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Dear Fr. Moderator:
Is it really better to remain at home and pray, read Sacred Scripture and the Fathers and the Saints, pray the Penitential Psalms or litanies or rosary, or engage in other appropriate spiritual activities than to attend a Novus Ordo service? You seem to be saying that only assisting at a Traditional Latin Mass fulfils the Sunday or Holyday Obligation. Isn't there a grave obligation to attend Sunday or Holyday Mass?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yes, there is: to attend Mass. The Novus Ordo is not a "mass." It's a newly-fabricated Protestant service with a good dollop of Judaism. There is absolutely no "obligation" ever to be attend the Novus Ordo service. In fact, it would be sacrilegious to be present for it. Otherwise, you may as well go to the schismatic Eastern Orthodox service or to the heretical Methodist service.
One would have to deny the evidence of his eyes and ears and mind to pretend that the Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Novus Ordo service is a "Mass." Some people are still so uninformed as to think that the Novus Ordo service is merely the Traditional Latin Mass in English (or some other vulgar tongue). No matter how contrary to Catholic doctrine that would be, the Novus Ordo service is not that. It is a completely fabricated "service" from the 1960s, in which very little of the true Mass is left. Even the very words of Consecration have been changed.
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 Apostolicae Curae. It is not a matter of mere "abuse." It is the abuse. It is a matter of essential invalidity sub radice, at the root. In the old expression, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Even if the Novus Ordo service weren't invalid, it is most definitely sacrilegious, blasphemous, and scandalous, and for that reason alone could not be attended by any Catholic. Priests, bishops, cardinals, and even popes have been admitting this fact from the beginning. At least four significant books from Roman clergy have pulled the facade off the reality, the first in 1967, the most recent in 2004.
But if an individual lives in an area where no Traditional Latin Masses are conveniently offered, what should he do about attending Mass ("convenient" here would be defined as travelling as far as one would for work in the area, which can in some areas be an hour each way)?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
While watching The Bill O'Reilly Show this past week, O'Reilly, when talking about the Terri Schiavo case, made the statement "that in the Catholic church, a man would be able to get an annulment from his wife when she has been in a coma for 15 years." Is that an accurate statement? I am so glad that I have TRADITIO to turn to for solid answers.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
No, it is not an accurate statement. How quickly people forget the solemn pledges they make! Obviously, Michael Schiavo has forgotten his pledge, "in sickness and in health." Just kill your wife, and, above all, don't stay with her in her last hours, which you yourself have engineered. It is particularly sad that this woman, who has been abused by her own husband our increasingly-corrupt judges, didn't even receive the traditional "Last Rites," as the papers said, but only the Novus Ordo "blessing," as the Novus Ordo no longer has a sacrament of Extreme Unction.
As this woman is starved to death -- and there is reason to believe that she knows exactly what is happening to her --, where are the liberalist hypocrites? Traditional Catholics are now fresh from the reading of the four Passions. If you think that the perpetrators in the death of Christ lived 2000 years ago, think again. They are alive and well today.
Let's start with the Annases and Caiphases, those Newchurch bishops, who are all weepy about executing capital murderers, but turn their backs on an innocent woman being starved to death. You are now seeing before you, folks, what Newchurch, Vatican II, and JPII really stand for. Don't believe the propaganda that Newvatican puts out about being "pro life" and against the "culture of death." When push comes to shove, these people, from the top down, mouth mere words, which they fail to put into action.
Then let's go on to the mad mob, who screamed for the blood of Christ. Modern Zionists, like Abraham Foxman, of B'nai B'rith, the calumniator of The Passion of the Christ, will ululate over "The Holocaust," but when a woman is starved to death just like Fr. Maximilian Kolbe and others in the concentration camps, the Zionists can't be bothered. Leave them alone. It's their holocaust. Let no one else dare to butt in.
Next let's go to the Sanhedrin, the council that illegally condemned Christ to death. They claimed to be preserving the Faith, yet they violated that Faith to commit judicial murder. Not only do we have the liberalist judges who are bound and determined to put an innocent woman to death, but even the so-called "conservatives" like Scalia and Thomas have been unusually quiet.
Then there are the Pilates. Governor Bush, like the Roman governor, has the executive power to send in the police to take that woman out of the hands of her murderers and protect her life until a just court will do what Congress and the President passed a special bill to provide, a de novo investigation of the case. Democrat Janice Reno, Clinton's attorney general, bypassed the courts on principle for politics. Why can't Gov. Bush to so to save a life?
Well, back to O'Reilly. Remember, he is one of those Novus Ordo Catholics whose knowledge of the Faith was corrupted after Vatican II. We don't even consider him a "conservative."
Many people, including O'Reilly, do not understand what an annulment, or (more accurately) declaration of nullity, is. It has nothing to do with what happened after the marriage was entered into. It relates only to an invalidating defect at the time of the marriage that rendered the contact null and void. After all, the marriage contract (exchange of promises) was publicly entered into "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part." Anything else is divorce.
Remember the warning before the marriage contract is entered into: "If anyone knows why these two should not be joined in Holy Matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace"? That is intended to ferret out any nullifying causes before the marriage is entered into; for example, whether one of the parties is already married, whether one of the parties is under the age of consent, whether one the parties are related to one another in too close a degree by consanguinity or affinity, or the like.
That having been said, the Church of the New Order has made a mockery of the Sacrament of Matrimony. It gives divorces (cagily called "annulments") for such frivolous reasons as a woman not being able to balance a checkbook! We know of several cases where "annulments" were given without anyone asking for them.
It is a scandal that even JPII has criticized, particularly in the United States, but like most of the things in his papacy over the last 25 years, he speaks loudly, but carries a wet noodle when it comes to action. No matter. No power on earth can dissolve a Sacramental marriage ratum et consummatum, including the pope. That is Catholic doctrine, pure and simple. Bill O'Reilly should silence himself as the proclaimer of Catholic doctrine. Irish he may be; Catholic he's not.
As the Novus Ordo is essentially Protestant in its doctrine and liturgy, it is no surprise that some Novus Ordinarians in Natick and Quincy in the Boston Newchurch archdiocese, whose churches have been closed, are going Protestant. They are asking defrocked married presbyters to preside over their Novo-Protestant "liturgies" on Easter Sunday. [Boston Globe]
One archdiocese presbyter admitted that this may be a step toward the American schism that Newchurch has been fearing. (Of course, we know that the schism has already occurred, the Roman Schism of 1964, in which Newchurch was created).
But don't bother waiting for any "excommunications." Newchurch won't do it. Phony "excommunications" are reserved for real Roman Catholics like Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
We are faced with yet another dramatic example of the hypocrisy of Newchurch in the case of Terri Schiavo. Several years ago the pope put a lot of public pressure upon the governor of a Southern state in the United States to spare the life of a capital murderer. This governor had traditional leanings and was troubled that the pope would push his own personal agenda when capital punishment was fully in accord with the 2000-teaching of the Catholic Church. He sought advice on the Church's traditional teaching to bolster his position and hung tough against the pope. (See the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs?)
A murderer has forfeited his innocence; Terri Schiavo has not. Yet, no one in Newrome seems ready yet to call for "pre-emptive intervention" to save this woman's life -- the type of intervention Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Newvatican's Secretary of State, approved of in the Balkans in the 1990s, at the time of Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo. This pope, his Newvatican, and all the Newchurch cardinals and bishops who are supposed to be "pro life" seem quite content to plead for the life of convicted murders, but are quite willing to see an innocent woman starved to death. And guess what the recently-announced priority of the Newchurch bishops in the United States is for the next year. Saving the lives of convicted murderers!
The "pro life" stance of Newchurch is a joke. It is just another example of "all talk, no action" that has characterized Newchurch from its inception. Why should anyone trust an organization that has defrauded its people by taking away their Mass, their Sacraments, their Catholic doctrine, and their Catholic morality and substituted counterfeits that Newchurch dares to call "Catholic." Newchurch bishops preach doctrines that would have scandalized the Apostles whom they are supposed to be succeeding, and the morals they practice have gone to the dogs.
So, we don't want to hear how "pro life" this pope and his cohorts are. Sure, their words sound "pro life," but what about their actions? As previously reported here, this pope gives the Novus Ordo cookie in his private chapel to a pro-abortion leader in the Italian parliament and gives the papal medal to a Caribbean politician who introduced pro-abortion legislation in his country. The record of this pope and his ecclesiocrats is quite clear: they speak with forked tongue. Any Catholic who continues to trust such men has simply been duped by their propaganda.
We predict that the case of Terri Schiavo will be a watershed event. More and Novus Ordinarians who still remain in Newchurch will now see that Newchurch is a ruse that stands for nothing Catholic. They will more and more rise up against bishop-pretenders who take away their Catholic Mass, Sacraments, Faith, and Morals, who destroy their traditional churches, who embezzle their money. The reckoning is here, and Newchurch is sinking into the quicksand faster and faster, hopefully never to be seen again.
