Michael Davies, who wrote some 30 traditionally-leaning books and pamphlets from the 1970s to the current day, particularly his three-volume Liturgical Revolution, in which he exposed a number of errors of Vatican II, died Sunday, September 26, at 01:20 Universal Time of a massive heart attack at age 68. Davies had been under treatment for advanced prostate cancer.
Although his commitment to traditional Catholicism was not quite on the same level as that of Fr. Gommar DePauw or Fr. James Wathen, who antedated him in their attacks upon what now has come to be known as the Counterfeit Mass, Davies did associate himself with the Society of St. Pius X in the 1970s, but then drifted toward the "Indult" Mass.
In the early 1990s he accepted the position of President of Una Voce, a semi-traditional organization that played up to the New Vatican. When Davies became the president of this organization, he shifted farther in the direction of the Church of the New Order. Probably he thought that this was a practical necessity, given his new position.
It was at this point that he started to revise his former books to make them more palatable to the New Vatican. In particular, he started promoting his own idiosyncratic version of "indefectibility," which accepted the New Order apparatus. But after he resigned his presidency, in his last few years he seemed to be returning to his more traditional viewpoint of the 1970s, and he expressed more or less a rejection of the Novus Ordo.
He left the Traditional Catholic Movement some very useful volumes of apologetics, particularly if you can find them in their first editions, before he bowdlerized them in his Una Voce years to make them more palatable to the New Vatican. One could only have hoped that he had had the direct vision of a Fr. DePauw or Fr. Wathen, but such clear vision was characteristic of very few in the early days of the movement.
The truth is out. Catholic Charities are not Catholic. The California Supreme Court has upheld the Court of Appeals and ruled that Catholic Charities does not meet the requirement of being a religious employer, that Catholic Charities is not really "Catholic." Therefore, Catholic Charities will be forced to provide abortion coverage for its employees.
State law requires that to be considered as religious, an employing organization must meet all of the following criteria:
Catholic Charities' own statement admitted that it was not religious or Catholic, but social and oecumenical:
It is hard to take exception to the California Supreme Court. Catholic Charities by its own definition is not "Catholic"! We hope that next the courts will find that the New Order dioceses are not Catholic either. Then maybe we real (traditional) Catholics can take our churches back.
Remember back in 2000 when the New Vatican published a list of "Oecumenical Saints," including "Saint" Martin Luther and so forth? It is not unusual to find de facto "saints" in Novus Ordo churches. For example, St. Martin is found in one diocesan seat -- and several other churches around the United States, so we hear.
No, we are not speaking of the great St. Martin of Tours, the actual father of Western monasticism, antedating St. Benedict of Nursia. (St. Martin by the way refused to be in the same room with the Arian heretics of his own day, thereby giving us a Catholic example of how to deal with the Modernist heretics of our day.) No, we are not speaking of St. Martin de Porres, the humble Dominican Saint of Latin America.
We are speaking of St. Martin Luther King, civil rights advocate of the United States, who in addition to being a Protestant heretic was also known for plagiarizing his Ph.D. examination and committing multiple adulteries. Doesn't seem like a very fit subject for sainthood does he, particularly, since he never recanted his heresy. Yet there is his statue in a nave niche of the Oakland quasi-cathedral, holding his sacred text: "I have a dream."
The Episcopalian cathedral in the city of St. Francis has a stained-glass window depicting St. Harvey Milk, the city supervisor who was a public homosexual and an advocate of "gay rights." And we all know that whatever the Episcopalians do, the Novus Ordinarians are soon to follow join in.
Now we have St. William -- Clinton that is, being circulated in the press as a de facto "saint." The way the U.S. bishops have been playing up to John Kerry, we can expect the de jure adoption of "St. William" in the not too distant future!
Isn't the Novus Ordo getting wackier and wackier every day? Now they've got laypeople telling the New Vatican how to understand theology. Take that crazed woman from New Jersey who wants to invalidate what the New Order purports to be the Eucharist by changing it from bread to rice cakes! Now, we know that the Novus Ordo "Eucharist" is invalid anyway, but these benighted individuals don't.
Somehow this case of the Wheat Cookie is emblematic of the New Order -- me, me, me. The New Order has trained this woman well. Her daughter allegedly can't even take a crumb of wheat. Well, she's certainly not the only one that had this problem. There are other ways to deal with it, including the method that several Saints used: Spiritual Communion.
But now, according to the Asbury Park Press, this woman is trying to prevail on Card. Ratzinger to redefine bread to rice cookies. She even admits: "I'm questioning 2,000 years of tradition." She doesn't care. As far as she's concerned, she'll invalidate the "Eucharist" for everyone around the world, just so that her daughter can eat a Rice Krispie.
And what theological basis does this woman, who equates herself to St. Thomas Aquinas, give to justify invalidating the "Eucharist"? "The divinity of the Eucharist doesn't lie in the wheat." Fine, if she wants to scrap bread, why not "consecrate" dog kibble or tuna or yogurt? Just like the New Morality, which does not "judge" murderers and rapists, the New Theology has no objective basis. Just do anything you want. Fine, but at least have the sense to take it outside the Catholic Church. If you want to be a Protestant, set up a Protestant church where you can consume dog cakes for kommunion if you want.
And why wouldn't she care about what is Catholic? Well, it turns out that this woman is a liberalist activist with one of those crusading organizations. She's an activist first and a Catholic second. I find it curious that the girl's father has never been quoted. Where is he? Embarrassed? Deceased? Athiest?
Can there be any question that the whole Church of the New Order, not only its clergy but also its laity, have "changed the truth of God into a lie" (Romans 1:25/DRV) and are characterized in the words of the Apostle as "hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things" (Romans 1:30/DRV).
The Church of the New Order is so sick and spreading its sickness so widely now that it must be reduced, as its false doctrine and immorality are in fact reducing it so that, in the words of Our Lord, "there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed" (Matthew 24:2/DRV).
Here we go again. The Church of the New Order is thoroughly covered in corruption as it enters the winter of its existence. Now the New Vatican has been implicated in the rash of embezzlements and frauds that have already ensnared several Newchurch bishops and presbyters.
The Associated Press reports that a Vatican official stationed in the United States, Monsignor Emilio Colagiovanni, was found guilty by a U.S. federal court of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money-laundering in a wide-reaching insurance scam. Colagiovanni pled guilty to charges that he falsely vouched for a bogus charity to hide a theft of $200,000,000 from insurance companies in five states. Colagiovanni was also found guilty in state court on charges related to an attempt to deceive regulators.
So now you Novus Ordinarians know where your charity contributions are going. Into the pockets of Newchurch thieves and embezzlers.
Colagiovanni agreed to use a Vatican charity and its Vatican bank account, to launder money from the fraudulent St. Francis of Assisi Foundation. In exchange, Colagiovanni was to receive a payoff of $5,000,000.
Don't you just love the lies of the New Order? Newchurch Bishop Tod D. Brown, of Orange Country, California, known for his shutting down the "Indult" Mass, has been pleading poor mouth when it comes to compensating the victims of sex crimes by his presbyters or paying diocesan workers a fair wage (so he canned many of them last spring).
Brown has added a second story to his already massive abode. And just last month he admitted to purchasing a gated-community lot on which he plans to build a new multimillion-dollar mansion for himself near the proposed site of -- yes -- yet another Pagan Cathedral: the $100,000,000 Christ Our Savior Cathedral in Santa Ana. As if that weren't enough, this Newchurch bishop has provided a $2,000,000 house to a retired monsignor. [Orange County Weekly]
Now, let us examine further this New Order Church of Love, of which Brown is a member in good standing. It loves the homeless. It loves the AIDS victims. It loves illegal aliens. But not much. Last year, the bishop's office transferred to its charitable arm a puny total of $398,500. This amount is one-third of what Brown's Santa Ana house costs and doesn't even provide one-tenth of the charitable arm's operating funds.
Let's face it. These Newchurch bishops haven't just taken away the Roman Catholic Mass and Sacraments from the faithful. They are engaged in widespread legal and illegal plundering and embezzlement of funds from the widow who puts her mite into the Newchurch collection basket every Sunday.
