholic, whereas those who adhere to the New Order Schism of 1964, rooted in Vatican II and the Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo Mess, are not Roman Catholics, but participants in what has been called the Counterfeit Church, or the Great Facade.
Monaghan goes on to say, "We do not have the Tridentine [sic] liturgy, favored by Traditionalists [sic], said at Ave Maria University.... Three of our twenty Masses each week are said in Latin, but it is the Novos [sic] Ordo prescribed since Vatican II.
So, Thomas Monaghan is a flaming Novus Ordo sectarian, and Ave Maria University is thoroughly Novus Ordo. Since this university is now undertaking a major mail solicitation for funds, traditional Catholics should be very careful not to contribute one dime to Monaghan's New Order cause, which is also associated with Joseph Fessio's Novus Ordo-obedient Ignatius conglomerate.
And, while you're at it, order your pizza at Round Table or Straw Hat!
The United States Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops claims to the public to be a staunch defender of the Eucharist, then acted directly against the sanctity of the Real Presence by voting in July 2002 that it is "illicit" for the faithful to show their reverence for Christ in the Eucharist by kneeling, as "kneeling is not a licit posture for receiving Holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States of America." These New Order bishops are obviously as ignorant of Scripture as they are of Catholicism. Didn't St. Paul write to the Philippians (2:10/DRV): "That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth"?
Millions of Novus Ordo sectarians are now leaving the Church of the New Order because it has de facto abandoned the Eucharist, first in its sacramental form, then in all forms of respect by the faithful. Novus Ordo sectarians are gradually waking up to the fact that they have been cheated of their Roman Catholic Faith by the Church of the New Order, that what they are subjected to in parishes is not the Roman Catholic Faith, but an unCatholic counterfeit religion, a great facade, no matter that they use the word "Catholic" to describe themselves.
In changing the Mass to a illicit Protestant Cranmerian "service," the Holy Eucharist is no longer confected. The Church of the New Order is barren of the Eucharist like a mother who aborted her child; thus, that church suffers the "abomination of desolation" spoken of in the Book of Daniel, as quoted by Our Lord. Without Eucharistic strength, the Church has grown so spiritually weak that bishops no longer teach the Roman Catholic Faith or practice Roman Catholic virtue. The New Order clergy have fallen into the gravest of sins since the "smoke of Satan has entered the Church," as Pope Paul VI described Vatican II.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Of course, nothing better can be expected from New Order bishops. They are pushing their own liberalistic propaganda program. They are not Catholic, and haven't been for most of the period since Vatican II.
That is why it is pointless to approach such bishops to "support" the Traditional Latin Mass. They don't want it. It's a slap in the face to their irreligion and their immorality. The Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service is their thing. You may as well save your time and instead establish a traditional church or chapel, and then get a traditional priest to serve your congregation; that way no New Order bishop will have any power over you to force you to Novus Ordoize the true Mass. That's what Mel Gibson did; he had the right idea. And your Passion ticket money is going partially to support his traditional Holy Family Church in Agoura Hills.
New reports indicate that House Democrats are preparing a so-called "Catholic Voting Scorecard" in an effort to show that New Order Democratic lawmakers have adhered more closely to the position of the U.S. New Order hierarchy on key issues than their "Catholic" Republican counterparts.
The only "scorecard" I would be interested in is how many of these politicians practice the Traditional Roman Catholic Faith: its doctrine, its morality, its liturgy. Nearly 27 percent of House members are New Order sectarians; there is not a real Catholic among them. Who cares whether these politicans practice the liberalism of the corrupt New Order bishops, who desperately need to have a scorecard applied to them ! Of course, they would all flunk Catholicism!
All these New Order bishops do is push their personal, liberal political agendas: go soft on abortion, go soft on homosexuality, go soft on defending the country against Islamism, go soft on punishing criminals -- you all know the liberalist litany.
Meanwhile, these bishops are abysmally failing in their proper task of teaching true Catholic doctrine, true Catholic morality, and true Catholic worship. Since their own houses are in such a state of collapse, no wonder they turn their mitres around, get down into the mud, and play petty politics with hack politicians. They should be ashamed of themselves, and traditional Catholics should burn these "Catholic Voter Scorecards" in the public square!
