Are you really scandalized by the fact that Mass was said for soldiers in a combat zone using the hood of an army jeep as an altar? Wasn't the same done in World War II and the Korean Conflict?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Please take a refresher course in basic reading skills and have your eyes tested. Novus Ordo propaganda seems to have clouded the clear evidence of your mind and your eyes. The TRADITIO Commentary mentioned nothing about a combat zone or even the hood of an army jeep. It specifically pointed to the phony "camouflage" frock on the Novus Ordo presbyter and the wicker basket for the Novus Ordo kommunion kookie.
If you look carefully at the photos you supplied, you will see that although a jeep is being used, there are proper altar cloths on the jeep (there are no altar cloths in the Novus Ordo photograph), the priest is wearing proper vestments (not a phony "camouflage" frock as the presbyter does in the Novus Ordo photograph), and there is no evidence of a sacrilegious wicker basket to hold the Hosts.
I have also seen a wonderful photo from World War II, in which Mass was being celebrated in a French barn. The animals look on in apparent reverence, while the soldiers kneel in the mud with an absolutely rapt and celestial expression of attention to the Holy Sacrifice. The priest, however, is wearing proper vestments, not a laughable "camouflage" frock, and a wooden altar has been constructed with proper altar cloths.
The Novus Ordo "Army Mess" is a joke. It has nothing to do with the reverential practices in World War II and the Korean Conflict. A Marine sergeant wrote me from Iraq when we published the "Camouflage Mess" photograph earlier. He said that he knew that presbyter and that the whole thing had been concocted by a Lutheran minister!
Of course, the main difference is that the soldiers in World War II and the Korean Conflict had the true Mass. The soldiers today are deprived of that grace. The only thing available is the counterfeit mess, which no real Catholic could ever attend.
Although some accommodations can be made for unusual circumstances, the Church never forgets that at the true Mass we are in the Real Presence of Our Lord and God. A real priest would die before he wore some silly "camouflage" frock and throw what is supposed to be the Sacred Host into a wicker basket.
This is the latest in our series of Novus Ordo Messes. Some Novus Ordinarians may try to excuse themselves by saying, "It isn't that bad where I go to Mess." Oh, isn't it? Don't you receive the "host," probably really a cookie, into your unconsecrated hands that have touched all kinds of profane objects? Doesn't the presbyter use the vulgar tongue instead of the canonized language of the Catholic and Apostolic rite? Doesn't the Mess you attend differ from the Catholic and Apostolic one in over two thirds of its content? Don't the "revised" words of consecration proclaim the heresy of universal salvation? Aside from the increasingly bizarre versions, even the "vanilla" version is spurious at its core. For further information, click on Novus Order Service Photo Gallery.
From a forty-year perspective since Vatican II, we can see how Catholics have been duped into accepting a New Religion. Latin was too accurate and exact to be used by the prevaricators of the New Order, so it was dumped in favor of the "vernacular" languages, vernaculus being itself a Latin word meaning "of or pertaining to a slave" (1964).
Then the Traditional Latin Mass exhibited too clearly the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, so it was dumped in favor of a circus-like New Mess (1969). The traditional Divine Office was too reverent, so it was dumped in favor of a Modernistic "Liturgy of the Hours" (1971). Traditional Canon Law was too just, so it was dumped in favor of a New Canon Law (1983). Traditional morality was too clearly based upon the Commandments and the Natural Law, so it was dumped in favor of a New Morality based on perversion.
One of the remaining hitches in the Modernist program to destroy the Church is the Bible, which even the Protestants claim to adhere to. The Bible has already caused a split in several mainline Protestant denominations because liberal Protestants don't want to follow it. Now that problem has been solved. The New Bible has been published. [World Net Daily]
Because so many Christians are now so shamelessly ignorant of the three Sacred Languages of the Bible, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, they are now ripe for this latest deception of the New Order, which is starting to percolate through Christian denominations and has received approbation from the highest "authorities."
The New Bible is titled Good as New. It shameless rewrites Holy Scripture, even making it explicitly contradict the original text, not just obfuscate it as the Novus Ordo New American Bible did. Here are some examples.
Douay-Rheims Matthew 26:69-70. But Peter sat without in the court. And there came to him a servant maid, saying: Thou also wast with Jesus the Galilean. But he denied before them all, saying: I know not what thou sayest.
Good as New Bible. Meanwhile Rocky was still sitting in the courtyard. A woman came up to him and said: "Haven't I seen you with Jesus, the hero from Galilee?" Rocky shook his head and said: "I don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
Douay-Rheims First Epistle to the Corinthians 7:1-2. Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife: and let every woman have her own husband.
Good as New Bible. Some of you think the best way to cope with sex is for men and women to keep right away from each other. That is more likely to lead to sexual offences. My advice is for everyone to have a regular partner.
Douay-Rheims First Epistle to the Corinthians 7:8-9. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burnt.
Good as New Bible. If you know you have strong needs, get yourself a partner. Better than being frustrated.
Impossible, you say? Not at all. Catholics and other Christians have obediently swallowed travesties like the New American Bible, the Good News Bible, the Living Bible, and a host of other non-translations. So few have heeded the encouragement of the Church to learn some Latin and even Greek that they can't check the original to see that they've been duped. Every Jew is required to know a passable amount of Biblical Hebrew. It is a scandal that so few Catholics take the trouble to learn some Latin.
The Good as New Bible. You'll be hearing its perverted Gospel more and more as the New Order Religion pushes its Modernist message.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The Archdiocese of Detroit is willing to allow an "indult" Mass, but in order to get it, the attendees will have to agree (among other things) to the following: "The first is that Vatican II, its authenticity, and its liturgical reforms have to be accepted as a legitimate work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church." So, even though it was merely a pastoral council, the Spirit was running it!
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, that is correct. Those who attend "indult" Masses are generally ignorant of the fact that by the explicit condition of both the indult of 1984 and of 1988, they must accept the legitimacy of the New Order. So, the minute they walk into the "indult" door, they have essentially forsworn Catholic and Apostolic Tradition.
This is just more evidence that the "indult" is merely a political red-herring by which the Church of the New Order attempts to force that New Order on everyone, including the indultarians, under false authority. From Catholic dogma, however, we know that the pope hath not that authority, nor the bishop. Many of the "indult" Masses aren't even really Traditional Latin Masses. Some of them are more Novus Ordo services than Masses, what are called "pseudo-traditional Masses," and must be scrupulously avoided just like the New Order Mess.
Regarding the TRADITIO Commentary, "And You Thought You Had It Bad!," in which is mentioned the ingratitude of some traditional Catholics who carp at making a little extra sacrifice to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I offer the following thought from an Irish priest:
Your love will be shown in your acts. It is not always easy to go to Mass. Even the Sunday Mass entails, at times, and for some persons almost always, considerable inconvenience. The length of the road, the uncertain weather, failing health, awkward hours -- all these, at some time or other, make hearing even a weekly Mass an act of self-sacrifice. But do you not now see how well this may be made to fit in with the fact that the Mass is a Sacrifice, and that it is indeed a blessed privilege when assisting at the Sacrifice that Jesus makes of Himself for us, we are also called to make a sacrifice of ourselves for Him?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
And let us also remember the great sacrifices made by the celebrants of these Masses, those traditional priests who have courageously stood up like Athanasiuses against faithless and corrupt prelates. Like Fr. Gommar DePauw, the Founder of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Founder of the Society of St. Pius X, and so many others. Without them, the Roman Catholic Church would be essentially dead.
In this regard, I take the opportunity to bring to you the sad news that two contemporary leaders in the movement are seriously ill: Fr. Paul Wickens, an independent priest of many years with a church in Orange, New Jersey; and Fr. James Wathen, of Benton, Tennessee, author of the 1972 anti-Novus Ordo classic, The Great Sacrilege, which proved that the Novus Ordo had no legal standing whatever. Please remember them, as well as all the other traditional priests who serve you.
Boston Catholics are grieving, so says Fox News, over the loss of 65 diocesan churches and are even more downhearted to learn that their former places of worship are being sold as luxury condominiums.
I lament the lost of traditional churches too, but let's put this into perspective. These beautiful traditional church buildings were turned into the pagan temples of the New Order forty years ago after Vatican II. They are like the Gothic Anglican churches, beautiful on the outside, but empty within. As the great John Henry Cardinal Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, said of them, in the words of the Angel after the Resurrection: "He is not here." Well, He is not in these churches turned Novus Ordo. Better to give true worship in the open air, in a hotel room, in a small chapel than in these great empty tombs.
As the Eastern Doctor of the Church, St. Basil the Great, said to a flock that had been deprived of its Catholic Faith and ejected from church buildings by a heresy-leaning pope (Liberius) and a college of bishops that were mostly heretics (so said St. Jerome): "Who has lost and who has won in the struggle -- the one who keeps the premises [buildings] or the one who keeps the Faith?"
Sure, lament over the New Order's destruction of our Catholic architectural heritage. But what these people really ought to be lamenting over is the Roman Catholic Faith, of which they have voluntarily deprived themselves over the last forty years. The Novus Ordinarians are suffering the natural consequences of their actions in supporting false worship. Since they didn't fight for the Roman Catholic Faith when they could easily have changed things, look what Divine Providence has allowed (not caused) to follow from their cowardice: sexual immoralities worse than the Renaissance among the clergy all the way up to the top and destruction of truly Catholic churches.
God is a permissive God. He gives us what we want out of our own free-will, even if what we want is evil. To a pope who over the last 25 years has destroyed the Roman Catholic Church, He gives a clergy and people who ignore him except for a little lip service. To a bishop who has suborned, and even participated in, the grossest immoralities, He gives a bankrupt diocese. From Novus Ordinarians who play into the hands of the counterfeit Church of the New Order, He takes away even the last vestiges of true Catholicism, so they cannot hide their shame.
This is what they chose, remember, so that is what God gives them: the natural consequences of their desire to choose their own fabricated religion over God's religion. Vere dignum et iustum est. Our Lord had the appropriate words for them when He said: "Weep not over me; but weep for yourselves and for your children" (Luke 23:28/DRV).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
There has been a lot in the news lately about New Order politicians who support abortion being refused the Novus Ordo kommunion kookie. What about any of their presbyters who are in sin? As an example, are the presbyters who were involved in child abuse still able to perform transubstantiation?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
A review of a basic principle of Sacramental Theology is necessary here. The condition of sin on the part of the celebrant has no effect upon the validity of the Mass, as the Sacraments operate not through the power of man but through the power of Christ (ex opere operato).
