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Newchurch Archbishop Paul Loverde, of Arlington, Virginia, had just lifted the ban on "altar girls" on March 26, and Presbyter Leonard Tuozzolo, of Our Lady Queen of Peace Newchurch, couldn't wait to bring them up to the "table" the following Sunday. One girl held the Novus Ordo Lectionary open while the presbyter read from it. Another "altar girl" brought water to the table. A third "altar girl" followed the presbyter down the aisle while he glad-handed the congregation.
And what was this latter's devout comment on the experience of being the first altar servette in the diocese? "It was a deeply spiritual experience"? "I felt closer to the Lord"? Not at all! "It was fun," she said. When the presbyter announced that he was "accepting applications" for "altar girls," the Novus Ordinarians cried out: "Yay!"
It has been recognized in the Washington press (Arlington is just outside of Washington, D.C.) that "that fox" (to use Christ's term of derision for Herod), Newchurch Bishop Loverde, had tried to pull a fast one to defuse objections to the utilization of "altar girls." He "approved" his first two "Indult" Masses at the same time. Just more proof that the "Indult" is a temporary ploy to be used to introduce more Novus Ordo practices without "conservative" Novus Ordinarians objecting too much.
You Novus Ordinarians who thought that the New Mess was going to get better because Benedict-Ratzinger is supposed to be "conservative," think again! Newpope's Master of Liturgical Ceremonies, Archbishop Piero Marini, was asked in a Milan interview about "liturgical abuses."
Far from being concerned about "liturgical abuses," Marini is perfectly comfortable with experimentalism. Sure, the 300 "Eucharistic prayers" in use in Belgium and Holland is a bit much, he says, but twelve is okay. What Marini doesn't advocate is the Catholic and Apostolic one, which not even popes dared to change (they don't have the authority) for 1950 years.
What scares the bejiggers out of Marini is what he calls "neoritualism," of which the Traditional Latin Mass is the best example. He doesn't want a priest who celebrates Mass thinking: "Good, I said my Mass following the rite to the letter. I'm fine." This is not good; the celebration is not slavish respect for liturgical norms. Well, what's so bad about that? That's been the Catholic way almost 2000 years! Apparently, Newpope's liturgiac Marini is perfectly comfortable with Hannibal Bugnini's Messes sauvage, or "wild Masses," which offended even the cuckolded Paul VI, who would sign off on any liturgical nonsense that Bugnini stuck under his nose.
As far as the "indult" Mass is concerned, Marini said that limited permission was given to accommodate "old" fogies who were attached to the "old" rite. Marini added, "But to go beyond this is to go beyond the Church. If the liturgy is the sign of the unity of the Church, you cannot create groups of faithful who pray in a certain way on this day at this hour, then an hour later another group prays in another way." In other words, you can't have the Novus Ordo Mess and the Traditional Latin Mass co-existing. That is the general view of Newchurch bishops. And in that they're right. That is why no SSPX sellout will work.
Now listen to Marini's final contradiction: "First of all, we must understand that the liturgy is a sign of unity." Exactly. And that unity is the Catholic and Apostolic Traditional Latin Mass: "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (St. Paul to the Ephesians, 4:5/DRV), one Roman rite from Sts. Peter & Paul, through the Apostolic Roman Fathers, through the Roman Fathers and Doctors of the Patristic Age, right on down to us.
If anyone doubts that the New Mess is a "liturgy of disunity," all the proof you need is the doctrinal, moral, and liturgical mess that Newchurch finds itself in today, not a generation after Vatican II!
There they go again! The Washington Post reports that Newchurch cardinals are scrambling to defeat bills that would hold them fully liable for sex crimes in their dioceses. Theodore Cardinal "Muslim" McCarrick, known for his public prayers to Allah, and William Cardinal "Kooky" Keeler have expressed opposition to the bills to every individual member of Maryland's House Judiciary Committee. They have also hired a prominent Annapolis law firm to lobby for the Maryland Catholic [sic] Conference, their regular lobbying arm.
