At one time the following description of the sanctuary of Christ Church United Methodist in Manhattan could have described a Catholic church:
This Byzantine and Romanesque masterpiece was designed by one of America's foremost ecclesiastical architects, Ralph Adams Cram. The interior is decorated with a glittering array of seven million tiles of Venetian mosaics, covering 14,000 square feet and 34 varieties of marble. This work is said to be equal to the finest Byzantine art in any museum. A blazing image of Christ enthroned fills the semi-dome of the apse above the altar.
Now, the typical Novus Ordo church style is modeled after a Masonic meeting hall, with its necessary accoutrements: the large chair for the Masonic Worshipful Master (now sat in by the Novus Ordo presbyter or bishop), the small table (now used as an "altar" by the Novus Ordo), and the lectern (where a non-stop flow of babble from eucharistic ministresses, lay deacons, and even Protestant politicians emanates).
It's getting pretty bad when the Novus Ordo can't hold a candle even to a Protestant Methodist church!
The Boston Globe reports that a Novus Ordo church in East Boston slated for closure was almost going to become Roman Catholic. It has been nearly three months since parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church took physical possession by sit-in of their Novus Ordo church, episcopally condemned in a diocesan shutdown scheme. However, the number of those holding vigil was significantly reduced in December because some of the group walked out when a clique of die-hard Novus Ordinarians in the group refused to welcome an order of traditional Roman Catholic nuns to give a Christmas concert to raise money for the vigil fund.
When the concert fell through, two nuns associated with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, nevertheless, out of charity, traveled all the way from Spokane, Washington, to support the vigil. The Congregatio Mariae Reginae Immaculatae is one of the largest independent traditional Catholic organizations, which is founded on the Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and Faith before the pre-Novus Ordo modernizations under John XXIII. The nuns continue to wear the full traditional habit, which they make themselves at their Spokane convent.
Although many of the sitters-in were delighted at the charitable support from the congregation of traditional nuns, there was a small clique of Novus Ordo fanatics who objected to the fact that the nuns were not part of the Church of the New Order (Newchurch). Thus, the nuns were disinvited, and it will undoubtedly be only a short time before Archbishop Sean O'Malley proceeds with his plan of smashing Our Lady of Mount Carmel to smithereens.
Sometimes people ask TRADITIO: aren't the Novus Ordinarians really without fault for having lost their Faith and their Church? Aren't they just innocent pawns in an ecclesiastical shell game by the Newchurch hierarchy? This case demonstrates that the answer to that question is no: the Novus Ordinarians are complicit in their own downfall. If the clique had acted properly, Our Lady of Mount Carmel might very well have survived, becoming a traditional Roman Catholic Church, where the people would be blessed with the True Mass, True Sacraments, and True Faith. Now, they will be condemned by the Newchurch archbishop's wrecking-ball.
Moreover, these Novus Ordo fanatics proved themselves to be the bald-faced liars they always are. After the nuns were escorted from the church, the fanatic fringe locked the doors and posted signs saying that the church was closed "due to the flu." Well, maybe they weren't liars after all. This clique has been thoroughly infected with the flu of the counterfeit New Order!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Recently, there have been authors who have proposed way-out theories concerning Jesus Christ and His disciples. Books like the DaVinci Code purport to have discovered secret information from Leonardo DaVinci, the Knights Templar, and so on, which have been the basis for these books. I have seen even traditional Catholics reading this rubbish. Would you please comment on this situation?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
We're surprised at how many people misinterpret these things. These are not "theories," there is no purported "secret information." Nothing more needs to be said than that the Da Vinci Code will be found in the fiction section of your local library.
Fiction. That's all it purports to be. It isn't meant to be taken seriously. People must be seriously dumb if they take as real a work of fiction. Did the Martians really invade the earth and zap humans because H.G. Wells wrote a brilliant fictional account in The War of the Worlds? Of course not (although many were taken in by a famous radio version). Did Dr. Frankenstein actually use electricity to bring to life a being fabricated from human body parts because Mary Shelley wrote a brilliant fictional account in Frankenstein? Of course not. Did there exist a great house owned by one Roderick Usher, whose walls rushed asunder and sank into the tarn when Lady Madeline of Usher, buried alive, arose from the tomb because Edgar Allen Poe wrote a brilliant short story in The Fall of the House of Usher? Of course not.
We understand that these are works of fiction. They only seem real because their authors were gifted fiction writers who could make fiction seem like reality. Why in the world would anyone give Dan Brown's work of fiction any more credibility than that due to a successful work of fiction?
Apparently, a lot of people are dumb. They (not Dan Brown) have turned this fiction into a multimillion-dollar industry. You may as well buy anti-Martian ray-guns and go to lectures on how to prepare for "the coming Martian invasion"!
TRADITIO has been chided for picking on the Methodists when we stated that Novus Ordinarians might just as well go to the Methodist church down the street as to the phony Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service. Well, the Methodists have a point, but we did say that their service was more Christian than the Novus Ordo service! (We could have picked any other Protestant mainline denomination as an example.) At least Methodists believe in the Scripture and have some scriptural hymns -- which is more than most of the Novus Ordo can say.
Dr. Frederick Parrella, a Novus Ordinarian and ex-Methodist, already in 1981 wrote an article describing a visit to a Methodist church in the San Francisco area:
During the service I was struck by the profound differences between the liturgies of Methodists and Catholics.... I sensed that there is something deeply amiss in our own [Novus Ordo] eucharistic celebrations, a liturgical identity-crisis that has escaped our attention. My first clue was the music.... During the first hymn, I realized that this is one facet of Catholic liturgy that has gone wrong.... What I have heard instead are [Novus Ordo] choruses ... more attuned to ... "Sesame Street" than to an act of divine worship. Where have we [Novus Ordinarians] gone astray liturgically? Is it only in our choice of music, or is there a deeper malaise afflicting our liturgy?
I have given up on [Novus Ordo] hymn singing. Most of the modern texts are banal doggerel, most of the modern tunes worthy of second-rate nursery rhymes. What passes as "folk music" is nothing of the kind. It has no soul. All is designed to be "easy," but still it is not well sung. Most congregations show their disdain by their lack of participation.
While Methodism has no idea of a sacramental presence of God, the level of reverence displayed by the typical Methodist nowadays indicates an acute sense of the transcendent and respect for the sacred. Many years ago, a Methodist friend, Adrian Shinger, told me that he had found [Novus Ordo] worship "embarrassingly informal." While the Church [of the New Order] has been desacralising its liturgy, British Methodists have been adopting a much more sacramental and sarcardotal style of worship: at least in their officially published orders of service.
At the present rate of change, Methodists will have adopted the Tridentine Liturgy and [Novus Ordinarians] some combination of Quaker prayer meeting, Pentecostal revival meeting, and New Labour press conference as their forms of Sunday Observance by the end of the 21st Century!
Much has happened to [Novus Ordo] liturgical form.... There was a certain light-headed enthusiasm about it all. Hope that the liturgical changes would add new life and spirit to the Church were never realized.... Liturgy changed its form with some confusion, and not a little anguish.... At a [Novus Ordo] liturgy today, one is aware not of those present, but of those absent.... Catholics under 35 are conspicuously fewer at liturgies today, as are those who are confused and uncertain of the meaning of their faith.... Young Catholics are rootless, hungry, and thirsty for what they do not know and cannot name: the transcendent in liturgical form, an objective sense of the Holy in the eucharistic drama.
I suspect that much of the "reform" was conducted in bad faith, in a juvenile, misguided, and doomed attempt to make [Novus Ordo] worship acceptable to Protestants. It is not true that if only the philosophical climate were now different, the Pope Paul's New "Mass" would be serving the Church well.... I see now that there are very good reasons for preferring the [Traditional] Latin Mass, reasons that one would have to be a very strange sort of Catholic not to be able to recognise as valid and worth honouring.
We have quoted from this article in extenso because this once Methodist has a very clear foundation in what is sacred, and he can smell the Novus Ordo rat. One can only hope that since 1981 he has left the phony Church of the New Order and found a traditional church or chapel.
Those Easterns that have so vehemently denied TRADITIO's statement that the Eastern rites have been significantly changed over the centuries, and particularly in the Novus Ordo regime, will be dumbfounded by this news straight from the Newchurch Bishops' Conference of India.
The Syro-Malabar Eastern rite has deliberately introduced changes in baptism, confirmation, marriage, "anointing of sick," and confession. Eastern Church leaders said that "the fresh liturgical changes would help the Oriental Church to move in a new spiritual direction." So, there you have it, folks -- all of you who so vehemently denied TRADITIO's statement that Eastern rites have been changed. Here is a clear admission by Newchurch Eastern "authorities" that they are deliberately introducing novelties into their Eastern rites.
According to a communiqué issued by Syro-Malabar Church Major Archbishop Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, the novelties came into effect in all parishes and dioceses from January 6. Auxiliary Bishop Sebastian Adaynthrath of Ernamulam-Angamaly, who headed the liturgical committee that proposed the "new sacraments," said that the changes would help the Church to "Indianize in a new direction." In other words, these Eastern "new sacraments" are being Novus Ordoized and changed to make them "politically correct" for different countries.