When are the Novus Ordinarians going to realize that they are being duped? They're being fed a phony faith, a phony mess, phony sacraments -- and being robbed blind in the process. The time is long overdue for them to walk out en masse and let the New Order Facade crash all to Hell, where it belongs?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
TRADITIO was proven right again! I just received an "indult"-affiliated periodical in which Card. Hoyos was interviewed. He hates the Traditional Latin Mass, the one that would never change, and calls us who wish it in perpetuity, as promised us, "attached." That phraseology truly irks me. Where is the "Church"? He was totally pedantic and sarcastic, yep, but certainly not "loving" toward traditional Catholics, who want only what is their right and the right of all Catholics. As St. Basil the Great said in his day: "The heretics have the buildings, but we have the Faith!"
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Traditional writer Patricius Anthony previously wrote a devastating critique of Hoyos' "show Mass" at St. Mary Major last year. For further information, see Cardinal Hoyos' "Mass" in the TRADITIO Special Features department.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Which rules of fast should traditional Catholics follow? Is the 1956 mitigation of Pope Pius XII acceptable for the Eucharistic Fast? The traditional Eucharistic fast is from midnight, but was mitigated to three hours in 1956. One well-known traditional organization says that only the Novus Ordo one-hour fast binds under pain of mortal sin. What must we do?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
For fast days, such as those in Lent and on certain vigils, it is reasonable to follow the 20th century custom in the United States (or whatever country you are from). Essentially, this fast depends upon the quantity, not the type of food. One main meal is taken, enough to sustain, and two smaller meals, or collations, not adding up to the main meal. No solid food is taken between meals. This fast and fast days are described in detail in the Traditional Directory. You should consult your copy as a handy reference to these and many other details of traditional Catholic practice.
As to the Eucharistic fast before Holy Communion, such a statement as you have quoted above shows that the organization has not consulted Pope Pius XII's original Motu Proprio Sacram Communionem, in which the pope specifically stated that the faithful should make an effort to follow the traditional Eucharistic fast, that is, from midnight. The mitigation of 1956 makes most sense within the traditional context by applying it to special cases, such as those of driving a long distance to Mass, attending evening Masses (which were themselves introduced only in 1956, and so are moot), etc.
The considerations for and against the mitigated three-hour fast aside, the "one-hour" fast is clearly an abomination of the New Order. It is inconceivable that any traditional Catholic could accept it seriously. If one followed that corrupt thinking, one could go to Denny's, order the Grand Slam Breakfast, arrive fifteen minutes before Holy Mass belching bacon and eggs and pancakes, and receive Communion 45 minutes later. Such a concept is totally untraditional and grossly offensive to Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.
Moveover, there is an hypocrisy, or at least a contradiction, in the statement you have quoted above. How can the same organization mentioned not accept the Novus Ordo's anticipated ("golf") Mess on Saturday afternoon and yet accept such a sacrilegious "mini-fast"? It just doesn't make any sense. It is clearly a descensus ad Avernum and a hallmark of the New Uncatholic Order, with which any true Catholic can have nothing to do.
First Portland, Oregon. Now Tucson, Arizona, goes bankrupt. Wasn't it Robert Frost who wrote that the world would end in fire or ice? Well, it seems that the Church of the New Order, the Church of Love, the Church of the New Springtime, or whatever they're calling it today, is dying a slow death by attrition.
It is looking more and more as if Providence, some thirty or so years after the New Order was imposed upon large portions of the Church by force, is now paying the price for its sins and is becoming unraveled. Granted, the New Order propaganda machine and its New Order officials still keep referring to the wonderful Church of Vatican II, but how can anyone take them seriously, when:
The bankruptcy will open the secret diocese books to court scrutiny. Our bet is that the scandals we have seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Even so, Newchurch bishop Gerald Kicanas tried to pull a fast one at the last minute. It was discovered that the diocese had transferred five properties between March and June, in an apparent effort to remove assets from the diocese in advance of a trial and to shield such assets from collection efforts.
Plus ça change, plus ça même chose.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What can you tell your participants about the purported Ottaviani statements supposedly retracting his condemnation of the "New Mass"?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This case provides a good example why the internet is a dangerous source when people don't have the knowledge to analyze the information they receive. The New Order's cover story that Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani changed his mind about his document, authored in conjunction with Antonio Cardinal Bacci and several Roman theologians, condemning the New Order as unCatholic and even invalid, has long ago been shown to be an "urban myth."
The proponents of the New Order were devastated to have the Church's highest theological authority and a President of the Vatican II Council publicly question the validity of the so-called "New Mass" and to have had Pope Paul VI admit the validity of Cardinal Ottaviani's charge by recalling the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969, just after it was issued.
In an effort to counter the Cardinal's charges of unCatholicity and even invalidity, which stand true to this day, the New Order cooked up a phony "cover story" that the Cardinal had "retracted" his statement. This story interestingly parallels the deceit that the English bishops had used with St. Joan of Arc, claiming that she had retracted her statements. Of course, both stories are lies.
A purported letter of February 17, 1970, supposedly with the Cardinal's signature, was adduced to prove the story. However, by that date it is known that the Cardinal, then 80, was totally blind and would not have known what he was signing when presented with the purposed letter by his secretary, Msgr. Gilberto Agustoni.
Now it has come to light that this Agustoni was a member of the Consilium which that fabricated the "New Mass" and which the Arch-Architect of the New Order service, Hannibal Bugnini, led. At the time, Jean Madiran, the editor of the respected French journal Itineraires, publicly accused Agustoni of obtaining the Cardinal's signature by fraud. As a result, Agustoni was fired as the Cardinal's secretary.
So, it seems that Agustoni insinuated his way into becoming the Cardinal's secretary and in that position created a fraud in an attempt to undermine the Cardinal's public document, which questioned the validity of the New Order service, by a phony "retraction," which Agustoni had himself written with others. In any case, co-author Antonio Cardinal Bacci and the Roman theologians never "retracted," in any manner, shape, or form the devastating document, which they courageously published.
The moral of this story is that the New Order will resort even to fraud and lies to relieve itself of the embarrassment of having its New Order service called what it putatively is -- invalid. One can only think of the mountains of lies that New Order bishops have told to conceal the gross immoralities going on in their dioceses, which are starting to topple those bishops, ten of whom have been indicated or resigned, two of whose dioceses have now come under court supervision.
In many ways, this fraudulent cover-story is reminiscent of the current "Rather-gate," in which CBS News and newscaster Dan Rather are embroiled because of their acceptance of phony documents on President Bush forged by his political enemies.
Plus ça change, plus ça même chose.
TRADITIO has said it many times before. You might as well go to the Methodist church down the street as to one of the Novus Ordo churches, for all the difference there is now. Well, it seems that some Novus Ordinarians have been reading TRADITIO and are doing just that. Apparently, they too see no difference!
The Toledo Blade recently quoted a parishioner whose 115-year-old St. James Church is being closed to pay off sex lawsuits and in recognition of the fact that Novus Ordo attendance is plummeting. What this parishioner says is quite revealing. She said if her church closes, she might not go where the diocese says. "Maybe. I'm not sure," she said. "My husband's Methodist. I may consider going to a Methodist church."
Congratulations to the New Order! It has purveyed so much unCatholic "doctrine" about false oecumenism and "we all worship the same god" nonsense that Novus Ordinarians can't even distinguish between what passes for a Catholic church and a Protestant church. And notice how Novus Ordinarians throw over the "obedience" argument when it doesn't suit them. That being the case, why should traditional Catholics be expected to "obey" Newchurch bishops who simply want to destroy the Roman Catholic Faith as it has been known for two millennia -- and have almost succeeded in doing so?
A parishioner at the closing St. Anthony's says that she'll watch the "Mass" on TV. Well, she may as well tune in to "The Simpsons" for all the good watching the "Mass" on the boob tube will do her. She'd better hope that Lucifer likes TV!
Yet another church, St. Francis, is said to have trouble scraping even 200 of its 953 "members" to Sunday Mess. So, attendance at the Mess is less than 20% of even the most active members, active enough to register at a parish.
As TRADITIO has been saying, the Vatican II "springtime" has entered winter. Pope Paul VI in 1972, just seven years after Vatican II was closed, predicted it exactly right: "We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned, instead, was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties."
Well, don't worry. The traditional Catholics who have held fast to the True Faith these forty years, heeding the counsel of St. Paul, will be around to pick up the pieces of Newchurch. We should not lose hope now. We are finally winning the Church back!