Delegate Carol Petzold described Newhurch's lobbying as "just short of frantic. It appears to be a very high priority with them." Delegate Samuel Rosenberg said that he was contacted by a local rabbi who had received an irate call from Keeler because Jewish lawmakers were sponsoring the bills. (It seems that "oecumenism" is failing!) Committee member Anthony Brown, who is a Novus Ordinarian, said he and his wife were invited by McCarrick to "a social call" at the cardinal's residence, at which the cardinal lobbied against the bills.
The Pennsylvania Appellate Court has ruled that the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic [sic] Diocese must pay $1,700,000 in punitive damages to a man abused hundreds of times by a presbyter in the 1970s because Newchurch Bishop James Hogan's oversight of paedophile presbyters was "outrageous." Documents detailing Hogan's mismanagement of other paedophile priests were the key to the decision.
In one instance, when Hogan learned that a presbyter, who acknowledged abusing five children, was still bringing children to his sleeping quarters, Hogan wrote: "For the time being, cool any and all association with the youth. Let's get the case settled first. Don't jeopardize it. For it could yet cause you and the diocese a bit of heartache."
Yes, of course. The first concern for these Newchurch bishops is always for the diocese, not the child-victim. They have learned nothing. To call these criminals "Catholic" bishops is an outrage.
Dear Fathers:
In the Litany of the Sacred Heart, to what does the invocation to the "desire of the everlasting hills" refer?
The Fathers Reply.
Desiderium collium aeternorum is a phrase used in Genesis (49:26). It is a reference to the coming of the Messias, for whom all nature, represented by the everlasting hills, yearns.
Dear Fathers:
For many years I was under the impression that documents like Quanta cura, the Syllabus of Errors, and Mortalium Annos were considered infallible. Now, I read that all of these might be infallible, might not be, some theologians say yes, some no, some say not ex cathedra, some say Ordinary Universal Magisterium. Could you cut through all of this verbiage and give us your always direct insights into the issue?
The Fathers Reply.
What you are describing is a result of the Modernist errors of Vatican II period. It is occurring in Newchurch because the Modernists don't want to be bound to anything divine or "infallible." They want to be able to change Newchurch teachings at will: on divorce, on homosexuality, on abortion, etc.
All the "legal" verbiage conceals the fact that this is not a "legal" problem; it is a problem of basic Catholic belief. What you are calling "infallible" documents are really an expression of the unbroken Tradition of the Church, which the Modernists reject. At what point in the Apostolic Tradition did the Church encourage publicly joining in worship with heretics? At what point in the Apostolic Tradition did the Church teach Catholics to accept the truth of all religions "because we all worship the same god?"
Only the progeny of the "Illegitimate Council," Vatican II -- what we call Newchurch or the New Order -- teach this false "oecumenism." The Doctors of the Church are screaming down from heaven, railing against such an unCatholic outrage: Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, and all the rest.
The word is getting out once again that at least one "secret meeting" took place between Newvatican and the SSPX's Fellay. According to a March 24 report in the Italian periodical La Stampa:
A secret two day meeting in Rome, in mid November, between the leader of the Society of Saint Pius X and Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, had clarified some aspects; and Bishop Fellay and his right hand man, Franz Schmidberger, seemed willing to take a definitive step [toward the New Order], even if that would have cost the loss of some of the extreme fringe."
Apparently, the "extreme fringe" refers to the SSPXers who wish to remain faithful to their Archbishop-Founder's principles and not sell out to the New Order. La Stampa further reports that at the November meeting, it had supposedly been agreed that the SSPX would write Benedict-Ratzinger a letter asking that the Newchurch "excommunications" of the four bishops be eliminated, but the letter has not yet arrived. Such a letter, if it is ever written by Fellay to Newrome, would demonstrate sheer hypocrisy, as the SSPX has always held that the "excommunications" of the Society's bishops were invalid. Will Fellay now sidle up on bent knee to an "authority" that for almost twenty years he, the Society's Archbishop-Founder, and the SSPX as a whole have called false? Time will tell.