Priests now are to arrogate the formerly episcopal office of blessing the Holy Oils. And, by the way, any oil can now be used: not just the traditional olive oil, but even coconut oil. So, at "baptism" now, the infant can be immersed in coconut oil. Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor would have loved that! Even the Sacramental Forms themselves of "baptism" and "confession" have been changed. These Easterns are just as bad as the Novus Ordinarians, whom they emulate.
These Easterns may very well have crossed the line of validity, in an environment where "modernizing" Easterns have already been recently accused of playing fast and loose with valid Sacramental Forms. Yes, there may be a few unadulterated Eastern rites around, but they are very few and far between, much fewer and farther between than the Traditional Latin Mass.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I attend a Traditional Latin Mass each Sunday and drive about 30 miles each way to get there. My car is not working right now, and I have had to miss Mass for two weeks, although I could attend a Novus Ordo service within walking distance. Am I seriously obliged to attend a Novus Ordo service? I have resorted to saying my rosary and reading my missal instead. Any thoughts on this would be helpful.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
There is absolutely no "obligation" to attend the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Service. There is, however, an obligation NOT to attend it.
The obligation to worship almighty God is not to fulfil some empty "requirement" to engage in false worship, but to give true worship to God -- the worship that He has established, not whatever counterfeit any individual might "prefer." The Novus Ordo service is not even a Mass (it bears only a trivial resemblance to anything Catholic and Apostolic), and consequently there is no "obligation" to attend it.
Quite the contrary. The Novus Ordo service is to be totally avoided, as if it were a Methodist service (which is giving it more credit than it deserves). It is hard to deny any longer that the Novus Ordo service, in any version, is unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and conclusively invalid.
If you can't attend to a Traditional Latin Mass, keep the Lord's Day holy as best you can and see ABSENT.TXT: Method of Hearing Mass Spiritually for the Absent (Adapted from The Key of Heaven) in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Apologetics).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Could you please advise me as to how I can answer people who claim to be able to hear and understand the Mass in the vernacular (Novus Ordo)? I have one Novus Ordo friend who professes to be very devout, but thinks that the "liturgy" is better now, since she claims that she can hear and understand everything without the help of a handmissal.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This is a senseless argument. Just because the Novus Ordinarians get a Protestant service in the vulgar (vernacular) tongue doesn't equate to understanding. If that were true, why does the Novus Ordo spend so much money on those throw-away missalettes? Just look at these people when the Gospel is being read. Are they listening to the Scripture in their vaunted vernacular, or are they reading it in the throw-away missalette? They should rather be arguing for the True Mass in Latin with a handmissal!
Moreover, why is it that if these Novus Ordinarians "understand" so much better, they are so abysmally ignorant of the Roman Catholic Faith? They don't understand its doctrine. They don't know its Saints. They don't know its history. No, the vulgar tongue is not the key to understanding. Catholics knew their Faith before the Novus Ordo service was fabricated. Now, the service has dumbed the Novus Ordinarians down.
In any case, these Novus Ordinarians have been hoodwinked into a Counterfeit unCatholic service. The dogmatic Council of Trent anathemized (condemned, excommunicated) those who advocated the Mass in the vulgar tongue. Of course, the Novus Ordo service isn't a Mass anyway and isn't valid under the very criteria by which the pope held the Anglican service to be invalid (which is a lot closer to the Traditional Latin Mass than the current New Order countefeit). The Novus Ordo was a service invented by a Masonic Archbishop and six Protestant ministers. Even the Vatican admits that!
Isn't it ironic that the Novus Ordinarians have been hoodwinked by their own vernacular tongue? The Traditional Latin Mass is doctrinally perfect, as it comes essentially unchanged from the Apostles and Great Fathers of the early Church. As the popes have consistently said, the Latin tongue is the Guardian of the Faith. If it were ever to be lost, they said, the Catholic Faith would be lost. Prophetic statement for the Novus Ordinarians, wasn't it?
These people you refer to may as well be Methodists. For all their apparently external devotion, in reality they are worshipping like Protestants and eating a Protestant cookie that has nothing more divine about it than a soda cracker.
There are increasing signs that JPII is becoming blind to the Catholic Faith. According to the Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, JPII in his January 12 General Audience, commenting on the Apocalypse of St. John, started off by indicating that "the fight between good and evil, personified by Satan, is a very hard one, as shown by the manifold violence and injustice in the world today."
Now there are two troublesome points here. First of all, JPII seems to be projecting the notion that Satan "personifies" evil (we unfortunately have only an English summary to work with here). This verb may imply the Modernistic notion that Satan is merely a symbol of, not the reality of, the Prince of the Fallen Angels.
Secondly, JPII immediately seems to fall into the Liberalistic notion that evil is "violence" and "injustice in the world today." Such evils are just the given natural consequence of the Fall of Man. Adam introduced evil into the world, and his progeny has had to pay the price of Original Sin and its natural consequences ever since. Is JPII blind to the fact that not the evil of the material world, but the evil of the spiritual world, is paramount? Is he blind to the fact that Newchurch has virtually destroyed the Roman Catholic Faith and filled the minds and hearts of the once faithful with a Counterfeit Religion that is not Catholic?
JPII went on to say that "Satan, the original adversary,... has now been cast down from heaven and therefore no longer has great power." Again, JPII seems blind to the spiritual evil in our time. He seems to be cut from the same cloth as John XXIII, who looked at the world with naivete and rosy-colored glasses and opened the Pandora's Box of Vatican II, which held the seeds to destroy the Church. However, as the Fathers of the Church teach, Satan is most powerful when he is not recognized, but operates in deceit and surreptitiously.
Has JPII not really read and understood the Apocalypse of St. John? Pope Leo XIII certainly did. It is said that in 1884 during Holy Mass he was given a vision of the growing destruction of the Church. She was set upon on all sides by Satan and his minions and was on the verge of being totally lost, when the Prince of the Heavenly Host, the Guardian of the Church, St. Michael the Archangel, appeared in a great burst of light and routed the forces of Satan.
Now, Pope Leo was a sanguine man, of a naturally kindly and optimistic nature -- but not naive. This vision so shook him that he commanded that his prayer to St. Michael be recited at the end of every Low Mass. Paul VI had it expunged in 1964. It was in that very year that the Roman Schism occurred, and the New Order became public. In 1994 JPII, in the usual post-conciliar pusillanimous way, merely "asked" that the prayer be restored, but has done nothing to command that this be done.
The Church now, more than ever, needs that prayer, said before holy altars throughout the world. It merits a partial indulgence of three years, but a plenary indulgence once a month, if this prayer is recited daily, under the usual conditions of confession, Communion, a visit to a church or oratory, and any prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff (S.P. Ap., Nov. 12, 1932).
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio. Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur. Tuque princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.
Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
We have to give a horselaugh when people talk about Newvatican and its New One-World Religion as "Catholic." No, folks, the New Religion, with its New Service is avowedly unCatholic.
Here, from Newvatican, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations, is the emblem of the New One-World Religion that Newvatican and its lieutenants are pushing. Can there be any doubt that such a notion as represented by this emblem is definitely not Catholic and would be condemned by 260 popes as sycretism, which is a grave violation against the First Commandment by the promotion of the "all religions are equal" oecumenical heresy.
These Newvatican personnel, hand-picked by JPII, especially Walter Cardinal Kasper "the Oecumenical Friendly Ghost," and Oecumenical Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who wouldn't know real Catholicism if it hit them in the face, are nothing if not subtle. Look carefully at the emblem. The labarum, or chi-rho, the early Christian emblem consisting of the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of the title Christos (Messias) in Greek, the emblem that Constantine, after a vision of Christ, placed on his soldiers' standards and subsequently was victorious in the battle that allowed Christianity to come out of the catacombs and become the official religion of the Roman empire, is overwritten in the New Religion's emblem by the crescent and star of the infidel religion, Mohammedanism.
There is no question where Newvatican is leading, is there? The New Order is a deliberate hijacking of the Roman Catholic Church. The New Mess is a phony service concocted by a Freemason and six Protestant ministers. There is no secret about this. Paul VI even had his picture taken with them! (This picture has been published with previous Commentaries from the Mailbox.)
Anyone who attends the Novus Ordo temples and defends the New Religion has made himself an agent of a system that is designed to destroy Catholicism. They can talk themselves blue in the face about how "Catholic" they are, how "pope-loving" they are, but it won't wash. Like the zombies in Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, their intellects have been captured by the New Religion, whose puppets they have become. It is not Roman, and it is certainly not Catholic.
During a sermon in the Cologne cathedral on Epiphany, Joachim Cardinal Meisner declared: "First there was Herod, who ordered the children of Bethlehem to be killed, then there was Hitler and Stalin among others, and today unborn children are being killed in their millions."
So? No problem there, right? Wrong! The cardinal was set upon by Liberalists, who objected to abortions being compared to the Nazi concentration camps and demanded an "apology." But let's look at the numbers. Every year around the world, 46,000,000 abortions are conducted. The total number lost in the concentration camps has been estimated from 6,000,000-12,000,000. So, the concentration camps are a comparative blip compared to the firestorm of abortions. That's a fact.
