For answers to many questions, click on TRADITIO's Home Page about how to order the 10th Annual Edition (2005) of the Traditional Directory or consult the Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics). For information about the protocol for sending messages to Fr. Moderator, see Ask Fr. Moderator.
| If you wish to support the work of TRADITIO, click on the box to the left to made a donation easily, securely, and confidentially by bank account or credit card through PayPal. Regular contributors become Benefactors of TRADITIO, and their intentions are specially commemorated at Traditional Latin Masses offered. Indicate in the Message section of your payment "For TRADITIO." For other methods, see FAQ01: How Do I Help to Offset Expenses? |
We here at TRADITIO have to laugh when the ignorant secular and "conservative" Novus Ordo press describe Benedict-Ratzinger as "traditional" or even "conservative." Did you know that he is personally pushing married presbyters? This has now gone even beyond the married Anglican ministers already admitted into the New Order.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that one Michael Shipp, a former Lutheran minister, with a "wife" and five kids, has been admitted to the Novus Ordo presbyterate by none other than Benedict-Ratzinger. He knows full well what an embarrassment he is. His wife and kids have to slip out from the pews before the Novus Ordo Mess is over so that they're not encountered by parishioners.
You see, a papal loophole brought Scheip to the presbyterate. The Novus Ordo accepts married men, provided that they grew up in another "Christian tradition" (read: heresy) without the celibacy rule. So, Novus Ordinarian marrieds need not apply -- yet. Lest we hear the same chestnut from the "conservative" Novus Ordinarian apologists that the "pope didn't know," Scheip's admission to the Novus Ordo coven was blessed in 1992 by none other than -- you remember him -- Joseph Ratzinger, aka Benedict.
And how did all this get started? Why, with false oecumenism, specifically the heretical Taize. You see, his wife was a single Catholic on a bus tour of Protestant churches as part of Taize. (And you don't think that oecumenism is a dangerous immoral temptation?) Scheip got her phone number and invited her to a Philadelphia symphony concert. Oops, got that wrong -- nothing so high-minded for Scheip. He took the demented woman to a Bob Dylan concert at the Philadelphia Spectrum. For the second date she invited him to see the rock group, the Moody Blues. This former Protestant minister is something that the Novus Ordo can't do without. He's got all the right tastes for its musical cesspool!
Scheip, supposedly a Lutheran minister at this point, apparently was cheating on his own religion! He got "married" in a Novus Ordo Church in 1981 and started cheating on his own religion by attending the Novus Ordo Mess with his "wife"! He converted in 1987 and wangled becoming a presbyter in the Novus Ordo. And guess who gave the guy a audience? You got it: none other that John Paul the Small! Scheip's mother, who remained a Lutheran, posed the relevant question that JPII was too faith-compromised to admit: "Does being married mean you're half a presbyter?"
Scheip and others of his ilk are causing nothing but problems with former presbyters who complain that the Church cast them out when they married, but embraced marriage for former Protestants. The Novus Ordo is "two-faced for dipping into the Protestant labor pool while enforcing celibacy for lifelong Catholics," one of these said.
Celibacy has been the characteristic of Catholic clergy in Major Orders since the early Church, in accordance with the teaching of Christ and St. Paul, representing the Apostolic Tradition. None of the Apostles was married, or, if they had been, they left the married life to follow Christ. At some times and in some places, enforcement was not as strict as it should have been, but as the centuries went by, exceptions were found and dealt with. Has Newchurch of today strictly enforced the Sixth and Seventh Commandments on its presbyters and bishops? (For further information, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs? in the article "Clerical Celibacy.")
The practical problems of a married clergy are numerous -- just ask the Protestant ministers, whose divorce rates are astronomical. So, seminarians, instead of studying theology (of which they do precious little now in Novus Ordo seminaries) would be going out on Friday-night dates and bringing back "tricks" to the seminary grounds? What happens when a presbyter preaches clean living, and his own children are getting high on drugs and conjugating with girls in the rectory?
And, of course, there will be the inevitable priestesses in the New Order Church. What will pew Novus Ordinarians do when their minister is a pregnant women with a Lesbian lover living in the rectory? Far-fetched, you say? No, the handwriting is on the wall. Who would have guessed that a pope would have a "Clown Mass" performed at the Vatican? The more outlandish it is, the more certain that Newchurch will embrace it. St. Paul was speaking to Newchurch in our time when he warned:
"For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (2 Timothy 4:3-4/DRV).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I wanted to let you know that I have finally begun attending exclusively a Traditional Latin Mass. I very much doubt that this would have happened if you hadn't been willing to take the time to answer my many questions and continued to correct on TRADITIO the errors that nowadays pass for Catholic, but really are anything but.
After being away from the Catholic Church, I reverted to what I thought was Catholicism. Now I don't know what I reverted to (Novus Ordoism); I guess it was a form of Protestantism. I think that I'm now a true revert to the traditional Catholic Faith. What's interesting is that it took me less than three years to see that I was attending a counterfeit Catholic service, with counterfeit Catholic sacraments -- really a counterfeit Faith that is neither Catholic nor Apostolic.
I don't understand why is there any debate about what one should do. I'm no theologian, but what passes for Catholicism today is not Catholicism. Any idiot should be able to see that. I can understand that so-called presbyters or bishops don't want to lose their jobs or power positions, so they won't do anything because1 of personal aggrandizement. But why doesn't the average person stand up and say, "No more!" What are they afraid of?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
That's a very good question. Here are some possible answers.
With the Newchurch bishops having lost all credibility because of their personal involvement and/our subornation and/or conspiracy in crimes, the moral constitution of the United States, Europe, and the world will sink further and further into the moral morass.
In the 1950s, divorce, even among Protestants and Jews, was frowned upon. Now Newchurch hands out divorces (they call them "annulments") like candy. In the 1950s, homosexual acts were considered perversion and in medical text were discussed in Latin, so as not to offend the sensibilities of good people. Now, perversion is open and legally protected. Once the Pandora's box is opened by ignoring one Natural Law, all the other immoralities come out as well.
If you thought that the liberalist push would stop with "gay marriage," an abomination in itself, read this. In comments at Yale, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Nadine Strossen, has indicated that among the "fundamental rights" of people is the right to polygamous relationships -- and that the ACLU has defended and will continue to defend that right.
The Yale Daily News reports that Strossen was responding to a "student's question about gay marriage, bigamy, and polygamy." She continued, saying that her legal organization "defend[s] the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals," making the ACLU "the guardian of liberty ... defend[ing] the fundamental rights of all people." Apparently, she is ignorant of the Natural Law, which defines "fundamental rights." Strossen has been president of the ACLU since 1991. She is also an acting professor of law at New York Law School and the author of the book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex & the Fight for Women's Rights.
So, we have the slippery slope:
Every Catholic needs to reread and meditate upon the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. That great Saint really hit the nail on the head. What he was describing in the first century in Rome is exactly what is happening now in the 21st century in America, Europe, and elsewhere. Basic moral principles are eternal and universal.
A Manchester bank has forced a Christian group to close its account because of its Biblical views against homosexuality. The bank said that the opinions of Christian Voice were incompatible with its support for "diversity." "Diversity," of course, is a P.C. code word for the "gay" agenda. The Christian Voice group said that the bank was discriminating against it on religious grounds. The bank is now expected to inform other Christian, Muslim, and Jewish groups that they will not be able to bank there on the grounds that they all share the same view on homosexuality.
Christian Voice first came under the spotlight earlier this year when it took on the BBC over its decision to screen controversial musical Jerry Springer - The Opera. Christian Voice complained that the show was blasphemous and portrayed Jesus as a "sexual deviant". [BBC News]
The signs are clear that the world is entering another period of anti-Christian persecution. It hits at a most unfortunate time, when the Catholic Church is in a state of confusion, impotence, and corruption, being virtually taken over by a New Religion. There are those who believe that the Modernists at Vatican II, including the present pope, who was a Modernist peritus at the Council, deliberately laid this groundwork to undermine the true Church.
Another woman has been "ordained" as a priestess of the New Order in a chapel in central Europe. Three years ago Newvatican called the "ordinations" of the so-called Danube Seven, seven women who were "ordained" on a boat moored on the river Danube, "invalid." Members of the Danube Seven were witness at this latest "ordination," who now describe themselves no longer as priestesses, but as bishopesses. Apparently, the priestesshood was not enough!
The woman involved is a practicing Novus Ordinarian, who teaches religious education in a Novus Ordo institution. One can only imagine what kind of a religious education those pupils are getting! She claims to be a Dominican, but would, of course, be condemned out of hand by St. Dominic. [BBC Radio 4]
In Newchurch, which is rushing to conform to the world around it rather than serving as a sign of contradiction to the world, don't be surprised when the photograph above depicts a common scene in Novus Ordo cathedrals around the world.
In Victoria, which has historically had one of the most radical left-wing organizations in Australia, two pastors are threatened with jail for preaching Christianity. The courageous pastors have described themselves as martyrs and said that they chose imprisonment, like St. Paul, rather than apologize for their Christian preaching. "Right from the inception, we have said that this law is a foul law; this law is not a law which brings unity. It causes disunity and as far as we are concerned; right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologize. We will go to prison for standing for the truth and not sacrifice our freedom and freedom to speak."
Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered the two pastors of an evangelical order to apologize for a sermon in which Mohammedans were accused of encouraging domestic violence and practicing an inherently violent religion, opposed to Christianity. In a chilling statement, Higgins said that "their passionate religious beliefs caused them to transgress the law." [Herald Sun]
Our Australian correspondent tells us that some of the statements that were held to amount to "religious vilification" were direct quotes from the Koran! He also informs us that a number of similar cases involving persons such as Wicca (witchcraft) practitioners are also about to start, naming Christians as respondents.
Meanwhile, books sold in Muslim bookshops tell Muslims they should "hate and take as enemies" non-Muslims, reject Jews and Christians, and learn to hate in order to love Allah properly. The texts say that Muslims should learn military tactics and suggest that if a person speaks ill of Islam, it is acceptable to kill them. They urge Muslims to strike back against "the barbaric onslaught from their enemies -- the Jews, Christians, atheists, secularists, and others."
You citizens of the United States are next. Watch for similar legislation being introduced into the U.S. Congress to squelch free religious expression. Already public-school students are prohibited from reading the Bible during their lunch hour. Already the U.S. government panders to imprisoned Mohammedan terrorists when the Koran is "desecrated," but when the Holy Bible is torn up and destroyed by the Mohammedans, not a peep is issued by the U.S. government.
Symbols often speak louder than words. The photograph above showing Newchurch Bishop David Zubik, of Green Bay, laying aside his episcopal miter at a Novus Ordo "Confirmation" service and placing it on the head of a girl tells us two things.
First, Zubik has no understanding of what it means to be a Catholic bishop. The two-peaked miter represents duty of the episcopal office to defend, and even die for, the Faith of the two Testaments. A true bishop never trivializes this symbol for laughs or propaganda. It is equivalent to an American citizen burning the flag.
Second, Zubik places this symbol of the episcopal office on the head of a girl, implying the future consecration of priestesses. Is that reading too much in? No. This Newchurch bishop explicitly stated that "it was never too early to plant the seed of ordination."
Our Lord is testing His Church by giving us popes who do not act like popes and bishops who do not act like bishops. Where are the popes like Pius V and Pius X? Where are the bishops like Augustine and Ambrose. Our time of trial is bereft of them. Just as we deserve the kind of presidents and legislators we get, we deserve the kind of popes and bishops we get. Novus Ordinarians have been all to ready to except sacrilege as a "Mass," phony sacraments, false doctrine, and immorality. Novus Ordinarians excuse gross sins on the part of the pope and bishops and even pay for them. They seem to have learned nothing in forty years.
We have to do the best we can to protect, guard, and defend the Faith until the Church is restored to true Catholicism. It's happened before, and it will happen again. It is the truly Catholic people who will keep the flame alive in the face of rank apostasy and heresy eating away at the Church, just as they did in the face of the great Arian heresy that swept the Church in the fourth century.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Thank you for addressing the spate of inaccurate press articles in the last couple of weeks regarding Benedict and the "Mess." Didn't JPII have trouble with the bishops on the Mess? Do you think that this pope is more cunning than his predecessor? JPII seemed up front about his wildness, but Benedict seems more sinister in a way.
Fr. Moderator Replies.
JPII didn't want the Traditional Latin Mass. In 26 years of his papacy, JPII never celebrated a single Traditional Latin Mass! That speaks volumes more than all the various scribblings he issued. Ecclesia Dei is a mere apostolic letter, not a Papal Bull, or even an encyclical, and was hastily issued only when Archbishop Lefebvre took his courageous action. Those "indultarians" who criticize what Lefebvre did should realize there wouldn't even be that kooky "indult" without him.
Ratzinger, though German, has internalized the Vatican's "Romanitas." That is a term that indicates a long-standing Vatican modus operandi. It provides for lying, cheating, and stealing, but always with an obfuscatory gentlemanly veneer. This is why, to this day, the popes and their ministers still support and hide the crimes of their subordinates. This is why JPII appointed the disgraced and criminally-negligent Bernard Cardinal Law to a plum position at Rome rather than stripping him of his office and sending him to a monastery cell to pray in reparation for the rest of his life.
Now, most people, including ill-informed reporters, who are unaware of this historical modus operandi, are deceived by the surface veneer and never dig deeper. That is why you can never believe what comes out of Newvatican. It can't even be straight about the day on which the pope died! It's propaganda for the New Order pure and simple, no matter how delicately it's phrased. As TRADITIO has said before: Words are cheap after Vatican II. Look for actions.
With all the attention paid by the secular press to the sex-crime scandal in Newchurch, not nearly enough attention is paid to the even worse crimes of gross thievery going on. In plain terms, you Novus Ordinarians should be aware that significant numbers of your bishops and presbyters are robbing the Church, robbing the poor box, and converting your donations to personal use.
Who knows how many poor, elderly, and infirm people died as a result of these thefts, some amounting to millions of dollars, because the charitable funds for medical treatment were not available? Remember the crime for which St. Dismas paid the price on the cross: theft. We have covered these crimes before here on TRADITIO, when the Novus Ordo press, including the "conservatives," won't cover it because they think that you might as a result break your association with the New Order Church -- as you should, for this among many other reasons.
Novus Ordo Presbyter-Pastor Joseph Hughes, of Holy Cross Church in the Newchurch diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, has been spending over $2,000,000 of Church money on a $47,000 BMW, jewelry, upscale restaurants, and Caribbean vacations. Church auditors finally caught the embezzlement, from fund-raisers, golf tournaments, and charity auctions. On June 20 the grand jury charged Hughes with nine counts of theft by deception, nine counts of filing false federal-income-tax returns, and nine counts of failure to pay state income taxes between 1997 and 2004. Hughes faces fines of up to $200,000 and a potential prison sentence of 90 years if found guilty on all counts.
But the real story is what the parishioners did. Instead of helping the country prosecutor jail this presbyter-criminal and throw away the key, the parishioners actually asked that the prosecutor not seek a prison term for Hughes if he was eventually found guilty, or pleaded guilty, to the charge. "I rejected that out of hand," the country prosecutor said. "This was money from fund-raisers and meant for charity. There are very few instances where we would even consider not seeking jail time for this kind of theft, and this is certainly not one of them."
At least the country prosecutor knows Catholic morality. It's sure clear that the Novus Ordo parishioners don't! We have no sympathy for the Novus Ordinarians, who would cover crimes of stealing from the Church. As far as we are concerned, they're accomplices to the thievery. No wonder Newchurch is drowning in immorality, which is getting worse, not better. [Asbury Park Press]
TRADITIO has consistently maintained that the popes are personally involved in the sex-crime scandal up to their Roman collars. The evidence is pretty overwhelming at this point that both JPII and Ratzinger conspired with criminal bishops to cover up such crimes and obstructed justice. Richard Nixon lost the Presidency for just such high crimes and misdemeanors.
Now an American lawyer, Daniel Shea, has gotten three victims of sex crimes by Novus Ordo clergy to name the pope as a responsible party. Just as Bernard Cardinal Law was personally named as a defendant in Boston, Shea is endeavoring to create a legal precedent by compelling Benedict-Ratzinger to give evidence in a lawsuit he is taking on behalf of three young men who claim abuse.
Benedict-Ratzinger is trying to "plead the fifth," as it were, by putting pressure on the U.S State Department to grant him diplomatic immunity. Newvatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano tried the same ploy with U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, who diplomatically threw the request back in Sodano's face (see last month's TRADITIO Commentary on the subject).
Shea is basing his action against the pope on an interpretation of a recently uncovered letter Ratzinger wrote to the world's Newchurch bishops in 2001, setting out how they should deal with a variety of clerical crimes. The letter lays down a statute of limitations that prevents presbyters from referring such complaints to the civil authorities for ten years after the alleged victim reaches the age of 18. By that stage, the statute of limitations that applies in civil law in most U.S. states would have expired, and a plaintiff would be legally prohibited from filing a case.
Shea claims that the pope, who at the time was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and right-hand man to JPII, obstructed justice and effectively ordered the cover-up of child sex abuse and the shielding of paedophile presbyters. The Texas-based lawyer declared:
I think everyone who is taking a case against the Catholic [sic] Church should cite Joseph Ratzinger in their proceedings. The way the Church handled these matters was nothing less than an international conspiracy and that needs to be tackled internationally.
Shea says if the State Department agrees to grant the pope immunity, he will challenge the decision on constitutional grounds. [Irish Examiner]
A story has been circulating recently in several newspaper accounts to the effect that "Pope Benedict XVI wants to restore the traditional ceremonial Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, with Latin instead of the vernacular and Gregorian chants."
As always, you must read all news accounts very critically and analytically. You have to be very careful about falling for the inaccurate surface meaning of these stories, as the terminology used does not mean what you think it means. To the New Order, "traditional" means the invalid New Order Mess, but just done more "conservatively" (if such a thing were even possible!). The press (and most of Newvatican) wouldn't know the Traditional Latin Mass from a hole in the wall! "Traditional" to them means the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service deceptively clothed in a little Latin.
Benedict-Ratzinger is a rank Modernist. He has published enough Modernist books to confirm the accuracy of that statement. He is a pupil of censured theologians at the time of Vatican II. Sure, as a consummate Church politico, to keep "conservative" money flowing in to the New Order apparatus, he talks from time to time about the "traditional" liturgy, as did JPII, but for all the talk, what you got was Clown Messes.