Today is Easter Sunday, as it is commonly known in English-speaking countries, Dominica Resurrectionis, the Sunday of the Resurrection, as it is termed in the Roman Missal. The English word Easter refers to Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring.
Liturgically, the days of violet are gone. The voices of the Old Testament prophets are stilled. The Alleluias and Glorias that have been missing since Septuagesima return once more in profusion.
A word about the eggs that one sees in profusion on this day. The egg was regarded by the early Christians as a symbol of the resurrection of the body (St. Augustine, Sermones, cv). In the tombs of several martyrs marble eggs have been discovered. For the Christian, the egg is an image of the tomb. He remains there, without movement and without life, until the Lord at the Resurrection of the Dead.
We hope that you were able to attend all of the rites of Holy Week, if you were fortunate enough to have these ancient traditional rites were available to you. Indeed, Easter Sunday means little without the context that precedes it in Holy Week, during which Our Lord rewards the faithfulness of His people with many special graces, as they follow His Passion and Death for the salvation of His faithful.
So often we have to report troubling news here that it is nice to be able to report some very encouraging news.
A few years ago the independent "In the Spirit of Chartres" Committee, originally organized in Phoenix, Arizona, produced an excellent videotape explaining the principles behind the Traditional Catholic Movement, entitled What We Have Lost ... and the Road to Restoration. This 50-minute VHS videocassette is beautifully produced, with historical footage of the traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and papal ceremonies, as contrasted with the inanity of the New Order service and other rites.
The contrast has been graphically shocking to those who have gradually slipped into the Novus Ordo service without realizing its unCatholicity. (If you have not gotten your personal copy of this videotape, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for FAQ5: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend?)
We have now been informed that a few months ago the ISOC was contacted by a gentleman in England who was interested in acquiring a large quantity of the videos. One week ago ISOC shipped 5,510 videos in the PAL format to England. This gentleman will be sending, with the spiritual advice of traditional priests in England, one video along with a couple of pamphlets and a cover letter, to every Newchurch presbyter in England. Of course, the intention is to bring them, one and all, back to the fully Traditional Latin Mass, Sacraments, and Faith.
Future plans are to move this work to Ireland, Scotland, and the continent. The Traditional Catholic Movement is on the move worldwide!
On this day, traditional Catholics will hear the litanical prayer pro perfidis Judaeis, for the faithless Jews. Indeed, the Jews as a whole then, as today, have rejected their prayed-for Messias. The teaching of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition is crystal clear on this point, as is secular history, but stating the fact has become "politically incorrect." When Mel Gibson produced The Passion of the Christ, the Zionists went ballastic (although not, interestingly enough, the sincere Mosaic Jews and rabbis).
It seems that one of the hallmarks of the current pontificate is its eagerness to sell out the Roman Catholic Faith. Instead of proclaiming to the world what that Faith has brought brought to the world, as previous popes have done, JPII seems bound and determined to make the Roman Catholic Faith responsible for every evil in the world, past, present, and presumably future.
JPII has apologized to the Jews, who rejected Christ; to the Anglicans, who push priestesses, bishopesses, and now gaybishops; and to arch-heretic Martin Luther. Well, it seems that the Mohammedans are feeling left out. It isn't enough that the pope touched his lips to the abomination of their Koran. Now they want him to apologize for the Holy Crusades -- the Crusades, which were fought to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land from being murdered and enslaved by the Mohammedans! Thomas Madden, author of A Concise History of the Crusades, has written that the Crusades "were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world."
Al-Azhar University in Cairo sent the request for an apology to Newvatican in February. In 2003 Al-Azhar's grand sheikh, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, stated that suicide bombers are considered "martyrs" under Islamic law. In December 2002, Al-Azhar declared the acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a religious obligation for Islamic states, saying "The Islamic nation has to recognize the enemy, and to prepare itself accordingly." This is the ilk to which JPII would apologize.
Well, this pope has apologized to those who have denied Christ, to those who have made a mockery of the Christian Church, and to an arch-heretic. Are there any doubts whether he will apologize in the name of what the world will view as Catholicism to murderous Mohammedanism, which his predecessor termed "the darkness of Islamism"?
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Here in Boston the Novus Ordinarians are still reeling from the corruption of two archbishops, Law and O'Malley, and the closing of many of the city's most traditionally-built churches.
Now O'Malley, who, when confronted by irate Novus Ordinarians because of his depradations, ran away to his limousine and cried like a baby, has now approached Newvatican to turn its back on the Bible by getting "clearance" to wash women's feet on Maundy Thursday.
Actually, Newvatican didn't give its permission. It simply said: "Do whatever you want." It seems that Newchurch will stop at nothing to destroy the Roman Catholic Faith and that Newrome will go along like a lapdog with its now "collegial" bishops. The Novus Ordo Liberalists who want priestess are ectatic, of course. [AP]
Am I surprised? Of course not. But at this point, I can think of only one comment, from Scripture: "Jesus wept." Fortunately, there are traditional Catholic churches in and around Boston that don't pay any attention to O'Malley and his Newchurch diocese, where we will have the traditional rites of Holy Week.
Those of your readers who have the opportunity to attend the traditional rites of Holy Week should consider it a privilege and an obligation. So many around the world will be missing these most ancient rites of the Church, with their special power and graces.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Over the years I have come to trust TRADITIO's sober and down-to-earth look at things. So I want to ask you your opinion about the message of Fatima (it seems that your online comments on Fatima are mostly meant to debunk extremism and Fatimism, especially when at the expense of the True Mass and Faith).
Nevertheless, I always thought that Fatima was hogwash. This is not to say that I thought the apparition was false; indeed, the evidence does point to a genuine apparition. But I have simply seen too much Fatima nonsense to believe in any of the commonly-met claims about it.
What am I to think about Fatima? Do you think it advisable that I should say the Fatima prayers with the rosary, to practice First Saturday devotions, and so on?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
As we've said many times in the TRADITIO Commentaries from the Mailbox, there is nothing wrong with a balanced, measured devotion to Fatima, if that is what attracts you. The Catholic Church, contrary to the common perception, offers wide freedom of private devotion within the basic bounds of doctrine and the public liturgy.
We do look askance, though, at "all-or-nothing" private devotions. The Church has so many rich traditional spiritual options that it is troubling to hear that the only prayer someone ever says is the rosary. What about the Penitential and Gradual Psalms, devotions to the Holy Souls, the wondrous Litanies, the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Office and the Little Offices, devotions to the Martyrs and Auxiliary Saints, the Sacred Chant, and so many other private devotions from which one's spiritual life can profit?
It seems that the private devotions of many modern Catholics are dull and dry, not rich and varied, as was that of our Mediaeval and Renaissance forebears.
I moved in with my boyfriend a year ago. Two months ago we agreed to get married for technical reasons (health insurance and possible future children). I was all ready to fly off to Las Vegas, but my boyfriend really wanted a traditional Catholic wedding. I agreed to this only because it meant so much to him. We are both "Catholic," but not very religious, and we don't belong to a parish.
We're meeting with a "priest" for the first time next week. I don't see how I can look the priest in the eye and tell him we're living together and don't attend "mass" regularly. Isn't that offensive? How can I ask to receive this sacrament from a church whose rules I don't abide by? I enjoy many things about Catholicism, but there's also a lot I don't agree with. Should I try to convince my boyfriend that having a civil ceremony is the only real way to honor my/our convictions?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You're no "Catholic," lady. Even you seem just smart enough to realize that yourself. If you want to do the right thing, dump this "boyfriend" and let him pick up the pieces of his religion, if he can. So your marriage is going to be merely "technical," while you and "traditional" he are willing to shack up and fornicate yourselves to perdition as your preparation for a sham service. This "relationship" is a train-wreck waiting to happen. Better for both of you to remain single than get involved in this ménage!
P.S. Yes, lady, to use your own word, you're very "offensive." And he's no better.
The anti-Christian Newchurch or the liberalist secular governments -- sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Here's a wrap-up of a few recent news items.
TRADITIO has previously covered the mire into which the Austrian Church has sunk. Now Austrians Novus Ordinarians want to proclaim Judas a Saint of the Church! (No, this is not St. Judas Thaddeus, but Judas Iscariot.)
The Ursuline Novus Ordo temple in Linz has become a site of pilgrimage for St. Judas. This Lent, the temple is holding a "Requiem for a Friend, Judas Iskarioth". The Requiem will take place in the crypt where Usuline Sisters from before the advent of the New Order are buried. The Requiem will have a special showing on Good Friday. The accompanying text claims that Judas has a halo, and the Novus Ordo devotees light candles to St. Judas at his own shrine.