What, then, did this cardinal do in response to the attacks? Stand by his statement -- which was true? No. In "oecumenical" fashion, he capitulated and "apologized," saying that "he would never have made such a comparison if he had thought it could have been open to misinterpretation." What misinterpretation?
The Liberalists, who stand four-square for free speech (not!), included Claudia Roth, the co-president of the Greens party, which is in coalition with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats, and by the president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, who told the press that he "cannot in any way understand how anyone could compare abortion and euthanasia to the crimes of the Nazis." This benighted individual just doesn't have any imagination!
Then, too, the Oecumenical Movement "Initiative Kirche" got all out of joint. "Meisner has completely lost his authority as a bishop and has publicly done a great wrong to the Catholic Church and to dialogue between Jews and Christians," it said. Oh, yes, oecumenical "dialogue" must trump the truth, must trump Catholic teaching. You see how eating the phony Novus Ordo cookie has affected these peoples' minds? It seems that there was a little too much vanilla in the Cologne batch!
France. Eldest Daughter of the Church. Once the most Catholic country on the planet. What has the Novus Ordo done to it?
A BBC report quotes a French presbyter as saying: "My fear is that the Roman Catholic Church [he means the Church of the New Order] will disappear altogether in France. That's the path we're on." In the whole country of France, only 150 men completed their training as Novus Ordo presbyters last year. The average attendance at a French Novus Ordo church is about five. So, what is Newchurch in France doing to turn around the problem?
Do you see the flaw here? This is the Achilles heel that underlies Newchurch. It tries to change itself into everything but the unadulterated Roman Catholic Church, when that is the only solution that works! Traditional seminaries have more applicants than they can accommodate. Presbyters want to revert to the traditional priesthood because they're tired of the phony Novus Ordo. Traditional churches and chapels persist in spite of the most hostile attacks by Newchurch bishops. Yet traditional Catholicism true religion, so people stick by it in spite of persecution.
What has Newchurch since Vatican II tried?
On the other hand, traditional Catholicism in France is healthy and growing. An Australian reporter, having returned from a six-week tour of France, wrote:
The traditional Catholic movement in France is today far more vital than "mainstream" Catholicism, whether ultramontanist [extreme papists] or liberal. Churches and chapels where the immemorial Mass is offered by priests of the late Archbishop Lefebvre's Society of St Pius X or under the 1984 Indult are generally well-attended, whereas the more numerous parish churches and cathedrals given over to the Novus Ordo liturgy of Vatican II are more often than not close to empty, even in former bastions of religious practice like Brittany and Alsace.
In fact, traditional Catholics simply occupied the Church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris in 1977 and kicked out the Newchurch personnel. St. Nicholas now draws 5,000 worshippers each Sunday, far more than other churches in Paris. There are five Traditional Latin Masses on Sunday, plus Vespers, and three weekday Masses.
There is a false notion among Novus Ordinarians that the New Order and its Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service can be "fixed." Some want a "better translation." Apparently, forty years of false "translations" don't tell them that this desire is fruitless and no solution at all. Others want more "reverence." Apparently, forty years of irreverence essentially incorporated into the New Service don't tell them that this desire is fruitless and no solution at all. In any case, neither of these approaches will change the Novus Ordo service from invalidity to validity. It still fails the validity test promulgated by Pope Leo XIII.
Then there is the question of Newchurch teaching false doctrine. The vehicle for this is, in its English rendition, the so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is really not Catholic, but a product of the Neo-Modernist conciliar period initiated by Vatican II. At the time the "catechism" was being formulated, the formulating committee (not a Saint like Charles Borromeo, who essentially wrote the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent) admitted that its knowledge of Latin and Greek was so bad that it could not consult Catholic sources!
Then there was the novel idea of publishing an "experimental" first edition. The first edition was floated to see what the "feedback" would be. If there was strong popular objection to certain teachings, they could be changed in the final edition! The issues that Newchurch didn't want to confront (like the question of aborted children or Freemasonry), it simply omitted. The large number of uneducated Novus Ordinarians reading this "catechism" would, therefore, not even know that a doctrine was being contradicted -- the principle being that what is left out is just as important as what is put in.
Let's put a human face on this fruitless hope of Novus Ordinarians that the New Order can be "fixed." Take the case of Presbyter Joseph Baca of the Newchurch diocese of Fresno, as reported by the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission, in an article entitled "Baca and the Bear." Now here's a presbyter the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians would love. He gave a "homily" concerning the Iraqi War, in which he applied the Catholic just-war standard, which, as it happened, was covered in the Catechism. Result: Newchurch Bishop John Steinbock suspended him because the bishop had already issued a political letter taking the pacifist position. Of course, Newchurch bishops are not obligated to follow Catholic teaching, or even the Neo-Modernist Catechism. They are their own law, and Newvatican remains silent, whatever they do or say. You see, Newchurch bishops have one law, the Law of Louis XIV: le État, c'est moi!.
Now, Presbyter Baca was nothing if not determined. Instead of telling Bishop Steinbock to "get a religion" and then himself go off to celebrate the Traditional Catholic Mass independently, he kept madly pushing against the unCatholic New Order. He was eventually "unsuspended" and assigned to another parish, where he eliminated the use of inclusive language and gave conservative "homilies" on the Church's positions on hell, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, women's ordination, etc.
In spite of numerous letters of praise from the Novus Ordinarians, just two letters did Presbyter Baca in. The first letter was from a church musician to Pastor Jean-Michael Lastiri, complaining that Baca had deeply offended her "as a musician and a humanitarian." And what was Baca's great sin? Why, he had forbidden the congregation from clapping after the service songs. "People have a right to express their emotions," she sputtered, "especially in God's house." Apparently, this dingbat would approve of the two people who expressed their emotions by conjugating in St. Patrick's Cathedral a couple of years ago!
What's more, the letter-writer didn't like B's negative stance on homosexuality. She, with her linguistic expertise in ancient languages (not!), pointed out that catholic meant universal and therefore drew the absurd conclusion that the lifestyle of her two Lesbian friends was perfectly acceptable. (Perhaps there was a ménage à trois going on amongst these Novus Ordinarians.) She wrote that when she goes to one of "Joe's" (that's the term she uses for Presbyter Baca) services, she feels that she is "in a captive audience that is forced to endure his ultra-conservative talk." That, because he condemns Lesbianism.
The second letter, from a local teacher, objected to Presbyter Baca's homilies that "constantly reinforced the concepts of Mortal Sin and Hell." Newchurch wants to sweep these under the carpet, of course. Newchurch teaches that we're all perfect, that no matter what villany or corruption we practice, we are fit to be saints in heaven, get a "white" funeral service, a "Christian" burial, etc.
The last straw was that Presbyter Baca called the parish administratrix (another Newchurch woman; is there a pattern emerging here?) on her marking up the price of copies of the Catechism that were to be used for his classes. As a result, Baca was "exiled" and assigned to a "pastoral skills" program and "anger-management" classes. This is an old technique Newchurch has consistently been used to purge any presbyter having the least "conservative" tendencies.
Fed up with Bishop Steinbock's subornation of heresy by silencing the teaching of the Catholic Faith, quite a number of the parishioners cosigned a letter warning Bishop Steinbock that they would withhold funds from their parish and from the diocese if appropriate action were not taken to correct the situation. Bishop Steinbock sputtered back: "I have no idea what you are talking about. I can only call on you and those who signed such a scandalous letter to conversion to ask God's pardon and the pardon of your pastor, whom you defame so maliciously."
On the same day on which Bishop Steinbock dismissed Presbyter Baca, a private investigator sent a public letter to the bishop informing him that Pastor Lastiri had employed a convicted felon, who had been sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting a minor under seven years of age on church property. The investigator publicly called on parishioners to withhold financial support from the diocese.
Bishop Steinbock, in typical Newchurch fashion, did not even launch an investigation of his own. Instead, he accused the parishioners of "hate." When Bishop Steinbock tried to deny the accusation, the investigator stated that the information was published by the District Attorney himself as the "testimony of several witnesses."
Then the lid blew off. Pastor Lastiri was discovered to have sent numerous messages, profiles, and E-mails with the purpose of securing "rendezvous," which resulted in trips to Amsterdam, Florida, New Orleans, Huntington Beach, and Las Vegas.
So what did Bishop Steinbock do when faced with the undeniable truth? Did he abjectly apologize to the parishioners whom he accused of calumny? Of course not. He quietly removed Pastor Lastiri, while he continued to lambaste the parishioners, who turned out to be quite right in asking all monies to be withheld from the corrupt Pastor Lastiri and the corrupt Bishop Steinbock So, "conservative" Presbyter Baca was in the right, but he's out. For, as we all know, in Newchurch right is wrong, and wrong is right.
Sorry, folks. Newchurch, the New Order, is rotten to the core. There is no "reforming" it. It must be amputated like a gangrenous leg before the infection circulates throughout the whole body and kills it. Its infected bishops must be refused "obedience"; since they are not Catholic, they have no claim to obedience. Money must never be given to the unCatholic New Order, since funding such corruption is a Mortal Sin of cooperation in evil. This was the course of Pope St. Pius X, when he discovered Modernism affecting the Church at the turn of the century.