The April 12 Michigan Daily carried the above photograph of Novus Ordo Presbyter Thomas Firestone's "sacrament" during Easter Mass at St. Mary's Student Parish yesterday.
Now, first of all, out of respect for the Blessed Sacrament, it is traditionally prohibited to photograph the elevation. (Granted, this Novus Ordo cookie is not the Sacrament, but the Novus Ordinarians think that it is. Yet they allow the photography anyway.)
When TRADITIO started calling the Novus Ordo thing what it is -- a cookie, not the Sacrament -- a number of readers got all hot and bothered. Good! They should be. It is one of the purposes of TRADITIO to shake "conservative" Novus Ordinarians out of their complacency by means of biting Juvenalian Roman satire to force them to confront the truth of the Counterfeit Church, the Great Facade.
What the nay-sayers were apparently ignorant of was the fact that the New Vatican, in 1979, admitted the very same thing, in a letter to the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops, claiming that "eucharists" in the United States (at least) were invalid because of defect of matter (cookies instead of bread), and must be resaid, or stipends returned.
The USCCB and its liberalist president, Archbishop John Quinn, of San Francisco, simply ignored the Vatican's shocking warning. Ignored the fact that they were told by the Vatican that their "sacrament" was invalid. Ignored the fact that they were perpetrating a fraud upon the Catholic (or at least the Novus Ordo) faithful. More lies, lies, lies from the Church of the New Order, which is based on lies, counterfeits, deceit, and autocratic politics that has gone so far as to deflower Catholic youth. And yet, the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians continue mindless to support this fraud, invoking the Hitlerian principle of blind obedience to evil.
But now that youth is getting smart. A student from the University of Michigan wrote to the paper: "This is probably not even a valid mass. It looks like a gingerbread cookie if anything."
In a stunning reversal of past policy, Father Vincent O'Keefe, S.J., former Vicar General of the Society of Jesus and a past President of Fordham University, affirmed that Fr. Malachi Martin was in fact granted a dispensation from all his vows in the Jesuit order except for chastity. O'Keefe was the Vicar General of the Society in 1965, at the time of Martin's departure from the city of Rome.
O'Keefe's statement dispels decades of rumors that Martin had been "defrocked." This was the false lie spread by past Jesuits to discredit Fr. Martin, whereas in reality Martin had requested and received a special dispensation by Pope Paul VI to remain a Catholic priest and say Mass in private. (In fact, reports to Fr. Moderator have indicated that Martin celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass daily in his New York apartment.)
Ever since Fr. Martin's scathing review of his former order in The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (1988), rumors were spread by members of this order claiming that Martin was "defrocked" and "expelled." Martin denied this charge until his death in 1999. Mitchell Pacwa, chief spokesman at the EWTN cable network would regularly hang up on callers who inquired about Martin on his live call-in show.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that "Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia has slashed its budget by about $400,000 this year to offset a drop in contributions largely by parishes upset with the national church's endorsement last summer of a 'gay' bishop."
It would appear that the Episcopalians have finally figured it out: the only thing their clergy responds to is money. Many Novus Ordinarians, however, remain ignorant. The latest figures indicate that they plunk more money than ever before to support criminal bishops and presbyters, and the whole sacrilegious Counterfeit Church1 of the New Order. Well, inanity is its own penalty: if they support evil and sacrilege with their pocketbooks, they deserve everything they pay for!
Swedish textiles expert Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who discovered the seam at the back of the shroud, or sudarium, during a restoration project, says: "There have been attempts to date the shroud from looking at the age of the material, but the style of sewing is the biggest clue. The stitching on the shroud could have been created only during Christ's lifetime. "It belongs firmly to a style seen in the first century A.D. or before."
Mark Guscin, of the British Society for the Turin Shroud, says: "The discovery of the stitching ... add[s] to the mountain of evidence suggesting this was probably the shroud Jesus was buried in." Barrie Schwortz, photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project, who in 1978 took part in the first scientific examination of the shroud, says: "I was a cynic before I saw it, but I am now convinced this is the cloth that wrapped Jesus of Nazareth after he was crucified."