That having been said, you seem to be speaking not of the true Roman Catholic Mass, that is, the Traditional Latin Mass, but the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service. That service is, in any version, unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid because it fails to meet one or more of the three criteria established in Catholic dogmatic and sacramental theology for a valid Mass and most cogently expressed in Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curae.
Therefore, the state of soul of the Novus Ordo presbyter who "performs" the Mess is irrelevant, as the service is itself invalid (not a Sacrament) and cannot be made valid (a Sacrament) any more than a traditional Catholic priest saying an Episcopalian service (quod Deus avertat!) can turn that invalid service into a valid Sacrament.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Reading the recent TRADITIO commentaries on Novus Ordo conduct toward what they claim is the "Eucharist," I am even more grateful to be a traditional Catholic. The blatant sacrilege of the Novus Ordo is obviously the most important consideration, but this purported "sensitivity," in human terms, does the biggest disservice to lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics by sending the message that the Church really has no concept of absolute truth.
The lapsed Catholic can blithely continue to live in mortal sin. The Eucharist is no better than an unconventional hors d'oeurve. If Novus Ordinarians really agree with the Protestant perspective on everything, an honest Protestant might ask, why don't they become Protestant and just stop all lip service toward Catholicism? If not, then what do they really believe? Decent people tend to respect others who are honest about honestly held convictions -- whether or not they agree. Wafflers and milquetoasts do not garner that respect.
Going from conservative Novus Ordinarian to traditional Catholic has actually enhanced the quality of my friendships with non-Catholics. Practicing one's faith completely and explaining the reasons behind Tradition can be met with great receptivity. Many Protestants of good will have said things like, "I never thought of that!" (when receiving an explanation of why Catholics ask Saints for intercession) or "What a wonderful idea!" (after an explanation of the Friday abstinence). My point: The so-called sensitivity is a poor excuse for failing to do as God commands.
Those of you who are looking to the papacy for a magic answer to the deep-seated problems in the post-conciliar Church are going to be disappointed. The problem has now become so institutionalized, and the post-Vatican II popes have so abandoned the true exercise of their office, that no one pope will be able to rectify matters.
This has to be a ground-roots movement, as it has been in the Church's past centuries. The laity must purify themselves and return to the belief and practice of the true Faith, as they did during the restoration of the 13th century under St. Francis and St. Dominic. Then a situation will develop where the clergy, including the pope, can be purified. The idea that the pope can rule by fiat is ridiculous in practice. After forty years of Novus Ordo nonsense, both the laity and the clergy will just laugh in his face. And Paul VI and JP II have brought this about. The next popes will undoubtedly continue in this attitude for a while. (Usually, major heresies in the Church take about a century to purge. We've been at it for only forty years.)
Here is a good example of what we can expect in the next papacy. One prominent candidate, Oscar Cardinal Rogriguez, of Honduras, was recently exposed to have sheltered a Novus Ordo presbyter who is an admitted molester of children, including one mentally handicapped ten-year-old. The presbyter is now an international fugitive.
This presbyter had fled criminal accusations in his native Costa Rica in 1998, then served in the United States in New York, Hartford, and South Carolina before escaping again. He vanished days ahead of police after child-protection activists in Costa Rica pressured their government to revive the criminal case. Interpol said that it is continuing to search for the 44-year-old presbyter at the request of the Costa Rican government, but it has not had the courage to question Cardinal Rodriguez.
Cardinal Rodriguez has not been forthcoming in revealing what he knows about the criminal presbyter whom he sheltered. Cardinal Rodriguez, 61, is described as "a fast-rising star in the Roman Catholic hierarchy." Yet the cardinal has insistently protected his presbyters who are sought by the police on criminal charges. [Dallas Morning News]
It is impossible to imagine that the bishops and cardinals of the Church of the New Order are not involved in a conspiracy. How can these criminal presbyters travel so freely between dioceses and countries and escape national and international law enforcement if these ecclesiocrats were not conniving against the law?
And ultimately we must lay the heaviest moral responsibility at the top, at Pope John Paul II, who has foisted these ecclesiocrats upon the Church, and has shamelessly aided and abetted them, by inaction if not by action. The mother of the handicapped boy whom the presbyter raped couldn't have laid it out any more clearly:
You see the pope asking forgiveness for the Holy Inquisition. But the same thing is happening in the 21st century. The Church is destroying the lives of so many children, and the pope won't say anything. And he won't do anything.
So often I get messages from traditional Catholics who complain with ingratitude about the fact that the Traditional Latin Mass isn't as convenient to get to as in the "good old days" when they had only to walk around the corner. They seem to think that God is singling them out personally to make life inconvenient for them. They never stop to think that in many times and places throughout the history of the Church, it was very difficult to receive the Sacraments and that they had been extravagantly "spoiled" in the past. Here is a case in point.
Traditional Catholics in a remote mountain area of southwestern China over 2000 kilometres from Beijing continue to keep their faith alive, even though no priest has been stationed there for more than five decades, since French missionaries served the area before 1949. Despite the lack of a resident priest, about 5,000 Catholics pray together daily.
Local Catholics have not only maintained their faith, they have also evangelized. During winter time when there is no farm work to do, these Catholics go in groups of two or three to visit and preach to non-Catholic villagers at their homes. The number of churches has grown to fifteen from the three established before the Communists came to power in 1949. The number of Catholics also has grown from 1,000 to 5,000. [Asia News]
Puts us American fat cats to shame doesn't it? They don't have the Mass and yet they're evangelizing! We have books, tapes, CDs, and DVDs, not to speak of over 600 Traditional Latin Mass sites in the United States and Canada alone, and we still complain. We need rather to realize that Our Lord is giving us a great opportunity to show our love of Him, His Faith, and His Mass. We can make the extra sacrifice for Him, just as He made the ultimate sacrifice for us, on the Cross.
What can you do, then, if a Traditional Latin Mass is not available to you? Of course, going to the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Mess is never an option, as it is always phony, sacrilegious, and scandalous. But you can start to build a traditional Roman Catholic community slowly. That may start by bringing two people together to say the Rosary, read spiritual works, sing the chant, recite the Propers of the Missal, view videotapes, read articles in TRADITIO's Library of Files, or any of many other possibilities. For further information, click on The Method of Hearing Mass Spiritually for the Absent.
Once a small community has been formed, click on TRADITIO'S Traditional Catholic Priests Wanted and Available department, for priests nearby and invite one of them to say Mass for you. Even if it is only a couple of times a year, that is two times more than you have now. From the little mustard seed, you can grow quite a tree, so that the flitting Novus Ordinarians come and lodge in the branches thereof!
A few years ago at a seminary reunion, a discussion arose about distributing Holy Communion at a funeral or wedding when non-Catholic Christians are present. One classmate and friend who is particularly rigid told the group that he makes it a point to announce at communion time that only practicing Catholics in the state of grace are permitted to come forward for communion.
Many of us were shocked by the callousness of that statement and its lack of pastoral sensitivity, though it accurately reflects Catholic teaching on the reception of Holy Communion. I also have a Lutheran pastor friend who, in similar circumstances, says, "we distribute communion, I invite you to come forward to receive communion if you would like." What do you think?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I can't believe that you consider yourself a Catholic priest -- correction, presbyter -- and ask a question like this. Your "rigid" friend has you trumped seven ways to Sunday. I suppose that it's no surprise, though, given the fact that there is no seminary training worthy of the name given to presbyters after Vatican II. Claiming to be legitimate, they actually violate every command of the Father of Vatican II, Pope John XXIII, in his Apostolic Consitution Veterum Sapientia. (For further information, click on Necessity of Latin for the Roman Catholic Church, including the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia [On Promoting the Study of Latin], Given by His Holiness Pope John XXIII in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
Why should the Lutheran minister care? After all, he is handing out a mere cookie, just as you are, since you are using the invalid Novus Ordo service, which is no better, and in fact far worse, than the High Anglican service that Pope Leo XIII condemned as invalid.
"Pastoral sensitivity" cannot be used as an excuse for sacrilege. (I guess they didn't teach you that in seminary either.) What you are handing out is certainly not "Holy Communion." You may as well go out and buy a bag of Mothers cookies and hand them out to one and all. They're no more invalid than what you're doing. No wonder the Church of the New Order is now visibly sinking into the quicksand of its own invalidity, sacrilege, and immorality.
The following is the kind of thing that Novus Ordinarians have to deal with under the regime of the Novus Ordo cardinal of New York, Edward Egan. Egan appointed one Msgr. H. pastor of a parish in the archdiocese. In a recent issue of that pastor's Sunday bulletin, the following appeared:
Many of us have been taught to believe that the Priest changes the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It is the Community of Faith that brings about the Transformation. The words of Jesus are: "Take this, all of you, and eat it," and "Do this in memory of me." Jesus taught his disciples that when they are gathered in his name to recall his teachings and example, and when they shared all that they had received from God, including their food and drink, he would be the bread and wine they shared. The Eucharist is something we all do.
After reading this in the bulletin, two families immediately left the parish and now attend a chapel affiliated with the traditional Society of St. Pius V.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Good for them! Those families did exactly the correct thing. Too bad they didn't do it earlier, and too bad the other families chose to stay to stay in spite of the fact that what was published was a rank heresy with which the arch-heretic Martin Luther would be very comfortable. If the parishioners are comfortable with such heresy, they may as well go to the Lutheran church down the street. At least that way they'd get the heresy directly, instead of having to rely on a Novus Ordo knock-off.
In a blockbuster new report to be released by the Dallas Morning News, the Church of the New Order's sex scandal has been exposed as international in scope and knocking at the very door of the pope himself.
Not only have hundreds of criminal Novus Ordo presbyters in the United States been scuttled by their bishops from diocese to diocese to conceal their crimes, the same has been happening on an international scale. The report demonstrates that "there are documented cases of priests, accused and in many cases criminally charged, convicted, or having admitted to abuse, who were transferred from one country to another, and in some cases, transferred from country to country to country. Some are in active ministry today while on the run from law enforcement."