Most of all, those Novus Ordinarians must leave those New Order temples of corruption and seek out the Traditional Latin Mass in their community. Providence has provided them with a fine independent site there. If they don't take advantage of it, it is their immortal soul that is in jeopardy. And it will be nobody's fault but their own.
When the Divine Office is chanted or recited, one comes upon this verse from the Psalms (118:22): Lapidem quem reprobaverunt aedificantes hic factus est in caput anguli [The stone which the builders rejected; the same is become the head of the corner]. A more appropriate motto for the New Oecumenical Fatima could not be found. Newchurch has rejected Christ, the cornerstone, and substituted a pagan stone to replace Him.
On June 6, 2004, the cornerstone for the New Oecumenical Fatima was laid. Conservative Novus Ordinarians and extreme Fatimists were sure that the pope would step in and stop this abomination. After all, isn't JPII supposed the "Fatima pope" (sure, just as Al Gore is the "education president")? Instead, JPII blessed the Oecumenical Ediface by sending St. Peter's altar stone to Fatima!
Perhaps Our Lady of Fatima in 1917 didn't make this prediction, but what about Our Lady of LaSalette in 1846? In 1851, five years after the apparitions at La Salette, the bishop of the diocese declared the apparition as authentic and divine in origin, and a magnificent basilica was built on the site. Now, TRADITIO, in the spirit of the popes and the Saints, has always urged great caution about visions and apparitions. They are not part of Public Revelation, and particularly in our age, people are apt to push them to a superstitious extreme. But if we are to mention one, should we not mention the other?
Lucifer together with a large number of demons will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell; several religious institutions will lose all faith and will lose many souls.
Evil books will be abundant on earth, and the spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening in all that concerns the service of God. They will have great power over nature: there will be churches built to serve these spirits. People will be transported from one place to another by these evil spirits, even priests, for they will not have been guided by the good spirit of the Gospel, which is a spirit of humility, charity and zeal for the glory of God.
Extraordinary prodigies will abound everywhere because the true faith has been extinguished and the false light illuminates the world. Woe to the princes of the Church who only concern themselves with the accumulation of riches upon riches, protect their authority and rule with pride.... [Later] Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of Antichrist.
In many respects, these statements seem to be a far more accurate description of our times than Fatima's statements. Just reading the TRADITIO Commentaries from the Mailbox for the last week, you could find evidence for each of these descriptions. But there is a silver lining to the cloud:
The righteous will suffer greatly. Their prayers, their penances and their tears will rise up to Heaven, and all of God's people will beg for forgiveness and mercy and will plead for my help and intercession. And then Jesus Christ, in an act of His justice and His great mercy will command His angels to have all His enemies put to death. Suddenly, the persecutors of the Church of Jesus Christ and all those given over to sin will perish, and the earth will become desert-like.
And then peace will be made, and man will be reconciled with God. Jesus Christ will be served, worshipped, and glorified. Charity will flourish everywhere. The new kings will be the right arm of the holy Church, which will be strong, humble, pious, poor, but fervent in the imitation of the virtues of Jesus Christ. The Gospel will be preached everywhere and mankind will make great progress in its faith, for there will be unity among the workers of Jesus Christ and man will live in fear of God.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am a traditional Catholic, who teaches high-school Spanish and middle-school math in a public school in Louisiana. For two or three years, I had had Catholic screen-savers on the two computers in my classroom until two months ago when my principal ordered me to remove the screensavers because the atheist father of one of my students was offended. I sadly removed the screensavers and put the scrolling words In God We Trust instead, since that is "legal." I want to put the Catholic screensavers back on my computers. Should I risk losing my job and my family's only income by putting the Catholic screensavers back on? I need some advice.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In such a situation, since the original action was a matter of choice rather than obligation, you are not required to risk your job. But you yourself discovered another way to skin the atheist cat.
Our Lord told his disciples: "Be ye therefore wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16/DRV). These anti-Christians play the law. So you play the law. It was ingenious to use the motto of the United States, although one of these days, we don't doubt that this will be illegal too. Another approach would be to use a work of art, such as Michelangelo's famous depiction of the creation, with the finger of God giving life to Adam. You don't even have to depict the persons, only the hands. If someone objects, you can answer that you are broadening the students' knowledge of art, which is not properly represented in the curriculum!
Someone once asked, by the way, why the U.S. motto is not in Latin, as E Pluribus Unum, Novus Ordo Seclorum, etc. The answer is that the phrase is taken almost directly from the fourth stanza of the national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner: "In God is our trust."
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Approximately how many bishops has the pope created during his tenure, and of those, how many have been implicated in the Sex and Embezzlement Scandals? It seems to me that the number is significant.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
There some 5000 bishops around the world now, of which one-tenth (about 500) are in the United States. Virtually every Newchurch bishop was appointed by this pope. He is directly responsible for the disaster that grips Newchurch. If JPII had wanted to appoint Catholic bishops, he had the power to do so. Instead, he appointed bishops who were pledged to the substitution of the Roman Catholic Church by the New Order Religion.
Every one of these Newchurch bishops in the United States are involved in the Sex Scandal. About a dozen of them have so far been proven to be personally involved in committing the acts. All of the rest have been involved with concealing the acts of others, suborning them, paying extortion money to hush them, and/or obstructing justice with other bishops across state lines. Governor Keating, Chairman of the Bishops investigating committee, hit the nail on the head when he said: "This is not the Catholic Church. This is a Mafia."
But the most telling evidence of the collusion of every U.S. bishop in the scandals is that not a single one of them has dissociated himself from the immorality of his colleagues. Not a single one of them has stood up before the cameras at the U.S. [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops Conference and said,
I feel polluted to be in the same room with you, who have perverted the Roman Catholic Faith and our people. As of today, I resign from this conference. I will run my diocese, as every bishop should, according to the Roman Catholic Mass, Faith, Sacraments, and Morality.
This is exactly what Bishop Meyer did in Campos, and Newvatican left him alone. This is what any real bishop would do.
In an indication that, in the wake of church closings and episcopal immorality, Newchurch parishes may finally be moving to "go independent" from Newchurch, the parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kosta parish in St. Louis voted 98% to go independent from Archbishop Raymond "Bully" Burke. This is the Newchurch archbishop who, having shielded his presbyter-perverts and received a transsexual "nun" into final vows, is now trying to despoil the $10,000,000 property and assets of St. Stanislaus.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 98 percent of those voting at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church on January 9 rejected a measure ceding control of the church's property and finances to the St. Louis Archdiocese. Even board members who expected that the measure would be defeated were surprised by the strong show of support from the 304 people, out of 510 eligible, who voted. The corporation bylaws prevent the board from handing over church assets without the consent of parishioners.
Bully Burke is attempting this Mortal Sin of Injustice in spite of the fact that the parish property and assets are owned and controlled by a lay board under a not-for-profit religious corporation. This arrangement has persisted for 124 years and was approved by original bishop in perpetuity.
Burke is going to find out that he can huff and puff about Newchurch "interdicts," but he is not going to get the $10,000,000. Such "interdicts" are just as phony as the phony "excommunication" of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which ten of the pope's own most prominent Roman canonists have declared, to pope's embarrassment, was invalid. Why, then, should it surprise us that Newvatican, which is quite content to operate illegally, should support Bully Burke in this matter of the "Purloined Parish"?
These courageous parishioners of St. Stanislaus have told Burke and Newvatican in no uncertain terms that they are not going to give over their property in a hostile takeover by the New Order. They'll go independent first. And their "best case" situation seems to be ironclad legally.
All too many traditional Catholics view the current abysmal state of the Catholic Church as an inconvenience, an annoyance. Rather, they should look at the current situation as the early Roman martyrs did: as an opportunity to proclaim and suffer for the True Faith personally. One board member hit the nail on the head: "If the bishop does what he intends to do to the board, my feeling is I'm a martyr to the cause," he said. In Roman Catholic theology, this is known as "dry" martyrdom and gains much merit in Heaven for the martyr.
Bully Burke has barred Novus Ordo presbyters from celebrating Mass at the parish. Well, who needs them? Of all peoples, the Poles should feel a strong obligation to worship in the traditional Catholic Faith, not the Counterfeit New Order Religion. For example, parishioner Henry Marganski, 76, recalled years spent in a Siberian work camp as a teenager. When his family returned to Poland at the end of World War II, it was not the Counterfeit Newchurch and its Protestant-Masonic New-service that he returned to. Certainly not. It was the Roman Catholic Church and the Traditional Latin Mass. The time has come for these Poles to restore the True Faith to their parishioners. And Bully Burke has given them a golden opportunity to do so.
The board is already pursuing options to find a priest outside the diocese. This parish should take advantage of the opportunity to go all the way. Find an independent traditional Catholic priest, restore the true Mass and Sacraments, and be a beacon for traditional Catholicism around the world. There are currently a dozen traditional Catholic priests listed in TRADITIO's Traditional Catholic Priests Wanted and Available department.