As Cardinal Kasper put it bluntly, "If they [the Society of St. Pius X] are willing to recognize the Council, there is the possibility of a resolution." Two other prominent cardinals made it clear that as a non-negotiable condition of any deal with Newchurch, SSPX would have to accept Vatican II. The SSPX would be forced to sign very specific theological statements to that effect before Newvatican would accept any "deal."
So, there we have it. This battle is not just for the "Latin Mass" (an ambiguous term that includes the invalid Novus Ordo service in Latin) or for some unnecessary "broader indult." It is not for some face-saving "reconciliation" to the New Order institution. It is, as the SSPX's Archbishop-F`ounder stated, a battle for the Roman Catholic Faith itself. Although certain people don't like to admit it, the New Theology, New Mess, New Sacraments, New Morality, and Newchurch are quite different from the Roman Catholic Church of two millennia. Selling out to the New Order to save face would be simply hypocritical and selling out Christ.
The SSPX, in order to get recognition by Newchurch will have to give up its Archbishop-Founder's principles and accept the "Illegitimate Council," Vatican II. If Fellay does that, he will be not only a traitor to his own consecrator, Archbishop Lefebvre, but also a proven hypocrite for all the world to see and discard, just as Newchurch and Newpope will discard him after he signs on the dotted line.
Good Catholics, if you have any doubt about that, just look what happened to the Society of St. John Vianney in Campos, Brazil, after it became a traitor to its Bishop-Founder, Antonio de Castro Meyer (who died the same year as Archbishop Lefebvre), when it sold out to Newrome in 2002. Within a year, its "Newchurch-approved" bishop, who claimed to be "exclusively traditional," was publicly concelebrating the invalid Novus Ordo service. Even the Society of St. Pius X admits that. After all, the SSPX was the organization who first published the photographs!
Here is another possible slant to keep in mind about the going-on in Newrome during the recent Cardinalatial Consistory. There has been a consistent fear among some SSPXers that Newrome's actions may be intended deliberately to split the SSPX by driving a rift between the liberalist Fellay faction and the traditional Lefebvrist faction. The recent consistory in Newrome may fly off on its own tangent, just as Vatican II did. Newrome may try to play a "full court press" on the Society, which the Society must find the fortitude to resist entirely. For, in the end, the Newchurch bishops will not stand a parallel traditional Church (nor should there be one; it should be the Church, purged of the Modernist New Order heresy).
Fr. Yves LeRoux, rector of the SSPX's U.S. seminary, in his monthly bulletin has drawn attention to the fact that Benedict-Ratzinger has stated (Entretien sur la Foi, 1985): "The true time of Vatican II has not yet come, and it has not even started to be received in an authentic way." LeRoux correctly points out that Newpope thus does not view the Council as being the origin of the present crisis in the Church, but rather its remedy! In other words, according to Benedict-Ratzinger, it's all a matter of interpretation. You make the texts say whatever you want them to for a given purpose.
LeRoux correctly concludes: "We reject this false problem of the interpretation of the Council and prefer to keep the doctrine of Christ, Who taught us to judge a tree by its fruits. All the hermeneutics of the world will crash against this divine and salutary evidence."
That has been the Society's consistent position. Will it now sell that position out for a "deal" with the Newchurch progeny of the "Illegitimate Council"?
We were delighted by the outpouring of interest in the question of Mozart and Masonism, elicited by a previous Commentary on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of his birth. We have been asked for more information on the status of Masonry in Mozart's time and are happy to oblige.