Benedict-Ratzinger is so busy kissing up to the World Council of Churches at Geneva that you should not expect any serious effort from him to restore any part of the real Roman Catholic Faith. In two months now, you haven't even heard anything about fixing the "abuses" in the Novus Ordo Mess, have you? That was Ratzinger's incessant patter a year ago. Benedict-Ratzinger is just like JPII, who wrote two encyclicals about "abuses" of the Novus Ordo in the year after his accession. Then he became the biggest abuser of all!
One thing that Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code, seems to have gotten right is the essential character of the Newchurch organization known as Opus Dei. JPII, never known for his discernment about people (just remember how many heretics, sex criminals, and embezzlers he appointed to the hierarchy), rushed through on October 6, 2002, one of those highly questionable "presto" political "canonizations," of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, who had died only thirty years previous, even though there were many who tried to present counter-evidence to the "canonization."
Since JPII had done away with all the checks and balances in the process, however, including the elimination of the Devil's Advocate, Escriva was forced through for political reasons. Escriva anticipated and developed thirty years before Vatican II a revolutionary, new, secular theology of the laity and accepted the principle of pluralism and indifferentism: a Novus Ordo Seclorum. In 1982 John Paul II created this group as a "personal prelature." Suspiciously, this act occurred in the same year that the wealthy sect allegedly had transferred almost $1,000,000,000 into the Vatican Bank, bailing it out of an embarrassing bankruptcy.
It has been reported that JPII was actually groomed by Opus Dei for the papacy, so it is not surprising that shortly after his election, he made Opus Dei a "personal prelature," responsible only to him. As his #2 man, he appointed an Opus Deista, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, as Secretary of State. This man remains in that position also under Benedict-Ratzinger. He also appointed Joaquin Navarro-Valls as head of the now immensely powerful Vatican Press Office.
In further confirmation of what has become an overwhelming amount of evidence from around the world, Dr. John Roche, who joined Opus Dei as a numerary while at university, has written on the subject of his experience. Gradually, Roche came to see that Opus Dei "was entirely self-centered, sectarian, and totalitarian, and that it was misleading the Church about important points of its character."
Without success, Roche tried to draw the attention of Church officials to the dangers found in Opus Dei, so he contacted The London Times, which published a study in January 1981 and concluded that the Church should forbid Opus Dei from recruiting any more members until after a thorough investigation had been made. London's Basil Cardinal Hume, in December 1981, published his guidelines for Opus Dei, requesting that it cease recruiting youngsters under 18, not prevent its members from seeking outside spiritual direction, and not prevent those who wish to leave from doing so.
Roche warns that it is easy to be impressed with Opus Dei's beautiful buildings, the energy of its well-dressed members, and their intense loyalty to Novus Ordoism. In reality, he says that it is guided by fascist ideas turned to religious purposes. While living, the founder Balaguer demanded that new recruits accept the fact that Opus Dei was revealed to him by God, was "absolutely perfect," and that he was infallible in matters of the "spirit of the work." The members are told that they have no need to think. In fact, they are kept so busy with praying and working that there is neither the time nor the solitude for quiet thought.
Financially, the members are left with only a pittance after turning over their paychecks to Opus Dei, and even that pittance must be accounted for, though Opus Dei makes no accounting of its own financial affairs. Opus Dei follows a strange "apostolate of not giving." It does not give alms to the poor, and the members are not allowed to give presents to anyone, but are pressed into forming friendships with the wealthy in order to obtain contributions.
Opus Deistas are part of the New Order Church. Some "conservative" Novus Ordinarians, however, have been duped by Opus Dei into thinking that it is a "conservative," even traditional, organization. It is neither. It is a shrewd modernist device. Opus Dei is a chameleon organization, being liberal or conservative, whichever benefits its agenda.
From New Orleans, we bring your the latest Mess: the "Pink Pather" Mess, performed at Mt. Carmel Academy, a New Order Carmelite secondary school for girls, by Novus Ordo Presbyter Rhenne. This was a "spirit" Mess. No, not dedicated to the Holy Spirit, but to the school spirit, represented by a pink panther, a cutout of which was placed against the "table." Teenage girls, who apparently can't distinguish between Our Lord Jesus Christ and an animal-god, handed out the invalid Novus Ordo "cookie."
Catholic parents should heed Archbishop Fulton Sheen's sage advice from the 1960s and never send their children to the sacrilegious and immoral corruption of a New Order school. This, among other horrors, is what you will be subjecting them to. Better that they go to the best secular school you can find. At least the secular schools make no misleading pretense of being "Catholic."
"When it rains, it pours." Bostoners are learning just how powerful the word No! is. The usurper-bishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, who has turned out to surpass even the discredited Bernard Cardinal Law in Newchurch totalitarianism, has capitulated in the face of parishioners boycotting the Novus Ordo service, sitting-in at historic churches slated for closure and wrecking, and civic officials calling O'Malley's chancery a "pack of thieves."
As a result of parishioners boycotting, sitting-in, and in other ways fighting O'Malley, the Newchurch archbishop was forced on June 16 to announce the reopening of six parishes. The fight against usurper O'Malley continues, however, as a spokesman for the Council of Parishes criticized O'Malley for "leaving some churches in limbo." (It is ironic that the flawed Vatican II Catechism doesn't even mention the Church teaching on limbo, yet the people still believe in it.)
The Council of Parishes had already sent a letter on June 15 to Newchurch Bp. William Skylstad, President of the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops, meeting in Chicago, asking him "reaffirm the rights of parishes and parishioners." The Council is making the argument to return to the 19th-century norm in the United States, under which lay trustees, not bishops, operate parishes.
Later in the 19th century, around the time of the three Baltimore Councils, the Catholic bishops wanted to enhance their power and made the parishes totally subordinate to themselves. It was at this time that the legal fiction of the Corporation Sole was constructed, under which the diocesan bishop became sole dictator over his diocese's operations and assets, responsible not even to a nonprofit religious board of directors. Many states have rescinded such arrangements, which allowed the bishop to become an autocratic dictator, without supervision of any kind, over diocesan money and property.
In addition to the Corporation Sole, many states passed laws that protected eleemosynary organizations from being sued in civil court for more than a trivial amount. Before Bernard Cardinal Law, of Boston, was personally sued a few years ago in the wake of the Great Sex & Embezzlement Scandal, the largest civil judgment a plaintiff aggrieved by the diocese could receive was a mere $20,000. The Council of Parishes is now arguing that bishops do not own parishes and that parish assets cannot be used to settle debts of the diocese [read: for sex crimes and embezzlement]. [Boston Globe]
The U.S. Newchurch bishops are so riddled with crime and scandal that they may be now so weakened that they cannot contest this initiative to win back churches. If bishops lose control of the assets and property of churches to lay trustees, those lay trustees will be able also to restore traditional altars, the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments, and the traditional faith and morals. Not all will, of course, as the New Order heresy has become all too frighteningly engrained among many Novus Ordinarians, but some at least will be inspired toward the Traditional Catholic Movement.
After all, we cannot expect perfection here. We can fight only a holding action that will eventually break through when the Catholic Faith returns to the hearts and souls of those who have sold out to the New Order. But the embers of the true Church that never disappeared (how can it, since it is the indefectible Church of Christ?) are now starting to break out in purging flamelets.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Congratulations on being named the top Traditional Catholic web site by Amazon. It must be rewarding to you to know that so many people visit your site because they can be sure of reading authentic Catholic truth there. You tell it as it is, unlike the sycophants of the Novus Ordo who refuse the recognize that Newchurch has no clothes!
May God bless you and the TRADITIO Apostolate. And thank you for all that you do for so many souls around the world.
On the heels of his defeat at the hands of determined parents at Our Lady of the Presentation School, Newchurch Archbishop Sean O'Malley, of Boston, has suffered two more defeats. Determined parishioners of St. Albertus Magnus Church, of Weymouth, like modern-day St. Pauls, withstood O'Malley to his face because he was to be blamed (Galatians 2:11/DRV) and forced him on June 15 to reopen the church, closed for the past ten months on his orders. "David did slay Goliath," said one of the protesters.
For ten months the parishioners occupied their church and would not turn it over to O'Malley. Former Boston usurper-bishops had called out the police to remove such occupiers, but Bernard Cardinal Law and his successor O'Malley have so alienated the people of Boston, from the mayor on down, that the police would have probably just laughed in O'Malley's face!
O'Malley also confiscated $200,000 of the church's money, undoubtedly to be used to pay off for more sex crimes by Novus Ordo personnel, which the protesters are demanding be returned. O'Malley was forced also to reopen St. Bernard Church in West Newton, which was also the subject of a sit-in.
Since last summer, O'Malley has closed 63 of the archdiocese's 357 churches, many of them historic. Parishioners at eight of these churches have had the courage to thumb their noses at the usurper O'Malley and conduct round-the-clock sit-ins at their churches to prevent O'Malley taking over. O'Malley is moving to close 17 more churches. St. Albert's was the first closed church whose parishioners simply refused to leave. They have been occupying the church non-stop since August 29, 2004. [Boston Globe]
So you see, folks, how all one has to do is huff and puff, and the Great Facade of Newchurch will be blown down. What is stopping the swift restoration of the True Church?