If you had any doubt that Newvatican was behind the Sex Scandal and the Embezzlement Scandal in the United States, you need doubt no longer. Newvatican has approved the action of the Newchurch archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond "Bully" Burke, to despoil the $10,000,000 assets of St. Stanislaus Kosta Church.
It doesn't matter that this church, with episcopal approval in perpetuity, has been run by a nonprofit board of trustees for 124 years. It doesn't matter that the archdiocese has in all that time given not one dime to the church for maintenance, even during the Great Depression. It doesn't matter that Vatican II says that Newchurch popes and bishops are supposed to listen to "the people."
No. Burke and JPII are fully behind an ecclesiastical shell game. These guys should be stripped of their offices in the Church. They are far more corrupt than the fabled mediaeval and Renaissance bishops and popes who regularly farmed money from their people. The parish web site has already been taken off the archdiocese listing and been "transferred" to a different church. There is a particular irony in this Mafia-like activity by Newvatican. This is a Polish parish, and the pope flaunts his Polarity!
In a ruling made public November 15, Newvatican sided with the Newchurch archbishop, who objected to a parish being run by anyone but "hisself." It is commonly believed in St. Louis that Burke intends to sell off St. Stanislaus for $10,000,000 so that he can pay off the civil debts of his presbyter-perverts.
One has to wonder about Burke himself, who received into final vows a transvestite who had undergone a sex-change operation and has a record of sweeping under the rug the sex crimes of his presbyter-perverts. And newspapers still describe Burke as a "conservative"! He's just as bad as that phony Bruskewitz from Lincoln, Nebraska, who wants to excommunicate Masons and then joins the Masonic parade!
Now get this Vatican II "Church of Love" part. Having tried to grab $10,000,000 of ill-gotten goods, the archbishop ignores his grievous Mortal Sin of Injustice and desires "that the decision of the Vatican will be implemented in a spirit of reconciliation and Christian charity." Is this Newchurch bishop from Mars? After someone steals $10,000,000 from you with no contrition, you don't get "reconciliation" and "charity." You get God's "just punishments," as the Act of Contrition puts it. Even the Prodigal Son abjectly asked forgiveness for his sins before his father admitted him back.
Well, you Novus Ordinarians of St. Louis and elsewhere, can there be any doubt left in your minds that Newchurch is not Catholic? That it is a Great Facade, a Counterfeit Church? As the U.S. Bishops Conference's own investigator concluded: "This is not the Catholic Church; it is a Mafia." It is due no "obedience," as it has publicly turned its back on the Catholic Faith, Catholic Sacraments, and Catholic morality. Let Burke join the Mohammedan imams, since he keeps claiming that he worships the same god as they do, right?!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Often, TRADITIO has stated that it is false that Catholics and Mohammedans worship the same God. The "new" Catechism of the Catholic Church states the contrary. In addition, I've heard some supposedly "Catholic" apologists also affirm that Catholics and Mohammedans worship the same God. Could you explain to me why they and the Newchurch catechism are wrong? Hopefully, one day, I might be able to set them straight.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
That's just the problem: the "new" so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church of 1983 isn't. It isn't a Catholic catechism. It is a product of the New Order, a Modernist attempt to rewrite Catholic doctrine, liturgy, and morality. It's a counterfeit, engineered to deceive "if possible, event the elect," as Scripture says. Many theologians have pointed to numerous errors throughout it. When it doesn't like a doctrine that has been a Catholic teaching for millennia (like that on Limbo), it omits any mention of it. When, however, it wishes to fabricate a new doctrine (like that against capital punishment), which contravenes the bimillenial teaching of the Church, it makse up new doctrine as it goes along.
There are two senses in which the statement, "we all worship the same God," can be taken: objective and subjective. Of course, objectively, God is the same, no matter what any man thinks of him. But, in a subjective sense, true Catholics are worshipping God as He is, as we are taught through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the two fonts of the Public Revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is God as He is described to us (as best a human mind can) in the works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Our Lord Jesus Christ said, "I am the Truth." Well, if He is the Truth, how can any Catholic in good conscience view a religion, Mohammedanism, as "worshipping the same God," when that religion does not accept Our Lord Jesus Christ as Our Divine Savior, but as a mere prophet like Isaias, when that religion rejects His Sacred Scripture (the Bible), when that religion despises the Most Holy Trinity, and defames the Blessed Virgin Mary in its "holy book," the Koran?
The Christian Church was forced to fight the Mohammedan infidels for the better part of the second millennium under a number of popes and Saints, including St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Francis of Assisi, the purpose being to reopen the Holy Land to all pilgrims (which the Mohammedan ruler had closed) and to redeem Christians whom the Mohammedans had enslaved. There is nothing new about 9/11. The West has had to repel invasions of Mohammedans to take over Europe and make it infidel on at least four major occasions in the past. We are just now seeing the fifth.
So, the god that the Mohammedans worship is not the god of the Christians, not the true God. Conciliar popes and potentates can play all the "oecumenical" games they want to, blinding themselves to the teaching of the Catholic Church on these matters, but it won't wash. No pope can change reality. His office, as dogmatically defined by Vatican Council I, is to guard the Faith as handed down to him and to hand it down to his successors as it was handed down to him. He has no power to change it. The difference is too obvious to deny, and that is why even Newchurch admits that "oecumenism" (whatever that means to it on any given day) has been a failure.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I was introduced to the Byzantine Rite through my participation in the Serra Club [a Newchurch organization]. Vatican II said that the Eastern Catholic Church should "maintain their venerable traditions." No changes have been made in our Liturgy and rubrics. Is this a correct assessment?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No, it isn't. Why should we trust Vatican II to "maintain venerable traditions" in the East any more than in the West? Vatican II and its aftermath have come close to destroying the venerable Apostolic Roman Rite of St. Peter, which was virtually universal before. Just so, the virtual destruction of the Eastern rites has been documented in previous TRADITIO Commentaries from the Mailbox.
The statement that "no changes have been made" in the Eastern rites is ridiculous. Unless you are privileged to be in one of those few churches that actually retain the Apostolic/Patristic Eastern rites, you are undoubtedly being exposed to a rite that has been modified, vernacularized, Romanized, and otherwise "modernized" over the better part of two centuries.
And the "modernized" Eastern rites under the auspices of the Vatican II Newchurch are much worse, on the whole, than the rites in the Eastern Orthodox Church because Vatican II's Modernism has been deliberately injected into them. For further information, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Beliefs? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Apologetics).
Nor do the Easterns really maintain that their rites are authentic. They admit to the "modernizing" of the Apostolic rites. We've spoken to a number of Eastern bishops and priests, and they have all been honest about that. They claim to be dumbing down the rites to modern Easterns, who are ignorant of their Traditions. This fact has been confirmed by scores of messages from our correspondents around the U.S.
We did once observe an authentic Byzantine-rite Divine Liturgy, in Greek, following the authentic Apostolic/Patristic rite. However, this service, celebrated by a young Eastern priest, was, like many Traditional Latin Masses, held in an independent chapel, not in a "mainstream" church building.
You can find authentic Eastern rites, yes, but they are much rarer than the traditional Roman rite. Moreover, Novus Ordo Westerners are hardly in a position to know authentic rites when they see them, just as many "conservative" Catholics are fooled by pseudo-traditional Masses or Novus Ordo services in Latin or even "conservative" vernacular Novus Ordo services.
Aren't these Newchurch bishops a fraud? If they're not involved in immoral actions, or promoting them, or hiding them, they doff their miters and become secular politicians. They're in the wrong vocation -- either vocation. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of St. Paul's book and go back to tent-making!
CNS reports that the Newchurch Connecticut bishops have joined with a secular political organization, Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, in a petition drive to end the death penalty. These Newchurch bishops have affronted God and the IRS by bringing into their parishes their personal secular crusades. The Archbishop of Hartford, Henry Mansell, did not hesitate to push false Newchurch doctrine: "The Gospel mandates us to respect human life from conception to natural death." That is not a clearly Catholic statement, but one of those "nuanced" political statements that is so common from the New Order.
Here's what is going on. Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed on January 26. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering four teenage girls in the early 1980s. He was also sentenced for murdering three other young women. He has admitted to killing an eighth young woman, but has not been prosecuted in that case. (Isn't seven enough?) He acknowledged raping most of the victims.
The governor, Jodi Rell, at least has some sanity. She said that she would not stand in the way of the scheduled execution. Ross himself has said he will not pursue any further appeals, though his father has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Cruel and unusual punishment? To a murderer and rapist of eight girls?! Fantastic.
Mansell has, of course, misrepresented the position of the Catholic Church. Why shouldn't he? He's a bishop of the New Order -- the New Order that sheds not a tear for eight murdered and raped girls, but weeps buckets for a mass murderer and rapist who admits his crimes.
What is the position of the Catholic Church on the death penalty? First of all, let's make a simple moral distinction that the Newchurch Mansell doesn't seem to be able to fathom: there is a difference between innocent life and guilty life. The child in the womb is innocent life. It has done nothing to merit its being killed. The murderer is guilty life. It is right and just that he should receive what his deeds deserve. Heinous criminals are not innocent persons (like unborn children), but are objectively guilty in natural law of grave crimes against the common weal. As Pope Pius XII explained it:
Even in the question of the execution of a man condemned to death, the state does not dispose of the individual's right to life. It then falls to the public authority to deprive the condemned man of the good of life in expiation of his fault after he, by his crime, has already deprived himself of his right to life.