The text accompanying the Requiem exhibition says that Judas should be made a saint and that he did not commit suicide, but was done away with by the other Apostles. (Now there's a new book for Dan Brown!) To the contrary, Sacred Scripture tells us: "Those whom thou gavest me have I kept: and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition: that the scripture may be fulfilled" (John 17:12).
Surprising as it sounds, this is nothing new. The Gnostic heretics of the early Church venerated St. Judas. Birds of a feather flock together, even though they're 2000 years apart!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I received a reply from the SSPX in the U.S. in response to an inquiry that I made about the Novus Ordo service. The response claimed that "if the New Mass is said with a validly-ordained priest who uses the proper intention, form (and this includes the consecration formula either in Latin or the vernacular form, including the ICEL's rendering of pro multis as "for all") and matter, then a valid consecration takes place. This has always been the position of the SSPX, and, in fact, we cannot say otherwise, unless Rome renders a different judgment."
That response is very troublesome to me. It leaves me with this image of Our Lord trapped in these Novus Ordo pig-sties, where He can be dropped on the floor, tucked into church bulletins, or worse.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Yours is just one of many similar communications that we are receiving more and more frequently, in which SSPXers themselves indicate that the position of the SSPX on the validity Novus Ordo service is hypocritical. After all, the SSPX questions the heretically-tainted doctrines that Newrome is pushing. Why can't the SSPX question Newrome's Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service as well? Why will it not accept Newrome's teaching of false doctrine, but will accept Newrome's practice of the Counterfeit Service?
To us, the answer is clear: politics. We conclude that the real reason for this essentially untenable position, which accepts even the phony consecration, condemned by the dogmatic Council of Trent, is that if the SSPX's "official" position rejected the Novus Ordo service, Newrome would stop playing footsie with the SSPX and cut it off unceremoniously. In our opinion, that would be a good thing. No organization considering itself traditionally Catholic should see a need to pal around with a false religion. The lines must be clearly drawn, particularly when it is a question of doctrine or the Sacraments.
The formulation that you quote is rather self-contradictory and cannot be readily reconciled with the traditional sacramental theology of the Church. Perhaps the formulator is just playing games with Newrome. There are a number of escape clauses, in that the statement of "validity" is couched with so many "ifs" that if even one of the premises can be held false, the conclusion of validity is false. And the formulator believes that.
More and more traditional Catholics are coming around to the conclusion of the invalidity of the Novus Ordo. This is, after all, not a new notion, but one that goes back to the beginnings of the New Order. In 1967, Patrick Omlor argued quite cogently for invalidity on the basis of Thomistic sacramental theology in his blockbuster, Questioning the Validity of the New, All-English Canon. Later, Omlor revealed that he had been persuaded to tone down the title, which was originally to be The Invalidity of the New, All-English Canon.
In 1969, when the Novus Ordo service was formally rolled out, Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, together with a number of Roman theologians, seemed to reach a conclusion of invalidity in what is commonly called the Ottaviani Intervention. At least the conclusion was so serious that even Pope Paul VI backed down and recalled the Novus Ordo Missae.
In 1971, shortly after the New Service started to be used in practice, Fr. James Wathen gutted the validity argument on canonic grounds. In reality, the service was never formally promulgated to be the Mass of the Church (nor could it ever be). It had only been merely published, much as the heretic Hippolytus published his own service in the early years of the Church. And what is this conclusion improbable? After all, the Novus Ordo proponents were so ignorant of basic Catholic dogma that they published an heretical definition of the Mass in the original Novus Ordo Missae, which was recalled by Pope Paul VI!
In 2004, Fr. Paul Trinchard, a Roman canonist, published his treatise, "New Mass" Conclusively Invalid according to the Preponderance of Evidence, in which he relies principally on the Papal Bull of Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, declaring the "New Mass" of the Anglicans invalid.
But we daresay that whatever "official" verbiage the SSPX puts out, many SSPX bishops, priests, and laypeople are now irrevocably convinced of the invalidity of the Novus Ordo service. In fact, the "official" statement may be just a smokescreen to fool Newrome, while everyone understands that the SSPX, under the covers, rejects, as it should, the validity of the Novus Ordo service. Archbishop Lefebvre himself, in his later works, seems to lean toward the invalidity of the Novus Ordo service, just as he leaned toward retreating from the modernized 1962 version of the Missale Romanum.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
If the pope were to authorize a Traditional Latin Rite, with its own metropolitans, dioceses, episcopates, law, liturgy, norms, and rubrics, should traditional Catholics support such an institution under the authority of Newchurch and consider that they have been successful in their efforts to restore the Apostolic Tradition?
First of all, there's not a snowball's chance in you-know-where that such a thing would happen. Newchurch is committed to the New Order and the New Religion. What minor "concessions" it might make to traditional Roman Catholicism will never be more than half a loaf, more like a crumb.
In any case, it is a moot question. The Traditional Latin Mass has already been more than authorized: it has been canonized in perpetuity, arising out of Sacred Tradition. All that remains is for errant clerics of Newchurch to obey Sacred Tradition, Catholic dogma, and the popes. It's a question of obedience, isn't it? Newchurch is disobedient to Catholicism and the Roman Catholic popes.
Of course, that's only half the equation. The Apostolic Tradition would not have been restored. The True Church cannot simultaneously purvey a modernistically-fabricated, non-Catholic, non-Apostolic rite such as the "Novus Ordo." Such an act contravenes the dogma of Vatican I and two thousand years of popes, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Saints, and dogmatic Councils.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am confused about what is "outside" and "inside" the Church. Don't we have to battle from within?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Ah, but that's the point: what is "outside" and what is "inside"? We cannot define what is Catholic by the names on buildings. No one put the point better than St. Basil the Great, who was fighting error and evil in the Church of his day, along with a pitifully few other bishops, as most of the bishops and perhaps even the pope had gone over to the Arian heresy. In an Epistle written in the year 371, at the height of the heresy's grasp upon the hierarchy of the Church, the Great Saint wrote:
Who has lost and who has won in the struggle -- the one who keeps the premises [buildings] or the one who keeps the Faith? The 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.
The New Religion being promoted by the Church of the New Order is not Catholicism, any more than Protestantism is. In fact, the New Religion that is being pushed by the New Order, which calls itself "Catholic," is in most cases worse than most Protestant sects. You cannot let yourself be fooled by words. You must rather look carefully at actions. A man can call himself an elephant, but that doesn't make him so.
In a world that is full not of classical realism, but modernistic subjectivism, people have been led into the philosophical pit that "feelings" are reality, that "all opinions are equal." They are not. The Catholic Faith is first and foremost what Our Lord Jesus Christ said it was. He appointed deputies -- popes, bishops, and so forth -- but He is still the Sheriff! The deputies have no power of their own, except only the power that He gave them. And that power does not include the power to change essential dogma, worship, and sacraments.
The fact of the matter is that the New Religion is "outside," to use your term. True Catholicism, traditional Catholicism, is "inside," as it always is. We have the history of the Church and the examples of the Saints in past troubled periods to show us what to do. They do not urge us to compromise with error. As St. Basil above, they urged the faithful rather to be roused against it.
We are what you once were.
We believe what you once believed.
We worship as you once worshipped.
If you were right then, we are right now.
If we are wrong now, you were wrong then.
Consider this. If, despite its blatant departure from the traditions of the Church, the New Order and the new theology which that worship service supports can be justified and approved of, then all the Saints were superstitious simpletons, all the theologians were liars, and all of our Catholic forefathers were duped idiots, including some of the greatest minds in human history: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Thomas More, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Benedict, St. Louis de Montfort.
These and all previous Catholics were traditional Catholics. They all believed exactly the same as traditional Catholics today do. It is not a mere matter of opinion, but a matter of irrefutable fact that the traditional Faith, the traditional Mass, and the traditional Sacraments are Roman Catholic, not the novel teachings of Vatican II, not false oecumenism, and certainly not the New Order/Protestant service.
Considering the words of St. Basil the Great, no one who calls himself a Roman Catholic can have anything to do with an invalid rite, defined as not a Mass, flaunting condemned heresy, perverting Christ's own most solemn Consecratory Prayer in both word and form, contradicting Christ's and His Church's identical sacrificial intention, fraudulently introduced as an experiment in flagrant violation of laws made to protect our Holy Mass and in deliberate fracture of two most solemn oaths required of and sworn by ever priest at ordination and every bishop at consecration.
In what may be the beginning of the end for the "indult," an international semi-traditional periodical that has heretofore been identified with pushing the "indult" has thrown in the towel, saying: "The 'indult solution' envisioned by the papal decree Ecclesia Dei Adflicta is, to put it bluntly, not working -- nor will it work."