The growing victories against the Newchurch teach us that if only a few had stood up to the New Order and its usurper-bishops after Vatican II, as St. Paul did to the first pope, we might have been able to avoid the pain and suffering of the last forty years and protected the True Church. The travail of the last forty years was due less to the schemes of the Modernists than to the sycophancy of the Catholic people, who in past eras stood up to be counted, even against popes and bishops, when their Roman Catholic Faith was threatened.
It is an unfortunate symptom of the age in which we live that education is so poor that as a result many people can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. At one time people were educated classically, or at least on classical principles. A classical education has for 2000 years sharpened minds and analytical abilities. Now, with schools, both public and religious, awash in liberalism, relativism, atheism, and "political correctness," the population is becoming more credulous of nonsense, believing in fiction more than fact.
Into this milieu comes Dan Brown, a mediocre pulp novelist with his book, The DaVinci Code. In past years, it would be enough to read his book and get some enjoyment out of its fictional entertainment. But Dan Brown and his publicists are shrewd. Knowing that the vast majority of the population is ignorant of religion and history and more inclined toward occultism than orthodoxy, abetted by Newchurch, which has subtlely incorporated pagan occultism (enneagrams, yoga, seers, and the rest), Dan Brown & Co. have blurred the line between fact and fiction. But isn't that what any novelist does? It's all part of the sales game.
Obviously, Dan Brown has touched this nerve of ignorance to abet his sales. He has even orthodox Christians, who know that his work is a mere fictional pot-boiler, questioning the tenets of their Faith. Brown's fictional religion includes these contra-Christian doctrines:
Just like the Romans of the second century, who, though normally sober, were plagued with civil unrest and an influx of Eastern religions and as a result turned to nonsense like occultism, seers, astrology, and Eastern mysticism, many moderns have accepted Brown's fiction as fact. It inundates television, secondary markets (both pro and con), and the film industry (Tom Hanks, one who knows a good story when he reads it, is going to star in the motion-picture version).
Sane Christians will have a good laugh at this nonsense and treat Dan Brown like that other pot-boiler novelist, the Novus Ordo presbyter Andrew Greeley. At least Brown keeps his focus more on intrigue than gratuitous sex!
We have been informed that Amazon has determined the TRADITIO, Traditional Roman Catholic Internet Site and First Web Site on the Internet for Traditional Roman Catholics since September 29, 1994, to be by far the most popular traditional Roman Catholic web site on the internet.
In the statistical survey, TRADITIO was almost twice as frequently accessed as the next web site, a book and tape sales site, and almost four times as frequently as the SSPX site, which placed a distant third.
After being called unCatholic by civic officials and parents from Boston's mayor on down, usurper Newchurch archbishop Sean O'Malley has been successfully beaten back in Boston. O'Malley had locked out Brighton's Our Lady of the Presentation school students and parents without notice and caused a firestorm, as a result of which he has now been forced to agree to pursue the sale of the contested school building to a neighborhood group. We may just be seeing the "shot against Newchurch heard round the world."
At a press conference, O'Malley, grim-faced and fingering the cross on his rosary, expressed "regret" for the events of last week. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was furious with O'Malley and excoriated him in public statements. Other politicians supported the parents, including mayoral candidate Maura Hennigan, Massachusetts Representatives Kevin Honan and Michael Moran, and Boston Councilor Jerry McDermott, who publicly called O'Malley and his chancery "a pack of thieves." Parents had been protesting against O'Malley across the street from the school.
What have we learned? Newchurch exists on a thread. While pompous bishops no better than heretics have called true Catholics "schismatic" to cover their own schism and heresy, we have learned that whenever Catholics fight back courageously and persistently, Catholics will win. And all the huffing and puffing of these counterfeit hierarchs means nothing.
Catholics have two main weapons against usurping Newchurch bishops: recognition and money. First of all, as the Romans did in the early Church, when dealing with heretical and immoral bishops, you just walk out. You don't recognize their usurpations and immoralities by your physical presence in their temples. This practice has the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its greatest Saints: St. Basil the Great, St. Martin of Tours, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Augustine of Hippo, and many other true Catholic bishops, when they were faced with the same situation.
Second, you cut off the usurpers' funding. To put money into their collection plates when you know (and who doesn't now know?) that your money is going to be used to pay off perverts and support a sick system that suborns sex crimes, embezzlement from the Church, and who knows what else, those contributors are involved in same moral sins as their bishops.
The people of Boston have just learned how powerful they can be in starting to restore the true Catholic Faith. Let us hope that many of them go all the way to traditional Roman Catholicism. And let us hope that honest people in other dioceses learn this important lesson: we can get our churches and schools back, but we have to stand up and fight, not wimpishly capitulate in the sin of false obedience to evil, unCatholic hierarchs.
It's not sex this time, but money. On June 13 thirty-six parishioners sued the Newchurch diocese of Cleveland for $2,000,000. Newchurch bishop Anthony Pilla is accused of allowing three of his financial officers to divert that amount of Church funds to their private businesses! The bishop and diocese are accused of even bilking the dead. One of the officers was director of the diocesan cemetery.
Again, Novus Ordinarians are just as immoral as the thieves if they are contributing one red cent to the Newchurch dioceses and bishops. Their contributions may as well be flushed down the toilet. Until their contributions are stopped, Newchurch will continue to lie, cheat, and steal and have no incentive to do otherwise.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Recently I have heard (after the last pope's death) that the new pope is trying to raise Pope John Paul II to sainthood. I will admit that he did do a lot of good. Let me also state that I am not a Catholic. But his stand or lack of standing on all the many, many young people harmed by their local presbyters wipes out all or most of the good he did do.
He could have taken a stand and had those men defrocked and made to pay for their misdeeds early and maybe some of the young people wronged would not have had to pay that terrible price of being a victim of someone they should be able to trust.
No, I do not believe John Paul II deserves any more recognition than he has already received.
The evidence is clear that JPII and his agent Ratzinger were personally involved in sex-crime cover-ups. The heat got so bad that when Benedict-Ratzinger was Cardinal Ratzinger, Newchurch Doctrinal Czar, he became so upset with an ABC News reporter asking about crime accusations against JPII's fundraiser, Presbyter Marcial Maciel, Superior of the Legion of Christ in Orange, Connecticut, that Ratzinger slapped the reporter to silence him at a confrontation in Rome during May 2002.
Maciel has been charged by eight accusers for sex crimes over a protracted period of time. The victims say that Newvatican quashed any investigation because JPII was praising Maciel, who had raised millions of dollars to keep JPII's Newvatican afloat. Operating in the United States and 19 other countries, the Legion of Christ recruits boys as young as 10 years old to leave their families and follow the Church of the New Order.
The accusers say that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger personally made their canon lawsuit against Maciel go away. There was no investigation, and the accusers weren't asked a single question or asked for a statement. Ratzinger had been appointed by JPII to investigate the entire sex-crime scandal in Newchurch, but when approached in May 2002 by ABC NEWS in Rome with questions about his cover-up of accusations against Maciel, Ratzinger became visibly upset and actually slapped ABC reporter Brian Ross. "Come to me when the moment is given," Ratzinger told him, "not yet," Ratzinger imperiously demanded.
Yet the accusations against Maciel won't go away. Pressure against Ratzinger had increased to the point that he was forced to open an investigation in December 2004, when he was rumored to become the next pope, with JPII being seriously ill. Now that Ratzinger has become Benedict, one of the accusers says: "This pope is at a crossroads. He has to resolve the Maciel case or it will stalk him like a shadow in the sun." [ABC News]
Those of you who have been asking TRADITIO to give you some good news, well here it is. We think that this is beginning of the Novus Ordo conversion that will eventually restore significant parts of Newchurch to Catholicism, imperfect as the movement currently is. TRADITIO predicts that eventually these moves will lead to a return of Catholic lay trusteeship, which was the norm for the Church in the United States of the 19th century and holds the possibility of return a number of parishes to the true Roman Catholic Faith away from the Novus Ordo Schism of 1964.
Eventually, the civil courts, under political pressure, will begin to take corporate control from the Newchurch bishops, who have failed to meet the purposes of their corporate charters, and will turn them back, one by one, to lay trustees. As a result, some of these lay boards will bring their churches back to the true Catholic Church, the true Catholic Mass and Sacraments, and the true Catholic morality and doctrine. You heard it first here on TRADITIO.
TRADITIO has reported previously on what we will call the "Take Back Our Church" movement across the country. Finally, the Novus Ordinarians are beginning to realize after forty years that their diocesan bishops are liars and cheats, who have deprived them of their Roman Catholic heritage and are serving not the Catholic people, but a false New God of a New Order. The Novus Ordinarians are now coming more and more to reject false obedience to Novus Ordo usurpers of the Catholic Faith and crying out with Howard in Paddy Chayefsky's novel Network: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."
In Boston, eight churches have been occupied, so that Newchurch Archbishop Sean O'Malley, who has turned out to be even worse than his predecessor Bernard Cardinal Law, cannot close them. In St. Louis, parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish have exercised their rights to run their own parish and have spurned their Newchurch archbishop Leo Burke (notorious for receiving a transsexual as a nun) to hire a presbyter from Poland. Parishioners in Los Angeles have organized a boycott of collections, so that funds going to Newchurch Roger Cardinal Mahony, of the world's most notorious Novus Ordo bishops, will be cut.