Our Lord Himself confirmed this power of capital punishment in the interview with Pilate before His crucifixion:
Pilate therefore saith to him: Speakest thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee? Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above (John 19:10-11/DRV).
Our Lord also seems to speak of the appropriateness of capital punishment in another passage when innocents are involved:
But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6/DRV).
The principle is also represented in the words of St. Dismas, the Good Thief on the cross beside Christ, who was being crucified for robbery (the Rheims and Confraternity versions translate the Greek kakourgon in Luke 23:39 as robbers, but it is really more general than that; malefactors would be the literal translation or, more generally, criminals). He says to his fellow criminal on the other side of Christ:
Dost not even thou fear God, seeing that thou art under the same sentence? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what our deeds deserved, but this man has done nothing wrong" (Luke 23:40-41/DRV).
As a result of the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ and Scripture, the teaching of the Catholic Church from the earliest centuries, as represented, e.g., in the writings of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, Q. 64, A. 2), and St. Alphonsus Liguori (all Doctors of the Church), as well as in the Encyclical Casti Conubii of Pope Pius XI, is that society has the authority to inflict punishments upon its members, and even to deprive a criminal of his life, for the necessity of the common good:
Thus, the dogmatic Council of Trent decreed:
[Well founded is] the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.
Given these purposes, an execution may take place if the following conditions are met:
Given these criteria, Catholics may differ in their prudential judgments as to whether a particular society needs to employ capital punishment for its own protection. To say that it is wrong per se or never justified is contrary to the traditional teaching of the Church. A Catholic may not add his prudential judgments to the list of Church doctrines and enjoin them as obligatory. However, the state may always choose to commute the deserved penalty.
It's the same story all over again. The Newchurch of Hate bishops are lethal Black Widows: they kill their own.
Raymond Burke, Newchurch archbishop of St. Louis, whom scandal seems to follow wherever he goes, is now threatening to withhold the Counterfeit Cookie by interdict from a group of Novus Ordinarians who are trying to save their historic church. But the courageous parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in St. Louis, Missouri, are telling the power-mad archbishop: "Well, Burke, you can take your phony cookie and shove it!"
This Burke is the same arachnid who was exposed in a Riverfront Times article as architect of an "Immaculate Deception": victims who claimed that they were abused by presbyter-perverts in his former diocese of La Crosse "were stonewalled by Burke, who declined to report their allegations to local authorities."
Fresh from the Immaculate Deception, Burke went on to the "Bishop Takes Queen" scandal. This Burke, who bamboozled the dimwitted into believing that he is "conservative," received the final vows of one Sister Julie Green. Green was exposed to the Papal Nuncio as "a transsexual, a biological male." According to evidence submitted to the nuncio, as reported in the Riverfront Times, he/she/it is really Joel Green, who had a sex operation to make him/her/it physically appear as a woman."
St. Stanislaus Kostka Church was built by Polish immigrants in the 1880s. The church is maintained and run as a not-for-profit corporation by the church parishioners and is recognized as such under the laws of the State of Missouri. Under a land deed signed by Cardinal Kenrick in 1891, the parish property was assigned to a parishioner-run corporation in perpetuity. St. Stanislaus is completely self-sustaining. The parish operates without the financial support of the archdiocese and has done so for its entire existence. The total value of St. Stanislaus Church the land, buildings, and financial assets is estimated at approximately $9,500,000.
But Burke, like all Newchurch bishops, is hungry for money to pay off defendants who have suffered Newchurch's institutionalized immorality and to spread the Gospel of the New Order. Almost $10,000,000 is too ripe a plum for the covetous archbishop.
In July 2003 the archdiocese notified the church's Board of Directors that it wanted to take control of the financial assets and property of St. Stanislaus. It is very difficult for the parishioners to understand the current machinations by Burke since for over 100 years the archdiocese never offered financial assistance. Knowing the financial difficulties of the archdiocese and the timing of the attempted takeover clearly leads to the only reasonable explanation possible: Burke is trying to gain control of St. Stanislaus's financial assets. And that is a Mortal Sin against the Seventh Commandment serious enough to have led two criminals to be executed beside Our Lord.
So Burke and the Vatican II Newchurch of Hate are going to use all the phony power they have to suppress their own people who are fighting simply to protect their church. But something has changed. The Newchurch magic threats of phoiny "excommunications" and "interdicts" and the like aren't working any more. Burke and his episcopal cronies have been exposed for the immoral denizens they are. Even Novus Ordinarians cannot as easily be connived into the sin of False Obedience to these Newchurch kleptocrats.
"I consider it a badge of honor," said St. Stanislaus board member Robert Zabielski to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I'm sticking up for what is right. Paedophiles in this church are transferred from diocese to diocese while good, faithful people are excommunicated." That's telling 'em!
The people of St. Stanislaus have all the cards in this one. They should tell Burke to pound sand, and then they should return to the True Faith and find a traditional priest to serve their community. If Burke tries to lay one hand on their money and property, let them sue the archdiocese for everything it's got (which is not much). Maybe St. Stanislaus will end up owning Burke and his Newchurch buddies, so that the Catholic Faith and Traditional Latin Mass can finally be restored to one of the United States' once great dioceses.
TRADITIO's position has always been that it doesn't take an advanced theological degree to see that Vatican II and its aftermath were imbued with an unCatholic Neo-Modernism that has come close to destroying the Roman Catholic Church in our time. So virulent has been this pestilence that it has swept up popes, cardinals, bishops, and presbyters, doctrine, liturgy, sacraments, and morality in its wake. We recently read a pointed summary of the status quaestionis:
The postconciliar crisis has moved far beyond issues like the language of the liturgy or nuns' habits -- even beyond sexual morality or gender identities. Today the theological frontier is nothing less than the stark question of whether there is indeed only one God and Jesus is His only-begotten Son. It is a question that the council fathers didn't foresee as imminent and, predictably, the council's dicta about non-Christian religions are now cited to justify various kinds of religious syncretism.
Now we can understand the mind of the orthodox Catholics of the fourth century, who were inundated by the Arian Heresy that swept through the Church and included not only the Emperor and his family, but also the bishops, probably the pope, and almost the entire mechanism of the Church. So bad did things get that St. Basil the Great wrote in 376:
Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer and assembled in the deserts -- a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit because they will have no part of the wicked Arian leaven.
And St. Athanasius wrote to the Catholics who remained Catholic in that great crisis:
May God console you!... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises -- but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously.
Who has lost and who has won in the struggle -- the one who keeps the buildings or the one who keeps the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. That therefore the ordinances which have been preserved in the churches from old time until now may not be lost in our days,... rouse yourselves, brethren,... seeing them now seized upon by aliens.
True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way. You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis.
No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, Beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Make no mistake about it, folks. The "aliens" and the "separatists" (schismatics) that the Great Doctor of the Church and Defender of the Faith is condemning are the pope and the vast majority of bishops and priests of his time. If we hadn't told you that this letter was written about the Church of the fourth century, you would have thought it had been written about the Church of today.
So, print it out in big print. Tape it to your mirror. Every day remind yourself that what we are dealing with has all happened before. That Church officials have gone off the rails before, even popes. That the Church was restored after a great crisis. So it was in the fourth century; so it will be in the 21st century.
St. Paul wrote: "For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6:10/DRV).
The Follieri Group, according to its web site, was formed in 2003 for the express purpose of buying church properties, renovating them, and re-selling them. The members of The Follieri Group's management team are Pasquale Follieri, Raffaello Follieri, Richard Ortoli, Vincent Ponte, and Andrea Sodano.
Sodano, the family name of the second most powerful official in Newvatican, the Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, often spoken of as the likely successor to JPII. The site admits that "because of the Follieri family's deep commitment to the Catholic Church and its long standing relationships with senior members of the Vatican hierarchy, The Follieri Group understands very well the imperatives of the Church and is sensitive to its needs."
Sensitive indeed. Turning churches into breweries? Turning churches into nightclubs? Turning churches into condominiums? The Follieri Group is seeking relationships with dioceses to buy up and dispose of closing church properties at the same time that a powerful Newchurch ecclesiastic is a relative of one of the man who is ultimately in charge of the appeals process for parishes being closed.
Not long after Christ walked the earth, a very smart Roman, who had a biting satirical tongue, asked a pertinent question: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Haven't we learned that lesson in the last 1900 years, particularly in the current Newchurch scandals?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been attending a SSPX chapel for the past year or so and have been quite generous in my offerings. This chapel has been a spiritual rebirth for me; however, the news report from our Coeur d'Alene Press is quite troubling. This story concerns a successful lawsuit filed by an SSPX parishioner against a Society priest and his superior, the former SSPX U.S. District Superior. The SSPX Superiors seem to be following the Novus Ordo playbook when it comes to scandal.