When confronted with the new evidence, which exposes a corruption in his Church that has blackened forever the personal reputation of JPII, the pope and his agents have again hidden behind "No comment." This report simply confirms the fact that the pope has become publicly associated with one of the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance. Qui tacet consentit [He who is silent consents].
JPII's silent support of the debauchery of his own children in the Faith by his own bishops and presbyters goes beyond scandal. Only God knows how many souls he is allowing to sink into Hell by his culpable silence, as he allows these bishops and presbyters to continue plying their sins. "The fish rots from the head," they say. Now we are once again seeing the truth of that aphorism in our own Church.
Chances are, we are going to hear a lot more about this as, like the U.S. Watergate scandal, the chain of responsibility rises from bottom to the top -- and the mighty fall.
JPII, it seems, never seems to miss an opportunity to include clowns at his Messes and audiences. It fits. It is becoming clear after 25 years that this pontificate has been no better than a circus sideshow. The latest image (above) comes from an open-air Mess in Berne, Swizerland, on June 6, 2004.
My prediction is this. When the current pope passes on to his eternal reward or damnation, there will be a frenzy to make him a Novus Ordo "Saint." All the rules will be broken to rush him in as "John Paul II the Good." His friends (of which he has few remaining) and his enemies will both rush to do this for P.R. purposes. They will tell lie after lie about how the Church of the New Order flourished under his pontificate. They will ignore all the factual indicators that during this pontificate, the Church has been essentially destroyed. Very few will stand forth, like the honest lad in the Hans Christian Andersen story, to speak the reality.
It will take probably half a century for the New Order lies to sour. Then, more and more historians will see the putrefaction of the Roman Catholic Faith in these last 25 years. One of the longest pontificates in history is going to be known as the most corrupt one -- more corrupt even than those of the so-called "Bad Popes." Well, those popes may have committed personal immoralities -- immoralities that have been far exceeded in the current pontificate--, but those popes were at least Catholic enough to preserve and even augment the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Faith, and the Roman Catholic culture.
On the other hand, the unCatholic Church of the New Order that Paul VI started, John Paul II finished. As far as the corruption in the Church, doctrinal, liturgical, and moral, is concerned, this pope has been a Nero: fiddling (or lyre-ing) while Rome burned, just as Our Lady of La Salette predicted, more than fifty years before Fatima.
But this is not to be a matter of despair for traditional Catholics. It is merely the natural consequence of turning from the true Faith that the Church of the New Order must suffer. God didn't cause this. He simply allowed the error and immorality chosen by men's free will to have its natural consequences. If you don't understand this, reread chapter one of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The principle has never been explained better.
God has provided well for traditional Catholics, who have stayed with Him and the true Faith. He has given us thousands of churches, chapels, and oratories where the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments are celebrated and where the Roman Catholic Faith is maintained.
He has given us priests who are courageous enough to turn their backs on bishops of the New Order and who therefore were spared, by and large, the moral corruption that these bishops personally and through their presbyter agents have suffered. (You don't see traditional Roman Catholic bishops and priests meeting having to meet in Denver now to pick up the pieces of a destroyed Church.)
He has given us faithful Catholics, who are courageous enough to leave the Great Facade and stay with the Roman Catholic Faith in spite of errant relatives and friends.
He has given us books, audiotapes, videotapes, DVDs, and the internet to help us preserve the true Faith. The English recusants didn't have these. The Japanese martyrs didn't have these.
Instead, we traditional Catholics should remember:
In happy moments, praise God
In difficult moments, seek God
In quiet moments, worship God
In painful moments, trust God
In every moment, thank God.
There is no more benighted religious order in the Church than the Jesuits. They got so involved in politics in the 18th century that the pope suppressed them for 40 years. In the 1960s the Jesuits got deeply involved in "Liberation Theology" and took up arms to join Communist movements in Latin America. They went so far that even the liberalist Paul VI declared them personae non gratae and would have nothing further to do with them personally.
As an example, just look at what's going on at the Jesuit Urban Center of Boston. First off, the Novus Ordo Jesuits have replaced First Friday devotions to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with "Taize" services. Taize is associated with Protestant Pentecostalism, part of the false One-World Religion concocted by the New Order, which partakes of heretical notions foreign to Roman Catholicism.
Next off, an "interfaith" service was held on June 12 to celebrate "Pride: A Deeper Love." And what is this "deeper love"? Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament? No. Our Lady in her holy virginity? No. St. Michael and the Holy Angels in their guardianship of the faithful? Certainly not!
I don't want to get too graphic here, but the title refers to a certain grossly immoral practice that cries to heaven for vengeance. The featured speaker is not even a Novus Ordinarian, but the "gay" Episcopalian bishop who has caused so much scandal that the worldwide Anglican Union is splitting because of it. Moreover, he is to receive the Interfaith Award for 2004! Nor is this the first blasphemy the Jesuits have put on; it is the 27th, starting in 1977 under the "Novus Ordo" pope, Paul VI.
How can any reasonable person reach a conclusion other than that the Church of the New Order is not Catholic, no matter what the sign on the door says? The signs outside of these New Order pagan temples should read not Catholic, but Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
And what is the Novus Ordo bishop doing? Not old Cardinal Law, who was forced out, but the new Archbishop O'Malley, who told the Novus Ordinarians of his archdiocese to stop objecting to "Gay Marriage" because it might make "Gay Catholics" unconfortable. (Well, shouldn't they be?) Before long, the Novus Ordinarians of Boston are going to be praying for Law to come back as the lesser of two evils!
What has happened to the Catholic League lately? Has President William Donahue stopped fighting for the Catholic faith and instead begun fighting for the Church of the New Order?
First, there was the fiasco about St. Michael's Church in Farmingville, New York, whose tabernacle was ripped out of a cement wall by vandals, and the Most Blessed Sacrament desecrated. Because the church was Roman Catholic, not New Order, Donahue dumped on the outrage of traditional Catholics. Even the Episcopalians were more charitable. Strike one.
Next, Donahue dumped on Justice Anne Burke, chairman of the Novus Ordo U.S. Bishops committee to investigate the bishops' sex abuse against Catholic youth. She and her committee criticized the bishops as being "manipulative" in using the committee to make it appear that the bishops were doing something about the problem, whereas in reality the committee was a P.R. ploy. Apparently, Donahue can't stand even legitimate criticism of his secret bosses, the N.O. bishops. Strike two.
Finally, Donahue dumped on Antonin Scalia, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a brilliant intellect (admitted even by his liberalist opponents) who is outspoken for the Catholic moral position. What did Scalia do to earn Donahue's wrath? Why, Scalia stood with the Roman Catholic position in support of the state's right to exact capital punishment to protect the state in cases of heinous crime. Scalia's position is solidly Roman Catholic, in accordance with the teaching of the Church's principal theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, and with the Church's Greatest Doctor, St. Augustine -- a position confirmed by 241 Catholic popes up to the current advocate of the New World Order. Strike three.
Donahue, you're out! Your organization is a just a front for the New Order. You're not fighting for Catholicism, but the New World Order. I trust that TRADITIO's nearly million participants aren't giving a dime to this champion of the Great Facade.
Novus Ordo Bankrupts Diocese of Tucson. The Church of the New Order has bankrupted its first diocese, the diocese of Tucson, Arizona. Tucson may be the first, but it won't be the last. Novus Ordo Bishop Gerald Kicanas is making plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If the diocese follows through on what its attorneys say is "the only viable" way to resolve financially pending lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by Novus Ordo presbyters, it will be the first, but undoubtedly not the last, U.S. Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy. Under bankruptcy protection, local Catholic parishioners would be in the unprecedented position of being part of a church whose purse strings are monitored by the courts. [Arizona Daily Star]
Comment. Benighted Novus Ordinarians keep plunking ever-greater amounts of money into the Novus Ordo bishops' coffers. Don't they realize that they are subsidizing perversion? As if the sex perversion weren't enough, there is the worse perversion of the Church of the New Order, which has turned its back on Roman Catholicism and fabricated a new, One-World Liberalist Religion and a phony New Order Mess to accompany it. These dioceses should go bankrupt. Then, maybe, real Catholics can take over the buildings and restore the Traditional Latin Mass and the Roman Catholic Faith that was taken away from them.
Europe Rejects Christianity. It's official. The European Union will not recognize God or its Christian roots in its new constitution. Seven nations, including Italy and the Czech Republic, had urged the EU to refer to the "Christian roots of Europe" and explicitly mention Christianity and God in the constitution currently being drafted. The Vatican City State had also made clear that it wants a reference to Christianity in the Constitution. [United Press International]
Comment. It is ironic that the New Vatican wanted to include this reference, as the New Order that has been rammed down Catholics' throats since Vatican II is probably the primary reason why once-Catholic Europe has lost its Roman Catholic Faith (excepting those areas already lost in the Protestant Revolt). Before Vatican II many European countries recognized Catholicism as their official religion. But after Vatican II Newchurch didn't want that. It forced countries, under threat of interdict, to strike references to Catholicism from all constitutions. Now, forty years later, the New Vatican realizes its mistake. Like so much in the Church of the New Order: too little, too late. Give it another half century, and Mohammedanism will have taken it over, which was previously unable to take it over because of the intervention of Catholic popes and rulers.
Vatican Changes Its Tune on the Holy Inquisition. With egg on his face, JPII confronted the fact that his previous apology was based on fabricated evidence. The New Vatican finally admitted what secular historians have already discovered, that the Inquisition was not nearly as widespread as the fabricated "Black Legend" spread by anti-Spanish Protestant political forces at the time. At a news conference to present a 783-page book on the findings, church officials and others involved in the project said that statistics and other data demolished long-held beliefs about the Inquisition. [Associated Press]
Comment. Here again we find the New Vatican really behind the times. In its mania for false oecumenism, it even apologies for things that did not happen. The New Vatican now had to turn an about-face on oecumenism, when the study forced it to admit that many of the executions during the centuries spanned by the Inquisition were carried out not by the Papal Inquisition, or even the state-run Spanish Inquisition, but by witch hunts in Protestant countries!