Now it is reported that 100 parishioners from eight parishes in the Newchurch diocese of Toledo are meeting together to determine a way to take back their parishes from Newchurch bishop Leonard Blair, who is attempting to close numerous churches in the diocese. The parishioners claim that their pastors had not shared the information about the closures in a timely manner, another ploy of the Counterfeit Church, which claims that it is more open to the laity and is the "Church of Love." The meeting's coordinator, Dan Thiel, reported: "In my eyes, our parishes aren't being listened to. Our parishes aren't in financial trouble. They are very good at reaching out to the community with many ministries, and in my eyes, there is no reason to close these parishes. I think the "priest shortage" is an excuse." By golly, he's got it! [Advertiser-Tribune]
He added that many parishes had formulated options for the reorganization plan, but he knew of none that had been adopted. He said that the decisions from the Toledo Newchurch bureaucrats are being made by people who don't even know how to get to the places affected by the diocesan decrees. Of course, the Newchurch bishop and his gauleiters don't want the parishes to remain open, even if there is are perfectly viable options to do so. The Newchurch bishops are not interested in communication or love, let alone Catholicism. All they're interested in is power and control. Don't let anyone tell you that the Middle Ages were worse. We're back in the Dark Ages, folks!
"We need to take our parishes back ... to take responsibility for our parishes." Thiel has enunciated the rallying-cry for the conversion from Newchurch to Catholicism. It won't happen overnight, but it has started. Traditional Catholics need to maintain their independent presence so that there will be a home for these Novus Ordinarians when they finally see the light out of the Newchurch darkness. Then, when parishes are taken back into some form of laytrusteeship, there will be traditional priests and congregations that can show them the Catholic way, the Catholic truth, and the Catholic life.
Before Vatican II put the Roman Catholic Church on the path to its destruction, churches and schools were being built, not closed. One can only wonder how many churches have been closed as the result of Vatican II and its aftermath.
The self-proclaimed "Church of Love," that is, the Church of the New Order of Vatican II, has been shown up as the Church of Hate yet again. (Just another reason why Newvatican propaganda must be rejected.)
It seems that the new Newchurch Archbishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, is just as much a hypocrite as his predecessor, Bernard Cardinal Law. (By the way, if you have not seen the Showtime Cable Channel production, Our Fathers, documenting the corruption of Law, and even JPII, it is well worth watching.)
According to the Boston Globe, the Newchurch Archdiocese of Boston abruptly closed Our Lady of the Presentation School without notice to parents. Why? To prevent possible occupation of the school by angry parents, who responded with outrage to the decision by O'Malley to end school early rather than to risk a rumored confrontation between parents and church officials in the presence of children.
Don't you believe that O'Malley was concerned about the children or their parents! Like Law, he did it to avoid a confrontation with him. Remember, this is the O'Malley who, when confronted by a group of parishioners who asked why their parish was being closed, retreated to his chauffeur-driven limousine and bawled like a baby.
Even Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, himself a Novus Ordinarian, sent a letter to O'Malley calling his action "reprehensible," "unconscionable," and a "heartbreaking insult." Councilor Jerry McDermott, himself a graduate of the school, was more blunt. He called O'Malley and his Newchurch associates "a pack of thieves."
McDermott went on to say, "We own those schoolhouses, and we own those churches. Our parents and grandparents have paid over and over again to fix the boilers and replace the roofs and repair the windows and to pay for the priests [presbyters] and the nuns, and how dare they tell us now that it's not our building and change the locks and deny our kids their diplomas? They had four paedophile priests [presbyters] assigned over the years to Our Lady of the Presentation, and now they want to protect the children? Isn't that refreshing? I'm not the best Catholic out there, but these are the supposed elders of the Catholic [that is, Newchurch] faith, and they've made a mockery of it."
State Representative Michael Moran, also a graduate of Our Lady of the Presentation School, said of the Newchurch leadership, "Lately, the only thing the [New]church seems to know how to do is to hurt people."
City Council President Michael Flaherty declared, "The archdiocese ought to be ashamed of itself; this is unconscionable. With everything that has happened ... and everything that the Church is supposed to stand for, I just don't know how they could do this."
These parents and parishioners and municipal officials need to recognize that what they are criticizing is not the Catholic Church, but a Counterfeit Church, organized and administered by Newchurch vandals like Law and O'Malley, supported by the likes of JPII and even Benedict-Ratzinger. You don't see the pope stepping in to do justice, do you? No, he was too busy that day schmoozing with the Jews of Rome. Apparently, the Jews get more attention than the Novus Ordinarians in the pope's priorities. When will these Novus Ordinarians wake up and smell the coffee? Newchurch has deserted them, yet they irrationally continue to fund Newchurch.
Parents at other Newchurch schools and parishioners at other parishes have occupied buildings to protect their property rights. Eight closed parish churches around the archdiocese are occupied by protesters; two other potential occupations were thwarted when pastors asked local police to arrest people who refused to leave.
The courts cannot act fast enough to give back Church property to its real owners, the people who paid to build it and maintain it. And the vast majority of these people were pre-Vatican II. The funds illegally converted to Newchurch uses should be returned to those donors and their heirs, and the current property turned over to Lay Trustees. They certainly couldn't do a worse job of governing these schools and parishes than the corrupt Law, O'Malley, and their Newchurch minions!
Parishioners of a Newchurch parish in San Francisco did just this a few years ago. After the former Archbishop John Quinn lied to his people in trying to excuse his closing of a dozen churches, the parishioners of one church, mostly Croatians, said to him, "Fine. You want to close our church? Then give us back all the sacred objects that we and our fathers and grandfathers donated to this church." Of course, Quinn refused, saying that he was the Sole Corporation and owned everything in the diocese. But the people wouldn't take no for an answer, and so they ended up taking back all the objects they donated, down to the candlesticks!
The moral of this story is that no one has to stand by idly while the Newchurch barbarians rob them of their Traditional Catholic Mass, Sacraments, doctrine, morality, and heritage. No one has any obligation whatsoever to patronize the Counterfeit Newchurch with his attendance and money. Because the Counterfeit Church, otherwise known as the Great Facade, is sacrilegious, irreverent, blasphemous, and invalid, the obligation upon true Catholics is not to have anything to do with it.
If the Novus Ordinarians wanted to correct the situation, they could do so virtually overnight. Can you imagine what Benedict-Ratzinger's reaction would be if even half the Novus Ordinarians deserted the Novus Ordo temples and cut off the purse-strings? The Traditional Latin Mass would be back overnight, and the immoral Newchurch bishops would be gone in a flash! However, as long as the Novus Ordinarians act like sheep, they will get exactly what happens to sheep: to be slaughtered.
In the fullness of time, our churches will be returned, and many of them will be returned to the Traditional Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments. This is devoutly to be prayed for. That time grows ever closer. "It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep.... The night is passed, and the day is at hand" (Romans 13:12/DRV).
Taking the recent advice offered by TRADITIO, the Council of Parishes plans to ask the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops at its meeting in Chicago the week of June 12 how diocesan bishops can close its parishes by claiming that it owns the properties, while the Conference's own president, William Skylstad, is trying to fend off lawsuits by clergy-abuse victims by claiming that church assets belong to parishioners. The Council of Parishes has advanced TRADITIO's logic that "this is just a glaring inconsistency." The council wants the Newchurch bishops to clarify how Church law defines ownership of parish assets.
In May, the Conference's president, Newchurch Bishop William Skylstad, of Spokane, filed documents in U.S. Bankruptcy Court claiming that his diocese cannot sell churches and other buildings to settle sexual-abuse claims because it does not own the property, but merely holds them in trust. Yet in recent years, dioceses have in fact sold off hundreds of millions of dollars of parish properties to recoup funds lost in sex crimes and embezzlement lawsuits.
As TRADITIO and the Council of Parishes argues, you can't have it both ways. You can't claim, as the Newchurch Archdiocese of Boston is pusillanimously attempting to do, that dioceses own parishes if they are not in bankruptcy, but not if they are in bankruptcy. (Sounds like Bill Clinton's silly defense against perjury: "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is," doesn't it?)
It may be that eventually Newchurch parishes will be returned to the "lay trusteeship" system that was the rule in the 19th century. True, some parishes could go bonkers under local control, with priestesses and danceuses, but quite a number could very well choose to dump the New Order with its "New Mess," RCIA, "eucharistic ministers," and other unCatholic nonsense, and return to the Roman Catholic Faith with the true Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, morality, and doctrine again. It could be just the beginning of the counter-revolutionary restoration that traditional Catholics have been praying for for over forty years.
A while back we were informed that six new "Indult" Masses were being offered. So, we decided to check them out. Many indultarians slavishly hoot the "generosity" of those Novus Ordo bishops who establish these "Indult" Masses, but let's look deeper. What we found was interesting and fits a consistent pattern with the "indult" situation.
First of all, there aren't six new "Indult" Masses, but five. One replaces another that had been held at a different church. Of the remaining five, three are obviously intended to butt heads directly with already established non-diocesan Traditional Masses (one independent, two SSPX), and the remaining two are not far from already existing Traditional Latin Masses.
It is very clear from this example and many others in the past that the "Indult" Mass is being used not to expand the Traditional Latin Mass to new areas, but to counter already existing Traditional Latin Masses that are courageously operating outside the auspices of the Novus Ordo dioceses. In fact, we are informed that one of these new "Indult" Masses is being held right down the street from an already-existing SSPX chapel. "Why not put it on the other side of the diocese?," you ask. Because the Novus Ordo bishop's intention is not to expand the availability of the true Mass, but to knock heads with the existing traditional site!