TRADITIO has been one of the earliest and most outspoken proponents of the position that the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service is invalid. Some months ago we started calling its "communion" what it really is: a "cookie," both because it is not the Corpus Christi and because it is commonly made out of invalid matter, more like a cookie than bread.
Some participants originally took exception to this reference. However, TRADITIO's satirical method is meant, after all, to jolt participants to think outside of the erroneous patterns of the New Order, and jolt we did. Within weeks we were getting dozens of messages indicating that when participants were finally forced to confront the matter, they too were forced to conclude that the Novus Ordo Mess is null and void and that the worship of a cookie as God is idolatrous. They turned their back once and for all on the Novus Ordo "Mess" and started attending exclusively a traditional church.
TRADITIO has been furnished with an advance copy of a book just released by Fr. Paul Trinchard, a pontifical Licenciate in Sacred Theology: "New Mass" Conclusively Invalid: According to the Preponderance of Evidence. One of TRADITIO's main supports for the argument of invalidity has been Pope Leo XIII's Letter Apostolicae Curae, declaring invalid the Anglican "New Mass," than which the Novus Ordo Mess is far worse. Fr. Trinchard too relies heavily upon these principles for proving the invalidity of the "New Mass."
For further information on this explosive new book, see FAQ05: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics). The new book's publisher is also one of those outlets taking pre-publication orders for the Tenth (2005) Edition of the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses for the United States and Canada and Resource Book, which is expected to be released on October 1, so you can conveniently order both books at once.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Is it okay for an elderly Catholic who attends the Traditional Latin Mass to request for himself/herself a simple prayer service in place of a funeral Mass, so as not to inconvenience or offend his/her children, who no longer practice the Catholic faith? If this is wrong, what's wrong about it?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
There is no such thing as a "simple prayer service" for a Catholic. You must be thinking of a Protestant funeral. The Roman Catholic exsequial rites may be more or less elaborate (for example, with or without the chanting of Matins and Lauds of the Divine Office for the Dead), but why would you throw away the full benefit of your Catholic Faith and condemn yourself to who knows what pains of Purgatory out of human respect for apostate children? Their apostasy is on their own souls. By no means should you permit your eternal salvation to be compromised by their grave sin.
Did you ever consider that by failing to have fully Catholic exsequies, you might be depriving your children of almost their last opportunity to return to their Faith and perhaps even save them even damnation by the very example of your Catholic funeral? Your children cannot plead "invincible ignorance" of the True Faith, like (perhaps) certain Protestants. Your children had the True Faith and threw it away. Don't let their gave sin deprive you of the soonest possible happiness with God.
You should make your funeral plans now, in consultation with a traditional Catholic priest, and prepare your will and funeral instructions so that they will be fully Catholic without your children's involvement, as apparently you cannot count on them to do the right thing. For further information on funeral instructions, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Over the past few decades, official church spokesmen have been caught in numerous lies and distortions. To what extent has the Church's long-held operating policy of "avoiding scandal" contributed to the current catastrophe? Even before Vatican II, "full disclosure" was not common in the Church. If a clergyman mysteriously disappeared from sight, or a diocesan high school was quietly renamed and a former Bishop banished into exile, facts were not forthcoming. "Avoiding scandal" was the watchword.
I will grant you that no large organization is enamored of revealing its flaws, shortcomings, and duplicity; however, an organization that claims to be built on the truth would be expected to have a nobler modus operandi than silence or spin-control. Over time, "avoiding scandal" leads to many negative outcomes. In the absence of facts, interested parties create "facts", and rumor mills work overtime. As credibility begins to suffer, observers tend to consider any pronouncement as a lie. Parties lack the necessary information to make informed decisions.
The dazzling light of full disclosure is necessary to root out evil. Stygian darkness is good only for growing mushrooms. Once credibility is lost, it is not easily regained. It is sad that I cannot now believe any of the pronouncements of the Church of the New Order just on account of the numerous lies and distortions in which it has been caught.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
St. Augustine addressed this issue directly: "It is better that the truth be known than the scandal be covered up." Of course, there must be a balance between what immoralities should remain private and what is public; otherwise, detraction and calumny result.
Before Vatican II, there were a very few cases of immorality, which were typically dealt with privately and effectively. Such cases are going to occur in any human organization. The difference after Vatican II is that the immorality and corruption are rampant. They have been institutionalized by the bishops, by the New Vatican, and even by the pope himself, who refuses to acknowledge the problem and take public action against his criminal bishops and presbyters. To get any action from the pope, the man has to be threatened that worse consequences will redound on him, as in the case of Phoenix and Vienna.
TRADITIO does not focus on individual cases, and usually avoids giving names, unless the crime is public and well-known. Our purpose is rather: (1) to expose the corruption in the moral teaching of the Church of the New Order, which is the basis of the most immoral and criminal acts by its bishops and presbyters; and (2) to expose the corruption of the Newchurch hierarchy as a whole, who, in their official capacity, have pandered to this immorality, conspired to perpetuate it, and have racketeered together to prevent proper law enforcement.
TRADITIO from time to time receives messages from "neo-conservatives" or "semi-traditional" Catholics who agree with all our Commentaries from the Mailbox, but they ask that we not talk about these terrible things. They would prefer to pretend that the pope is a "holy father," when he has done more than any other single person to perpetuate these scandals and crimes. They would prefer to pretend to "obey" diocesan bishops who overtly speak and act to destroy the Roman Catholic Faith. They prefer to pretend to think that the New Order Mess and Sacramints are valid; they just happen to "prefer" the traditional ones.
This public and institutional corruption in the Church of the New Order must not be covered up. Otherwise, it just gets far worse and deludes the faithful into thinking that it, rather than the Roman Catholic Church, is the true Church.
Too bad we don't have a real pope like St. Pius X. When the heresy of Modernism in doctrine swept through the Church, he actively worked to stamp it out of the hierarchy and seminaries. JPII has his own crisis of Modernism, in both doctrine and morality, and he has done nothing about it. In view of the scandals in Newchurch, you'd think that he'd be actively doing something -- but no.
George Cardinal Pell, of Sydney, has done something, something that should not be surprising, but it is surprising because virtually all the other bishops have done nothing. He canceled a "Rainbow" meeting on religious premises, prevented two presbyters from speaking at it, and even prevented a bishop from saying the Novus Ordo Mess at it.
Pell banned a group of Modernists called Australian Reforming Catholics from using a property owned by a religious order, the Sisters of St. Joseph, to hold its annual conference. The group is composed of Rainbow Sash people, that is, act-up homosexuals pushing the radical "gay" agenda. The group also actively supports the ordination of priestesses. In other words, it is an heretical, unCatholic group, and the presbyters and bishop have no place there. Rather, they should be condemning it, as has Cardinal Pell.
When the banned bishop, Pat Power, was asked for the Cardinal's reasons, he replied: "I think it probably represents what he believes to be his responsibility towards the Church, to see that orthodox teaching is consistently presented." But then he went on to say: "I think it really is unfortunate because in many ways we are limiting what it means to be a Catholic and I think more and more people are being excluded from the life of the Church. I believe it's important too that we listen to those voices."
In other words, this Newchurch bishop believes that you can be a "Catholic" and at the same time be a radical act-up homosexual and an active promoter of priestesses. These are the voices that should be listened to by Newchurch. (Of course, traditional Catholics are not listened to; maybe we should take over AFC, and then we would be heard!) To exclude such heretics would be "limiting what it means to be a Catholic."
I suppose this bishop would accept death-dealing Mohammedans, atheistic Communists, and Indian pagans as "Catholics" so as not to be "limiting." We can never forget the principal Newchurch teaching: "We all worship the same god" [god not being capitalized because it does not represent the Christian God].
You see, folks, the Church of the New Order is not Catholic. So demented has it become that it doesn't even know what "Catholic" means any more.
A U.S. court has ruled that churches belong not to Catholics, but to bishops -- the same bishops that have stolen from the Church, the same bishops who have connived or suborned rape and sodomy, the same bishops who have destroyed the Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments.
According to the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge on September 15 rejected an attempt by parishioners to save St. Albert the Great in Weymouth, Massachusetts, by siding with the archdiocese, which wants this and 81 other churches destroy to pay off lawsuits for presbyterial perversion.