According to the distinguished British Catholic historian of the early 20th century, Msgr. Philip Hughes, the Church considered Freemasonry differently before the French Revolution (the Austrian composers Mozart and Haydn were pre-Revolutionary) than it did afterward. Although some concerns had been expressed by the Church before the Revolution, it wasn't until after Mozart's death (ob. 1791), in the turmoil of the war with France, that the Austrians grew concerned about secret societies, and in the mid 1790s Masonry was forbidden in Austria.
If Freemasonry during Mozart's lifetime (1756-1791) had been condemned universally by the Church, the question would remain: why did the Archbishop of Vienna, in whose employ both Mozart and Haydn prominently served, did not put a stop to the public Catholic Masonic lodge in his city and chastise his own composers for belonging to it? As a matter of fact, Haydn, Mozart, and certainly Mozart's father, were known to be devout Catholics.
It should hardly be necessary to point out that an academic discussion of the history in no way implies an approval of Freemasonic principles, which TRADITIO has strongly condemned on previous occasions too numerous to count, as being, among other things, one of the foundations of the invalid Novus Ordo service.
In a March 23 closed-door pre-meeting before the Ordinary Public Consistory of the College of Cardinals on March 24 to install 15 new Newchurch cardinals, Benedict-Ratzinger continued his policy of laying aside his position as pope and subordinating himself to collegial "talk-fest" with the cardinals. Among those being installed as cardinals are Archbishop William Levada, who took over Benedict's old job as Sex-crimes Czar, although Levada is himself under federal-court interrogations for his role in aiding and abetting rampant sex crimes in his two previous archdioceses of San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.
150 of the 193-member College of Cardinals were in attendance today supposedly for "a day of prayer and reflection." It didn't appear that the cardinals were doing much praying; instead, they were engaging in a political talk-fest. The hot topic on the list was relations with Mohammedanism. Newpope seems to want to kiss up to the Mohammedans. Unfortunately, his timing is bad. On the same date as the March 23 pre-meeting of cardinals, senior Mohammedan clerics demanded that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces." This is the religion of terrorism that Newpope wants to kiss up to.
Among other issues included in the cardinalatial talk-fest were the raising of the retirement age for bishops and cardinals from 75 to 80 and what to do, if anything, about the "schismatic" Society of St. Pius X and the "Indult" Mass. One of the choking points in doing anything with the latter is that it would be viewed by the vast majority of cardinals as "betraying the spirit of the Vatican II."
Among those who spoke on the issue of the state of the SSPX was Walter Cardinal Kasper, who views the SSPX as an unCatholic throwback and an obstacle to the Vatican II "oecumenism" that would bring the Novus Ordo cookie to the Protestants and to the divorced and remarried. Since the meeting was supposed to be secret, the cardinals didn't give details to the press when they broke for lunch, but admitted that there were "differing opinions."
Dario Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos said: "The Church is waiting with open arms" for the restoration of "full communion" with the Society of St. Pius X. Sure, if the SSPX sells out to Newrome, Newpope and Hoyos will be ecstatic that they have tricked the SSPX into the New Order. The SSPX should say, rather, that true Catholics are waiting with open arms for the adherents of the New Order to lay aside their errors and return to the Roman Catholic Faith!
In the March 24 installation ceremony at the consistory, each of the 15 new cardinals will take an oath and receive a red biretta from the pope, the same hat worn by traditional priests in black. Even this has been scaled down from the time that the galero, a wide-brimmed cardinal's hat with 15 red tassels on the brim called fiocchi was imposed. A red galero was the traditional symbol of a cardinal, hence the saying "receiving the red hat." On March 25, the new cardinals will receive their rings during a Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Mess in St. Peter's Square.
The ceremonial will elicit laughs from traditional Catholics when Newpope tells each one that the red of the biretta symbolizes their readiness to act, "even to the point of spilling your blood for the increase of the Christian faith, for peace and harmony among the people of God, for freedom and the spread of the Holy Roman Catholic Church." Of course, these cardinals deny the Catholic Faith in affirming the unCatholic New Order and have essentially eliminated any missionary spread of the Catholic Faith because of the Newchurch dogma, "All religions are equal. We all worship the same god."