True to form, this Newchurch bishop is engaging not in religion, but in control and power-play. Reports have it that he is even telling traditional Catholics that they cannot satisfy their Sunday Mass "obligation" by attending the established traditional site. The record of these Newchurch bishops is that they will stop at no lie to suppress the true Roman Catholic Faith. Even Newrome has publicly stated (if it really makes any difference) that any Traditional Latin Mass is satisfying.
Of course, traditional Catholics don't need Newrome to tell them that. They already have Catholic and Apostolic Tradition on their side, not to mention a Solemn Papal Bull conferring their right and obligation to the Traditional Latin Mass in perpetuity. For further information, see FAQ09.TXT: Am I Obliged to Attend the New Mass and Sacraments? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
TRADITIO's advice is not to support such chicanery of the Newchurch bishops, but to stand by the established traditional sites. Moreover, those who go to these "Indult" Masses and put money in the collection plate are supporting the New Order, pure and simple. Part of their money is going to the corrupt Newchurch diocese to pay off sex and embezzlement crimes and to support the structure that permits these crimes to continue.
And we won't even speak of the greater crime of the Newchurch dioceses in pandering the New Mess and Sakraments, New Morality, and New Doctrine. Traditional Catholics, in good faith, cannot simply say, "As long as I've got what I want, everybody else be damned!" That is not Catholic; that is not even Christian.
Novus Ordinarians better open their eyes to what is going on around them. Their sect is sinking in moral corruption from the pope on down. Their "communion" is an invalid "cookie." Their doctrine has been gutted.
One of the largest dioceses in the United States is being used as a testbed for the next stage of the New Religion. In Los Angeles, priests, having already been reduced to "presbyters" since the New Ordinal of 1969, now don't even answer to the name "pastor" any longer. Take Presbyter Laurence Estrada, who used to be pastor of St. Stephen's. You can still find him at St. Stephen's, but he isn't the pastor. He has become a so-called "sacramental minister" (sounds like a lay "eucharistic minister," doesn't it?), while Sister Susie Slater acts as de-facto pastor, even though Estrada is right there. Susie is quite hip to this liberalistic Protestant situation: "I love to vision for the future and think about how we're going to get there." A future featuring pagan priestesses, no doubt, doing the "liturgical dance" on the altar. [Tidings, L.A. Catholic]
As "pastor," Susie baptizes, witnesses marriages, officiates at funerals, and preaches homilies. This is all part of the New Religion that is being implemented with the apparent approval of Newrome, Benedict-Ratzinger, and new Doctrine Czar Levada. Roger Cardinal Mahony, a unCatholic fruitcake who can't even define properly what "communion" is, is taking the lead for Newrome in testing a Newchurch without priests, but full of priestesses. One can only wonder why Newrome, Newvatican, and New Religionists don't just give up the ghost and become liberalist Protestants! There is no doubt what is happening here. Mahony is clear about it. "What is called for is a major reorientation in our thinking about ministry as well as in our ministerial practice." Translation: priests are passe; bring on the priestesses!
Yet the Novus Ordinarians stand by, watching the whole thing and doing nothing. No sense of outrage at the theft of their Catholic religion. On the contrary, they keep ponying up donations in the collection plate to fund the immorality. Vladimir Lenin coined the term "useful idiots" for those Western commentators who provided cover for Communist atrocities in the press and elsewhere, assuring the West that Communism was nothing to be feared.
That term seems quite appropriate in our day for the apologists for the New Order Religion. These Novus Ordinarians are being used as patsies for the introduction of an anti-Catholic New Religion, being introduced through the mechanisms of Newchurch. Maybe in 1969 they could plead ignorance, but no longer. The reality in 2005 is in front of their eyes. Only a "useful idiot" could be blind to the handwriting on the wall.
What makes the pew Novus Ordinarians individually morally guilty in this affair is the fact that although the number of Newchurch donors has fallen in the past few years, the amount contributed overall has held steady, according to a study of Newchurch finances, at a time when over $1,000,000,000 of these funds has already been spent on sex crimes. Truly, these Novus Ordinarians must be the "useful idiots" that Lenin described. They might as well be spending their money on prostitution or abortion! Next time the Novus Ordinarians give you a hard time about your traditional Catholicism, counter with their guilt for personally funding the immoralities of Newchurch!
When the Rev. Derek Price replaced traditional Anglican services (similar to some Novus Ordo services) at St. Paul's, Cumbria, with a more evangelical approach, including gospel-style singing and clapping, 60 parishioners walked out. Since the average attendance at Anglican services is now fewer than ten, that's a big walkout! Three months ago, Price's wife Deborah danced bare-foot around the coffin at a funeral. He has also replaced the pipe organ with a CD player.
Price also faced criticism over plans to replace pews with flexible seating. He has been accused of failing to support the organist, choir, and youth orchestra at the Victorian Gothic-style church, built from pink sandstone and dedicated in 1871. The organist has already quit.
In a statement that could just as easily come from a Novus Ordo bishop, Anglican bishop Dow supported the wreckovation, saying: "Derek is seeking to shape a church in the generations ahead. This is bound to be a difficult exercise, but Derek and St Paul's have my full support." [U.K. News Telegraph]
Too bad more Novus Ordinarians don't walk out on the wreckovation of their churches.
All too many people take at face value what they hear out of Newvatican without applying the appropriate skepticism because it is now an admitted P.R. factory.
An expose by Chiesa Press of Rome has revealed that since 1984, when the tenure of the current head of the Press Office, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, a Spaniard and an Opus Deista, began, Navarro has been a "spin doctor, an editor, a P.R. man, and investigator, advisor, diplomat, and ambassador for the pope."
Originally, the Vatican's Information Office was associated with the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, but in 1966, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, it was renamed the Vatican Press Office and its purpose gradually became more propagandistic than informational. In 1988, JPII, in his Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus, dropped the pretence that it was an informational service and redefined its purpose as to propagandize "the acts of the supreme pontiff and the activities of the Holy See." In other words, the Vatican Press Office became an advertising agency for the personality cult of the post-Vatican II popes.
According to Chiesa Press, Navarro has turned the Vatican's Press Office into a "full-scale factory of the pope's public image," not of the Catholic religion. Navarro, with the popes' connivance, even corrupts the factuality of the information that Newvatican provides. Chiesa Press reports a number of cases in which the Goebbelsesque Navarro was engaged in cover-ups -- or outright lies to the press.
The moral of this story is: Don't believe a thing you hear from Newvatican. It is likely manufactured propaganda for uncritical minds.
William Levada, Newchurch archbishop of that Sodom-by-the-Bay, San Francisco, whom Benedict-Ratzinger has selected to be the new Doctrine Congregation Czar, has now made it clear how he will approach his office. He will dish out "love," not Catholic doctrine.
Never one to promote Catholic doctrine -- this was the bishop, remember, who gave into city demands to pay benefits to employees' homosexual partners and never in his ten-year tenure delivered one sermon against the "sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance --, Levada, in an interview with the Catholic News Service on June 6, spoke of "helping the Church see how beautiful and wonderful God's love is, as it has been revealed to us; that's what theology is about. So I think that's the primary job of this congregation." William, you're too old to be a San Francisco flower-child!
When it comes to religious-political issues like last year's debate in the United States over Newchurch politicians and their mastication of the Novus Ordo communion cookie, Levada said that his "Congregation is there to help, not meddle." So, you "conservative" Novus Ordinarians, don't look for any discipline of errant Novus Ordinarian clergy. Levada is one of them!
As to the Great Sex and Embezzlement Scandal that has rocked the United States and the world, Levada said that the Newchurch bishops' new sex abuse policies have been "diligently and vigorously implemented" in U.S. dioceses. Sure, William, and elephants fly! Your own Sex Crimes Committee Chairmen, one an FBI agent and one an appellate court justice, have publicly stated that the U.S. bishops have merely put on a better propaganda front while the crimes go on and are in fact operating like a Mafia.
Just as TRADITIO predicted from the beginning, we can already give the horse-laugh to the conservatives' hopes that Benedict-Ratzinger would be a truly Catholic pope, promoting Catholic morality and true Catholic doctrine. Benedict-Ratzinger has appointed as his #3 guy the likes of Barney Frank!
TRADITIO has covered before how the post-conciliar Jesuits have gone way over the edge. Now Catholic News announces that a rock-shop quartet of this ilk are going to issue a new album of liturgical prurience. "There are some wonderful songs for funerals [funerals!], some for prayers, and some that are rock-sounding." Instrumentation will be profane, using instruments that have been historically condemned by the Church for sacred music: "piano and guitar, but augmented with some bass, flutes, drums, oboes, and strings." In their heyday twenty years ago, the St. Louis Jesuits were hailed by demented Novus Ordinarians "a sort of religious equivalent of the Beatles." 'Nuf said.
Dear Fr. Moderator:
What do you think of the film Barabbas and the other biblical epics from the 1950s?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
Many of them are quite well done and reflect a traditional understanding of the Faith, within the bounds of literary creativity.
Barabbas, starring Anthony Quinn, portrays the Jewish criminal that was freed when Christ was condemned. A strong cast, including several greats of the golden years of film, participates in a lavish production based upon the Langerkvist novel.