Machinery and scaffolding are being installed for the dismantling of the high altar of the Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle in New York City. Cardinal Egan's position is that this is his property, and he can do with it what he pleases. That is the attitude of all Novus Ordo bishops, whom Vatican II has made petty autocrats in their own dioceses, beyond the reach of even the New Vatican.
If New Yorkers are serious about their churches and their Faith, they will make it clear to Egan that they aren't going to set foot in any of his churches and that they are cutting off the gravy train of collections that go not to maintain our heritage of beautiful Catholic churches, but to destroy them to pay off the perversions of the Church of the New Order.
The Novus Ordinarians who plop their money into the diocesan collection plates are paying to destroy their own churches and to pay off immoral bishops and presbyters. Doing that, the Novus Ordinarians can hardly wash their guilty hands like modern-day Pilates and still profess innocence.
Aren't you getting pretty tired of the New Vatican's bluster? The motto of the JPII papacy should be "All Talk, No Action." Sure, the pope makes a few public mumblings against Sodomy Unions (otherwise known as "Gay Marriage"), but when push comes to shove, what does he do? Well, on June 4, U.S. President Bush pushed, and JPII retreated.
During his June 4 visit to the Vatican, Bush asked the Vatican to push the American Catholic bishops to be more aggressive politically on family and life issues, especially a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
A Vatican official told the National Catholic Register June 9 that in his meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano and other Vatican officials, Bush said, "Not all the American bishops are with me" on the cultural issues. He asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken. While Bush was focusing primarily on the marriage question, he also was said to have in mind other concerns such as abortion and stem cell research. This action on the part of the pope should be a no-brainer: get his American bishops in line on a basic principle of Catholic moral theology.
What was the New Vatican's response? According to sources, there was no response to the President's request.
"All talk; no action." While controversy swirls about preventing Kerry from eating the phony Novus Ordo kommunion kookie, where are the excommunications for abortions? Where are the excommunications for Sodomy Unions? Not even the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians have gotten on that bandwagon. "All talk; no action."
If these people had one gram of intelligence, they would realize that all these evils -- abortion, sodomy, sex scandals, and the rest -- are all the result of a phony New Religion and a phony New Mess, which offers no grace. No wonder these Novus Ordinarians, deprived of the powerful graces of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, are sinking deeper and deeper into the pit. Could this be the message that Our Lord is giving His Church: you will continue to sink until you return to the Roman Catholic Faith and Traditions? The divine message could not be clearer.
I am an alien in the neo-modern, mega-New Order Church; lost in austere, cavernous, unruly monstrosities, where I may no longer worship, venerate, and reflect, but now must raucously "assemble" in the din of an irreverent "gathering space."
And now, my Church has become a bastion of hypocrisy, mired for two nightmarish years in a monumental, devastating, unending sex abuse scandal. When our hypocritical pope speaks, the world snickers, his moral authority undermined, his own house in disarray. And, in his twilight, this benighted man must bear the burdensome reality that his 25-year legacy is one stained by the worst scandal in modern Church history and the worst betrayal of the Roman Catholic Faith since Pope Liberius the Damned.
Hack, new-age, psycho-babbling theologians consider all the Modernistic aberrations their personal triumph. They proclaim, victoriously, that the Church they have shaped and molded since Vatican II has finally come of age and thrown off the shackles of the Middle Ages! But I witness an unmitigated disaster, a church in shambles led by Judas bishops. It is disgraced, beleaguered, and unraveling in an incomprehensible maelstrom of sacrilege and scandal, decadence and depravity, idolatry and invalidity.
Finally, God has slapped me in the face. I have been sleepwalking, pretending that the Counterfeit Church of the New Order is the Roman Catholic Church. It can't be. I know it, and my New Order friends know it. We have just been too dishonest to admit publicly what we know in our hearts. We have played into the evil of the New Order and its "New Mass." We have been accomplices to the evil. We have funded it. We have supported it. We have obeyed it like its ignorant slaves. What Paul VI called the "smoke of Satan" has now come close enough to singe me.
No longer. I have left this cruel joke of the New Order that lies to call itself "Catholic." I won't set foot in a New Order parish ever again. I have made a good confession to a real traditional priest, "not a presbyter" of the New Order. I will henceforth worship only at the Traditional Latin Mass. After all, my eternal salvation is at stake.
Now that the Los Angeles county supervisors, including the New Order sect members, have given in to American Civil Liberties Union pressure to remove the cross from the county seal, what's next? Why, removing San (Saint) from California city names!
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the city of Los Angeles may have to change its name. Also, cities like San Francisco, San Diego, and even Sacramento could be looking for new monikers. The reason? They all have religious meaning in their names. Los Angeles refers to the "City of Angels," while the others refer to names of Saints. In fact, the official name of Los Angeles is "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the Little Portion." A strong legal argument could be made to force municipal name changes, based on the argument that the names violate the so-called separation of church and state.
An ACLU spokesman said: "That has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Nobody is considering suing to change city names. If anybody were to bring such a suit, it would be laughed out of court and rightfully so."
Ridiculous? Not on your life. Would anyone in 1964 have thought that just 40 years later homosexual practices, condemned in criminal law, would not only be "tolerated" but also protected and encouraged by constitutional protections? That abortions, which were strictly regulated by the state for only significant medical reasons, would become a mere matter of a "woman's choice"? That the courts would even hear cases rejecting the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance or fail to suppress phony "gay marriage" certificates?
Even in the case of the L.A. County seal, the ACLU didn't object to the prominent depiction of Pomona, the pagan Roman goddess of fruits and nuts. I guess what's constitutional depends upon which goddess you worship. Paganism and Satanism is protected; Christianity is not.
Meanwhile, the Church of the New Order becomes so corrupt that its adherents support the dismantling of Christian culture. If conservative and traditional voters sit on their hands about these things, they deserve what they get. Just as they deserve the New Order, which they did not resist when it could easily have been overcome.
You've got to hand it to Abe Foxman. He just never gives up his hypocrisy. Head of an organization that is against defamation, he has made a career out of defaming Catholics. You'd think that, as a Jew, he would have learned the lesson of eschewing bigotry against others. But, no, he is a committed anti-Catholic bigot, in spite of the fact that he would not be alive today to spout his bigotry if it had not been for the charity of a Catholic family in France who took him in during the Second World War and protected him from the Nazis.
Last year, Foxman made it his exclusive work to defame one of the most humble, charitable, and honest men to be found in Hollywood, Mel Gibson. Foxman deliberately spread lies and vitriol against this long-suffering man, an avowed traditional Catholic and an exemplary husband and father amidst the cinematic cesspool in Hollywood of divorce, aborted and abandoned children, and homosexuality.
Well, it didn't work. The public, instinctively sensing Foxman's bigotry and Gibson's honesty, voted hands down for Gibson, making his The Passion of the Christ one of the top ten grossing films of all time.
Having been vanquished by Gibson, Foxman has now turned his bigotry against the pope, who has proposed to beatify Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich. You see, Foxman claims that the Venerable is "anti-Semitic." (It seems that this Foxman finds anti-Semites everywhere. Perhaps he should look under his own bed!)
Sister Emmerich lived from 1774 until 1824. As a child she is supposed to have received visitations from Christ and St. John the Baptist. In 1799 she began to bleed from a ringlet of tiny wounds around her head. Three years later she exhibited the stígmata on her hands, feet and side, and became so weak and ill that after 1813 she rarely left her bed.
An examination of Sister Emmerich by civil and ecclesiastical officials found no evidence of deception. Six weeks after she died, her body was exhumed to make sure her followers had not stolen it. The body was found to be free of corruption and odor. It was while she lay in bed that Clemens Brentano, a German poet, sat at her bedside and transcribed the words she spoke during her visions about the lives of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nine years after her death, he published them in a book, Passio Dolorosa Domini Nostri Iesu Christi secundum Meditationes Annae Catherinae Emmerich.
What to Foxman is "anti-Semitism" is to Christians Biblical truth: "His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated. The Jews, having quite exhausted their barbarity, shut Jesus up in a little vaulted prison, the remains of which subsist to this day." That description is no different from what is found in the Gospels themselves.
"Sister" Mary Boys, a radical feminist who is frequently trotted out to put a Modernist spin on anything and everything, "speculated that because of the pope's failing health, Sister Emmerich's beatification is being driven in a power vacuum by certain right-wing groups." Come on now, "Sister" Mary, you sound just like Hilary Clinton, who couldn't admit the infidelity of her husband and instead fabricated a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
So, Vatican II's phony oecumenism has gone so far as to let anti-Catholic bigots tell the pope whom to beatify and canonize. For such people, everything is secular politics, not true religion. You don't see Foxman wearing the kipah in the photograph above, do you? He's cut off his beard in the western manner, not the traditional Jewish style. I wonder whether he bothers to observe the Mosaic dietary laws or goes to temple very frequently. One could just bet he's one of those professing "Reform" Judaism, which bears as much resemblance to Judaism as Novus Ordoism bears to Roman Catholicism.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness (Matthew 23:27/DRV).
Just as the Novus Ordo service is invalid and ineffective, so are the Novus Ordo Sacraments and Sacramentals (except for Baptism and Matrimony, which are pretty hard to invalidate, though the Novus Ordo does manage to do so periodically). Of this fact, we have the following interesting indication.
As reported by L'espresso [Italiano], on September 6, 2000, a girl of 19, already having undergone Novus Ordo exorcisms, exploded in fury at the end of the pope's public audience. John Paul II wanted her close to him, and dedicated a half hour of prayer and blessing to her. He also promised her that he would say a Novus Ordo Mess for her. The pope's exorcism and Mess were of no avail. The next day, the girl spoke with the cavernous voice of the demon: "Not even the pope was able to defeat me."
Fr. Gabriele Amorth, 80, is said to be the most famous official exorcist in the world. His book, Exorcista Loquitur, has been translated into fourteen vernacular tongues. He has worked in Rome since 1986, wrestling with Satan every day. Of the "New" Ritual of Exorcism, issued by the Novus Ordo apparatus, Fr. Amorth says:
The Vatican curia has ... the same incompetence. They approved a new ritual which, for the exorcists, is a disaster. Fortunately, the old ritual [the traditional Rituale Romanum] is still valid. I use that one; otherwise, I would have to quit.