You've got to give the hapless Novus Ordinarians credit. They have physically occupied St. Albert the Great since August 29 to prevent the destruction of the Church. They sued, seeking an injunction that would have barred the archdiocese from selling the church buildings and other assets.
The parishioners contended: "We built the property, we paid for it, we own the property." The judge said no; the bishop owns the property. In denying that contention, Judge Thomas E. Connolly affirmed that the church belongs to the bishop. If the bishop wants, he can let the church go to the devil. (Well, he's done that already, hasn't he, by introducing there the unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and putatively invalid Novus Ordo service.)
The same judge had also sealed documents that were to provide evidence that one of the archdiocese's men had failed to supervise a presbyter, who pled guilty to crimes involving two dozen children. Do you get the idea that this judge is in the pocket of the Novus Ordo Church? Pretty suspicious, eh?
Abp. Sean O'Malley announced in May that 82 parishes would be closed. Why? The reason is interesting: falling attendance. So now we have the admission by a Novus Ordo archbishop that people are turning their backs on the New Order.
What to do? First: get Judge Connolly out of office. Second: work at the state level to change the terms of nonprofit religious corporations so that bishops cannot steal churches and money from the people that built them. Some states have done so already. Third: fight back at every juncture.
In San Francisco, for example, parishioners of a closed church demanded back all the gifts that they and their families had made to the church: ornate candlesticks, the marble altar, a gold tabernacle and chalices and patens, even stained glass windows. At first the bishop resisted. But the people contended that the gifts were for the church. If the church was to be destroyed, it had no need of the items. The people persisted. Eventually, they prevailed and got back all their gifts.
The people need to get of their derrieres and start fighting against episcopal corruption to get their churches -- and their Church -- back. How did they allow these Herods to deprive them of their Mass, Sacraments, and Faith? They were pusillanimous. And we all know how Our Lord despised that quality, even in His Apostles. Rather, they need to fight the "good fight" for the Faith. Otherwise, they will be left with nothing: no Mass, no Sacraments, no Faith, no church, no Church.
There is a worse crisis in the Church of the New Order than the sex scandals, and the Novus Ordinarians better recognize it before they are reduced to poverty: Newchurch bishops and presbyters are stealing right and left from the contributions of the Novus Ordinarians. If the sex scandals hadn't got more press, these thefts would have been front-page news.
There have been so many thefts from the collection basket that it hard now to remember them all, but they include:
The latest, as reported by Associated Press, is a presbyter who has admitted to stealing more than $1,000,000 from his Chicago parish, St. Bede the Venerable, between Janaury 1999 and July 2004. The same presbyter had resigned in July after police caught him drunk and having an assignation with a prostitute.
You can just imagine what the draft Novus Ordinarian parishioners are going to say about this incident. Let me tell you. We must "forgive and forget." The presbyter had "psychological problems." If he stole a million dollars, "he must have needed it." "We all worship the same god." You know the drill. No statement about crimes that need to be paid for. No statement about justice that must be served. No statement about a presbyter having to be an example to others.
And what is the pope's reaction to this thievery on the part of his own bishops and presbyters? Nothing. What is the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] bishops' reaction? Nothing. What is the Novus Ordinarian parishioners' reaction? Why, they gave more money last year than the year before!
Where do they think these collections are going? To buying prophylactics for Africans? To funding abortions in India? To supporting the Kerry campaign? Well, maybe those things too, but primarily these monies are going to support the venality of Newchurch bishops and presbyters and to support a structure of sexual corruption not seen in the Church since the Renaissance.
Every penny the Novus Ordinarians put into the collection plate is likely to be directed toward legal funds to pay off sex lawsuits. To supporting expensive pagan cathedrals. To paying the diocesan lawyers who are hired to close down the parishioners' churches. It's really quite sick what these Novus Ordinarians are doing to themselves. The people that walk in darkness have apparently not yet seen the blinding light.
One of the most amusing things that has come into my mailbox recently is a Catholic World News report that the Chief Bishop of the Society of St. Pius X expelled two priests in France for criticizing his leadership.
A couple of years ago TRADITIO pointed to the very real "crisis of authority" within the SSPX when the Chief Bishop went off the rails and took it upon himself to "negotiate" with the officials of the Church of the New Order. He tried to pose as the spokesman for the entire Traditional Catholic Movement, although the SSPX constitutes only about one-fourth of that Movement.
It looked very much as if the Chief Bishop were engineering a sell-out, but, in concert with TRADITIO's analysis, he was chastised by the other bishops, the abbots, and rank-and-file SSPXers, so that he has backed off that imprudent course in the last year or so. Unfortunately, certain members of the SSPX leadership have not shown the same prudence, generosity, and clear vision that the Society's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, had. But the safety valves worked, and the SSPX resolved this particular problem internally, at least for the time being.
But that is not the amusing thing. What was amusing was the comment from an unnamed New Vatican "official," speaking about such controversies in the Traditional Catholic Movement, "particularly in the U.S., where small unattached congregations have formed. The crisis in France could demonstrate that the Lefebvrist [sic] movement has failed to establish a workable system of authority."
This is where the horselaugh comes. This self-promoting blindness is so typical of the New Order Church. The New Vatican "official" points to a minor tiff in the SSPX and ignores the fact that its own Newchurch bishops and presbyters are engaged in worldwide raping and sodomizing to a degree not seen since the Renaissance.
Its own Newchurch bishops and presbyters are stealing from the collection plate to the tune of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Its own Newchurch bishops and presbyters can't even agree on what Catholic teaching is: for or against abortion, for or against "gay marriage." Its own Newchurch bishops and priests are engaging in what the pope himself calls "abuses" of the New Order Mess. Is this the "workable system of authority" that the Church of the New Order boasts of for itself?
Sometimes people write TRADITIO asking why the Traditional Catholic Movement can't get together. Our answer is that we are together! We have one true Mass; the New Order has an invalid Mess. We have the seven traditional Sacraments; the New Order has changed every single one of them. We have clear doctrine as taught by the Fathers and Doctors, Popes and Councils of the Church; the New Order can't even agree on whether abortion and "gay marriage" should be tolerated.
A crisis of authority? Not in the Traditional Catholic Movement. We are united in every essential. Our authority is God first, His public revelation in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and the authentic teaching of the Church He founded as represented in the Fathers and Doctors, Popes and Councils. The Church of the New Order is nowhere near being able to say that.
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descends from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in her long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings. --Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Although 83% of the Quebecois call themselves "Catholic" (they mean "Novus Ordinarian"), Quebec, once the considered to be one of the most devout Catholic regions in the world, now leads Canada in abandonment of religious adherence and practice.
The Quebecois Novus Ordinarians now represent the largest numbers who consider religion "unimportant" in public and private life. For generations, Quebec Catholic religious orders used to send missionaries all over the country and the world to operate schools, colleges, and hospitals. In the 1960's, Quebec's precipitous crash of individual internal adherence to the Catholic faith affected all parts of the country. Now, since Newchurch preaches "we all worship the same god," missionary activity is moribund. Pity those ignorant Canadian Martyrs who died for a religion that was no better than Mohammed's; so says Newchurch.
A recent Center for Research and Information on Canada shows that, in general, the number of Christians in Canada is dropping at a rate of 0.9% per year while the number of agnostics, atheists, secular humanists, and persons of no affiliation is on a steady rise. The Pew Research Center has conducted a series of studies called "The Pew Global Attitudes Project," which found that Canadians as a whole are moving away from sincere religious faith, even as they continue in large numbers to call themselves "Catholic" or "Protestant" on census forms.
Well, the pollsters are finally getting it. You can call yourself "Catholic" all you want, but if you don't practice the True Faith, you may as well be a Mohammedan. Interesting, too, that traditional Catholicism is increasing at about the rate of 1% per year. Pretty soon, we'll be overtaking those Novus Ordinarians, reclaiming our churches, and seeing the true Mass once more restored to our altars.
Oh, that New Order Church of Love. Isn't it just the quintessence of hypocrisy? It lauds adherents of lethal Muslimism, but calls traditional Catholics names. It says that it loves everybody, but when parishioners take advantage of their God-given and canon-give right to protest against their bishop, the bishops turn on their hate switch.