The history of the cloth, which bears the ghostly image of a bearded man is steeped in mystery. The first documented reference was in 1357, when it was displayed in a church in Lirey, France. The cloth astonished Christians, as it showed a man wearing a crown of thorns and bearing wounds on his front, back, and right-hand side. He also had a wrist wound, which confused some pilgrims who thought Christ was nailed to the cross through his hands. Scientists have since discovered the wrists were used as the hands could not support the body's weight. [Mirror]
On Maundy Thursday, April 6, John Paul II, in his now annual letter to the world's priests (does this man ever stop writing and start acting?), asked all priests to pray for an increase of vocations to priestly and religious life. In addition to prayer, the pope suggested that pastors should provide proper formation for boys and young men in their parishes, particularly altar boys, so that the parish can be "almost a sort of pre-seminary," giving young men solid spiritual formation and opening them to the possibility of a priestly vocation. The pope's letter was presented to the media at a news conference in Rome chaired by Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, who also takes the Ecclesia Dei Commission for a ride as its prefect. [CWN]
These leaders in the Church of the New Order just don't have a clue, do they? They have destroyed the Mass and replaced it with a Counterfeit Service. They have destroyed the Sacrament of Holy Orders, so that now "presbyters" are ordained to sit in a chair rather than to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead and to forgive sin. They have substituted "altar girls" for altar boys, so that the boys will be feminized, and the girls can look forward one day to becoming priestesses.
It is clear that in the New Vatican, one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Are the pope and Cardinal Hoyos really wondering why there are so few vocations to the New Order "presbyterate"? What demented man would give his life to a vocation to sit in a big chair and "preside over the assembly" at a Protestant-Masonic-Pagan "service" that is a horse-laugh (sorry, in New Order terminology that's Equine Sacred Laughter)? And everybody knows it.
Take a look at what passes for a Mess at Emmanuel College, of Warrnambool, Australia, described as "a Catholic community, accepting students of all faiths and serving Warrnambool and the surrounding district as part of the Catholic Schools Network." (Although the school is called a "college," it comprises grades 12 and below.)
Seventh-grade girls prance around the "altar," while the presbyter performs "Mess" behind an altar frontal reading, "Treat others the way you would like to be treated," enclosed in a big pink heart. Isn't that precious?!
For political purposes, it seems, presumptive Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry is a "Catholic Chameleon." He claims to be a Catholic -- well, really a Novus Ordinarian -- when it wins him "Catholic" votes. But if he wants to win Protestant votes, he morphs himself into a Protestant. Next you'll be seeing him wear a kipah in a synagogue for Passover. Can't forget the Jewish vote!
On Palm Sunday, April 4, 2004, here he is, caught on camera by Associated Press and Reuters, committing outright sacrilege. He was attending not a true Catholic Church, not even a Novus Ordo church, but an African Methodist Episcopalian church. And not only was he attending, which would surround him with, as the Church says, "the odor of heresy," but also was taking phony "communion" at the hands of a priestess, which is sacrilege. Participating in the sacrilege are his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and Boston Mayor Tom Menino.
In a way, you can't blame the poor fool. The pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the presbyters of the Church of the New Order have so confused Catholics about what true Catholicism is, he might think the African Methodist Episcopalians are just like the Novus Ordinarians. Actually, the photographs seem more "conservative" than most New Order churches. There is actually an altar rail and an altar cloth!
Now, Mr. Kerry's "Catholicism," it appears, is a political veneer. It certainly doesn't mean conforming to the immemorial moral teachings of the Church. He seems to think that suborning abortion and immoral homosexual liaisons (commonly known as "gay marriages") are perfectly acceptable (I have to say, in all fairness, that Mr. Bush isn't a great deal better on this issue).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am sure that you get asked this question often. I have been struggling with the issue of wanting to be a "traditional" Catholic, but fear being called a "schismatic." But I really don't want to be a part of the Novus Ordo Mess and lax moral sense. Every time I attend a Novus Ordo Mess, I can really see the Protestantism. The sermons have become psuedo-intellectual and banal. In the last sermon I heard, the presbyter included some Jungian psychology.