Last week Presbyter Anthony Forte, the current pastor of the late Fr. Wickens' independent traditional chapel in West Orange, New Jersey, now wrested into the possession of Newchurch, conducted a meeting after each of the three Sunday Masses to present his plan to the parishioners for "the security of the Latin Mass." Forte took over from Presbyter John Perricone, who, as TRADITIO reported earlier, was ejected.
A couple of things made Forte's whole presentation less than credible. When parishioners raised the fact that the chapel had not conducted a financial meeting since the death of Fr. Wickens and pressed the pastor for information on the financial standing of the chapel, the pastor refused any specifics. His response caused much discontent, and many people left.
It's bad enough that the chapel is chained to the Modernized Missal of 1962 instead of the fully Traditional Latin Mass. What is really sad is that even to the Modernized Missal of 1962 are added Novus Ordo practices, and omissions of traditional practices, and a general Newchurch atmosphere of the whole place, which was absent while Fr. Wickens was alive. The atmosphere now says: "Come to the Latin Novus Ordo! But feel like a real, old-time Catholic! And put all your money in the collection basket!
The grand finale of the presentation was the pastor's admonition never to cross "the most important line." "And what might that be?" asked a naive parishioner. He answered sternly, "You can't trash the Novus Ordo Mass." Well, at least he was honest about that. To support the "Indult" Mass, you have to sell your soul to the New Order.
Dear Fathers:
I live in Ireland and found your web site while searching for the truth regarding an article that I read stating that Vergilio Noe, formerly papal master of ceremonies and now cardinal, and the late Hannibal Bugnini, formerly head of the Liturgy Implementation Committee after Vatican II, paid five Protestant Ministers and one Jewish rabbi to create the Novus Ordo service.
I found this information in the Commentary "Searching For the Illuminati Deep Within The Bowels Of The Vatican." It lists at the bottom of the document the names and induction dates of at least 150 or more high-ranking "undercover clergy" into the Freemasonic brotherhood. I was also astonished to find that part of the emblem representing the New World Order has the inscription Novus Ordo Seclorum inscribed on it, which ironically is also the name given to the rewritten "Mass" and which can be seen on the back of the U.S. dollar bill.
As the jigsaw fell into place, it became clear to me that the Commentary regarding the Protestant clergy's involvement in re-writing the Novus Ordo service was correct and that the Masonic "undercover clergy" had infiltrated the Church to defile Catholic doctrine before employing its own inscription with its New World Order emblem, as we know though that Novus Ordo is pure Masonic Babel.
It is also with deep concern that I worry about those people who have no idea what is going on and may lose their souls by not worshipping in the way that the true Catholic Church intended us to do and who instead are unwittingly worshipping in a Masonic and Protestant manner, which has deprived them of the graces of a valid Sacrament. I for one would not like to face the wrath of Our Lord for fabricating the invalid Novus Ordo service and the subsequent deception of the Catholic faithful, for that crime will bear a heavy price, as will the crime of knowingly worshipping at the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic "table."
The Fathers Reply.
Yes, Hannibal Bugnini was a real piece of work. Like the Hannibal who almost defeated Rome in the Second Punic War, he and his Masonic-Protestant Modernists stormed through Rome after Vatican II. There is little doubt that he was a Freemason, since there exists a letter to him from the Masonic Worshipful Master at Rome, addressing him intimately as "Buan," in which he praises Bugnini's work in substituting Masonic-friendly rites for the traditional Catholic ones.
Interestingly, Pope John XXIII was sharp enough to detect the odor of heresy in this man and dismissed him. It was Pope Paul VI, Bugnini's puppet of the New Order, who reinstated him. Bugnini's Masonic connections became too much even for Paul VI, however. In 1976, by which time, unfortunately, Bugnini had done his dirty work with the New "Mass" and New "Ordinal," Paul VI banished him to Iran. Bugnini became a broken man and died six years later.