Case in point. The Boston Globe reported that the Newchurch bishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, abruptly walked out of a South Boston church where parishioners were pleading with him to reverse course. Parishioners at St. Peter Lithuanian Church were beseeching him not to close the 100-year-old church, when he got into a heated exchange of words with a female parishioner. The Lithuanian community, scattered throughout Eastern Massachusetts, is irate that O'Malley plans to close the South Boston church.
"A lot of parishioners here have experienced the persecution of their faith and they make a lot of analogies," said the Presbyter Stephen Zukas, pastor of St. Peter. What Zukas did not say is that long before any talk of closing the church, the Lithuanians had already been persecuted out of their faith.
These Lithuanians are foolishly playing to the godless elements of Newchurch by trying to save a church building, but giving away the Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, and Faith. Better to have the true Mass in a tiny hovel that host the invalid Novus Ordo Counterfeit Mess in the most beautiful traditional church.
These Lithuanians, and all others, should take inspiration from what happened to the once great Catholic orator Fulton Sheen. When he was appointed archbishop of Rochester, New York, his first action was to close a church. The parishioners saw his limousine driving up and surrounded it, pounding furiously on the roof, while they screamed, as reported by his biographer: "Give us back our church, you son of a bitch!" Sheen was so frightened at the sincerity of the parishioners that the very next day he signed the papers to rescind the closing. Perhaps he feared that at the Pearly Gates God would judge him not as the son of a mulier but of a canis!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Are eulogies at a Catholic funeral Mass allowed? This seems to be the trend at the Novus Ordo "Mess of Presumed Resurrection." What is the understanding of the true Church on this issue?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Eulogies within a Requiem Mass are prohibited. It is entirely presumptuous for any human to set himself up as a judge of a deceased in this final liturgical context. The deceased is before the Judge of all; man's comments are immaterial. The purposes of the Requiem Mass are (1) to pray for the soul and (2) to remind the congregation to prepare for their own coming judgment.In the Church of the New Order, we have seen the scandal of a thrice-divorced congressman being "eulogized." We have seen a designer flaunting his homosexuality publicly "eulogized." We have seen a transvestite boy being "eulogized" while exposed in the coffin made up as a girl.
In contrast, when President John Kennedy's Requiem Mass was celebrated (before the first session of Vatican II was adjourned), there was no eulogy. After the Mass and before the final absolution, the rector of the cathedral read the President's favorite passages from Scripture. From what we have learned subsequently about the President's moral life, the Church's traditional condemnation of eulogies in a liturgical context was proven sound.
If people want to give eulogies, they should be given after the funeral and outside of any church setting.
Just another proof of the Newchurch of Hypocrisy. JPII in 2002 supposedly told American cardinals in secret not to permit their presbyters to violate the young. Now, an investigative report by the Dallas Morning News shows that the pope's words were hollow. Rome is harboring the criminal perverts in Rome!
The News found that seven presbyters accused of sexual crimes, some of them runaways from law enforcement in the United States, are living in Rome around the Vatican. These priests are ministering with the full knowledge and consent of church officials.
The News found that the heads of religious orders who transferred sex criminals to the Rome office didn't bother to notify the Diocese of Rome about the alleged abusers' presence. Here's your quiz for today: who is the bishop of Rome? Why, JPII, of course! Does nobody who works for him take seriously his secret words on sex crimes? Apparently not.
If we accept JPII as head of the Church, we have to hold him personally responsible for allowing Novus Ordo bishops and presbyters to violate young Catholics. He has been publicly silent on the most vile crimes of his officials, like Abp. Rembert Weakland, of Milwaukee, who for years had an "affair" with a young catamite. The catamite attempted to blackmail the archbishop, who then stole some half a million dollars from the poor box, as it were, to pay off the blackmail. The archbishop, appointed by JPII, confessed his crime to the police a day before he was to be service an indictment.
The pope's comment: silence. Do we have a functioning pope? Or is he so spaced out that he is non compos mentis and can perform no valid action? Or is he so immoral that he would let his own officials violate young people and seminarians without so much as word of public chastisement? Whichever of the answers you choose, the JPII has to be the Bad Pope with the longest pontificate in the history of the Church.
Roger Mahony, of Los Angeles, has got to be the worst bishop in Newchurch. He's been very busy undermining every form of true religion, by the following, inter alia:
Now Tidings reports that Mahony has thumbed his nose at the pope, who in the recent Redemptionis Sacramentum recognized the "abuses" in the Novus Ordo Mess and tried to correct a paltry few of them. (Rather, the document should have talked about the abuse of the Novus Ordo Mess, but that is for another time when the New Vatican returns to the full Roman Catholic Faith.)
Mahony, who has been caught in so much corruption and subornation of corruption of true religion, has now played God by opting out of associating with his own pope: "I have determined that there is no need to make any significant changes in our liturgical practice at this time.... [I] have not become aware of any serious abuses." This from the man who tries to intimidate the just from exposing serious immoral goings-on in his diocese and in the United States.
This is surely a man whose word on this point can be believed!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The New Vatican's Press Agency recently released a pitiful attempt on the part of one Presbyter McNamara to explain why the (invalid) form "for all" or its equivalent is justified in vernacular Novus Ordo Messes. Could you explain why his explanation is flawed, lest the naive in our One True Faith are further deceived in this matter?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Fortunately, we don't have to, as this presbyter's erroneous explanation was long ago answered by the Church's principal theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, and dogmatically condemned by the Council of Trent. This Novus Ordo presbyter is just using the Modernist technique of trying to cover over heresy with a flurry of pseudo-"scholarship." Pope Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X exposed that ploy of the Modernists over a century ago.
More recently, the works of P.H. Omlor elucidating the Thomistic and dogmatic principles, many of which works are available in the TRADITIO Library of Files, and the work of Msgr. Klaus Gamber, who was a recognized member of the New Order apparatus, but contested the errors of the New Order in his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background, refute conclusively and clearly without a lot of theological gobbledygook, the Modernist errors, point by point. Apparently, McNamara is ignorant of these works; otherwise, he would be embarrassed to offer his phony explanation, which was discounted by scholars years ago.
I am particularly amused at McNamara's raising of the old discounted chestnut about "Aramaic." Since virtually no one in the Church knows this language, no one checked the false statement the New Order circulated that in Aramaic many and all were expressed by the same word. Msgr. Gamber did check. He checked with Aramaic scholars, and they categorically denied the contention that Aramaic did not distinguish all and many by separate words, just as Greek and Latin and Hebrew (and modern vernaculars) do. Msgr. Gamber documents these findings in a detailed appendix of his book.
Moreover, we must understand that there is an implausible assumption being made here by the Modernists. After all, who is to say conclusively that Our Lord spoke the words in Aramaic? The Passover Supper would almost certainly have been conducted in Hebrew, which had not been a vernacular language among the Jews for five centuries. Hebrew in Biblical times was a parallel to Latin in the Roman Catholic Church: a sacred, liturgical language.
Certainly Our Lord spoke Greek, which was the lingua franca of the eastern Roman Empire, and of a Greek city near Nazareth. Our Lord most probably Latin as well, as the language of the area's Roman officials and military. Interestingly, Mel Gibson in his The Passion of the Christ had Our Lord replying in Latin to Pilate's questions, while He spoke in Syriac (a Semitic dialect used in the Galilean area) to the rest. And the translator for the film was an Aramaic scholar. So much for the "Aramaic" argument.
We see in the McNamara piece typical ploys of the New Order. First of all, it keeps shoveling out disinformation, even when it has been disproven, "inasmuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect" (Matthew 24:24/DRV). For example, emember all the justifications that the Novus Ordo advanced for the heretical Second "Eucharistic Prayer," the "Prayer of Hippolytus"? Now it turns out that scholars cannot prove that Hippolytus even used the prayer, and in any case Hippolytus was a declared heretic of the time and set up his own Church. Second, the New Order tries to snow people under with theological fabrications that no one can check. Who, including McNamara, even knows "Aramaic"?!