Moreover, it does seem however that most New Order bishops are against Roman Catholicism. The bishops have tolerated the homosexual "Dignity" churches for so long with no reproach, but they are quick to attack traditional Roman Catholics. In that regard, I was also wondering about the phrase, "Eternal Rome." What does that phrase mean?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
As St. Thomas More said to his false accusers, "These are nightmares for children." You can't be "schismatic" for practicing the true Roman Catholic Faith. You can, however, lose your soul if you, with full knowledge and consent of its falsity, attend the phony Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo Mess. This counterfeit will eat away at your Catholicism, and you will end up irreligious, pantheistic, and worse (if that were possible). I've seen it happen over and over again.
The pope has no authority to change Sacred Tradition. That comes from Christ and the Apostles, as confirmed at dogmatic Vatican Council I. The Popes and Doctors of the Church make it quite clear that if a Pope were to attempt that, he becomes a schismatic or heretic and is not to be obeyed. The preparatory commission to Vatican I found that about 40 popes out of 260 had fallen into personal heresy. One was even excommunicated. So, if anything, it is not you who practice the traditional Roman Catholic Faith that have to be worried about being "schismatic"; it is the errant pope and bishops!
It is a sin, not a virtue, to obey false authority. If your Nazi sergeant tells you to stick the innocent Jew in the oven and turn on the flame, do you say, "Ja woll"? Of course not. Your obedience to false authority and evil would be a sin, just as it is a sin to obey a pope who is attempting to overthrow the doctrine and practice of the Church.
Another way to look at it this "false obedience" question is as follows. If the President of the United States attempted to impose a tax by Executive Decree, what do you say? "He's the President, so he can do what he wants?" Of course not. You say, "He's exceeded his power. Only Congress can legislate a tax. The President's action is null and void." Just so, any action of a pope that goes beyond the authority of his office is null and void and must not be obeyed.
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. --First Vatican Council, Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi (Pastor Aeternus), chap. 4, De Romani Pontificis Infallibili Magisterio
[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.}
"Eternal Rome" is a locution that, in the present confused state of the Church, is used to distinguish between what is truly Catholic (coming from the "Rome" of St. Peter and the Apostles, and the bimillennial authentic teaching based upon it), and the "New Rome," which, under deceptive color of authority, tries to impose unCatholic doctrine and practice on the faithful in a kind of parody of true Roman Catholicism.
So, you need immediately to get out of that New Order environment, which will rip away your Roman Catholic Faith quicker than a vulture rips the flesh off a dead carcass.
The U.S. Bishops Conference's investigating committee recently reported that corruption in the New Order Church in the United States is far more rampant than previously imagined and reported. The U.S. bishops -- all of them -- did a much better job of concealing moral perversion and embezzlement than anyone had realized.
So, what is the pope's response? Is he reacting like a Gregory VII or a Pius V or a Pius X to condemn and root out the causes of corruption? No! Would you believe: at an ad limina visit of several New Order bishops from the United States, JP-II "expressed his confidence in the U.S. bishops' handling of the sex abuse crisis, saying their willingness to address past mistakes and failures would ultimately make the church a more credible witness of the Gospel."
Is this man living in the real world? His Church is falling down around his ears. His own episcopal appointees are spitting in his face daily with their unconscionable immoralities. And he praises them? Perhaps this pope has become a mere "newsreader" of texts that are shoved under his nose by the Modernists in the New Vatican curia. As a matter of fact, on this occasion he was not even competent to read his speech. He pronounced only a part of his speech; the bishops were handed the full text.
The pope said that his ad limina talks to the remaining groups of U.S. bishops this year would examine the bishop's triple role of sanctifying, teaching and governing. It is exactly in these three Apostolic qualities of the episcopate that these Novus Ordo bishops have signally failed. The Church of the New Order is not sanctified, but corrupted. The bishops do not teach Catholic doctrine, but Modernist heretical doctrines. They have thoroughly failed to govern; their dioceses are cesspools of sexual and financial corruption, the likes of which have not been seen for many centuries.