True to true Newchurch form, Newchurch Bishop Paul Loverde, of Arlington, Virginia, has pulled another fast one on the Novus Ordinarians. Undoubtedly, the "indult" organizations will wax sycophantic over his two new "Indult" Masses. But will they give you the other side of the story? For the first time in his diocese, altar servettes, otherwise known as "altar girls," will be introduced. Now only the Newchurch diocese of Lincoln has not introduced them yet. Loverde gave as his excuse that now parishioners could "participate more reverently, more actively, more fully" in the Novus Ordo service. One wonders how the Church got away with the contrary for so long!
Many Novus Ordinarians in the diocese had been chafing at the bit for introducing this new Protestant step after Loverde's predecessor, who would not permit it, retired in 1999, as Loverde had allowed female altar servers at his previous diocese in New York state. Loverde waited five years and then decided to introduced it at the same time he introduced the two "Indult" Masses." Our reports from around the U.S. indicate that "altar girls" are now being used at "Indult" Masses.
This "Indult" Mass business is more and more being exposed as the phony ploy of Newchurch that we have said it is. More and more of you TRADITIO readers around the country have informed us that your "Indult" Masses have become more and more like the Novus Ordo service, including "altar girls," communion in the hand, and all the Protestant rest.
Newvatican has "officially" announced it: Newpope is no longer Patriarch of the West. Historically, this title began to be used in the year 642 by Pope Theodore. The term refers to the pope's patriarchal status of special jurisdiction over the Latin (Roman) Church.
"If it's new, blame it on Vatican II," so the motto goes. And that's just what Newvatican did in its "official" statement, stating that the title is "obsolete..., even more so now that the Catholic Church [sic], with Vatican Council II, has found, in the form of episcopal conferences and their international meetings, the canonical structure best suited to the needs of the Latin Church today." [Vatican Information Services]
What this gobbledygook means is that since Vatican II the bishops are now in charge of Newchurch, not the pope. You Novus Ordo "conservatives" out there can pray all you want for a "conservative" pope, but it won't make any difference. The papal office has been turned by Vatican II and its Conciliar popes a Cheshire cat, of which only the vague suggestion of a smile remains, telling the Novus Ordinarians: "We certainly fooled you!"
We were loathe to let pass without comment the 321st anniversary of the birth of the world's greatest composer, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), on March 21, 1685. Beethoven may be a little more flashy, and Mozart may be a little more precocious, but Bach is the solid, universally most influential composer par excellence. Although Bach wrote many instrumental works, his Church music was solidly Catholic in its spirituality, even though a good deal of it was written for the early Lutheran Church.
Bach's greatest work was a Catholic one, the Hohe Messe in h-moll, or High Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), which is, in the opinion of many musicologists, the greatest piece of music ever written. It was in fact written on commission from a Catholic Prince, Fredrich Augustus II "The Strong" von Sachsen (Saxony). More familiar to the average person would the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, written by the French Catholic composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893) on a ground from Bach's Prelude in C from the Well-tempered Clavier (BWV 846).
Another Bach favorite of Catholics is the motet O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden [O Sacred Head Surrounded], a setting of the hymn Salve caput cruentatum by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153). It is a meditation on the Passion of Christ hanging on the cross and was used by Bach as Chorale 54 in Part II of his St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244). It is a wonderful piece to use as a Lenten meditation.
Was Bach Catholic? As for William Shakespeare too, evidence is mounting that Bach may well have been a "closet" Catholic. Although to support his wife and 20 children, he spent the last 27 years of his life in the post of Cantor and Musical Director of Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Lutheran Church) in Leipzig, musicologists remark that his spirituality was essentially Catholic and that he may have been locked into his Lutheran post more for economic reasons than because of a religious choice.