I understand through information elsewhere that both Fathers Doran and Scott are still with the SSPX in good positions, instead of rightly being assigned to a traditional Benedictine Monastery working off their penance or being shown the exit door. The entire case reeks of impropriety, and the silence on the part of the SSPX is deafening. I love the chapel, but I'm quite hesitant to be as generous as I was in the past. How should I react to this situation?
Jury Finds Church Liable for Slander, Distress
Awards Post Falls Man $800K in Damages
POST FALLS -- A Kootenai County jury [on December 16] found an [SSPX] Catholic chapel liable for slandering a former parishioner. Jurors unanimously awarded Anthony J. Ferro $200,000 in compensatory and $600,000 in punitive damages after an eight-day civil trial in 1st District Court. The suit named [the Rev. James] Doran, the Post Falls priory, as well as the entire religious order as defendants. [The jury] found that the Rev. Peter Scott, as the agent for the Society, approved Doran's conduct toward Ferro....
[The lawsuit included a number of charges], but the most unconscionable one was the following.] Ferro also claimed Doran, in a sermon given in March 1996 to more than 450 parishioners, defamed him by questioning his adequacy as a father, alleging disobedience to Doran's orders and that he was impossible to deal with. The sermon also allegedly instructed parishioners to have no social or business dealings with Ferro.... The filing also claims Doran said in his sermon he ordered the couple to divorce, resulting in Ferro being "ostracized by a large percentage of the parishioners...." Doran left Post Falls in 1996. [Scott left the United States to return to his native Australia in 2002.]
Fr. Moderator Replies.
In fairness, we must be consistent. As we always say, one must separate the office of the pope from the person of the pope. Just so, we have to separate the officers of the SSPX from the Society itself. The Society does much good. It raises the level of awareness about traditional Catholicism (although that can be a double-edged sword). It has a fine book outlet, and its house organ generally has well written, well laid out, and topical articles.
On the other hand, as we have consistently pointed out, the SSPX has been afflicted with some officers who fall short of the standard set by the Society's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The current Superior General has a reputation for compromising with the New Order. Granted, he has more recently backed off of his tone of conciliation with Newchurch that was painfully evident two years ago. Sounder heads in the Society (and the Society does indeed have sounder heads, who are often too intimidated to speak out) fortunately prevailed over him and brought him back to reality. But the risk still remains until a new Superior General is elected in February 2006.
The post of U.S. District Director has also been a problematic one, as your news report indicates. For all too long, the Society leadership put up with (some say was intimidated by) the former U.S. District Director mentioned in your news report. Over more than a decade of holding the office, the individual built up a reputation as being hostile, belligerent, and antagonistic not only toward various members of the SSPX but also toward anyone not under his control (that is, outside the SSPX). In a number of cases, he engineered hate campaigns against good traditional SSPX and non-SSPX priests because they would not capitulate completely to his authority.
It is not hard to understand how a group some of whose leadership is all too often motivated more by a culture of control than of the broader focus of its founder has acquired a reputation of being "cultish." It all depends, however, on the particular officer or the particular priest or the particular Mass site. Our reports from around the United States indicate that some SSPX personnel are exemplary; others they describe, in the modern vernacular, as "control freaks," just like the New Order bishops and presbyters.
For a priest to single out a private member of the congregation from the pulpit is unconscionable under church law. And it is even more unconscionable that the U.S. leadership of the Society at that time, with its control-motivated leader then (there is a different one now), should have swept this serious incident under the carpet, just as Newchurch has proven wont to do.
You ask what to do. We give you the same advice that we give the Novus Ordinarians. Stand up for what is right. You control SSPX attendance; you control the SSPX pocketbook. If an SSPX official grossly abuses the nature of his office, give a focused opportunity for a correction to be made. If the correction is not made, and the leadership condones the fault either explicitly or implicitly, cut the site off and find another. It is not worthy of your support and would not have been supported in its fault by the Society's founder.
On the other hand, if your site is acting rightly, it would not be fair to penalize a good priest who is serving you well. If it seems safer to you, earmark your donations for a specific purpose, e.g., the altar, vestments, the church building. Then, too, the former District Superior is gone, so you want to recognize the leadership of the Society that finally dealt with the problem in some way. Let the Society leadership know in no uncertain terms that you will not continue to support the Society financially if its leadership condones the kind of thing its errant priest and former District Director perpetrated. Reward good; correct evil.
Fr. Paul Kramer, who was trained at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum), under what he describes as "the last group of traditional Dominicans," has been one of the clearest writers on the invalid nature of the "New Mass" and the Catholic's obligation to adhere not to it, but to the "received and approved rites," that is, the Traditional Latin Mass.
Fr. Kramer's book, entitled A Theological Vindication of Roman Catholic Traditionalism, is a clear and devastating indictment of the New Mass, critiqued on the basis of traditional and conciliar documents. For further information, see FAQ05: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Apologetics).
In a 2001 speech, Fr. Kramer clarified directly a notion spread by the New Order that is absolutely false. The New Order tries to claim that Paul VI created his "New Mass" just as Pope St. Pius V created the "Tridentine" Mass. Here is how Fr. Kramer devastates that spurious contention of the New Order.
[From the beginning of the Church,] the one thing that was the least questioned was the doctrine of liturgy, because it was so well and universally understood. The liturgy was a sacred patrimony handed down from generation to generation in the Church.
The process of handing down is what we call Tradition. Tradition, having been established, becomes custom. The liturgy grows gradually, as does a human being, in a natural organic way until it reaches its adulthood. It reaches the full term of its development, and that is where the development ends. Then the form of the liturgy remains fixed and undergoes, from there on, very little change. In the life of Tradition, there are always minor accretions and minor changes and, after a period of time, the liturgy needs to be trimmed again. And that's when we have revision of the liturgy undertaken by the Roman pontiffs.
After centuries of development, the Roman Rite was top-heavy and needed to be trimmed and codified. This is what Pope St. Pius V did. A major misconception in the post-Conciliar Church is that Pope Paul VI did what Pope St. Pius V did. In fact, he did something quite the opposite.
So, Paul VI's officials, principally Hannibal Bugnini and his six Protestant advisors, created a New Service, based on Protestant principles, as they themselves admitted. This is not a Catholic Mass, nor is it any more valid than the Anglican service declared invalid by Pope Leo XIII.
Pope St. Pius V, on the other hand, essentially canonized, at the behest of the dogmatic Council of Trent, the Traditional Latin Mass that had been handed down to him. If one compares the Missale Romanum of 1570 to its predecessors, one will find very little difference, and no essential difference, from the previous Missals. The New Service, however, dumped two-thirds of the Traditional Latin Mass, invented new "Canons" (Eucharistic Prayers), and even changed the Apostolic words of Consecration.
Such a thing had never happened before in the history of the Church. The difference between Paul VI and Pope St. Pius V, between the "Service of Paul VI" and the Traditional Latin Mass, is the difference between night and day, between Catholic and unCatholic, between valid and invalid.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
How can people buy the fallacious argument that if the pope fails in his duty, then the gates of hell will have prevailed, and since that can never happen, the pope cannot have failed in his duty? Aren't the words, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" meant for the Church as a whole rather than for the pope?
In today's struggle, I get the feeling that nothing matters but the pope. This would in essence be a false belief that the pope can never fail. In truth, can't a body (such as the Church) receive a terrible blow to the head (pope) and yet not die? Even when in a coma, the rest of the body will continue to live and function as much as possible, awaiting the healing of the injured part of the brain. The lungs don't cease to be lungs, and the heart doesn't cease to be a heart just because the brain is seriously wounded. The other organs continue doing what is their duty and what has been their duty from the beginning. Shouldn't Catholics do the same?
Another question is, why are people so hung up on the idea that the Church can't be without a pope for any extended period of time, or else the gates of hell will have prevailed against it? Why does Christ need a Church if the only thing that matters is the pope?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You are correct in your analysis of the Biblical text. The "it" against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, referred to in Matthew 16:18/DRV, is the Church (Latin ecclesiam, Greek ekklesían).
Your analysis makes a lot of sense and accords with the principles of dogma treated at Vatican I. The pope is not the be-all and end-all, but has his appropriate role in the Church, just as do bishops, priests, and the laity. Certainly the head is not all there is, any more than (to use your metaphor), the head would exist without a body, like the disembodied head of the Wizard of Oz.
There is a tendency among extremists these days to make the pope equivalent to God, a heresy known as papolatry, that is, divine worship of the pope (Greek latria). This appears to be an extension of the modernistic personality cults that spring up around movie stars, rock stars, and sports stars. But there have even been many periods in the past when the Church had no living pope (or didn't know for sure who he was) -- over 260 of these periods between popes, lasting from several weeks to several years.
No one disputes the fact that there has not been a living pope every minute of every day since A.D. 33. So what does the Church rely on during papal interregna? The Church always has Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition to rely upon, that is, Public Revelation, left to us by Our Lord, as well as 260 popes and 20 dogmatic councils. So the Church is never without guidance, never without a pope, because it always has some 260 to refer to. The point is that the gates of hell have not, and will not, prevail against the True Church. We have Our Lord's promise of that in what called the dogma of indefectibility.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I recognize that much of today's popular music -- rock, pop, and particularly rap and "hip hop," listened to mostly by youth, is increasingly degrading, filthy, etc. A good example of this is the MTV channel. Much of what is displayed is surely unfit for any Catholic, let alone children.