The New Order is getting more and more desperate. Two New Order bishops, Kazimierz Gorny, of Rzeszow, Poland, and Sigitas Tamkevicius, of Kaunas, Lithuania, purported to "excommunicate" three individuals "because they frequent the Mass of the Society of St. Pius X."
The Union of Nations of European Christians (UNEC) immediately attacked the bishops for the invalidity and hypocrisy of the purported "excommunications, as the Eastern Orthodox in their dioceses were not excommunicated. In fact, the Church of the New Order "loves" the Eastern Orthodox, even though they are formally schismatic, reject "Rome," and consecrate bishops without Vatican approval. The pope even smooches the Arch-Schismatic Oecumenical Patriarch on the Vatican balcony.
Make no bones about it. What these New Order bishops hate is Roman Catholicism and the Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and Faith!
One can be completely sure that such purported "excommunications" are totally invalid, just as the phony "excommunication" of Archbishop Lefebvre. If these bishops hadn't already lost any jurisdiction because of heresy, they are spitting in the face of John Paul II and his New Vatican, whose own highest judicial tribunal already declared null and void the "excommunications" of similar persons in the celebrated "Case of the Honolulu Six," with the following decree:
Since [the persons] did not, in fact, commit the crime of schism and thus did not incur the latae sententiae [automatic] penalty, it is clear that the decree of the Bishop lacks the precondition on which it is founded. This Congregation [for the Doctrine of the Faith, commonly known as the Holy Office], noting all of the above, is obliged to declare null and void the aforesaid Decree of the Ordinary of Honolulu.
The latest is just another case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, or, worse, two heretical bishops going off the deep end. Pay them no mind. They are not Catholic, and they're not obeying the pope.
Even the New Vatican has had to admitt that there is nothing "schismatic" about attending the Traditional Latin Mass. How could there be? If the Church of the New Order ever said that, it would in the clearest possible way be cutting itself off from any claim to be Roman Catholic. For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ04: What Is the Status of the Society of St. Pius X?
Traditional Catholics should be prepared for more of these New Order shenanigans. As the corruption of the New Order is more and more rejected for its immorality, corruption, and apostasy, the New Order ecclesiocrats are going to get scared and try to play these silly games. It won't work, of course, because these are the same "prelates" who are being defrocked for sticking it to their parishioners (particularly the young ones) on the one hand while stealing from the poor box on the other.
Now is the time for traditional Catholics to tell all of these New Order ecclesiocrats: "You're not Catholic. I don't recognize anything you're doing."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Some friends told me that there was a Novus Ordo Mess in New Guinea where the lectoress was bare breasted in front of the pope and other clergy present. I took the position that in some cultures, this type of dress is not offensive and is quite appropriate. My challenge to them was, "Should pygmies or other indigenous peoples be required to wear clothes to Messes in their own villages if they don't normally wear them? Would attending Mess in their native state of undress be disrespectful?" Could you please enlighten us on this subject?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
There is a rumor that the bare breasted lectoress at the Papal "Nudie" Mess was in fact a Papuan studying in New York and flown down for the occasion. If this is true, then she surely didn't "dress" in New York the way she did at the Mess. JP II encourages this nonsense. He's virtually lost his Catholicism. Compare the reserved way he spoke and acted in 1978 compared to his flaming Modernism today.
This is certainly a question of culture, but not of tolerance of a pagan culture where natives run naked in the jungle, but of civilized culture, that culture which it is the mission of the Roman Catholic Church to carry to the world to elevate it to Christ and the high civilization inspired by Him. After all, it is not happenstance that Providence used Rome and the Roman Catholic Church to spread the true Faith to the world.
Catholic missionaries for many centuries undertook this mission to elevate the ignorance of natives to Christ. They realized that the natives knew no better than to run around naked, but they educated them and "inculturated" them, in the truly Catholic sense of that term.
The Romans raised the culture of the Britons, Gauls, and other peoples of Europe, who were little more than barbarians when Roman civilization reached its peak. Do we really want to argue that the English today should be running around naked in face paint the way Julius Caesar found them, as described in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico? Would the native populations of the Americas really be better off as Christopher Columbus found them: nations pillaging one another for victims to use in human sacrifice? Or, rather, aren't they much better off civilized after Roman Catholic civilization was brought to them?