The late Dr. William Marra (1928-1998), Professor of Philosophy at Jesuit Fordham University, Founder of the Roman Forum, Host of Where Catholics Meet, was a student of Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1997), whom Pope Pius XII called "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church." In a speech, excerpted below, he clearly pointed out the unCatholic fallacy of believing that all the pope's actions are inspired by the Holy Ghost." He shows that in recent times, the opposite is more true, that true belief must always trump servile obedience.
The point is this: if there is a problem on a question of truth, and there is a big dispute, and finally Rome speaks (invoking its infallible authority) and says: this statement must be believed de fide, then this is the end of the dispute. Roma locuta, causa finita. Therefore, we owe assent of belief to statements of truth.
However, practical decisions of churchmen, even the highest authorities -- the pope, bishops, priests -- are something quite different. We do not say, for example, that a command of a pope or decision of a pope to call a council is true or not. We can say that it is wise or not, it is opportune or not. Such a decision in no way asks us to assent to its truth. And we Catholics are never obliged to believe that a given command, or given decision of anyone, including the pope, is necessarily that of the Holy Ghost.
There is a kind of papalotry [pope-worship] going around. It acts as if no matter what comes out of Rome, it must have been inspired by the Holy Ghost. This line of thinking holds, for example, that if Vatican II was called, it means that the Holy Ghost wanted to call it. But this is not necessarily the case. Convoking Vatican II was a personal decision of John XXIII. He may have thought God was telling him to call it, but who knows? He has no special charism that guarantees he would recognize such a decision as coming from the Holy Ghost with theological certitude. We can say that the Pope has the power to call a council. We can say that the authorities in the Church can call upon the Holy Ghost to guarantee, in a very narrow set of cases, that what comes from this council is de fide. (And nothing in Vatican II was pronounced de fide.)
Let us look at certain practical decisions of any pope. A pope could command the suppression of a religious order. That happened a few centuries ago; the pope suppressed the Jesuits. For all practical purposes, Paul VI suppressed the Roman rite. Pope Paul VI thought he had the liturgical power to do this. Von Hildebrand called it the greatest blunder of Paul VI's pontificate. So, to suppress a religious order, to suppress a rite, to name a bishop, is not a matter of truth, and it is not protected by the Holy Ghost.
We have 2,600 bishops in the Church. Does that mean the Holy Ghost picked all of those? That is blasphemy, friends. Do you want to blame the Holy Ghost for Archbishop Weakland [of Milwaukee, a self-admitted pervert and embezzler of Church monies]?
As already mentioned, to call a council is a practical decision of the pope. A person may piously believe that God inspired it. But no one can say that this is an object of faith. Also, we must not believe that whoever becomes pope is the man God wants to be pope. This is a play on words that "this is the will of God."
Every theologian has always understood there are two senses to the will of God: the positive will of God and the permissive will of God. Now, we know that God positively wants holy people in the Church: "this is the will of God, your sanctification." But when evil is done, this is through the permissive will of God. It is not something that God directly wills, but something that He permits when men exercise their free will.
Before any conclave which elects a pope, the electors are supposed to pray for guidance by the Holy Ghost. Now, if they are truly men of God, and they really pray, it is to be expected that the Holy Ghost will give them the right choice. But if they are willful, ambitious, carnal men, and they are not truly opening themselves to inspiration, an unworthy candidate of their own choosing may be the result. That does not mean that the man elected ceases to be pope. That does not mean that he loses the protection of the Holy Ghost when he teaches faith and morals. But it could be that this pope will end up to be a disaster.
It is as if God says, "You carnal electors and you carnal people in the Church who did not pray enough will get what you deserve. The papacy is still protected and will never teach with its infallible authority something as true that is false, but everything else is up for grabs. The given pope might do every type of abomination, his personal life might be a disaster, he might be self-willed, and so on. It could be that he is a horrible person. He can also be a disaster for the faith even if he is a good person. The papacy is not protected from such a calamity.
In the mid-1960's Dr. Alfred Tomitas, a French neurophysiologist, was called to a Benedictine monastery in France that had been taken over by a new abbot. The new abbot, a young man, was a revolutionary and had changed the internal rule of the abbey, the venerable Rule of St. Benedict, by modifying everything in accordance with the post Vatican II liturgical revolution.
He eliminated Latin from the monks' vocabulary and replaced it with prayers in the vulgar tongue. The new abbot rejected St. Benedict's Rule: "Seven times a day will I sing your praises," by which the Benedictine monks had normally chanted from six to eight hours a day. The new abbot succeeded in eliminating the Latin Gregorian chant from the monks' daily schedule because he wanted to demonstrate that the venerable Latin chant served no worthy purpose.
Gradually, as the days passed, the monks were laid low by fatigue. In desperation, the monks called a meeting to discuss what was causing their fatigue. Their habit had been to sleep only a few hours each night, so they decided that they should start sleeping like other men, going to bed early and waking up when they were no longer tired. After several days they realized that this regimen wasn't working: they were more tired than ever! The monks were so worried that they decided to call in several medical specialists. Over a period of several months, they saw a procession of doctors. They even tried specialists of the digestive system. One great French doctor thought they were ill because they were vegetarian, so they began to eat meat and heavier foods. The monks' condition became worse.
Finally, by the time Dr. Tomitas was called in, in June 1967, 70 of the 90 monks were slumping in their cells like limp dishrags. He examined them and began their: the Latin Gregorian chant. For Dr. Tomitas understood what no one else did at the time: that the monks needed to chant in order to "charge" themselves. He insisted that they immediately return to their schedule of eight hours of daily chanting. Within five months Dr. Tomitas succeeded in giving back to the monks their health and energy without drugs or medication. The Latin Gregorian chant had proven that it heals the body, at the same time as it comforts and calms the spirit.
Before the Vatican II era, which introduced junk music in the Novus Ordo service, chant scholae and classical choirs were proliferating, keeping alive and vibrant the only music proper to the Roman rite. Now with the introduction of vulgar music into the Novus Ordo service, among other abominations, the New Order is getting sicker and sicker, just as those Benedictine monks after Vatican II. The Church will be returned to health, spiritual and even physical, only when it returns to the Traditional Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, and Faith, including the sacred Gregorian chant.
It is wonderful to note that so many traditional churches and chapels are maintaining and developing the use of Sacred Music at Mass. One noted schola at an Oratory on the West Coast has been chanting the Hour of Terce of the Divine Office before Sunday Mass for almost ten years. Another independent church outside of Chicago has developed a significant Sacred Music program under the direction of its new organist and choirmaster. The choir at an independent church in the Mid-Atlantic area has essayed the Tenebrae of Holy Week.
The chant is not that difficult. Centuries of kings and peasants, butchers and bakers, has learned it by ear. If your traditional church or chapel is lacking a Gregorian schola, you are missing much. Now that the Liber Usualis has been reprinted, containing all of the chant that anyone would need, it is possible for any traditional site to attempt at least some chant. Try it. Your congregation's spiritual and physical health will improve, just like that of the Benedictine monks!
I wondered when it would happen. These U.S. bishops, with the pope in silent complicity, have all suborned, privately or publicly, the depravity of their presbyters. After the U.S. bishops' chief investigator correctly called the bishops "not the Catholic Church, but a Mafia," I wondered when someone would think to bring out the RICO (organized crime) statues against them. But first, it appears, someone has thought to lodge a class-action suit.
A Louisville attorney, William McMurry, filed a federal lawsuit against the Vatican on June 7, accusing leaders of the Roman Catholic Church of orchestrating a cover-up of presbyters who allegedly molested thousands of American children. McMurry is seeking to have the lawsuit certified as a class-action case, saying in the suit that he believes there are "at least several thousand" victims nationwide.
In the lawsuit, McMurry said that the Vatican sought "to maintain its aura of infallibility and thereby ensure that its parishioners, followers, and financial contributors will not lose faith and fail to contribute money and property" to the Church. "The pattern and the practice of cover-up and denial is so similar throughout the United States and in other countries," said canon lawyer Fr. Tom Doyle, contending that the bishops "must be getting their orders from somewhere."
And hasn't McMurry hit the issue on the head? The bishops and the Vatican have consistently used the arguments of false obedience and authority to force Novus Ordinarians to continue to contribute to collections, a significant portion of which is not going to the Church, but to pay off victims, while the bishops close down historic churches to sell the property for hush-money.
This lawsuit is designed to lay the responsibility for all childhood sexual abuse committed by [presbyters] in America at the feet of the responsible party, and that's the Vatican," McMurry said in an interview with The [Louisville] Courier-Journal. Although dioceses in Louisville and elsewhere have paid settlements, he said the "financial responsibility should be shared, if not borne entirely, by the Vatican." Canon laywer Fr. Doyle says, "Hopefully, this lawsuit will get somebody's attention over there."
After all, it was the Vatican's illegal imposition of the New Morality of the post-Vatican II New Order that provided the climate in which this depravity could take place. The pope has had every opportunity to discipline, defrock, or excommunicate the bishop-perpetrators, but he has so far declined to do so -- in every case. According to the legal principle, respondeat superior, in which the superior bears the responsibility for his subordinates' actions, this pope in both Catholic moral theology and secular law, is committing a greater evil than all the American bishops combined. As the truism goes: Qui parcit nocentibus, innocentes punit [He who spares the guilty punishes the innocent].
And once again we see that hypocritical "conservative" organization, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, weigh in on the side of the pervert-bishops and the "consents with his silence" pope. This is the same "Catholic" League that remained mute about the desecration and vandalism, including the theft of the Most Blessed Sacrament, of a Farmingville, New York, church, since the church was a traditional one, not kowtowing to the local bishop of the New Order.
When, as a result, TRADITIO called upon you, its hundreds of thousands of participants, to cut off funding to this group, the League changed its tune fast and issued an apology. Nevertheless, its mission of supporting the U.S. bishops of the New Order counterfeit was permanently compromised.