The second part of the film is set in Rome at the time of Nero, and unlike so many modern Roman-period films, which include hardly a single word of Latin, one sees and hears Latin all around. Barabbas enters the catacombs to hear the Pater Noster being recited in Latin, and a funeral begins with the antiphonal chanting in Latin of Psalm 50, the Miserere. In the background music, an only slightly-arranged version of Kyrie XI, Orbis Factor, is heard as a leit-motif. These things do not occur to modern writers, directors, and composers, who longer have the classical sense that their predecessors of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s did.
For further information, see FAQ12.TXT: What Traditional Films Do You Recommend? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
I am what you would consider to be a "conservative" Novus Ordinarian. This past weekend I attended Reconciliation. I proceeded with the sacrament as normal, and when I stated that I had attended confession last week, my confessor rudely interrupted me. He asked why I had attended last week and still wanted to attend this week, and then proceeded to explain that weekly confession is discouraged. Moreover, when I confessed a mortal sin, he blew it off. My question is: has Newvatican changed its stance on the importance of mortal sin?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
What Newvatican has done, as it has done with the New Mess, is to change the form, matter, and/or intention of the sacraments to putative invalidity (except in the case of Baptism and Matrimony, although the former has been coming into more and more into question in individual cases, as has been covered here in the TRADITIO Commentaries).
Since Newchurch essentially doesn't recognize sin in the Catholic sense (as you yourself have discovered), there is no matter for the sacrament, thus its invalidity. This is a common experience with "Reconciliation," which is really different from the Sacrament of Confession, or Penance, that the Church traditionally has had. It has been turned into a kind of pop psychology with little or nothing of religion about it. People confess sins only to be told that things that they know are sins are not -- unless you chop down a tree or forget to vote!
In fact, since 1968, when the "New Ordinal" was issued, Novus Ordo Presbyters aren't even explicitly ordained with the words: Accipe Spiritum sanctum: quorum remiseris peccata, remittuntur eis, et quorum retinueris, retenta sunt [Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins thou shalt forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins thou shalt retain, they are retained.]
Given what you know now, from your own experience, you cannot plead ignorance and continue blindly attending the New Order Religion with its counterfeit Mess and sacraments. If you need further background on the invalidity of many Novus Ordo sacraments, we would recommend the excellent treatment by Frs. Dominic & Francisco Radecki, What Has Happened to the Catholic Church?, a methodical, but eminently readable, study of the invalidating changes introduced into the Mass and Sacraments since Vatican II. These priests give detailed comparisons of the traditional and Novus Ordo Mass and Sacramental formulae with full references. For further information, see FAQ05.TXT: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
Dear Fr. Moderator:
My question concerns the Knights of Columbus. I have been a member of this long-standing Catholic organization for several years now. I know that the Knights support some good causes and do charity work. But the Knights have evolved right along with the Modernist Novus Ordo Church and have become one of its defenders.
It has also come to my attention that, at least where I am from, a lot of the money the Knights raise goes to support the Novus Ordo temples, which I just don't think I can condone any more. I myself refuse to give Novus Ordo parishes money of my own; why should I support the Knights when they do it? How do I balance wanting to participate in the Knights' good work and wishing to stay away from the things that I know aren't supporting the true Catholic faith?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
You have really answered your own question. The Knights of Columbus are not knights of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. They have forsworn themselves and serve, if you will, "the dark side" of the battle.
You yourself have described their modern essence as serving false religion. The fact that they might do some "charitable" work on the side is just not good enough when they are committing a greater sin against charity by promoting a false Faith.
In conscience, it seems, you must end your membership in such an organization. You might as well join the Salvation Army, which does good work. But I doubt that you would feel morally comfortable about this, because the essence of that organization is Protestant.
There are many fine non-religious charitable organizations that are based on good morality and are not founded in a false Faith. We would suggest that you look into joining one of these. Don't let history or a name deceive you. Most once Catholic organizations are Catholic no longer. Same with the Novus Ordo Mess. Same with the Novus Ordo Sakraments. Same with the Novus Ordo doctrine. They're not Catholic, no matter what the signs say.
If anyone doubts that that Newrome has become a mafia, all one has to do is observe what has happened to Novus Ordo presbyters who have publicly blown the whistle on Newchurch crimes.
TRADITIO reported earlier on the case of Newchurch presbyter Andrew Dowgiert, of Miami, who has sued the archdiocese on for wrongly firing him, for slander, and for whistle-blower retaliation when he blew the whistle about financial improprieties and rampant homosexual activity and fraud by another presbyter in the archdiocese.
In another case in Boston, the vice rector of the diocesan seminary, who blew the whistle to his Newchurch bishop that there were immoralities going on at the seminary, was illegally committed to a mental hospital. The court freed the presbyter, who subsequently sued the archdiocese for millions.
Now Presbyter Steven Gilhooley, who wrote an book entitled The Pygama Parada on the sex abuse he suffered while growing up in a Edinburgh seminary has disappeared. In 2001, Presbyter Francis Bligh (what an appropriate name!) was jailed for two and a half years and placed on the sex offenders' register for life on ten counts of crime.
Some suspect foul-play against Gilhooley on the part of the Newvatican, since in his last public statement before disappearing, Gilhooley criticized the appointment as pope of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, whom he accused of trying to silence him. As previously reported on TRADITIO, Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, had a bad record as Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith in attempting to silence Newchurch clergy who publicly expose crimes on the part of the Newchurch bishops and presbyters.
Gilhooley claimed in the book, which graphically described the abuse and brutal regime he suffered while growing up at the seminary, had provoked the wrath of Newvatican. He stated: "I went public [over the abuse] at great personal cost to myself, and reported my abuser to the police. He was given a jail sentence. Led by Cardinal Ratzinger, Rome's response was to deliver a threat to my archbishop [Keith Cardinal O'Brien] that if he didn't silence me, they'd discipline him. I was treated as the perpetrator rather than the victim." [Edinburgh Scotsman]
Archbishop O'Brien declined to comment on the claim that he had been pressured by Cardinal Ratzinger to keep Gilhooley quiet. Hmmm. It appears that neither the Newchurch bishops nor Newrome nor the pope have changed their pattern of criminal complicity in sex crimes and embezzlement. They are just a morally rotten now as they were some five or more years ago when the Newchurch Great Sex and Embezzlement Scandal came to public light.
The moral culpability goes to the very top. Certainly JPII, far from the picture of a saint, abetted the crimes by silence and inaction. Now we found out that Benedict-Ratzinger tried to silence whistle-blowing Newchurch clergy and threatened archbishops to keep them silent. Why does none of this corruption in Newchurch surprise us?
The world is becoming more and more aware of the fact that the New Order is not to be taken seriously, but should be the butt of comedy. So the British Broadcasting Corporation has produced a cartoon sitcom, Popetown, modeled after Bevis and Butthead, to portray the silliness of Newvatican and its minions. Starring are a less-than-charming pope and corrupt cardinals.
The Novus Ordinarians have called the cartoon comedy "offensive and nothing more than an intolerant derision of Catholic beliefs." We beg to differ. These are not Catholic beliefs; they are Newchurch beliefs. Turnabout is fair play. The Novus Ordiniarians stole the true Church and re-engineered it into a farce, so they can hardly complain when their religious crime is pointed out and satirized.
The Novus Ordo service is a joke, not a Mass. The Newchurch hierarchy has sunk into persistent corruption and crime, which is only getting worse. Church doctrine is now going to be "run" by an archbishop who panders to "gay rights." Solemn processes such as canonization have been turned into a joke, reliant upon politics and P.R. rather than religion.
What do these Novus Ordinarians expect?
If there's anything the Newchurch knows better than sex crimes, it's thievery. Embezzlement is out of control in Newchurch, and the Novus Ordinarians keep funding it.
Hot on the heels of the Presbyter Stravinskas scandal is the latest case in point. Presbyter-Pastor Jean-Michel Lastiri in 20 months converted to his personal use (read: embezzled) $60,000. The embezzled money included $20,000 in travel expenses, $10,000 in personal goods, and $10,000 in a personal loan. Apparently, the travel money was used for "assignations" in various cities around the United States. [Merced Sun Star]
A member of the audit committee admitted that parishioners had been withholding contributions because of the thefts. And so what happened? Newchurch Bishop John Steinbock, of Fresno, was forced to institute the audit. Well, Fresnoans, why not carry this technique one step further? Tell Steinbock that you're not resuming your contributions until he resumes the True Mass. Get the usurpers out of the parishes altogether!
We all know, if we're honest with ourselves, that the New Order doesn't have the Holy Eucharist any more, just a cookie, with invalid ingredients. Moreover, you can't confect the Holy Eucharist without a valid Catholic and Apostolic Mass and valid intention, and that too leaves the Novus Ordo cookie invalid.
As a result of the fact that the New Order lacks the Holy Eucharist, it is no surprise that Newchurch has fallen into the most immoral and faithless condition, from the local parish presbyter right on up to and including the pope. It is also no surprise that Newchurch plays games with its invalid cookie. For example, in late May, Newchurch Roger Cardinal Mahony addressed Seattle parish leaders as part of the celebration of the "Year of the Eucharist." In it, he made his usual unCatholic remarks about the "eucharist," for example:
The eucharist is not "just" the physical reality of the bread and wine, but "the principle and plan of mission." It sounds as if the cookie is supposed to be the servant of some Newchurch corporate machine, doesn't it?