Between Msgr. Gamber's work and P.H. Omlor's commentaries on Thomistic theology, you've got everything you need to counter this McNamara nonsense.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
With all the scandals going on in the Church today, with so much sacrilege, irreverence, blasphemy, and idolatry within our Holy Mother Church, is it still possible for a traditional Catholic pope to be elected in the future to restore all things to Christ Jesus Our Lord in His True Church? When I take a really good look at the College of Cardinals, I don't see much hope. Just by their actions, it makes you wonder whether they even have the Faith anymore. Also, traditional Catholics are in small numbers compared to the Novus Ordinarians. I will always have hope in God and place my trust in Him, but I just don't see how it is now possible for a true pope to be elected.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
A common question, but based on a false premise. We shouldn't particularly look to a pope as the solution to the widespread problems in the Church. That is much too simplistic. Rather, the Church and its people must be tested and purified, perhaps down to much smaller remnant.
No matter how bad the recent popes and other Church officials have been, it is the vast majority of the Catholic people who have given away their Faith, their Mass, and their Sacraments. They gave it away, when they could have stopped the corruption in its tracks. Even today most of them support the corruption financially and by their scandalous presence. As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
It is naive to think that a pope can simply command that the Faith be restored, and, abracadabra, all is back to normal. Sin has its consequences. This pontificate has allowed so much corruption that the bishops will just laugh in the pope's face, as they have already done in even the minimal attempts the New Vatican has made to try to rectify the situation.
No, we must make the ground fertile once again for the sheep. Then Our Lord will send the pastor who is necessary, just as he sent Pope St. Pius V after a succession of venal and incompetent popes. I am estimating that it will take about a hundred years for this problem to be addressed, as the historical evidence seems to indicate for past problems in the Church, such as the widespread Arian heresy that stormed the Church in the 4th century.
So, prepare your soul for the long haul. "Stand fast and hold to the Traditions, which you have learned" (2 Thessalonians 2:15/DRV).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
This past Labor Day weekend, we visited some friends in the western part of our state. We were handed a copy of an area newsletter, which contained a number of articles about a local Catholic academy (now very much Novus Ordo) that celebrated its 50th anniversary in July. One of the articles contained a photo of a few students who, as part of a pageant, according to the caption, "dressed in ancient robes to share a glimpse of what it was like when St. Angelus began."
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No doubt the modern "Catholic" academy is dealing with rampant drugs, sex, and rock and roll! One thing about the Traditional Latin Mass is that it taught young (and old) the lesson of dignity, order, and the sublime. Even the agnostic academician Joseph Campbell, who was an altar boy in his youth, wistfully admitted on public television that he could not get that divine image out of his mind and that modern youth was becoming more and more barbarian just because they did not have such images.
Just think, when this photograph was taken, many Catholic young were speaking, reading, and writing the immemorial Latin language and its literature. Now, the vast majority of them can't pass a standardized test in English! Then, many Catholic youth were singing the modes of the venerable Gregorian chant. Now, the vast majority of them don't know one key from another. Vatican II was a "springtime"? Hardly. It is more like the dead of winter.
And now let us take a step forward in time to see the risible counterfeit of the Catholic religion that the New Order shovels up to its fans. This is how the Novus Ordinarians worship their cookie in Germany, home of the Modernists Ratzinger and Kaspar, hotbed of Modernism, paradigm for the Church of the New Order in the United States and around the world. It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a -- Tabernakel -- at St. Martin Novus Ordo Kierke of Dietzenbach, Germany.
Here we have a new ploy of those "ever-loving" Novus Ordo bishops to wrest money from the innocent: close the convents and throw the nuns out!
Associated Press reports that an order of nuns in Charleston, West Virginia, that has shrunk since the Vatican II "reforms" to fewer than the fingers on one hand has been ordered to disband so that the bishop can filch the $1,200,000 saved by the order in a trust fund for expenses involved with the nuns' healthcare, retirement, and convent repairs.
"We're talking about close to 300 years of combined service from these ladies," their attorney, Harold Courtney said. "Most of them have been there since they were teen-agers. The tragedy here is that the convent is their home, and they are being put out of their home." So much for the New Order Church of Love.
As one TRADITIO participant put it: "I'd bet the few remaining nuns never once objected to the Novus Ordo Mess and the removal of the Real Presence from their lives under 'holy obedience' to a corrupt Novus Ordo bishop. But now, when the cost isn't their souls but their creature comforts, they suddenly discern past their servility and quickly disobey. Money talks, and Christ walks."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I find it strange that some "semi"-traditionalists seem to be wedded to the Novus Ordo apparatus, its sacramints, and even its consecrations of bishops. It is no surprise that more and more Catholics are considering the new rite of consecration of bishops invalid because of significant Modernist changes to the traditional form.
We here in Vancouver, Canada, could witness the defective rite firsthand in the purported consecration of the bishop in the archdiocese of Vancouver. The photograph from the diocesan B.C. Catholic shows a girl in a purple gown walking up into the sanctuary (a prohibited act) with incense in a pot. Please note that she is barefoot. Doesn't it look like some sort of pagan ceremony?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
It has been noted that in the United States and Canada, as well as around the world, more and more pagan practices have been introduced into Novus Ordo "sacramints," to the point that their validity has been seriously questioned or denied as no longer Catholic. It is interesting to note too that even the Novus Ordo admits that it no longer consecrates bishops. It simply "ordains" them.
For one treatment of the questions involved, see The Problem of the Other Sacraments in the TRADITIO Library of Files. For pictorial examples of paganism introduced into the Novus Ordo Mess, see the Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery.
TRADITIO often gets messages from participants lamenting the fact that they don't have a Traditional Latin Mass geographically convenient to them. These participants seem to think that they are in an unusual situation. Far from it. In many times and places over the last two thousand years, a Mass was not available to Catholics, including even Saints.
That is a significant reason why you who have the true Mass near you should be deeply grateful and do everything you can to protect it and support your traditional priests who courageously offer it. There are forces of the New Order and, sad to say, even "fringe traditionalists" who are arranged against them personally -- and you. So take what you read and hear cum grano salis.
It may comfort those who are currently too geographically distant to assist at a Traditional Latin Mass (which situation is never an excuse for attending the Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo Mess) to know that this problem was so common in even pre-Vatican II times that a prominent moral theologian, Fr. Francis Connell, answered the following question in his column for priests in the American Ecclesiastical Review, essentially as TRADITIO has always answered it.
One might ask how far is "far away" in this context? A good rule of thumb, in the general case, is to gauge by how far one would travel to meet a serious secular obligation, like a job. Many people travel an hour (or even more) by car to a job. Should they travel less to worship their God in the way that He has ordained? Of course, some truly devout Catholics make special efforts and travel even farther than an hour on a Sunday. They write TRADITIO that their whole week is enriched thereby. Some adjustment would be made, of course, for the elderly or the sick or in inclement weather.
Question. If the members of a family living far away from the church are unable on this account to attend Mass on Sunday, are they bound by the divine law, promulgated in the Third Commandment, to devote some portion of the Sunday to private worship?
Answer. For the due observance of Sunday, the Church has commanded that Christians attend [the true] Mass and abstain from servile work, as well as from certain other types of activity, such as holding court. The people described by the questioner must abstain from forbidden work, as far as they are able; but, in the presumption that they are excused from hearing Mass by reason of distance from the church, they are not bound to perform any special acts of worship on Sunday -- though they must pray, make acts of the theological virtues, etc., with sufficient frequency and regularity throughout the year. Needless to say, however, such persons should be strongly urged to set aside a period of time on Sunday for devotional acts.
There are many such devotional acts, some of which have been complied in Method of Hearing Mass Spiritually for the Absent (Adapted from The Key of Heaven). Such people should also make a special effort to assist at Holy Mass at least a few times a year. People typically make special efforts to go on vacation at a distant location. Surely real Catholics far distant from a true Mass can make a special effort to assist at Holy Mass a few times a year, e.g., at Christmas, Easter, Pentecost.
Don't you traditional Catholics thank God every day that you are not part of the Church of the New Order? If you don't, you should. The New Order, its hierarchy, and its religious, get wackier and wackier every day. They have long ago stopped being Catholic.
Here we have a Newchurch organization representing 500 U.S. women religious, called the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN). This is a group "recognized" by the Newchurch institution. At its August 18-21 meeting, it took an official position that the Church should allow same-sex "marriages" and opposed federal or state laws that would prohibit gay or lesbian "unions." [CNS]
Those of you TRADITIO participants out there who think that you are "conservative" and are still clinging to the Church of the New Order and its various officials should wake up and see the handwriting on the wall. You compromised on the true Mass. You compromised on the true Sacraments. You compromised on the doctrine of the Faith. You compromised on Catholic morality.