The cultural relativism that is so propagandized today is truly vapid. As Roman Catholics, we should take due pride in the fact that our Roman and Roman Catholic ancestors civilized the world -- not only Europe, but also much of the Near East. Eventually the Roman Catholic Church carried that universal high civilization even to the Orient.
These days we hear a lot about one-world government. Well, this is certainly not new to the modern age. The Romans already had it around the term of the millennium, and the Roman Catholic Church finished the job. It is interesting that the areas which were least touched by Rome, like China, are the countries that are the most barbaric today. Communist China, for example, thinks nothing of executing priests and nuns in the public square in front of the international press.
The Roman Catholic Church has no apologies to make. It has been the guardian, missionary, and enhancer of civilization. It has unarguably inspired the greatest art, architecture, music, law, government, literature, philosophy, and theology that the world has ever known, based in its classical roots. Who would seriously argue, according to some kind of inane cultural relativism, that the natives' tom-tom rhythm is equal to Bach's High Mass in B Minor?
For clergy to be gawking at bare-breasted "lectoresses," and for an African archbishop to be advocating the introduction into the Novus Ordo Mess the blood of chicken sacrifice to satisfy some "nativist" mania should be called exactly what it is: a return to barbarism, from which even the West is not proof. Look around you, and you will see that as the Roman Catholic Church sinks, the culture of the world is sinking into barbarism once again.
Above the Flavian amphitheater in Rome, more commonly known as the Colosseum, there was an inscription:
This aphorism could serve as the epitaph of our modern age.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Why are the holy-water stoops emptied and dry during Lent?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
First of all, the holy-water stoops are not dry during Lent. Much less are they filled with sand. The Novus Ordo nonsense of putting sand in the fonts and covering the crosses and statues from the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday is not Catholic (no surprise there!). As a matter of fact, it violates even the Novus Ordo "rules" (as recently confirmed by the Congregation on Divine Worship and the Discipline [sic] of the Sacraments), but the Novus Ordinarians don't pay any attention to "rules" anyway. They make up their Mess as they go along!
Traditionally, the holy water is removed from the stoups only on Maundy Thursday evening after the stripping of the altars. It is not replenished until the Easter Vigil, when the new water is blessed in the Holy Saturday rite. Traditionally, the Catholic practice is to cover the crosses and statues from the First Sunday in Passiontide (two Sundays before Easter). This is done in remembrance of the last words of the Holy Gospel of Passion Sunday: Jesus autem abscondit se [Jesus hid Himself]. Our Lord had just declared Himself in no uncertain terms to be the Son of God, and the Pharisees took up stones to kill Him as a blasphemer (little did they know!).
Liturgically, the Church begins the process of educating us in the nature of the Passion of Our Lord. Little by little, He is taken from us, until on Good Friday He is gone from us entirely. Not even His sacramental presence remains. No Sacraments are conferred on this day (except to the dying). No Communion is distributed on this day. We are without Christ. The altar is stripped bare. The sanctuary light is extinguished. The tabernacle door is open, and there is nothing inside. Only the altar cross remains uncovered for our meditation on Our Lord's Passion.
Traditional Catholics often grumble about the condition of the Church today. "Why did God do this to us?," they say, as if the Church were not ripe for a test of its Faith in Christ, when so many sell out to a secularized Church and society. But we are a thankless people, like the ancient Jews. We don't realize how much we truly have. The New Order has an invalid counterfeit Mess and mostly invalid, sacrilegious "sacraments." They have a Clown Mess and a "Gay" Mess and a Cardboard Box Mess.
We traditional Catholics, on the other hand, have hundreds of churches and chapels, in the United States alone. In our churches and chapels, the tabernacle lamp remains lit, the Sacramental Presence remains in the tabernacle, and on the altars is celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the true Mass.
If you want to know what it would really be like to be without Christ and without the Church, think of the stipped altar and the empty tabernacle of Good Friday.