The eucharist is not "simply" the Corpus Christi. Therefore, Mahony dumps on adoration of the cookie in the tabernacle, calling it a "misconception." So much for Newchurch "adoration." Isn't it interesting that in this comment Mahony reflects Benedict-Ratzinger's apparent assertion, in his little-known German work entitled Die Sakramentale Begruendung Christlicher Existenz (Meitingen: Kyrios-Verlag, 1970), that the Holy Eucharist is the not sacramental Body and Blood of Christ, that Our Lord is not present in the tabernacle, and that the church is not the House of God. Instead, he says: "To go to church on the ground that one can visit God, Who is present, there is a senseless act which the modern man rightfully rejects."
Novus Ordinarians get angry at TRADITIO when we say that the Novus Ordo thing is a "cookie." We say that first because even Newchurch and Newvatican admits this fact. In a Letter from the Cardinal Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the President of the [U.S.] National Council of Catholic Bishops, as approved by Pope John Paul II on May 11, 1979, the Congregation found evidence that priests "have mistakenly used an element for the Eucharist other than genuine bread" after the NCCB's own Committee on the Liturgy admitted "abuses in regard to the making of bread for the Holy Eucharist." The Newchurch U.S. bishops never disseminated Newvatican's letter to their clergy, and the evidence indicates that in the intervening 25 years, the invalidity of matter has become rampant, as confirmed by cookie "recipes" that the Newchurch bishops publish for their dioceses.
Add to this the New Order's invalid form and intention, and it is, therefore, 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. For further information, see CURAE.TXT: Apostolicae Curae Apostolic Letter in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
That is why it is unconscionable for any true Catholic to worship the cookie at a Novus Ordo "Mess" or to participate in "eucharistic adoration" of a cookie. If traditional Catholics get any flack from their Novus Ordo family and friends, they should just say: "The pope said it's invalid, and the bishops are disobeying him by not fixing it. I'm not going into a Novus Ordo temple until the True Mass is restored, and the valid Holy Eucharist is confected." Then leave the rest up to them. If they are sincere, they will do the research. They will discover their error in adhering to the Novus Ordo service.
It seems that Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer, usurping Archbishop of Canterbury, may have won out in Britain after all. At one time the British took up arms to keep their Traditional Latin Mass instead of being forced into the Anglican service. At one time the Catholic Church in Britain produced such orators and theologians as John Henry Cardinal Newman.
Now, it seems, the Church of the New Order in the Diocese of Westminster will become just like the Anglicans. Current plans endorsed by Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, Primate of Newchurch in England and Wales (no Basil Cardinal Hume he!), would have lay people take on "huge new responsibilities," from running parishes to officiating at church services. Full-time lay ministers would live in rectories and routinely preside at weekday services using pre-"consecrated" Novus Ordo cookies.
How else has Newchurch wrecked the British Catholic Church?
Before the Protestant Revolution all roads led to Rome. After the Revolution British Catholics were forcibly cut off from Rome. In the 19th century, the ties were re-established, but now Vatican II has completed the anti-Catholic Revolution in Britain.
From a flyer found in a Novus Ordo temple:
Each year hundreds of [illegal] migrants die in the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from hunger, thirst, exposure, and exhaustion trying to find a[n illegal] job in the promised land.... The [Newchurch] bishops ... are providing aid along the U.S./Mexico border.
So now the Newchurch bishops -- Their Graces the Heretics, Schismatics, and Obstructors of Justice -- are again Lawbreakers, Accessories after the Fact, for aiding and abetting the violation of the sovereignty of the United States.
Why are these illegal migrants hungry, thirsty, exposed, and exhausted? Because they have done it to themselves by attempting to violate U.S. borders. If the Newchurch bishops are so concerned to assist these people, why don't they do so at the source? Put pressure on the corrupt President of Mexico, Vincente Fox, and force him to clean up his country so that his citizens don't feel that they have to get out.
As usual, the Newchurch bishops are clueless. Just another reason that Novus Ordinarians shouldn't put a penny into the collection plate. By doing so, they are suborning lawbreaking -- just like their bishops.
TRADITIO has long had anti-traditionalist Peter Stravinskas, of Catholic Answer, on its Index Auctorum Prohibitorum. (For further information, see FAQ05: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend?) Like so many other "conservative" Novus Ordinarians, his writings have displayed a virulent hostility to traditional Catholicism. It is as if these people knew that their position is untenable. You can't be "conservative" and "New Order" at the same time. Thus, they display a more virulent hostility even than the liberalist Novus Ordinarians from the frustration of their conflicted position.
Many people mistakenly think that the Newchurch Great Scandal is only one of sex crimes and bishops obstructing justice. Actually, it is not. An equally, if not more important, aspect of the Great Scandal is embezzlement. Newchurch presbyters and bishops are stealing church money right and left. It is if the sex crimes were a cover-up for the rampant embezzlement. Case in point: Newchurch Archbishop Rembert Weakland admitted to stealing half a million dollars of Church money, and there is no evidence that JPII asked him to return it.
Now Newchurch Archbishop Elden Curtiss has told Stravinskas to get out. Stravinskas' handling of a south Omaha, Nebraska, parish's money is under police investigation after parishioners filed a report of a possible embezzlement. Detectives have told a judge that it appears St. Anthony parish money was spent on Stravinskas' personal expenses, including personal travel, mortgage payments, and credit cards. This is what is known as the sin of conversion, converting the money of others under one's control to one's own personal use. It is theft, pure and simple.
In a court filing last month, Omaha police that said two parish funds -- one worth $82,000 and the other worth $71,000 -- were nearly wiped out. Only $4,200 remained from the $153,000 total, detectives told a judge. But the Omaha World-Herald reports that those funds represented only part of the parish's savings. People knowledgeable about the situation said that the money taken from those accounts was only part of a larger amount spent from August 2002, when Stravinskas arrived, until March 2004, when the Archdiocese of Omaha froze St. Anthony parish funds.
Stravinskas leaves behind him a train wreck. Curtiss brought him to Omaha when a clerical group Stravinskas had founded there, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, had been disbanded. Although a presbyter from the Newchurch diocese of Boise, Stravinskas hasn't worked there in 25 years. Curtiss has declined to be interviewed about the parish's finances or about how he knows Stravinskas or why he brought him to Omaha. Hmmm, skeletons in the closet, bishop? Stravinskas has been praised by the New Order as one of its best mouthpieces. Although jhe poses as a "traditionalist," Stravinskas is really a coy Novus Ordinarian, appearing on the Charismatic television network EWTN, formerly run by the now debilitated Mother Angelica.
In Omaha, Stravinskas registered a new organization, the Priestly Society of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, as a Nebraska nonprofit corporation, based at the St. Anthony rectory. Now it appears that this organization may have been a ruse to launder money. Stravinskas hired a contractor to renovate parish buildings. at a cost of $126,000. Because the 3x4 metre rooms, in which nuns had once lived in convent, were too "cramped" for Stravinskas and company, Stravinskas had ordered built a three-room suite, with new flooring, a patio door, windows, a wine rack, and a deck. The diocese stopped the work on Good Friday 2004 after an archdiocese audit.
So, we have yet another noted Newchurch presbyter caught with his cassock down. And yet the Novus Ordinarians plunk their money into the collection plate Sunday after Sunday to finance embezzlement, child abuse, obstruction of justice. And Benedict-Ratzinger, six weeks into his pontificate, has yet to express outrage against his clergy, but plays the same role as JPII the Silent Accessory.
Doesn't the New Order just get more and more bizarre? It all fits: the "Clown Mess," the clown-loving JPII, and the clown-bishops of the New Order. But that is what will continue to happen because New Order is not Catholic. It is New Age, Modernistic, Masonic, pagan.
It seems now that a New Order cult has arisen, which sees Padre Pio as the incarnation of Obi Wan Kenobi, the Jedi master of Star Wars fiction, representing the "good side of the Force." In Bologna's garden of Porta Saragozza outside the Museum of the Madonna di San Luca, beside a statue to Padre Pio another statue has been erected of Yoda, a fictional Jedi master, who was the tutor of Obi Wan Kenobi. [La Repubblica]
Lest it be thought that this is just some local aberration, in May Yoda was being cited in a Church of Ireland report on children's ministry. According to the report, the Church's role is not to "fill buckets" but to "light fires" in a model of ministry that owes more to Yoda in Star Wars than to traditional instructional models.
The situation is reminiscent of the situation at a New Order church in San Jose, California, where a statue the pagan god Queltzelcoatl was erected nearby one of Our Lady of Peace. In the cult of the New Order, sanity and insanity go hand in hand. That explains a lot about the modus operandi of the New Order.
The "conservative" Novus Ordinarians will try to justify their position by referring only to what they think is their rational side. However, they will never acknowledge the multitudinous instances of irrationality that accompany it. If you have any doubt of that, just see The Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery as an example of the New Order's essential irrationality. Then there are the Charismatics, the Focolarists, the Cursilloans, and all the Bacchic rest.
It seems that the New Order can no longer distinguish between reality and fantasy. "They ... became vain in their thoughts. And their foolish heart was darkened. For, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools." (St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 2:21-22/DRV).
Return to Commentaries from the Mailbox.