But, for a long time, I have been a fan of "hard rock" and "metal" music, particularly the 30-year old rock band KISS. I enjoy both their music, as well as the "show" aspect of their makeup/facepaint and costumes. I realize they are not exactly models of virtue or sanctity, but much of their music gives me a fantastic feeling.
There are apparently some who would maintain that all rock music is sinful. My question is: If a particular rock band or their music is not an occasion of sin for the person who listens, and the music is listened to simply for harmless enjoyment, is that okay? Or is it really a sin to listen to all forms of rock music? What is the Catholic view, if any, of this type of music?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
One can be a "fan" of drugs too and get a "fantastic feeling," so they say, but that doesn't mean you won't eventually pay a high price for using them. Such enjoyment is hardly "harmless."
You have really answered your own question. Such music is just like a drug, even worse in some ways. The vocabulary you have used is in essence drug vocabulary. You talk about a "fantastic feeling." That is not an intellectual expression, but relates to the fact that such music appeals to the animal nature of man. Indeed, music has been shown by modern science to be a more powerful force upon the body than libido. Plato wrote about that 2500 years ago! Thus, we must be careful to make the right choices.
Just as we can be a fan of unhealthy food and unhealthy drink, and the excesses of these, so too we can be a fan of what is unhealthy for the mind. It is bad enough that an increasingly dumber youth falls prey to "mind garbage," but we adults should know better. We drag ourselves off to gyms to force ourselves to exercise, but what to we do to make our minds healthier?
We suggest an inculturation program. A palate that survives on hamburgers can be retrained to enjoy healthier foods. Just so, a mind that is addicted to junk noise can be trained to appreciate music that elevates the mind rather than dragging it into the gutter. Start introducing better choices. Take a music appreciation course, whether live or on tape/CD/DVD, such as that offered by The Learning Company.
Indultarians who think that the pope is sincere about traditional Catholicism have been bamboozled yet again by JPII. Remember Newchurch bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Houston? He was the bishop who led the hapless Stephen Zigrang on. Zigrang, you remember was the Novus Ordo presbyter who turned "traditional" under confused circumstances this year. He ended up in exile with the SSPX, but then went back to the bishop, who spoke soft words to him in person, but thereafter publicly suspended him, after conniving a letter of resignation from him so that Zigrang lost all his Newchurch rights. Fiorenza also issued a disinformation letter about the Society of St. Pius X.
Well, on December 29, JPII did a reshuffle of Texas dioceses and elevated the diocese of Houston-Galveston to an archdiocese. So guess who's an archbishop now. Does the name Fiorenza ring a bell?
TRADITIO certainly had this one nailed from the get-go. Whereas "conservative" periodicals were lauding the Strange Case of Stephen Zigrang, TRADITIO put the focus where it belonged -- not on the hapless presbyter, who didn't really seem to know what he was doing, but on the Machievellian bishop Fiorenza, who represents well the Newchurch tradition of deceit, treachery, and hate.
To show approval, the pope (or his minions) doesn't issue a written document. He simply promotes somebody. And JPII has engineered the promotion of the perfidious Fiorenza to make a statement against the Traditional Latin Mass, Presbyter Zigrang, and the SSPX. He killed three birds with one stone!
Remember the case of Bernard Cardinal Law? The man practically destroyed the archdiocese of Boston by pandering immorality to the point that he brought the archdiocese to the edge of bankruptcy. What did JPII do to him? Chastize him? No. Demote him? No. Exile him? No. He promoted him -- to be Archpriest of Santa Maria Major Archbasilica in Rome, with a sumptuous apartment and a generous yearly salary.
It fits a Newchurch pattern, folks. That's why the sex scandals are going to get worse. That's why the bishops' and presbyters' wholesale theft of parishioner collections will rise to the point that they cannot be swept under the carpet any longer. That's why the Novus Ordo will suffer the most frigid winter ever sent by the God of the Heavens. TRADITIO's been right on the money so far. Just you wait and see.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I have been reading the writings of several authors regarding the invalidity of the consecration of the Eucharist in the Novus Ordo service. It seems that all but one of these authors now agree in that conclusion, although their arguments to reach that conclusion differ. Can you elaborate?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The teaching of the Church indicates that a pope may become a schismatic by falling away from the traditional Apostolic rites of the Church. Therefore, one can conclude that such a thing can happen. The Catholic teaching is that should the pope dare to do such a thing, his right to obedience from the faithful is ended. For further information, see POPELIM.TXT: Limitations of Papal Authority to Change Sacred Tradition from the Writings of Roman Catholic Popes, Councils, Saints, and Theologians in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics). Note that the issue of "sede-vacantism" is essentially irrelevant here. If JPII is the pope, he still can't be followed into a non-Apostolic, fabricated rite. If he isn't pope, then the issue is moot.
The teaching of dogmatic council Vatican I answers the question conclusively. It defines the office of the pope and its powers. It defines that the pope has no authority change Tradition, but only to hand it down unchanged. Any such action, therefore, such as the fabrication of a "New Mass," would be null and void, just as would be the U.S. President imposing a tax by executive fiat. His office doesn't include that authority, so any such action is null and void. This is the argument that Fr. James Wathen made in detail already in 1971 in The Great Sacrilege. Note that Pope St. Pius V did not introduce a "New Mass of 1570." He canonized, in accordance with the dogmatic council of Trent, the Traditional Latin Mass handed down from Apostolic Tradition.
The validity of the Mass is not dependent upon a pope. It is dependent upon the same criteria upon which it has always depended upon: form, matter, and intention, that is, its conformity to the provisions of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. The Novus Ordo service, as more and more theologians have been demonstrating (and as is quite obvious to anyone who believes the evidence of his own eyes), fails on these criteria. If Pope Leo XIII declared the Anglican service of 1896 invalid, which looks and sounds much more "Catholic" than the Novus Ordo service today, we have our clear answer a fortiori. This is the argument that the Roman canonist Fr. Paul Trinchard repeated in his recent book, "New Mass" Conclusively Invalid according to the Preponderance of Evidence.
You had mentioned lay author Michael Davies as the only one of many who dissented from this position. Frankly, we don't give credence to the Davies position because Davies changed his position only for "political" purposes when he became President of Una Voce and began to deal with Newvatican officials, who would not accept him unless he changed his position to accept their "New Mass." The one and only "dogma" that Newchurch insists upon is total acceptance of the validity of its Protestant-fabricated "New Mass."
Davies changed his position so that he would be welcomed in the halls of Newchurch. In fact, he was very busy in the years before his death hastily issuing "second editions" of all his books to make them acceptable to Newvatican. Frankly, that strikes us as dishonest and not worthy of credence. His unadulterated first editions give a much more Catholic, but at the same time more anti-Novus Ordo, perspective.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
The reason the Holy Father provided the Indult Mass is that traditional Catholics have "legitimate aspirations" for this very beautiful part of our heritage! Further, the reining in of liturgical abuse by bishops is increasing.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The True Mass of the Roman Catholic Church is not merely a "legitimate aspiration," to take its place as a stepchild beneath the fabricated Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service. The Ecclesia Dei "indult" of 1988 is New Religion gobbledygook. It is your absolute right, nay, obligation, to assist at, by Catholic and Apostolic Tradition, canonized by a perpetual papal bull, supported by a dogmatic council.
You can't make a counterfeit bill legitimate, try as you might. It's worthless and invalid as money. Some foolish people may take it as valid, but in the end they lose its total value. The only proper thing to do with it is to throw it in the trash can. That is what must be done to the Counterfeit Mess. You can dress it up with a little Latin or a little "traditional" music, but it's just as invalid, just as worthless, just as bereft of graces as it ever was. The "indult" is simply a way for Newchurch to try to keep otherwise traditional Catholics members of the Church of the New Order. It's a power ploy, pure and simple.
That "liturgical abuse" is being reined is a Newchurch myth. How can you "rein in" something that is, in its essence, evil and void? Have the Newchurch bishops "reined in" giving the communion cookie in the hand? Of course not. They're all for it. Have the Newchurch bishops "reined in" giving the Protestant "cup"? Of course not. They're all for it. Have the Newchurch bishops put the crucifix and tabernacle back where they belong? Of course not. Have the Newchurch bishops turned back the altar to its proper and historical orientation, toward the East, with both priest and people facing the altar, the crucifix, and the tabernacle upon it? Of course not.
The Novus Ordo service is itself the abuse. It is hard to deny any longer that the Novus Ordo service, in any version, is unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and conclusively 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 in Pope Leo XIII's papal bull Apostolicae Curae.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I've got a very serious question: is January 1 a Holy Day of Obligation?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, January 1 is the Feast of the Circumcision and the Octave Day of Christmas, a Holyday of Obligation. It is the day on which Our Lord was given the name Jesus, denoting that He is our Savior. It is also has important elements of an a Marian feast, as can be seen from Lauds and Vespers of the Divine Office for the day. It is a special opportunity to worship two days in succession, as the following Sunday, January 2, is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
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