In spite of the error that Ecclesia Dei is not a "papal decree," but a mere "epistle" (that is its designation in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedis), this is quite an admission. Is this the "indult" fall heard 'round the world? The periodical in question is said to be a popular "read" in the halls of Newvatican. Here is its presbyter-editor's assessment of the situation, taken almost thought for thought from past TRADITIO Commentaries from the Mailbox:
The "indult solution" requires Catholic priests and laity who dissent from the present state of affairs to live in ghetto enclaves within dioceses, paying tribute for the "privilege" by professing to the pretense that they are at home in the post-conciliar world.
Yet even though this presbyter-editor admits, in strong terms, that the "indult" is a farce, still can't dissociate himself from the New Order apparatus. He, like so many other Novus Ordinarians, can't make the simple distinction that was clear to St. Augustine, to St. Thomas Aquinas, and to so many other Doctors and Saints of the Church, between true obedience and false obedience. He has created in his mind a phantasm:
I have a great and haunting fear: that Catholics of tradition, in trying to preserve the traditional Faith, will end up undermining the traditional notion of authority in the Church.
Nonsense! Did St. Augustine fear undermining authority in the Church when he took an oath in the public square against the pope, who had departed from Catholic teaching? Did St. Athansius fear undermining the authority in the Church when he refused to recognize the heretic bishop of Alexandria, whom the pope recognized? Did St. Martin of Tours fear undermining authority in the Church when he refused to have communication with heretic bishops, who were then in the vast majority in the Church? Ridiculous!
This presbyter-editor has another problem. He can't distinguish between the man and the office. Traditional Catholics respect the offices of the papacy and the episcopacy, and it is because of that respect that they condemn the immoral ilk that presumes to hold such offices. Does one who condemns Alexander VI condemn the papacy? Ridiculous!
This presbyter-editor ignores the foundation of all canon law. He condemns the "indult," but wants a "canonical" solution. Yet canon law itself prescribes: Salus animarum suprema est lex. How can the law be perverted to serve the end of destroying souls? Ridiculous!
Then it turns out that this presbyter-editor himself got his tail caught between the cracks of the New Order. He has been shut down by his New Order bishop from practicing his presbyterate. Is this perhaps why he has changed his tune now -- but is still singing in the same Novus Ordo key? At least certain well-publicized "reverts" have had the honesty to leave the New Order apparatus.
Times like these in the Church demand the courage of an Augustine, an Athanasius, a Martin. We are past the time for girly-men and pussy-footing to the false New Order apparatus, dallying with vain talking-shops like "Una Voce," worrying about maintaining false "authority" so that evil may flourish. It just won't wash. Half way is not half good enough. For God, only 100% is good enough.
Mel Gibson has taken TRADITIO's advice and toned down about five minutes of the grosser depictions of violence in The Passion of the Christ in a new edition. At the time of its release, TRADITIO wrote: "The extreme brutality of the film, which appeared to exceed even biblical testimonies, got in the way of a broader spiritual and theological understanding of the important events portrayed. Outside of a few quick flashbacks to the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount, there was very little that indicated what the purpose of all this suffering was. Remember, the vast majority of viewers will not be traditional Catholics."
That information is true, but there are a number of false rumors going around. Gibson denies a rumor being widely circulated that he has bought the rights to a book on Fatima and that he is going to make a film based on it. That is good news, since there has been enough extremism circulated about Fatima to last a lifetime. The world hardly needs some movie to fuel yet more extremism, such as the thoroughly unCatholic contention that Fatima bears an equal authority with Sacred Scripture.
Lourdes, for example, produced devotion, not the fanaticism that has been so often associated with Fatima. Fatima received comparatively little attention until about the time of Vatican II, when "all Hell broke loose" in the Church, producing the Roman Schism of 1964. Bishop Fulton Sheen visited Lourdes every year, not Fatima. Those saying the Rosary in the 1950s customarily stayed with the traditional form and did not add any Fatima addenda. Fatima devotion was a balanced devotion, as was Lourdes, as was appropriate.
But in the 1960s the unCatholic mindset of Vatican II took hold. Catholicism was out the window, replaced by a fanaticism and license that had not been seen since perhaps the third century in Rome, when that level-headed people, now enveloped in almost a century of civil war, went berserk, seeking out everything occult, including the pagan mystery religions. The constant talk about "secrets" parallels this Roman craziness and goes against the teaching of the Catholic Church that Christ's teaching is open to all. The Catholic Church's greatest enemies in those early years were the Gnostic heretics, who claimed to know "secrets" that were denied to other Christians. The Gnostic heresy is alive and well today. One sees it in the New Order and in such popularized forms as Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.
Just so, the 1960s saw the replacement in most churches of the Roman Catholic Mass by a Protestant-Masonic New Order service. It saw the introduction of one of the worst forms of Protestantism, that mindless form known as Charismaticism, in which the emotions take over the mind and reason, and the adherents are like the mad Bacchae in Euripides' tragedy of the same name. Also, the extreme Fatimists took over the "interpretation" of Fatima and turned it into some ecclesiastical game and virtually a New Religion of its own. Naturally, the Fatimists protest any dilution of their fanaticism, but in the process created a caricature of any devotion worthy of the Catholic name.
But back to Gibson. One must remember that all kinds of ridiculous stories are spread about Hollywood personalities. The important thing is to grab the public's attention and make money off sales of magazines and papers. "The truth be damned!" Remember all that nonsense spread by Zionists at the time of the movie's release last year that Gibson was "anti-Semitic"? To the contrary, Gibson showed such patience and forbearance with ideologues like Abraham Foxman of B'nai Brith that Gibson was cleared in the eyes of the public, but Foxman & Co. ended up being branded "anti-Christian"! The "anti-Semitic" nonsense so publicized the film, however, that Gibson ended up grossing close to a half a billion dollars -- and rising.
Many TRADITIO participants will perhaps be surprised to learn that today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in the United States: March 15, 1965. It did not start in 1969 with the "Ottaviani Intervention, nor in 1970 with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), much less in 1988 with the so-called Ecclesia Dei "indult."
The first U.S. traditional organization, the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, was literally grown "from the grassroots" as early as 1964 and was publicly launched on March 15, 1965, by Fr. Gommar A. De Pauw, J.C.D., then a Professor of Theology and Canon Law, and Academic Dean at Mount St. Mary's Major Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and theological advisor at the Second Vatican Council in Rome.
Already, as a result of the Second Vatican Council, the centuries-old Sacrifice of the Mass had become threatened with extinction. The CTM was virtually a lone voice at that time, concentrating its efforts on maintaining the completely unchanged Latin Roman Catholic Mass, handed down to the Church from Apostolic times in Sacred Tradition and enshrined in perpetuity by St. Pope Pius V by a solemn Papal Bull in l570:
By this our decree, to be valid in perpetuity, we determine and order that never shall anything be added to, omitted from, or changed in this Missal.... At no time in the future can a priest, whether secular or order priest, ever be forced to use any other way of saying Mass.
And so as to preclude once and for all any scruples of conscience and fear of ecclesiastical penalties and censures, we herewith declare that it is in virtue of our Apostolic Authority that we decree and determine that this our present order and decree is to last in perpetuity and can never be legally revoked or amended at a future date.
Thus it was that Fr. DePauw and the Catholic Traditionalist Movement set the foundation for what today is the hallmark of the movement: its basis in Apostolic Tradition, Papal Infallibility, and Canon Law. There are a number of laypeople running about these days, barely out of childhood, who claim to have some kind of Novus Ordo "degree" in Theology or Canon Law. Like everything else about the New Order, this is just another counterfeit.
Fr. DePauw, on the other hand, is the real article. He received his Doctorate in Canon Law long before the New Order came onto the stage. In fact, he was a Professor of Theology and Canon Law at the Primatial See of the United States. He knew full well the authority of Apostolic Tradition and the Papal Bull. And this he published since 1964. Others were to follow his 100%, unadulterated Catholic theology: Patrick Omlor (1967), Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani and Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1969), Fr. James Wathen (1971), Fr. Paul Kramer (1997), and Fr. Paul Trinchard (2004).
It was Fr. DePauw and the CTM that brought the Traditional Latin Mass to major metropolitan areas by radio in those dark days of the "spirit of Vatican II." It was Fr. DePauw and the CTM in those days that produced Mass tapes for the faithful. It was Fr. DePauw and the CTM in those days that produced Sounds of Truth and Tradition, which succinctly proved the traditional position as the Catholic one. For this priest, no 400-page books that couldn't reach a conclusion as clear as the nose on your face.
Fr. DePauw's Catholicism is today right where it was in 1965, and before, as Catholicism itself is essentially unchanging. It will be interesting to note how many writers and periodicals that call themselves "traditional" will even mention this historic date, this historic organization, and this pioneer priest of our Traditional Catholic Movement on their fortieth anniversary.