The time is soon coming for you when the Church of the New Order will present to the world the first openly "gay" pope and lesbian "nunneries" (if Novus Ordo nuns don't die off beforehand). We kid you not. Look at the evidence. Look at the history.
As TRADITIO has consistently said, just let the Novus Ordinarians talk, and out of their own mouths they'll convict the Church of the New Order as not Catholic.
Case in point. The National Conference for Catechetical Leadership (NCCL) met in Albuquerque in late April. This organization has official ties to the U.S. Conference of [Novus Ordo] Catholic Bishops. The following report is not that of TRADITIO, but of the Novus Ordo-based Catholic News Service itself:
After 40 years of relentless propaganda about the marvels of "renewal," ... speaker after speaker acknowledged that no one in their programs today knows anything about the basic doctrines of the faith. Their students -- and their students' parents -- live by the standards of a decadent secular society.
The religious-education establishment, it seems, no longer denies the blighted state of Catholicism. Yet no NCCL speaker audibly admitted having had a hand in causing the blight. Parental apathy was blamed, along with rapid social change, the hectic pace of contemporary life, the decline of Catholic culture and the loss of Catholic identity, and even the "backlash" from traditionalists [sic].
Oh, sure. Blame the traditional Catholics for the Novus Ordo! Do these Novus Ordinarians have rocks for brains or what? That disinformation was certainly not confirmed even in the conference address by professed liberalist Michael Horan, a current member of the NCCL's representative council. Again, the words of the Catholic News Service:
[Horan] is still enamored of the spurious "vision of Vatican II." ...Starting with a derisive reference to the "chilling" Baltimore Catechism, he reviewed the Vatican II call for a catechetical directory that would present a broad new vision, "looking at the human situation of the Church, including the best ecclesiology, the best sociology, the best personnel, the best resources" of the [Second Vatican] Council.
What gobbledygook! No wonder the Novus Ordinarians don't have the foggiest notion what Catholicism is! Even Horan had to admit the success of pre-Vatican II catechesis: "Prior to the council the goal of catechesis was to help children become loyal, obedient, and conscientious members of the institutional church by providing them with a solid education in the truths of the faith."
The disaster of failed catechesis in the New Order, admitted now even by the Novus Ordo itself after forty years of contrary propaganda, simply proves that real Catholics should not send their children to a Novus Ordo school or to Novus Ordo catechism classes. As Traditional Catholic writer Patricius Anthony, who saw the corruption of Novus Ordo schools firsthand, wrote:
After a year teaching in a Novus Ordo "Catholic" school, I can strongly recommend that parents who are really concerned about their children's moral and intellectual development home-school their children.
And as Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who had extensive knowledge about the Catholic school system, said after Vatican II:
You are better off going to a state school where you will have the chance to fight for your faith, than going to a modern Catholic school where you will have the new watered-down, modernist version of the faith spoon-fed to your unsuspecting minds, so that you will be apt to lose your faith.
It seems that the hierarchy of the New Order flip-flops as much as John Kerry does! And, in all fairness, it is the much-touted "conservatives" Newchurch bishops, not the liberalists, that do so.
Raymond Burke, formerly of LaCrosse, now of St. Louis, the infamous bishop who consecrated the "transgendered" male nun, yet for some unknown reason is considered by the Novus Ordinarians as a "conservative," on August 4, according to the Associated Press, claimed that he would:
deny Communion to lawmakers who consistently support abortion rights unless the dissenting politicians publicly recant. The banned Catholic lawmakers could resume taking the Sacrament only after reconciliation with the church has occurred, with the knowledge and consent of the local bishop, and public disavowal of former support for procured abortion. There can be no contradiction between the values bestowed by baptism and the Catholic faith and the public expression of those values.
Now Burke, according to a September 2 St. Louis Post Dispatch release, has found a way to excuse legalized murder of infants. The Great God Burke has declared ex cathedra that complicity in abortion is not a "grave sin," and supporters do not "have to go to confession."
Isn't that just like these Novus Ordo bishops? Something is a sin one day and virtuous the next. It's all politics to them; they no longer have any Catholic sense. Truly, there is no moral theology in the Church of the New Order. These bishops make it up as they go along. And, of course, we all know what the most grievous sin in Newchurch is. Not one of the Biblical four that cry to heaven (after all most of these bishops support homosexuality, murder, and theft). No, the "grave sin" is to attend the Traditional Latin Mass that is not only Catholic and Apostolic, but at which the faithful were given the right, nay duty, to worship "for all time" by a dogmatic council, and a Pope-Saint.
Why the Burke flip-flop? He apparently doesn't know the difference between a man and a woman when he consecrates a nun. Does he not know the different between right and wrong either? Well, his own newspaper gives the answer. Two Democratic leaders in his area brought pressure to bear on him, and he succumbed: U.S. Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. (D-St. Louis) and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay. Clay openly supports abortion rights and would have been denied the Novus Ordo cookie under the first Burke policy. Burke apparently didn't have the guts to do that when push came to shove.
Look, folks. If you are one of those that wants to "compromise" and "negotiate" with the Church of the New Order and its minions, learn a lesson from the likes of Burke. It does no good to settle for "conservative" instead of fully Catholic (that is, traditional). It does no good to accept the "compromise" of the "indult" Mass over the True Mass.
Catholics have the right, and obligation, to receive the true Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, consecrated at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the True Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, from the altar of Our Lord Jesus Christ and should never settle like dogs for crumbs from the table of unCatholic Newchurch masters.
If you are really a Catholic, why, in God's name, would you settle for a phony Novus Ordo cookie when you have the right to the Panis Angelorum?
A view of the future of the Novus Ordo. Ooops! It's the present of the Novus Ordo. A baptistry, laced with pagan symbolism: Hindu, Muslim, New Age. This type of corruption is becoming more and more common in Novus Ordo churches.
Fortunately for the Church and society, Baptism and Matrimony are the two Sacraments hardest to make invalid, but the Church of the New Order is sure trying its hardest. Catholic Sacramental theology has held that most mainline Protestant baptisms, if Trinitarian, are valid, although heretical. Eastern Orthodox and Old Catholic baptisms are valid, but schismatic.
The Novus Ordo has certainly mangled the other Sacraments: the Sacraments of Penance (which is even called by a different name and poses a different concept of sin), the Most Holy Eucharist (because of the substitution of the counterfeit Protestant-Masonic-Pagan worship service), Holy Orders (no longer is the ordinand given the explicit power to offer the "Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead" and "to forgive sins"), Confirmation (changed into the "triple whammy" by the RCIA), Extreme Unction (which does not even exist in the Novus Ordo, replaced instead by a mere blessing of the sick). (For one treatment of the questions involved, see The Problem of the Other Sacraments in the TRADITIO Library of Files.)
It may be that it has already reached the point that Protestant baptisms are more reliable than Novus Ordo baptisms! There are more and more reports that presbyters of the Church of the New Order are spontaneously changing the form to invalidity. There have been cases in New York and Toronto where Novus Ordo bishops have publicly admitted that their presbyters have invalidated the Sacrament by corrupting the form.
Of course, only the Traditional Latin Rite of Baptism has the Tradition of the Church to make us certain that is valid and complete, including salutary exorcisms and blessings, with which the infant or adult entering the Church is fortified. However, even in the case of mainline Protestant baptisms, see your local traditional priest. Depending upon the circumstances, a defect may have to be rectified. (Please do not write to TRADITIO. It is inappropriate for us to make "long distance" decisions on individual matters. That is matter properly for your local traditional priest/confessor, who will have to rectify it anyway, if necessary.)
There is increasing outrage even on the part of Novus Ordinarians that their bishops sweep crime under the carpet. But are the civil courts any better? It seems that if you're a bishop or a presbyter, you're let off. Even Phoenix bishop Thomas O'Brien, who killed a man, is let off with "community service." Several bishops have been caught red-handed stealing from the Church, and they are let off with a slap on the hand rather than being thrown into the klinker.
Case in point. We have the pastor of a Novus Ordo church in Illinois who stole $226,000 from the church -- robbed the poor-box, if you will. His excuse: he is "addicted to gambling." (No doubt he ran one of those "Catholic" bingo gambling halls in his own parish so that he'd have easy access.) The diocese didn't reveal what he did with the money.