After all, Bach did try to move to a Catholic region of Germany by composing the High Mass for the Catholic Prince Augustus. You see, in Bach's time in the Catholic-Protestant-divided Germany of a century after Martin Luther, the political reality was cuius regio, eius religio, your region determines your religion. In fact, since 1724, Bach had been working on parts of his magnum opus. Like Mozart with his Requiem, Bach was struck ill in his last days and spent several months in bed, choosing to spend those months completing his High Mass while he was contemplating his own death.
Although Bach's over 200 cantatas sung at Thomaskirche are for the Sunday Lutheran Service rather than for the Roman Catholic Mass, Bach's musical genius has been welcomed with open arms by the Roman Catholic Church, which must lament the fact that Bach did not get the position that he really wanted from the Catholic Prince in the Catholic region of Germany. Regrettably, the High Mass, a monumental piece of some two hours, is not easily integrated into a Sunday Mass, even at a great cathedral. The brilliance of Bach's music would tend to overwhelm liturgically what is going on at the altar. Furthermore, the Cantatas were not written for the Roman Mass.
But there has never been any problem with the use of Bach's organ music in the Catholic Church. Bach himself is said to have stated: "Music is my only voice, but the organ is my pulpit." And what a pulpit it was! The church organist uses not only his two hands but also both feet, calling upon dozens of stops incorporating an entire orchestra within the power of a single player.
Like no other music he ever wrote, Bach's great Preludes and Fugues for organ soar to the heavens, and take us along. It is a divine miracle that one instrument, the pipe organ, could utter such heavenly sounds. No wonder the Catholic Church holds the pipe organ in such esteem, giving it pride of place over every other instrument on the face of God's earth. When we hear its celestial sounds, we are reminded of the phrase in the Sanctus: Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua.
Most churches do not have the organ or the organist to offer these most sublime works, but Bach also wrote hundreds of chorales, preludes, and other smaller organ pieces of just a few minutes' length, many based upon Gregorian-chant melodies. In these Bach's Catholicity thus peeks through again. Bach was truly the universal musician -- and "Catholic" means universal!
Dear Fathers:
If Bishop Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X wants to join Newchurch so much, why doesn't he leave the Society and join it himself? I have spoken with a lot of fellow SSPX parishioners on this, and they have said that either they would find a independent priest or go with the Society of St. Pius V if SSPX sells out to Newchurch. This bishop just does not get it.
The Fathers Reply.
It seems that at this point the whole SSPX-Newchurch sellout is in limbo (yes, we know that the Novus Ordo doesn't believe in limbo anymore!). There is a lot of contradictory information flying around these days. The following is our independent analysis of the situation, based on our knowledge and experience of over five decades, now that we have a perspective of several months to look back at.
Although Fellay denies it, the evidence is substantial that after Benedict-Ratzinger was elected in May 2005, he wanted to start the ball rolling for some kind of "recognition" of the SSPX by Newchurch, which would have to involve a sell-out of Archbishop Lefebvre's principles. Fellay admits that it was he who asked for a meeting with Newpope, not the other way around. Fellay chose to enter the lion's den; the lion did not summon him.
Newrome considers the Society of St. Pius X just like the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglicans, as "kind of" schismatics (in the case of the Anglicans, with a good deal of heresy mixed in too), although Newrome waxes hot and cool over time on whether it actually uses the term "schismatic." (Newvatican has already, more or less, recognized the schismatic Old Roman Catholics.) These are groups that Newrome considers to be the "best bets" to lure into Newchurch. Thus, Newrome has no problem with "jawboning" with these groups. But Newrome is in no hurry. It has been dickering in "oecumenical dialogue" with the Eastern Orthodox since the 1960s, yet Newrome and Eastern Orthodoxy are even more far apart now than when they started "dialoguing" forty years ago!
Fellay and his cohort Schmidberger (or probably the other way around, our sources indicate) were probably flushed when Newpope agreed to a meeting, and a certain momentum was therefore generated for an SSPX sellout to Newrome, much as the revolutionary momentum of Vatican II carried ordinarily reasonable people away into directions where they otherwise never would have gone. While momentum was building, Fellay lost touch with his base in the SSPX.