This pioneering priest is still with us. He still pastors Ave Maria Chapel in Westbury, Long Island, New York, at 86. And yet you probably haven't heard of him. All the "conservative" and "semi-traditional" authors and publications don't mention him because he had the courage to step away from the Novus Ordo apparatus and continue his traditional Roman Catholic ministry independently of the Novus Ordo apparatus -- just like Fr. Paul Wickens, of West Orange, New Jersey, and just like the vast majority of traditional priests in the United States.
TRADITIO gives you this touchstone by which to judge the authors and publications you read. If they mention Fr. DePauw and the founding of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, they might have some claim to be traditional. Otherwise, not.
Oh, yes, they will bleed ink about the "indult," which is at base a deceptive sham. Oh, yes, they will praise to the skies Novus Ordo presbyters who have shoveled out the Novus Ordo offal for decades and then "reverted." Oh, yes, they will drone on about organizations that "negotiate" with Newvatican, which is so sympathetic to traditional "aspirations" that it can't even force its bishops to have a single "indult" Mass in a diocese.We are informed that Fr. DePauw, who recently returned from hospital to continue pastoring his traditional chapel, has suffered a setback in the past two weeks. He has become very weak and claims to be in a lot of pain. However, he is a fighter, and many around the world are praying fiercely for the recovery of our founder. No one has done as much as he. He started it. Without him, there would be no Abp. Lefebvre, no "indult." There would not be the hundreds of independent traditional priests that serve traditional Catholics all over the country and all over the world.
Surely anyone who can legitimately call himself a traditional Catholic will be offering up a hymn of thanksgiving today to Almighty God for sending such a priest to be the first light of the Traditional Catholic Movement. Après lui, le deluge.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Many thanks for your prompt and insightful reply, quashing that silly story that Pius XII "ordained" four Lutheran ministers in Germany in the early 1950s. That contention came from one Joseph Fichter (ob. 1994), who, as you said, is part of that rent-a-married-presbyter operation. This disinformation was being circulated by a "married presbyters" site. There are plenty of people only too willing to believe it. Our society is getting so dumb that all too many people would believe a scientist with "new evidence" that pigs fly and the moon is made of green cheese!
Here in my home town in England there is a married ex-Anglican priest who lives in the Novus Ordo presbytery with his wife and children. He looks after two Novus Ordo parishes and has thoroughly Protestantized them both. A few years ago he celebrated his Silver Wedding Anniversary in the Novus Ordo temple. How disgusting!
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Could you please explain to me why the Fraternity of St. Peter and the Society of St. Pius X are using the 1962 Missal instead of a more traditional earlier version?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The 1962 Missale Romanum, to be sure, includes substantial "modernizing" influences, which started in 1945. A graphic of the introduction of these changes from 1945 to 1962 is given in the Traditional Latin Mass, Office, Sacraments & Chant department of TRADITIO. That was about the time that Hannibal Bugnini, the Arch-architect of the New Order, came onto the liturgical commission, under the reign of Pius XII.FSSP is under the thumb of Newchurch, of course, as it accepts the Novus Ordo "indult." The price it pays for its association with the New Order is that the New Order tells it what to do in the liturgy as in other areas. That is why FSSP has to march in lock step with all the other abominable aspects of the New Order, such as the gutting of the Eucharistic fast, the Lenten fast, the Friday abstinence, indulgences, canon law, the Bible, etc., in addition to the "modernized" 1962 Missal.
The situation with the SSPX is a little more complicated. Archbishop Lefebvre didn't care all that much for the 1962 Missal. However, at the time the Society was founded and up to 1988, he was trying to get Newvatican to see the light. He thought that the edition of the missal to be used was less important in this context, so in order not to be battling over too many things at once, he went along with the 1962 Missal -- mostly.
He insisted, however, upon the recitation of the Confiteor before the distribution of Communion to the faithful, arguing that the 1960 elimination of that Confiteor introduced a Protestant view of the Sacrament. He maintained the perfidis of the Jews in the litanical prayers of Good Friday, which had been eliminated in 1960 for "politically correctness," but theologically incorrect reasons. He also had grave reservations about the mauling of the ancient Holy Week rites introduced in 1956 by Bugnini & Company, which were a prelude to the full-blown Novus Ordo. We have no doubt that if the archbishop were alive today, with no reason to play up to Newvatican, he would revert to an earlier version of the Missale Romanum.
The most practical traditional course is to use the rite before 1956, which does not show the signs of "modernization" that are contained in the 1956, 1960, and 1962 versions. This is the version that many independent traditional priests and the Society of St. Pius V use. Some, like the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, go as far as 1956, but no further.
Remember Mel Gibson's award-winning Braveheart, the story of the Catholic Scottish leader who fought the British? Well, Catholic Scotland has fallen a long way since then. Catholic Scotland went even harder than England for Protestantism, under the aegis of John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian sect.
The Novus Ordo draws even fewer members to the Mess than in the United States. According to 2002 figures, about one in ten Scots attend Mess. In England, it is worse: one in fifteen. In the U.S., it is one in seven. All these figures are a far cry from traditional Catholics, who attend in the four in five range.
Already one in seven Novus Ordo Scots are divorced. They are only second to Buddhists in fornication before marriage. They are just as likely as any other religion to marry outside their faith.
Braveheart would certainly would not have recognized this modern "generation of vipers" to the Faith.
What is all this nonsense lately about "canon law"? It seems that every Tom, Dick, and Harry nowadays claims to be a "canon lawyer." "Dummies" books are issued for those who can't read a drop of the Latin that has been used to define with exactitude for 2000 years a very complicated area. It smacks of "Self-taught Surgery for the Layman." In reality, there is no canon law in Newchurch, at least nothing that can lay any real claim to the title.
The principles of ecclesiastical regulation go back to the beginning of the Church. Naturally, the Apostles and their successors modeled ecclesiastical law upon what they knew of Roman civil law, and that is quite unlike U.S. law. Rather, it was modeled on Roman praetorian law, the closest approximation to which, in our times, may be case law. Ecclesiastical principles were collected in Digesta from time to time, but it was not until Pope Benedict XV, who succeeded Pope St. Pius X around the time of World War I, that a codex was produced. That was the traditional Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917, the basis of traditional canon law.
Along with everything else, the Church of the New Order after Vatican II corrupted this too. It issued a new Codex in 1983, which included a most inane hodge-podge of violations of Tradition, justice, and doctrine. Part of the lawlessness in Newchurch can be laid at the feet of this counterfeit.
But the real problem now for Newchurch is that no law is recognized in practice. The Catholic Church, whose justice was world renowned, when even during the Holy Inquisition defendants were given rights equivalent to those in modern-day law, has now returned to Mediaeval and Renaissance times, in which every bishop was a petty potentate and decreed his own law. Just so, today bishops are not in practice held to any ecclesiastical law by Newvatican. All the bishops are "collegial" now, you see. They all have the same authority as Newrome. If some layperson were to say, "Please, Mr. Newchurch Bishop, you didn't follow the law," the bishop simply says, "We don't do it that way in this diocese."
At any rate, it seems that three Toledo police detectives and a county prosecutor marched through the front door of the Toledo Newchurch diocese armed with a search-and-seizure warrant in the investigation of the killing of an elderly nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, by the man charged in her death, Presbyter Gerald Robinson. Bishop Blair tried to talk his way out of providing any information, but the police thought otherwise. They confiscated 148 documents with the defendant's name on it and searched for the "secret archive," of which they had been informed.
The police apparently knew their canon law better than the bishop. They were aware of the Modernist Codex, which provides:
§ 1. Sit in curia dioecesana archivum quoque secretum, aut saltem in communi archivo armarium seu scrinium, omnino clausum et obseratum, quod de loco amoveri nequeat, in quo scilicet documenta secreto servanda cautissime custodiantur.
§ 2. Singulis annis destruantur documenta causarum criminalium in materia morum, quarum rei vita cesserunt aut quae a decennio sententia condemnatoria absolutae sunt, retento facti brevi summario cum textu sententiae definitivae.
Now Bishop Blair was caught in a conundrum. If he admitted the existence of the secret archive, he would have to turn them over to the police in accordance with the court order. If he denied that the archive existed, he would be held in contempt of Church law by Newvatican. Blair decided that he would rather face Newvatican's music (an empty score) rather than the penalties of the courts. He denied that the "secret archive" existed, a situation that is a violation of the canon law.
Blair had good reason to be afraid for himself. On November 20, 2003, his comrade in scandal, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, once President of the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops, pled guilty in criminal court to five misdemeanor counts of failing to report a felony and received a fine of $10,000. Pilarczyk appeared in court officially as the representative of the archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio, in clerical garb.