The inaptly-named American Civil Liberties Union told the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to get rid of the cross on the county seal. (The cross is so small that at a quick glance one would not even notice it.) Rather than fight the ACLU in court, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors caved in by a vote of 3 to 2. Here is the "kicker": Gloria Molina, who is a "Catholic" (that is, a Novus Ordinarian), was one of the three who voted to take the cross off the seal. Had she voted in favor of keeping the cross, the vote would have gone the other way.
What was not mentioned, however, is the fact that the largest segment of the Los Angeles County Seal is that devoted to the pagan Roman goddess, Pomona. If the ACLU were serious about its incorrect notion about the "establishment of religion" clause the Founding Fathers of the American Republic intended it, they would have also attacked the fact that a "goddess" is depicted on the seal. The attack on the Christian symbol gives away the fact that the ACLU's concern is attacking Christianity, and only Christianity.
The reason the cross was originally included in the seal is that Los Angeles and California were founded on Christianity. It was Fr. Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest, who played a major role in the founding and development of California through the missions that he founded. The missions prospered. By 1804 the line from San Francisco to San Diego was complete. There were nineteen missions within a day's journey of each other. For photographs of many of these historic missions, click on Holy Cards, California Missions & Stations of the Cross.
The Franciscans came to California to convert native tribes to Christianity and to teach them practical skills, such as candlemaking, viticulture, animal husbandry, and weaving. The natives were taught religion and the Spanish language. They were also taught the Latin Gregorian chant, which visitors to the missions said the natives sang with a heavenly sound.
The Thomas More Law Center, a national, public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a lawsuit on June 4 in federal district court in California, seeking to prevent Los Angeles County officials from removing the cross from the County's official seal. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Mr. Ernesto Vasquez, a county employee, who objects to the removal of the cross because it sends a government-sponsored message of hostility towards Christians in violation of the United States Constitution.
Attorney Charles LiMandri, director of the Law Center's West Coast regional office in San Diego, commented, "California has become a battleground for anti-Christian forces. Whether it be same-sex marriage, the removal of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, or now the removal of a small cross from the L.A. County seal, the impact is the same: the de-Christianizing of our society."
Catholics for the Preservation of the Faith, headquartered in Bombay, headed by a lawyer, served the Archbishop of Bombay on Trinity Sunday, June 6, with a lengthy notice threatening to mobilise international legal assistance in order to move the World Court and secure a restraint on the multi-religious centre in Portugal.
Here our standpoint is that just protest letters to the Portuguese ecclesiastical authorities, good in themselves, are not enough and that the mitres of the local ordinaries must be banged in order to get them to pressure Rome to stop the project in Fatima. We are going step by step, and there is a possibility of a call to local Catholics to stop all financial assistance to the local church.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It seems that the Catholic faithful are finally getting fed up with this Church of the New Order and its nefarious schemes to deprive Roman Catholics of their true Faith and their venerated shrines and churches. The pope can no longer hide in anonymity, after the sacrilege he committed in giving St. Peter's sacred altar stone to the Fatima oecumeniacs to turn Our Lady's shrine into some kind of a One World Pagan Temple.
TRADITIO is in the process of trying to secure a contact point with the C.P.F. so that you as individuals or in the name of your traditional organizations can have a focal point resist the New Order counterfeit ecclesiocrats to their face. Watch these TRADITIO Commentaries for further information.
Isn't it disgusting when indultarian organizations such as Una Voce, Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, Fraternity of St. Peter, etc., play the sycophants when some Novus Ordo cardinal or bishop drops the slightest morsel of "approval" for the hemidemisemi-"indult" Mass? Have they become so jaded to the full truth, or are they just ignorant that standing behind the "indult" is a Novus Ordo counterfeit? Have they forgotten the words of the Holy Gospel: "for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters?" (Matthew 15:27/DRV).
Remember all the hoopla last May when Card. Hoyos, the gauleiter of the Ecclesia Dei "Indult" Commission, said one -- yes, count it -- one, "indult" Mass, at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome? Oh, didn't the indultarians drool over this event! So much sycophantic syrup was poured out that it would have fed hundreds of Beezebubs. Hoyos was hailed at that time by the indultarians as the Traditional God, who was going to bring back the Traditional Latin Mass.
Now, a year later, the whole story comes out. That "indult" Mass was a ruse. Hoyos (as only TRADITIO at the time had the guts to say) is a flaming Novus Ordinarian. And that is not just TRADITIO saying so; that is Hoyos himself saying so, in an interview on May 5, 2004. Here are some revealing excerpts from that interview, in which Hoyos exposes himself as a proponent of the Novus Ordo, and no traditional Roman Catholic by any stretch of the imagination.
Stick a microphone in front of these indultarians, and they'll expose their Novus Ordo affiliation in a New York second, so that no doubt is left where they stand: against the Mass of St. Peter and against the Roman Catholic Church.
You've got to hand it to the pope. He just never gives up, does he? The Church is falling to ruins around him, his cardinals and bishops are fornicating with everyone in sight, his altars are the venues for clowns and teddy bears and even bound-and-gagged confirmands. Yet he can always find time to tell the President of the United States how to run secular affairs! JP II, in the President's June 4 courtesy call, complained about recent "deplorable events," an apparent reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops.
Yes, a few American soldiers, liberators of Iraq from a vile dictator who had murdered multitudes of his own people and stacked them up like cord wood reminiscent of Nazi concentration camp graveyards, did lose their composure, just as Titus's Roman army sacked the Temple against the emperor's command. So, what did Bush's lieutenants do? They identified the problem, exposed it to the public, apologized for it, and fixed it.
The pope, on the other hand, when his lieutenants were exposed as rapists at worst and fornicators at best, did all he could to ignore the subject, concealed it from the public, didn't really apologize for it (he had time to apologize to the arch-heretic Martin Luther, though), and failed to fix it. As television commentator Bill O'Reilly has cogently pointed out, the sex crimes in the Church of the New Order in United States this year were reported by the Chairman of the U.S. Bishops' own investigating committee to exceed those of last year. Novus Ordinarians blindly continue to plunk more of their denarii into the collection plates to sponsor the national Bishops' Brothel, worse than what the mad Roman emperor Caligula dared to run in the imperial palace.
Well, Mr. President, I've got an idea. Since the pope has been so incompetent to rule his own house, letting his own lowerarchs engage in the most immoral and vile behavior without a word of censure from him, it's only fair that you should tell the pope how to run the Church. I grant you that you're a Methodist, but the pope is an unabashed devotee of the Modernist New Order, so you've got him beat on that. You appear to be a highly moral man, around whom not a breath of personal scandal has surfaced, but the pope is sinking in a quicksand of immorality in his lieutenants and his own culpable and immoral inaction.
Run for pope, President Bush. You'd be a darn sight better than those phony Modernist cardinals who only pretend to be honest men (let alone Catholics) while, in the words of Our Lord of the Pharisees of old, are "whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness" (Matthew 23:27/DRV).
One of the grave problems with the concept of the "indult" Mass (there are so many) is that its purpose was never to spread the traditional Roman Catholic Mass and Faith, but actually to undermine it by knocking heads with the true Faith. We traditional Catholics know that we are winning our battle for the Roman Catholic Church when one of the great Modernists in the Church of the New Order, Adam Cardinal Maida, of Detroit, who consistently rejected the "Latin Mass," has now become sufficiently afraid of the rising traditional Catholic tide to announce (on April 19) an "indult" Mass for the first time in his regime.
He has done this not because he is Roman Catholic, or because he loves the true Faith, or because he loves the true Mass. Oh, no. As with all these New Order lowerarchs, for him it is strictly a matter of politics and power. But what is really revealing is that this leader in the Church of the New Order has now admitted, on the public record, how powerful the Traditional Roman Catholic Movement has become in his diocese (substituting objective terms for his Novus Ordo propaganda):
We have much activity by traditional churches in the Archdiocese. We have children in our archdiocese attending traditional schools and being drawn away from the Church of the New Order. Some of our New Order people are crossing the border to go into Windsor or other dioceses for the celebration of this the Traditional Latin Mass.
Moreover, Maida was too afraid to admit in his public statement what Detroiters know only too well, that in addition to more and more laypeople leaving the Novus Ordo, there has been a major emigration of seminarians from the archdiocese, and the crisis shows no signs of abating. In the year 2007 there is only one man scheduled to be ordained for the Archdiocese of Detroit. [Crux]
So, traditional Catholics, don't be taken in by the New Order propaganda. The Detroit crisis and many other crises throughout the Church of the New Order underscore the realities:
No doubt Maida, as the Modernist he is, will try to use the "indult" Mass to inject New Order doctrine and practices into traditional Catholics. Visitors to diocesan ("indult") sites are strongly advised to evaluate these carefully on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they are in fact Traditional Latin Masses at all, or rather hybrids to one degree or another of the Traditional Latin Mass with the Novus Ordo (New Order) service of 1969.
In a few places the Novus Ordo service is offered in Latin instead of the vulgar tongue and is called a Latin Mass, but it is not a Traditional Latin Mass. Needless to say, the Novus Ordo (New Order) service is just as invalid in Latin as in the vulgar tongues and is not the Traditional Latin Mass of the Roman Rite. This is the ploy that the EWTN Cable Network tries to pull.
Furthermore, since Protocol 1411 of July 3, 1999, issued by the Vatican Congregation for the Divine [Novus Ordo] Cult, "indult" organizations have been forced into a collaboration with the Novus Ordo service. More and more "Indult Masses" are including texts and rubrics from the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo service, "indult" priests are now forced to offer the Novus Ordo service, hosts from a Novus Ordo service are mixed with Hosts consecrated at the "Indult Mass," and other profanations are occurring.
Such pseudo-traditional services typically deviate also in one or more ways from the traditional practices in force even in 1962, such as:
Such sites, whether in Detroit or elsewhere, do not offer the Traditional Latin Mass and should be scrupulously avoided by the faithful at peril to their eternal souls.
When confronted with the bizarre pagan religion of the New Order, like the "bound and gagged" Confirmation discussed yesterday, the Novus Ordinarians will say: "Oh, I know those bizarre things aren't valid, but when it's 'reverent,' it's okay." (Of course, these people fail to comprehend that the Novus Ordo itself is irreverent, as it virtually spits in the face of Christ, His Apostles, and the Apostolic Tradition.)