He says he's going to pay it back, on an income of $24,000 per annum. Sure, sure. He didn't even fess up to his crime until an auditor discovered the theft. And the bishop, rather than turning the presbyter-thief over to the just punishment of the law, lets him off. Sounds just like the corrupt mindset that produced the racketeering, conspiracy, and cover-ups of the "sex scandal," doesn't it? What have these Newchurch bishops learned? Nothing.
The only voice of sanity in this matter, which can serve for all such matters involving criminal bishops and presbyters, was a longtime church member who said that he wants the presbyter to be prosecuted. "If that would have been me, I am sure I would be in the penitentiary right now," he said. You've got that right! [AP and other sources]
Yet most of these daft Novus Ordinarians continue to plunk their hard-earned money into the Novus Ordo collection plate. Just where do they think their money is going? The poor? Not if rampant embezzlement by clergy in the Newchurch is any indication. To maintaining beautiful traditional churches? Not if the massive church closures all over the country are any indication. No, most of this money is going to corrupt Novus Ordo bishops to serve as hush money and pay-off money for vile criminal acts -- both of the past and of the present. So says the Investigating Committee of the U.S. Conference of [Novus Ordo] Catholic Bishops."
When are these Novus Ordinarians going to wake up? They don't seem to realize that the phony "Springtime of Vatican II" has become the "Winter of Our Discontent."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am hoping to begin an effort to restore the legal status of the Church by taking court action. In specific, the recent delivering of the Church's collective resources by court order in the United States to parties involved in recent events has been made without regard to the legal status of the Church membership. Actions leading to the shutdown of much of the Boston Archdiocese, with nearly 100 parishes being closed as a result of these settlements, is a clear violation of the civil liberties of the Catholic laity. If a study is made of similar problems in Protestant churches, you will see that no church closures resulted.
Fr. Moderator Replies:
In the United States, Protestant churches are generally in a different legal status from Catholic churches. That situation obtains because of the different organizational principles of the churches themselves. Most Protestant churches are run by a lay board at the local level and are independent of the church government. Novus Ordo churches, on the other hand, are organized under the complete control of the diocesan bishop as a Corporation Sole or the equivalent, because of the hierarchical structure of the Church.
Although the Corporation Sole may have had its justifications at the time, it is hard to deny that it has exacerbated the corruption of the bishops and their dioceses in the post-Vatican II period. Most states did away with the Corporation Sole some decades ago, although grandfathering in the existing ones.
Most Catholics are probably unaware that in the early years of the Church in the United States, up to about the middle of the nineteenth century, the bishops did not run the Catholic churches. Rather, churches were run by lay trustees, who virtually controlled the daily operations of the church. Churches and colleges were incorporated under the ownership of lay boards of trustees. The boards bought the property, built the church, selected the pastor, set his salary, and fired him.
As the Church grew, the bishops wanted full control and forced out these lay boards to take full control for themselves. This change was accelerated by an influx of Irish immigrants, who were well trained in "obedience" to ecclesiastics. Such a bishop was John Hughes, First Archbishop of New York (1842-1864). This extreme obedience was not characteristic of other Catholics, such as the German and the Italian immigrants.
Sometimes the lay trustees would take on the bishop. In Philadelphia, 1820 to 1824, St. Mary's Cathedral trustees barred the bishop from his own cathedral, as the bishop had suspended a priest who was critical of the authorities. There were actual riots over this issue. So much for those who picture the pre-Vatican II Church as blindly obedient to prelates!
If something like lay trusteeship continued today and controlled the finances of dioceses such as Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and New York, would the corrupt Novus Ordo bishops have gotten away with racketeering, embezzlement, hush-money, and payoffs to catamites? Would these bishops have gotten away with closing the most beautiful churches of our Catholic tradition in America? Current events indicate that perhaps that lay trusteeism had certain points in its favor, along with certain disadvantages.
But for the emergency in the Church of our time, lay people have another option: independent action. There is nothing stopping a lay organization from purchasing any of the closed churches and taking control of them under a non-profit corporation, religious, historical, or educational. They would have to be operated independently, of course, because the Novus Ordo bishop would resent it bitterly. But this may be the path of the future, for the time being, to save our churches and save our unadulterated Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, Catholic morality, and doctrine, while we wait for full Catholicity to be returned to the organizational structure.
Unfortunately, all too many lay members of the Church of the New Order today are truly daft. They know that their contributions are being used by corrupt bishops to pay hush-money, catamites, and payoffs. They know that their churches are being closed because their money is being misappropriated to immoral purposes. Yet they continue immorally to pony up their money to corrupt bishops and dioceses for corrupt purposes.
This is the nature of the Church of the New Order: sinful false "obedience" to corrupt bishops. Just consider this. If these Novus Ordinarians cut off the gravy train, the moral crisis in the Church would be gone overnight. With that unCatholic and immoral mentality, such laypeople would hardly be trustworthy to be trustees of anything.
Addendum. Archbishop Hughes was certainly Catholic in his doctrine. Unlike the phony "we all worship the same god" oecumenism of the Church of the New Order, Hughes said it like a true Catholic bishop:
[We] will convert all Pagan nations, and all Protestant nations, even England with her proud Parliament. Everybody should know that we have for our mission to convert the world, including the inhabitants of the United States, the people of the cities, and the people of the country, the Officers of the Navy and the Marines, the commander of the Army, the legislatures, the Senate, the Cabinet, the President and all.
Puts the Newchurch bishops to shame, doesn't it?
TRADITIO has consistently warned the faithful about the Arch-Charismatic Scott Hahn. This is the Protestant minister who preached that "the pope is the whore of Babylon," then made a "conversion" to the Church of the New Order, where he has profited by recycling his Fundamentalist Protestant books, recordings, and lectures to gullible Novus Ordinarians.
He has maintained a connection to the charismatic University of Steubenville and is a leader in the heretical charismatic movement. (For further information on the origins of this heresy, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics). So unCatholic are his still-Protestant teachings that he has earned a place on the Index Auctorum Vitandorum, together the likes of Raymond Brown, Karl Rahner, and Hans Kung. As all those churning in heretical beliefs, he hates with a passion Roman Catholics holding fast to the traditional teachings of the popes and councils, Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
Now it seems that Hahn is proclaiming a personal revelation to the effect that the Blessed Virgin Mary was a lesbian -- and the Holy Spirit too. At least that's what can be deduced from his recent book First Comes Love, in which, contrary to Roman Catholic teaching, he claims blasphemously that the Holy Spirit is "maternal, the uncreated principle of maternity, bridal, and feminine.... Mary's maternity is mystically one with that of the Spirit." One commentator for a prominent opinion journal has pointed out that if Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, as Hahn seems to imply, then Mary and the Holy Spirit share a lesbian relationship.
And Hahn's unCatholic and anti-Catholic views are regularly broadcast by that New Order EWTN cable station. It figures.
There is no mystery about what will happen to the Church of the New Order. Its future is exactly the same as what is happening to its Protestant allies. First, Luther dumped Sacred Tradition and preached Biblia sola. The N.O. has done just the same. Second, the Anglican Church dumped the Mass and substituted what Pope Leo XIII held to be an invalid service. The N.O. has done the same.
The 20th century is seeing the Protestants rejecting the only thing they have left of Christianity, the Bible, to embrace Biblically immoral acts: divorce, abortion, and now homosexual acts and "gay marriage."
Listen to what the Anglican leader, the spurious "Archbishop of Canterbury" says. Rowan Williams is angry because those who object to the Anglican Church embracing Biblically immoral acts "lack grace and patience" [News Telegraph]. How New Order can you get? To the Church of the New Order, objective truth is unimportant because it doesn't believe in objective truth. Objective sin doesn't exist because there is no objective morality. The only thing that matters is "etiquette." The motto of the Church of the New Order is not, as Our Lord Jesus Christ said, "If you love me, keep my commandments (Matthew 14:15/DRV)." Rather it is: "play nice."
So, we can see the historical trend of the Church of the New Order:
The handwriting is quite clearly on the wall. If the Novus Ordinarians don't jump ship, they are left with a spurious worship service, spurious sacramints, anti-Biblical doctrine -- and end up as homophiliacs to boot!
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