Already Blair's veracity is being questioned. Canonists called the diocese's response "nonsense." They said that dioceses across the country fight the release of confidential files. The records often lay out a road map of cover-up and conspiracy that is embarrassing to church leaders and, in some cases, incriminating. One presbyter-canonist "There's a credibility crisis, and church officials can no longer be taken at their word, even when they insist they're operating under a new policy of openness." This presbyter, at least, has seen through to the seamy truth of his New Order lords and masters. [Toledo Blade]
That delusive Newchurch bishop in Lincoln, Nebraska, Fabian Bruskewitz, is at it again. Bruskewitz was the one who threatened to excommunicate "Catholic" Freemasons, then marched in the Masonic parade. The one who allowed his "Catholic" cathedral to be used for the "consecration" of a Methodist bishop. Then, during the 2004 U.S. Presidental campaign, he threatened to withhold the Novus Ordo cookie from pro-abortion politicians, then he rescinded his threat. Bruskewitz' record is only too clear -- and it's not an honest one. He's just another example of the empty pit that is Novus Ordoism.
Thank God that He has seen to it that the Novus Ordo bread remains just that -- bread, or a cookie, certainly not the Corpus Christi. It is defective in matter, form, intention or any combination of the three. It fails to meet the criteria for a valid Sacrament laid down by Pope Leo XIII and has been exposed now as a sacramental fraud by several Roman theologians, starting with His Eminence Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, Pro-prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, His Eminence Antonio Cardinal Bacci, several other Roman theologians, and most recently by the Roman theologian Fr. Paul Trinchard.
So now we can look with an amused eye at the games that go on with the cookie. It seems that Bruskewitz decided to withhold the cookie from one John Krejci, a (former?) Novus Ordo presbyter, a member of Call to Action, a radical Novus Ordo organization. (Undoubtedly, Krejci was not the only CTA member at the service.)
On February 7, as Krejci approached to take the cookie, Bruskewitz waved him aside. Since the Novus Ordo is all politics, Krejci simply went up to the altar and took a cookie out of Bruskewitz' chalice and served himself. It is really the phony New Order Religion that allows this kind of thing to happen. At "communion" time there are so many eucharistic ministers and ministresses wandering all over the "sanctuary," that anyone can just wander up and do anything he pleases.
"Blowhard" Bruskewitz did nothing, of course, in spite of the fact that as a bishop, he is supposed to die rather than permit desecration of the True Sacrament. Bruskewitz, by his action, or rather inaction, has told the world that he agrees with those who say that the Novus Ordo cookie is not the Corpus Christi.
We all know the truth of the matter. Bruskewitz is no bishop, but a politician. He doesn't seem to be certain exactly what he believes. One day he's pro-Mason, the next day he's anti-Mason. One day he's pro-abortion, the next day he's anti-abortion. One day it's a cookie, the next day it's not. What is clear is that he has abandoned the Roman Catholic Faith to purvey a the counterfeit New Order Religion.
In reality, the person who should be "excommunicated" and barred from the Novus Ordo cookie is Bruskewitz himself!
In what has got to be one of its sleeziest actions to date, Newvatican has tried to involve U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in the New Order Sex and Embezzlement Scandal. But Rice outsmarted them.
It has now been revealed that when Rice visited the Vatican City State on February 8, she was approached by none other than Newvatican's #2 man, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, Secretarius Status Vaticanus, to quash a U.S. lawsuit naming Newvatican as the defendant in a sex-abuse case that is currently before a United States District Court in Louisville, Kentucky, and seeks to hold Newvatican financially responsible for the sexual abuse of minors.
Rice shrewdly informed Sodano that under American law, foreign states are required to assert claims of sovereign immunity themselves before U.S. courts. In other words, "Don't try to involve me as a bagman in your Mafia!" That Newvatican would attempt to interfere in the U.S. courts in this way is beyond belief. After all, under the universal legal principle Respondeat superior, JPII can himself be held guilty of the crimes of his subordinates, especially since he has done nothing to stop these crimes, but remains silent while the criminals keep their offices.
It is not common knowledge that Newvatican has been charged in a number of other cases:
Alperin v. Vatican Bank, which deals with Newvatican's role in recycling loot stolen by pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia during World War II (the Franciscan Order is also named as a defendant); Zivkovich v. Vatican Bank, a similar action; Dale v. Holy See, a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) suit filed by the Insurance Commissioners of Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, seeking $600 million in damages related to an insurance scam pulled off by Martin Frankel, using Newvatican cover; A number of cases related to sexual abuse, including Doe v. Holy See in Oregon and Gomez v. Holy See in Florida
Newvatican is trying to claim "immunity" for its actions (which seems to imply its admission in some way), but a 1976 law known as the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes it possible to sue sovereign entities in U.S. courts under certain conditions, especially when that entity engages in commercial activity in the United States. The act has also been used to sue foreign governments for mistreatment of citizens if some aspect of that mistreatment took place in the United States.
Legal notice has already been served on the Vatican in the Kentucky case, which is why Sodano is having the heebie-jeebies. It seems that Newvatican's "dirty little secret," the degree to which it has been directly involved in the Sex and Embezzlement Scandal, is going come out of the closet. Attorneys suing the Newvatican argue that it played a principal role in covering up sexual abuse of children on American territory. They point to a 1962 Vatican document, Crimen Sollicitationis, which he alleges "proves that the Holy See ordered American bishops not to comply with civil laws on reporting childhood sexual abuse."
In the RICO suit, a foundation linked to the Holy See was said to be involved in a scam to loot seven American insurance companies. A former Newvatican official, Monsignor Emilio Colagiovanni, was fined $15,000 in federal court and received five years probation on state charges in Mississippi related to the case. [La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno]
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I thought that your readers would be interested in an update on the Novus Ordo college being constructed in Naples, Florida. As you have previously reported on TRADITIO, Tom Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza founder, is poised to construct a billion dollar town and college in this area.
Part of that construction included an "oratory" that was going to look something akin to Dutch Reform Minister Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. The renderings of it showed it to be a total abomination. Reaction was not good. So, the vacillating Monaghan has backed off, claiming that the original design was a "mistake by the architects." (Do pigs fly?) It turns out the architects are the same ones who designed "Mad" Mahony's pagan cathedral in Los Angeles. With "mistakes" like that, one only wonders how Monaghan ever made a pizza!
Monaghan brings the usual Novus Ordo "conservative" veneer, but, on the other hand, he hobnobs with the corrupt Newchurch and pushes the Newchurch pagan mumbo-jumbo. I have met many of the students who attend the interim campus in town, and they are good people who want to be good Catholics. I have seen them praying the Rosary in Latin. Some of them also attend the SSPX chapel about 30 miles away rather than frequent the Novus Ordo Mess -- leaving the college with egg on its face.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
This continues to be an abortive project. In addition to the "oratory" scandal, Monaghan twice sold off other "conservative" colleges, in Ypsilanti and Orchard Lake, leaving students and teachers uncertain of their future, and parents livid. Will Ave Maria eventually suffer the same fate? It seems that Monaghan leaves a trail of ruined colleges behind him, as well as charges of illegal financial-aid disbursements and a lawsuit for improper transfer of assets.
The "oratory" was popularly called "The Hothouse" (something like "The Tennis Racket" basilica at Fatima), which would require three thousand tons of structural steel and aluminum for its 60,000-square-foot glass skin. Provost Fr. Joseph Fessio defended the architecture by adducing the best New Order "liturgical" arguments.
You remember Fessio. He's the "conservative" of the Adoremus crowd, who thinks that the Novus Ordo Mess is just peachy, except that the "translation" needs to be polished up. He was booted off the University of San Francisco campus and reassigned as an assistant chaplain at a hospital in Southern California. He couldn't handle that assignment, however, so he went on to be head of the "chaplaincy team" at Naples, which boasts a full spectrum of Novus Ordo services, including one described as "festive" (we shudder to think what that might mean) and the Liturgy of the Hours, which is the Novus Ordo's replacement for the traditional Divine Office and which, if anything, outtrumps the New "Mess" for the Stupidity in Liturgy award.
Poor Monaghan. He might know pizza, but he's out of his element in education and church architecture. The guy probably has good intentions, but he's the victim of the Newchurch mindset. Everything it touches turns to offal. As for us, we're going to Round Table!
Remember the purported "Ossuary of James, Brother of Jesus"? That was the box, later proven to be a phony, that was supposed to prove that Christ had actual brothers from Mary? Well, the museum that originally displayed the phony box, manufactured by a skilled serial forger indicted in Israel as a "scoundrel and a career criminal who lives off the proceeds of doctored artifacts," is now phony-ing the Christian calendar as well.
The Royal Ontario Museum of Canada, now the world's most idiotically "Politically Correct" country, has decided to change A.D. [Anno Domini], "In the Year of the Lord" to C.E., "Common Era." It also changed B.C. to B.C.E., "Before the Common Era."