Be that as it may, let's take a look at a "reverent" Novus Ordo ceremony. Here were are in a "reverent" church. It even has some Roman columns. The bishop is vested in a very traditional chasuble. His hands are reverently extended in blessing. A rosary? No. A crucifix? Oh, no. This Novus Ordo counterfeit is blessing -- a teddy bear.
Somehow this says it all. The Novus Ordo is in a dreamworld, in la-la land. It cannot distinguish between reality and make-believe. That is why it has a make-believe Mess, make-believe Sacraments, and a make-believe "kommunion kookie." That is why the Novus Ordinarians you meet sound as if they were coming from the Land of Oz. They ignore the reality of what is around them and instead create a Wizard of their own making. They learn only too late that their Wizard is a fraud.
Come on now, Dorothy. It's time for you to click your heels and get back to reality: the real Mass, the real Sacraments, and the real Catholic Faith. These you will find at your traditional church or chapel, not in the Oz of the Novus Ordo.
Vienna. The spires of the baroque churches reach toward heaven. The melodies of Mozart and Beethoven waft heavenward. You couldn't conceive of a more Catholic city. Yet even here, in the Kaisermuehlen district, the Novus Ordo has planted itself -- in the most bizarre way yet reported. The picture above shows a confirmand bound and gagged as part of this phony Novus Ordo "sakrament." I leave it to your imagination what this signifies. Whatever it signifies, it is sick! It is redolent of a pagan rite in which the virgin is bound, gagged, and sacrificed to the blood-thirsty Baal or Beelzebub.
While the New Order and New Vatican ecclesiastics lie to Catholics about what is going on at Fatima, it seems that the Protestants know exactly what the situation is. In contrast to the constantly ignorant or just plain lying Novus Ordo and secular press, the Christian Challenge, a Protestant publication out of Washington, D.C., has published one of the clearest statements of the situation I have read.
As the following passages indicate, it is clear even to the Protestants that Fatima is being turned into a temple for the most unChristian sects one could imagine. The article points out that the New Order officials have once again gotten caught with their cassocks down -- clearly lying about their intentions and what is happening at Fatima. Moreover, these Protestants clearly see that JP II, far from being the "Fatima Pope" he pretends to be, is not fighting for Roman Catholicism, but rather is fully behind the creation of the new secularized One-World Religion.
Ideas of "mingling" and "converging" religions are hardly new, but it is startling to find them at Portugal's famed Roman Catholic shrine at Fatima. Nonetheless, such ideas appear to be taking hold at Fatima, despite official denials and claims that hardline traditional Catholics are stirring unfounded controversy over Fatima. Even more surprising, perhaps, is that the trends do not appear to be opposed -- so far -- by Pope John Paul II.
The controversy surrounding the Roman Catholic shrine at Fatima began in the fall of 2003, when a Portuguese newspaper reported that the site would be remade into an interfaith shrine. Catholic officials denied the assertion, saying that the shrine will retain its Catholic, Marian focus. But in early May this year, a Hindu priest worshiped his faith's gods at the altar of Fatima's Chapel of the Apparitions, and he clothed the shrine's rector and the diocesan bishop in Hindu priests' vestments.
Reporting on the Hindu service on May 5, the Portuguese broadcast news services SIC and SIC Noticias said that the Hindu priest chanted prayers from the altar, on behalf of 60 Hindu pilgrims who gathered before him, outside the altar rail. A local television reporter explained, "This is an unprecedented, unique moment in the history of the shrine. The Hindu priest, or Sha Tri, [prayed] on the altar the Shaniti Pa, the prayer for peace." Additionally, the news report showed "scenes of the Hindu priest lighting a candle at the shrine while his followers [danced] outside the Chapel of the Apparitions chanting praises to their gods."
The TV broadcast showed that after the service, each of the Hindus was "personally greeted by the [New Order] Bishop of Leiria-Fatima," who then "bowed to the Hindu priest, repeating his gesture of greeting." The Hindu priest then clothed the diocesan bishop and Msgr. Luciano Guerra, the rector of the Fatima shrine, with a Hindu priestly shawl. The reporter told his viewers, "On the shoulders of the highest representatives of the Church in Fatima, the Hindu priest [placed] a shawl with the inscriptions of the Bagavad Gita, one of the sacred books of Hinduism."
The two Catholic dignitaries explained these events with rhetoric reminiscent of that used by Frank Griswold, the Presiding Bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church. Fr. Guerra said during the broadcast that: "These meetings give us the opportunity to remind ourselves that we live in community." And the diocesan bishop, D. Serafim Ferreira e Silva, told a local newspaper: "We don't want to be fundamentalist, but sincere and honest." The only Griswoldian buzzwords they forgot were "reconciliation" and "inclusive."
A conference sponsored by the Fatima shrine October 10-12, 2003, demonstrates that the Hindu service was hardly an inadvertent event. Titled "The Present of Man -- The Future of God: The Place of Sanctuaries in Relation to the Sacred," the conference was attended by an array of prominent Catholics. They included Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, the patriarch of Lisbon; Fr. Jacques Dupuis, professor of theology at Rome's Gregorian University; and the aforementioned Bishop Silva, and Msgr. Guerra, rector of the shrine.
The event occurred at the Paul VI Pastoral Center adjacent to the shrine, and was opened by Bishop Silva. The rector of the shrine said in December 2003 that the meeting was inspired by the reading of the message of Fatima "within the spirit of Vatican II."
The Belgian Jesuit theologian Fr. Dupuis told the conference October 11 that "we should not refer to the other religions as 'non-Christian', since this is a negative term that describes them by what we think they are not. Rather, "we should refer to them as 'the others.'" Dupuis added that "Christians and 'the others' are co-members of the Reign of God in history," and that "the Holy Spirit is present and operative in the sacred books of Hinduism or of Buddhism," as well as in "the sacred rites of Hinduism."
"The universality of God's kingdom permits this," he declared, "and this is nothing more than a diversified form of sharing in the same mystery of salvation." Dupuis predicted that "The religion of the future will be a general converging of religions in a universal Christ that will satisfy all." Almost everyone present, including the Catholic hierarchs, vigorously applauded Dupuis' speech. This occurred despite a 2001 warning by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican theological watchdog, that a recent book by Dupuis on religious pluralism erred with certain ambiguities and inadequate explanations relating to five doctrinal points.
The next day, Sunday, October 12, Archbishop Fitzgerald praised Fr. Dupuis' speech, saying the cleric had "explained the theological basis of the establishment of relations with people of other religions." Fitzgerald averred that "The Church is there to recognize the holiness that is in other people, the elements of truth, grace and beauty that are in different religions," and "to try to bring about a greater peace and harmony among people of other religions."
On the same day that Fitzgerald spoke, Fr. Arul Irudayam, rector of the Marian Shrine Basilica in Vailankanni, India, "rejoiced that, as a further development of interreligious practice, the Hindus now perform their religious rituals in the [Catholic] church." Noticias de Fatima then quoted Msgr. Guerra as saying that: "This proposal of coexistence -- also in Fatima -- of a religious pluralism is still embryonic. It's the first step. We are like the engineers in Portugal who begin by examining the structures of the bridges to see if we can trust them in the future."
And, since word of the interfaith trends at Fatima first emerged last fall, attempted reassurances by officials at the Vatican and the shrine have been undercut by clearly contradictory messages, and no one has denied or retracted the statements attributed above to Dupuis, Guerra, and Fitzgerald during the October interfaith conference.
A large new church, conceived in a stark modern style, is being built at Fatima to accommodate 9,000 pilgrims at a time. The design by a [schismatic] Greek Orthodox architect, Alexandros Tombazis, has received the approval of the diocesan bishop, and construction is to begin soon. On March 9, 2004, the Pope personally gave the rector of the Fatima shrine a stone fragment from the tomb of St. Peter; this relic will be formally placed as the cornerstone of the new basilica on June 6. Thus, the new basilica is proceeding with the highest blessing from the Vatican.
As usual, New Order ecclesiastics are blaming the controversy on "hardline traditional Catholics," as well they should. This shrine does not belong to the errant pope or his errant cardinals and bishops, but to the true Catholic faithful. As the Doctors of the Catholic Church teach us, when popes and prelates fall into error, it is the Catholic's duty not to obey, but to resist, just as St. Paul resisted the errors of St. Peter to his face, as Sacred Scripture teaches us.
Well, at least we can all make it more difficult for these Novus Ordo turncoats at Fatima build a temple to the Gods of Paganism. Not that it will probably do any good against the totalitarian New Order bishops, who are bound and determined to make over the Roman Catholic Church into the false One-World, Oecumenical Church of the New Order, but TRADITIO herewith provides you with you with the contact information for the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima: Msgr. Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, Largo Conego Maia, 2400-175 Leiria, Portugal, telephone 00-351-244.832.714, fax 00-351-244.812.922, E-mail diocese.leiria@mail.telepac.pt.
If you do communicate with him, don't act like a craven wimp, but as a courageous traditional Catholic who loves the true Faith and who justly chastises those prelates who fall from it. Take this bishop to task for his errors, following the example of St. Paul who chastised St. Peter in front of the Apostles for falling away from the true Faith.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Each time I discuss the Novus Ordo Mess vs. the Traditional Latin Mass with Novus Ordinarians, I get the feeling that most Novus Ordinarians think the Mass can be tailor made for their convenience or to suit their self-defined "spiritual needs" (e.g., change to the vulgar tongues, change to make it shorter, replace Catholic hymns with rock-based ditties). I argue that the Mass isn't created for them, but for God, a fact that clearly, most Novus Ordinarians have completely forgotten. Am I wrong in using this point with the Novus Ordinarians?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No, you're not wrong. Sacred Scripture and Tradition surely agree with you. However, I have come to learn that having these little discussions with Novus Ordinarians about "preferences" get nowhere. They are so deep in error now that you have to use the shock treatment of the unadulterated truth with them.
Just say to those who would make that argument: "You're not Catholic, you're Protestant. Martin Luther would love you." The Mass comes from Apostolic Tradition. Luther rejected that. He made up his own invalid service, just as the New Order makes up its own service. And the consequences? Look around you. Who can even define what "Catholic" is an more? Only the traditional Catholics.