I've obtained a copy of the letter which New Order Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona, talks about his intentions for one -- count it -- one "Indult" Mass in Phoenix. First off, he has to slam traditional Catholics by referring to the purported "schism" of Archbishop Lefebvre, which even the Vatican does not maintain (from the New Order perspective, the Society of St. Pius X is not "schismatic"; it is "disobedient"). Olmsted contends that the Novus Ordo "Mess" has grown in beauty and furnishings and music, etc., over the past thirty-some years. Are you choking yet? Apparently, he hasn't visited TRADITIO's Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery.
He goes on about how the "New Mess" replaced the Traditional Latin Mass, which even the post-conciliar popes don't dare to maintain. For if that were true, none of these New Order prelates would have any authority today. If they thumb their nose at the Apostles and spit on the decrees of Pope St. Pius V and Pope St. Pius X, they might as well drown in their own drool, since none of the Modernist bishops would have any authority either.
Olmsted doesn't want even the "Indult" Mass to have any stability. He says that he's going to have a group of presbyters alternate the "Indult" every Sunday at exactly one church starting this June. Rumor has it that the church will be located at the edge of the Grand Canyon! Olmsted is adamant that traditional Roman Catholicism will not exist in the Phoenix diocese. The Phoenicians might get the bones of an "Indult" Mass, but "catechesis" must be taken at Novus Ordo parishes, and all of the other "sacraments" will be performed in the Novus Ordo rite at Novus Ordo parishes.
Now, why does Phoenix even need an "Indult" Mass, when it is blessed in having four distinguished traditional churches and chapels? I'll tell you why. These well-established traditional sites will have nothing to do with the New Order diocese (more power to them!). So, Olmsted is out to "revolve" this "issue" by knocking heads with them, in that well-known New Order way of loving the apostate and hating the true Catholic. These four traditional churches and chapels are the only true Roman Catholic ones in the diocese and have been serving true Catholics in the area for many years before Olmsted's "Indult" ploy.
Now, I'm sure you'll be hearing all the "conservative" organizations touching their heads to the ground in abject servitude to this wonderful bishop who, as Scriptures, are "desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table" (Luke 16:21/DRV). Don't you fall for it. You Phoenicians, support your four truly traditional churches and chapels and don't let them be connived away from this modern-day Henry VIII. Stand firm in your Roman Catholic Faith against any efforts to "Novus-Ordoize" you.Even though the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses has a warning about the pseudo-traditional Messes, the "Indult" is just another wicked tool of the New Order. As far as I'm concerned, it's all or nothing! By the way, I'll make sure to say "hi" on behalf of TRADITIO's almost one million readers to ex-bishop O'Brien the next time I bump into him (pun intended!).
True to his warped New Order morality, the Phoenix (Arizona) bishop who killed a man alleging that he was a 250-pound dog, wanted to "continue to serve the Church." In order to do that, he didn't want to spend one day in jail for leaving the scene of a hit-and-run and covering up his crime.
But even more morally bankrupt is the judge, Judge Stephen A. Gerst, of Maricopa County Superior Court, who let O'Brien get away with it. This sellout jurist sentenced the bishop on March 27 to probation instead of the 45-month jail time that the law provides and that the prosecution and the bereaved family demanded in justice.
This New Order bishop had already been involved in the most disgusting of all the "sex scandals," virtually turning his diocese into a brothel. Even his own Novus Ordinarians threatened the New Vatican that if he wasn't kick out, they would not contribute a dime to the Church or go to Mess.
This warped ecclesiocrat, who has become the poster boy for all the ills of the New Order and its bishops, had the temerity to tell the court: "My ability to serve the people of the diocese and our community has not [ended]. I would like to ask this court to place me on probation so that I may continue to serve the Church and the community and to try to make up for my wrongs."
My recommendation to the judge was to sentence O'Brien to a solitary cell, on his knees, praying for the people he has allowed to be raped and sodomized, praying for the man he ran over like a dog (to whom he never even bothered to stop to give Extreme Unction), not to speak of praying for the Catholics to whom he has publicly denied the true Mass.
You people of Phoenix threw one bum out, Killer Bishop O'Brien. Your next assignment is to throw the other bum out: Judge Gerst the Gutless.
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