"A lot of people accept the reality of Jesus as a historical figure, but don't accept him as Christ, and to use the words "before Christ" is really quite ethnocentric of European Christians," said the museum's Director of Collections Management, Dan Rahimi. "And to use "the year of our Lord" is also quite insensitive to huge populations in Toronto who have other lords."
My, my. Christians are committing the two unpardonable sins of the Modern Era: to be Christian and to be "insensitive." It apparently doesn't make any difference when the country had an Established Religion, the Church of England. Frankly, the director is giving the anti-Christians too much credit. They probably don't know what A.D. stands for and wouldn't know what it meant if you gave them the Latin words!
If you're going to use the Christian (Gregorian) calendar, you may as well call it what it is, Christian. The Jews don't use it. They have their own lunar calendar. The Mohammedans don't use it. They have their own lunar calendar. This type of P.C. silliness increasingly affects the addled brains of American academe.
That was in 2002. Now the Sydney Daily Telegraph reports that a move of the Department of Education to change "Before Christ" to "Before the Common Era" has sparked outrage. New South Wales Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt is under fire from parents and educators alike. "This is political correctness gone mad," Shadow Education Minister Jillian Skinner said. "You ask the average mum and dad out there how they refer to time and calendars, they will use "Before Christ" [B.C.].
Often you can determine what the truth is by noticing who its opponents are. In the moral sphere, who are the opponents of foetal life, for example? Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, William Clinton -- all paragons of moral virtue, to be sure!
In the liturgical sphere, who are the opponents of the True Mass? Well, one is Newchurch Archbishop Pervert Rembert Weakland. You remember Weakland. As archbishop of Milwaukee, he had a catamite on the side. The catamite knew that he had the archbishop's "tail" caught between the cracks and so engineered an extortion scheme. The archbishop was the perfect "pigeon." To save his tail, he stole from the Church, to the tune of about half a million dollars. When the law was just about to close the trap, he fessed up.
If we had a pope who was worthy of the title, Weakland would be stripped of his episcopal garments and sent naked to the coldest monastery in the Swiss Alps, there to do penance on the cold floor for the rest of his miserable existence. But, no, this pope, who suborns immorality by inaction, simply allowed Weakland to "retire." Yet, even in retirement, the man has no shame. His target again: the Traditional Latin Mass.
Weakland tries to justify the monstrosity of the Novus Ordo, which, in his opinion is only the beginning. He doesn't think it to be "democratic" enough. It is clear that he wants an even newer order, one that features a lay-Protestant service to replace even the vestiges of the "Mess." The man protests too much. It is clear that he hates the Roman Catholic Mass, Faith, and certainly morality. He simply conceals it under faded purple.
But the people of Milwaukee have Weakland's number. After his exposure, he had the gall to try to administer Novus Ordo Confirmation at a parish church, and the people turned on him, vilified him, and cast him out into the exterior darkness. There he weeps and gnashes his teeth on impotent missives. Perversion knows no shame. And perversion -- of the Catholic Faith, of morality, and of the Sacraments -- is the hallmark of the New Order.
Some two years ago, TRADITIO was the first site to raise publicly the theological issue: what if the pope is non compos mentis? Then, according to Catholic moral theology, his acts would not be valid, any more than those of an infant or an imbecile. The question that TRADITIO publicly raised was so hot that no one else was courageous enough to take it up -- until now.
It seems that TRADITIO's question is now being seriously debated in the halls of the Newvatican Curia, now that the pope's health is significantly worse than two years ago. According to reports from Rome, curial officials are considering what procedures would be followed, for example, if a pope slips into a long or irreversible coma, or if he completely loses his ability to communicate.
Some curial theologians are proposing that, if necessary, the College of Cardinals could meet and declare that a pope no longer has control of his faculties and is therefore impeded in his office. Does that sound familiar? It should. It's the same process that those sede-vacantists have been discussing for years to declare the See of Rome vacant in a case of heresy on the part of the occupant. [Catholic News Service]
So, it seems that Newrome is coming around to the same position as those sede-vacantists, that the College of Cardinals could declare a vacancy. The only difference is the cause: medical in the one case, doctrinal in the other case. This opens a Pandora's box for sure, but one thing is certain: from the new perspective at Newrome, those sede-vacantists are not necessarily out in left field. In fact, for better or worse, they seem to have anticipated by several years the current discussion going on in Newrome today!
A lot of attention has been paid recently to the closing of Newchurch parishes and their K-12 schools, but what about Catholic higher education?
Already in the late 1960s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) was noting with deep concern what was happening in Catholic education. His advice on higher education, given around 1967, was as prophetic as it was startling:
You are better off going to a state school where you will have the chance to fight for your faith, than going to a modern Catholic university where you will have the new watered-down, modernist version of the faith spoon-fed to your unsuspecting minds, so that you will be apt to lose your faith.
Just as Newchurch is dismantling the Catholic Mass, Sacraments, and Faith, so it dismantling Catholic higher education. Colleges run under Newchurch control are, of course, no longer Catholic. Notre Dame University, for example, now sponsors "Queer" Film Festivals and pro-abortion speakers. There are a few private "conservative" Catholic colleges around, but these feature the Novus Ordo Mess and mindset. Sounds like just the kind of counterfeit that Archbishop Sheen was warning against, doesn't it?
And now we have examples of Catholic colleges being sold off to secular interests. Take Clinton, Iowa's 87-year-old Franciscan University of the Prairies, which is being sold this month to a for-profit secular Poway, California company, Bridgeport Education, Inc. In the process it will lose its religious affiliation and change its name to Ashford University. Gone will be the Sisters of St. Francis, who founded the school in 1918. These sisters, however, had already gone New Order after Vatican II.
Under the sale agreement the school will lose its religious affiliation, which was the basis of its creation by the Sisters of St. Francis, who have continued to support the institution. The university's colors will remain purple and gold, and the school's athletic teams will continue to be called the Saints, but the institution will be entirely secular. "Franciscan wasn't an appropriate name anymore," said Bridgeport's CEO. Well, it hasn't been since 1964 anyway.
The Newchurch archdiocese of Boston has publicly admitted to using funds from the closing of parish churches, rectories, convents, schools, and parish halls to finance payoffs for sex abuse. In fact, the archdiocese has admitted to spending all the money taken from the bank accounts of closed parishes -- to date, $2,800,000. It is in the hole $10,000,000 for its operating deficit just this year. In addition, the archdiocese has fired 141 lay employees and says that it will need to use a portion of the real-estate proceeds from selling church buildings for sex.
The reality is that Newchurch Archbishop Sean O'Malley is clearly violating his promises not to use the proceeds of parish closings to pay for parish needs and not to use the money to pay for settlements for sex abuse.
Already O'Malley has closed 50 of Boston's 357 parishes since just last July. Another 30 are planned for closure. The fact that he is violating his promises indicates that more parishes will be sold off for the sex scandal, which undoubtedly goes far more deeply than has yet been admitted. The archdiocese refuses to release publicly a broader set of financial statements that would fully describe the archdiocese's financial picture.
But it may not be so easy in the future to pilfer money by selling off (mostly) traditional church buildings. Seven closed parishes have been occupied for months by parishioners who refuse to leave.
"It [the archdiocese] plays fast and loose with the promise that was made to the public," said the president of Voice of the Faithful, Boston University management professor James E. Post. "It is not consistent with the spirit of the archbishop's promise that the funds would be used exclusively for the needs of parishes."
Promises, promises. Newchurch lives on lies. It foists off a phony "Mess," phony "Sakraments," and a phony religion that his not Catholic. What is remarkable is that the Novus Ordinarians believe in Newchurch at all!
TRADITIO reported previously that the Novus Ordinarians in the Los Angeles archdiocese were finally fed up with the unCatholic antics of "Mad" Mahony. The Concerned Roman Catholics of America have urged "all Catholics to stop giving money to the world's most scandalous cardinal" and launched a "collection basket strike" aimed at pressuring Mahony out of office. The group took their campaign to the streets by picketing Mahony's huge Religious Education Congress, which they call "the world's largest dissent-fest," featuring speakers who openly advocate abortion, sodomy, homosexual 'marriage,' fornication, ordaining priestesses and homosexuals, occult 'New Age' practices, 'dismantling' the Church, etc.
Now that the 37th Annual Los Angeles Religious Conference is history, you can inform your Novus Ordo acquaintances where the next phase of the New Mess is going. Nor should you think that this phase is going to be restricted to loony Los Angeles, since the announcement came from the mouth of the Chairman of the U.S. [Newchurch] Bishops Committee on the [Novus Ordo] Liturgy, Donald Trautman. The overall principle he proclaimed is: liturgy is "the primary form for catechizing God's people." In other words, more and more bizarre forms of the Novus Ordo service with be "approved" to indoctrinate Novus Ordinarians into the New Religion.