We are what you once were.
We believe what you once believed.
We worship as you once worshipped.
If you were right then, we are right now.
If we are wrong now, you were wrong then.
Consider this. If, despite its blatant departure from the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, the New Order and the New Theology which that worship service supports can be justified and approved of, then all the Saints were superstitious simpletons, all the theologians were liars, and all of our Catholic forefathers were duped idiots, including some of the greatest minds in human history: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Thomas More, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Benedict, St. Louis de Montfort.
These and all previous Catholics were traditional Catholics. They all believed exactly the same as traditional Catholics today do. It is not a mere matter of opinion, but a matter of irrefutable fact that the traditional Faith, the traditional Mass, and the traditional Sacraments are Roman Catholic, not the novel teachings of Vatican II, not false oecumenism, and certainly not the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service.
No one who calls himself a Roman Catholic can have anything to do with a putatively invalid rite, defined as not a Mass, flaunting condemned heresy, perverting Christ's own most solemn Consecratory Prayer in both word and form, contradicting Christ's and His Church's identical sacrificial intention, fraudulently introduced as an experiment in flagrant violation of laws made to protect our Holy Mass and in deliberate fracture of two most solemn oaths required of and sworn by every priest at ordination and every bishop at consecration.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
If the traditional Eucharistic fast starts at midnight and lasts until the time of Holy Communion, I would like to know what one is supposed to do if the Holy Sacrifice is celebrated at noon, for example, or at midnight (at Christmas).
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Christmas Midnight Mass is a special case. The Eucharistic fast then is traditionally four hours. Most people, so we're told, don't eat breakfast anyway, so a noon Mass would not be a problem. If you have a medical condition that makes such a fast impossible (e.g., diabetes), you should speak to your confessor.
From Apostolic Tradition, Mass is not to be celebrated after midday. There were certain exceptions introduced for evening Masses during the conditions of World War II, which were "regularized" during the pre-Novus Ordo changes of 1956 and 1960-62, although Masses between midday and 4 p.m. were still prohibited. If one has no alternative but to attend an evening Mass, it would be congruent, I should think, to follow the "mitigated" Eucharistic fast of 1956, which is three hours from food and one hour from drink before Holy Communion.
I have to marvel about how wedded the present age is to bodily comfort. Our ancestors in the Faith took fasting as an accepted thing in accordance with Scripture and Tradition, and their fasts were much more severe than our modern ones. We in this age do little enough mortification and sacrifice in the name of Christ. The Eucharistic Fast, the Friday abstinence from fleshmeat, etc., seem a very small thing to do in imitation of Christ, Who did so much more for us.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I will soon have to face the situation of the funeral of a father who is a dyed-in-the-wool Novus Ordinarian. I know that I will be expected to take part in some way, but this is difficult for me. I love and respect my father, and I want to honor him as I should, but I left the Novus Ordo years ago and attend the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively at an independent chapel, and my son has the high privilege of serving at the altar there. I do not want to set a bad example for my son by compromising and taking part in a Novus Ordo Mess.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This is a difficult situation that is becoming more and more common as close family relatives, even -- turning on its head the order of nature -- parents, leave the true Faith and take up with the New Order counterfeit.
Naturally, you cannot participate actively in the Novus Ordo service, as you yourself indicate. If asked, you should not read Scripture, give a "eulogy," or take "kommunion." You can be present out of respect, and that is how I think that you can explain it to your family if needed: "I am present out of respect for my father even though I consider the New Order religion to be no more than Protestantism, in which I as a Catholic am forbidden to participate."
Be prepared for negative comments, but stick to your simple statement. If necessary, cut off the situation by saying, "Please be kind enough to be tolerant of my deeply-held faith, just as I have to tolerate the things you do that I disagree with."
To the degree that you have influence on the format of the service, try to make it as simple as possible -- no music, no eulogies, no hoopla.
Dear Father Moderator:
I read Greg's very common question about the Holy Ghost keeping everything the Vatican does from error. It seems that many so-called Catholics refuse to give up their blind obedience to apparent authority because they think the Holy Ghost controls everything. The following example may help people discern.
Remember that the Holy Ghost teaches the truth (John 16:13/DRV), but does not force. God gave man free will. Those popes and bishops who fail to follow the teaching of the Holy Ghost cannot expect compliance from true Catholics to their erroneous wishes, as they are themselves at odds with God. Many members of the New Order sect tout automatic obedience to their Church officials (whom they themselves constantly disobey!) because the Holy Ghost purportedly runs the Church. As the Church teaches, this is not true in the case of the personal errors of officials, who have free will.
Let's say a cardinal, Cardinal Sellout, is voting within the College of Cardinals for the next pope. He knows that Cardinal Best is the best candidate for the job, but Cardinal Worst comes up to him offering Cardinal Sellout a choice archdiocese in a wealthy Italian seaside resort if he changes his vote in favor of Cardinal Worst. (You don't think these cardinals politic?) Now, Cardinal Sellout did not humbly kneel down and ask the Holy Ghost which candidate is favored by Heaven. Instead, from purely human covetousness votes for Cardinal Worst so that he can get the luxury appointment. What's the Holy Ghost going to do? Set fire to Cardinal Sellout's robes?
God has bound Himself never to override our free will, so He cannot force Cardinal Sellout to do the right thing. Cardinal Best should by rights be the next pope, but the majority of the College members want prestigious appointments or less papal control over their offices, so Cardinal Worst becomes Pope Worst the Intolerable, driving millions of souls towards Hell.
Being truth, God cannot violate Himself. He chose to create man in His own image, that is with reason and free will. This circumstance explains why the Arian heresy lasted centuries, not months. It explains how the pope of that time probably fell into personal heresy. It explains why some forty popes, according to dogmatic Vatican Council I, taught error. Eventually, the laity resisted the Arian pope and his bishops. The laity constantly prayed for guidance from the Holy Ghost, were led by Him to strenuous resistance of the bishops and pope, and finally prevailed over the clergy to right the Church. This history is brilliantly expounded by Cardinal Newman in his influential work, The Arians of the Fourth Century.
Those who today claim that they must automatically obey a priest, bishop, or pope who is in error commit the sin of Servility, also called False Obedience. Many of the disobedient members of the New Order sect go on and on about being "in communion with the pope." But what they never talk about is being "in communion with Christ." Like the Apostles, we must obey Christ first, and only then men who are in communion with Christ, Who is truth.
Anyone today who supports falsity and error, even when it wears a mitre or scarlet robes, will be judged not only according to his own sins, but also according to the sins committed by his superior, whom he has knowingly supported and ratified with his silence. We must remember that silence is the most common accord to error; when we remain silent about error, it is the same as committing it ourselves.
The Holy Ghost teaches, but bad students do not learn, just as St. Peter had to be corrected not only by St. Paul, but by God Himself, when he erred from the true path of Christ's teaching and the Tradition of the true Faith. St. Peter did finally learn his lesson. One can only hope that these errant cardinals and bishops -- dare we say pope? -- will learn their lesson as well.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Putting aside the validity of the Novus Ordo "cookie," do you agree that a priest has the duty to deny Communion to anyone he knows to be in serious sin?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
I wouldn't put it that broadly, no. First of all, the canons speak only of notorious, public sin. Any priest would have to be very careful indeed that nothing he ever did would break the seal of the confessional, even if as a result he had to give Communion to someone he knew to be in subjective sin. The sigillum of the confessional is inviolable.
All of the hoopla I've heard on this issue recently pertains to only one issue, abortion. Why? Let's take another case that is clearly notorious and public: two unmarried people publicly living together in fornication. This is a notorious public sin, obviously unrepented, for which Communion should be denied. But it never is. Cuts a little too close to the bone, eh? Maybe it would be your son or daughter who would be turned away, justly, from the Communion rail.
Even if we stay with politics, what about all the legislators who have come out for Sodomy Unions? I don't hear any bishop calling for Communion to be denied to these politicians. Why? Living publicly in a Sodomy Union is a notorious sin that cries to heaven for vengeance.
The problem is that this whole thing with presidential candidate John Kerry is pure politics. Even the bishops can't agree on what their own teaching is. Therefore, how can you legitimately hold anyone responsible for a "law" that Cardinal McCarrick denies and Bishop Bruskewitz affirms? Is abortion okay in Washington, D.C., but not in Lincoln, Nebraska? (And remember, Bruskewitz is that full-of-hot-air bishop who was going to excommunicate "Catholic Masons" and never did after the press hoopla died down.)
In normal, pre-Vatican II practice, no priest would refuse Communion. How would you know unless the person's sin was "notorious" and "public," and in saner times such people would never approach the Communion rail. If an error were to be made, it would have to be made on the side of giving Communion rather than denying It, since one would have to avoid any scintilla of violation of the seal of the confessional. (I wonder, was Al Capone was denied Communion by Cardinal Stritch? Or did Capone never even try?)
The problem is that the Novus Ordo kommunion means nothing. It itself is a political matter. Remember that Kerry took kommunion publicly at an African Episcopalian Church, and we heard only minor rumblings, not an outcry of "Sacrilege!", which it was. Now, that would be much better grounds for denying Kerry kommunion, but of course the Church of the New Order would never do such a thing, as it wouldn't be "oecumenical." So, you see, the Novus Ordo "law" depends not upon justice, but upon whose ox is being gored.
The New Order bishops are a coven of hypocrites. The bishops, not Kerry, are the morally reprehensible ones. They have deprived Catholics of the true Catholic Faith. If you want to deny kommunion to someone, let's start with the 300 Novus Ordo bishops! They are still trying to cover up their own crimes and apostasy by trying to turn the spotlight on someone like Kerry, who probably is in subjective good conscience. After all, his conscience was formed in the New Order by those same Novus Ordo bishops!
And, by the way, why are these bishops not hounding Ted Kennedy? Isn't he still receiving kommunion in the New Order? Is Kennedy, who was even involved at the death of a young woman, politically untouchable? More hypocrisy from these Novus Ordo bishops. This ridiculous brouhaha is not really worth the ink these "conservative" Novus Ordinarians are wasting on it.
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