First of all, these Novus Ordo liturgical fabricators, who are the direct descendants of Freemason Hannibal Bugnini, who virtually destroyed the Roman liturgy, are turning its backs on the middle-aged and senior. It realizes that the New Religion is never going to take hold completely with them. So, these liturgiacs are going to focus on "young people." You have already read here about the shocking things that go on at "Life Teen" Messes and "World Youth" Messes.
Trautman's message was this. "He cautioned that many young people today find liturgy inaccessible, because of celebrations that are boring, lackadaisical, and barely relevant to their lives. Good liturgy -- 'living liturgy' -- strengthens faith." You don't have to understand Modernist-speak too fluently to read what this means: rock music, dancing on the altar, and rave. Note also that Trautman makes it clear that more and more of these "liturgies" are going to be invented: "living liturgy." One thinks of the ex-presbyter Matthew Fox's "Rave" Messes in the basement of the cathedral, in which dope was a "living" component.
More and more, we see the wisdom of Holy Mother Church, as enshrined in the dogmatic Council of Trent. The Fathers of the Council understood full well the danger to the True Faith presented by the Protestants, who were championing a new "liturgy" in the vulgar tongues and with non-Apostolic forms. Therefore, that council anathemized anyone who should say that the Roman Catholic Mass should be celebrated in vernacular tongues.
Tolle Missam, tolle Ecclesiam. The Novus Ordo took away the True Mass, so it has destroyed itself as the Catholic Church. Thank God, there are those who never gave up the True Mass, who fought for it like tigers from the beginning, even though they received the barbs and arrows of the Modernists.
1970, when the "New Mess" was introduced, was a dark year. The number of True Masses being celebrated at that time could be counted on the fingers of one hand. But gradually more and more priests courageously went independent of the Newchurch dioceses to offer the Traditional Latin Mass. Abp. Lefebvre founded the Society of St. Pius X in the 1970s. The Society of St. Pius V and the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen were organized in the 1980s. In 1988, Newvatican was even coerced into half-heartedly accepting a limited "Indult" Mass. In the 1990s the Official Catholic Directory of Traditional Latin Masses began to be published and has now reached its tenth edition.
Indeed, as the New Order edifice falls down around the Novus Ordinarians as they dance in the aisles, with their attendance substantially curtailed, their religious orders disappearing, and their bishops and presbyters sinking into embezzlement, scandal, and crime, the Traditional Catholic Movement continues stronger every year. What it takes on our part is some patience and courage. Trust that Almighty God will take care of the rest. His work is becoming more obvious among us year by year.
Some months ago TRADITIO reported on the takeover by a group of traditional Catholics of the Basilica of St. Adalbert in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when the Novus Ordo personnel had allowed a Buddhist group to take possession of the sanctuary for Hindu chants and prayers and covered the high altar with picture of a Hindu god. The Novus Ordo personnel were taken by surprise when a traditional priest began addressing the crowd from the pulpit and leading the group in Latin prayers, ejecting the pagans from the sanctuary. The Novus Ordo personnel eventually called the police, but the police found no problem with a priest leading prayers from the altar. "What's the big deal?," was their response. "Isn't that what priests are supposed to do?"
Then, in a bizarre circumstance that was reminiscent of Lord Carnarvon's sudden death in Egypt after the tomb of Pharao Tutankhamun was violated, the Newchurch bishop of Grand Rapids, Kevin Britt, who claimed that he had no control over the admission of pagans into the sanctuary of his own cathedral, died suddenly in his sleep at the age of 59 shortly thereafter.
The Buddhists later sued in small-claims court for a few hundred dollars because of lost revenue for their "Evening of Religious Prayers." Well, actually it wasn't the Buddhists. It was the Novus Ordo sacristan, who claimed to be acting on behalf of the Buddhists. More likely, he was acting on behalf of the Newchurch bishop. But when the Novus Ordo sacristan was subpoenaed by the defense for a deposition under oath, he immediately abandoned the lawsuit. He has since filed a document dismissing the suit altogether.
Traditional Catholics 1, Novus Ordinarians 0, Buddhists -1.
During the February 22 episode of the NBC-TV sitcom, Committed, two non-Catholics are mistakenly given the Novus Ordo cookie at a Catholic funeral service. Nate, who is Jewish, and Bowie, a Protestant, don't know what to do with the cookie, so they make several failed attempts to get rid of it. For example, they try slipping it into the pocket of a presbyter, dropping it on a tray of cheese and crackers, etc. At one point, the presbyter, who is portrayed as not knowing the difference between the cookie and a cracker, goes to grab the crackers from a tray of appetizers. Nate and Bowie eventually flush what they think is the cookie down the toilet.
Well, modern sitcoms are not known for their reverence. We've come a long way down from Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, or even the Bob Newhart Show. But there is a long tradition of comedy and satire being used in the Greco-Roman classical tradition to give us "in-your-face" truth. One has only to think of the bawdy Old Comedy of Aristophanes, the biting satire of the Roman Juvenal, almost a contemporary of the Apostles, or even the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The characters of Committed have stumbled on the reality in a comic way, probably unbeknownst to them: the Novus Ordo cookie is a laughable phony.
The Catholic League, a mouthpiece for the Church of the New Order, which never said a word against the recent desecration of St. Michael's SSPX church until traditional Catholics, urged by TRADITIO, canceled their memberships, was, of course, outraged. "NBC," it sputtered, "has made a direct frontal assault on Roman Catholicism, choosing to mock, trivialize, and ridicule the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ."
That's exactly not what NBC has done. The Novus Ordo cookie has nothing to do with Roman Catholicism. It is merely a figment of the New Religion and the New Mess. It is a counterfeit, a fraud. And NBC, probably unbeknownst to itself, has exposed the reality of the fraud. This reality is expressed every time a presbyter places the cookie in unconsecrated hands, violating the most serious condemnations of popes and councils. Every time a layperson takes in his filthy hands the piece of bread and presumes to "communicate" himself. Every time a layperson slobbers over the "cup" of grape juice.
Then there are the cases of what would be outright sacrilege if a sacrament were really involved. For example, the presbyter-editor of a leading "conservative" Catholic publication has sent promotional tape recordings all over the country about what happened to the leftover cookies from the pope's sports-stadium "service" in New York some years ago. They were simply put into burlap bags; God knows where they ended up. You didn't hear any outrage expressed by the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, or the presbyters present.
Even the presbyter-editor, who was personally present and personally participated in the cookie hand-out, said and did nothing at the time. Why not? Because, for all their fulminations against traditional Catholics, these people don't really believe in the Novus Ordo sakrament, except perhaps in a broad Protestant sense. They tell us what they believe by their actions.
And what about the instances of missals sold on eBay, "complete with host inside"? Or the frequent cases reported of cookies found on the floor or in pews in the Novus Ordo temples, when the presbyter simply instructs the finders to "throw it into the wastebasket." Or the cases of Novus Ordinarians taking the cookie home to give to their dog or cat. They tell us what they believe by their actions.
The Catholic League's demanded apology is ridiculous. Rather, the Catholic League should apologize to true Catholics for supporting a Phony Faith, a Phony Sakrament, a Phony Mess, and their Newchurch bishops, whose morality is not based on the principles of Christ, but of the Mafia, as their own Chief Investigator put it.
Too bad they didn't abandon the New Order because of its New Religion, New Mass, and New Sacraments. Well, it's taken almost forty years, but the Novus Ordinarians are catching on. They're leaving Newchurch in droves because of scandal. In Los Angeles, in St. Louis, in Boston, in New York. Newchurch dioceses in Portland, Tucson, and Topeka are going bankrupt. Newchurch bishops are being hauled into court in record numbers. The worm has turned.
In Austria, known for its cosmopolitan ambiance, Novus Ordinarians are sick at the games that Newchurch is playing on them. Austrians are leaving the Church of the New Order in droves in disgust, crying, "We've had enough!" More than 10,000 people have left the Vienna archdiocese in the last few months, with thousands more leaving parishes across the country.
Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Austria's primate, has been caught flat footed. He admitted in a Vienna church newspaper that he could not blame people for leaving after a summer of scandal that is rivaling that in Newchurch dioceses in the United States. The Austrian police are conducting a criminal investigation.
Even JPII has that admitted that rampant scandals in the Church of the New Order have "cast a shadow" on his Church. Yet he has been sinfully passive in failing to do anything about the criminal activities of his clerics. In fact, he recently praised bishops of the United States, when their crimes, according to their own investigators, are increasing rather than decreasing.
In overwhelmingly Novus Ordo Austria, people are automatically registered as Church members when baptized as infants. They must apply to the government to leave the Church under guidelines established by Adolf Hitler during the country's Second World War Nazi occupation.
The Viennese seminary has been shut down, and calls have mounted for the Newchurch bishops to be sacked.
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