After the death of Archbishop Lefebvre, under the leadership of Fellay, the Society had wandered from its Archbishop-Founder's original principles. When one reads the statements of the Archbishop in the years just before 1988, when the four SSPX bishops were consecrated, and compares them with the statements of Fellay, the difference is like night and day. Lefebvre entirely rejected the Newchurch of the New Order as "unCatholic" and even "anti-Christ"; Fellay, on the contrary, seems to look to Newrome for his ultimate justification.
Because of the autocratic constitution of the SSPX, which makes the Superior General a virtual twelve-year dictator, the SSPX members were not really informed about what was going on. However, more experienced independent sources, such as TRADITIO, started sounding the warning bell early on. Several press sources in Europe also started covering the events. The staunch French SSPX institutions started raising objections of their own.
Faced with growing exposure of his Newchurch-friendly direction, Fellay reacted as the leadership of the SSPX typically reacts when faced with a different point of view: it attacked the contrary position, engaging in rank name-calling and personal attacks in an effort to avoid addressing the substantive issue. At first, Fellay and Schmidberger denied facts that they knew to be true, calling them "rumors." Later, they flatfootedly had to admit that what they had called "rumors" were actually the truth. Also, apparently under the aegis of Schmidberger, an internal purge of electoral positions in the SSPX (mainly the District Superiors around the world) took place, so that these positions, so critical in the upcoming SSPX 2006 duodecennial election for Superior General, would be kept in the hands of the Fellay/Schmidberger faction.
In any human organization, you will find the 10% fanatical fringe, and the SSPX certainly has one. These are people who believe in the SSPX dogma: "The Society: right or wrong." When legitimate criticism of the mismanagement of the Society under the Fellay regime was raised by those outside or inside the SSPX, the fanatical fringe tried to calumniate anyone who didn't take the 100% SSPX line. Eventually, of course, this tactic failed, because the unrepresentative, fanatical nature of these people became rapidly clear. These fanatics, however, engendered a reaction from the more conservative Lefebvrite (anti-Newchurch) faction, particularly in France. The latter set up web sites and started investigations into what was going on, publishing internal information about the Society that was accessible to the French than the Americans.
All the while, there was a growing sense both on the part of both Fellay and his liberalist faction, and on the part of Newpope and Newvatican that a critical point was approaching, what in ancient Greek is called the kairos. Newvatican was well aware of a wide pro-/anti-Newchurch division within the Society. This is no secret and in fact led in the 1980s to an internal schism between the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV). It may well lead to another internal schism in the first decade of the 21st century. Newvatican was also aware of the duodecennial elections this summer in which the Fellay faction may fall out of power.
Newvatican, of course, wants Fellay to deliver to Newchurch the entire Society, or at least the vast majority of it. It does not want a fractured Society and a blow-up that may well become ugly and, in the process, drag Newchurch into a debate about whether Newchurch and Newpope are legitimate. (Why else is Benedict-Ratzinger, as Cardinal Hoyos has reported, so worried about whether people accept his validity as Bishop of Rome and pope and why else did the Fellay-Schmidberger faction engineer the publication of a lengthy two-issue series in the Angelus, attempting to prove that Newpope is in fact valid?)
As the critical point approached, toward the end of 2005, perhaps the beginning of 2006, the outspoken opposition of many within the SSPX -- laypeople, clergy, even bishops -- sometimes public, sometimes private started to weigh in. Fellay and Schmidberger tried to put the genie back into the bottle and get control of the situation by giving lectures at Society sites, primarily in the United States and France, to combat what they termed "rumors." But by this time some Society members at these SSPX sites had become more outspoken against a possible sellout to the New Order. They posed questions to Fellay & Schmidberger and caught them in contradictions that demonstrated the "rumors" were in fact true.
So, where is the SSPX-Newvatican Affair Now?
Our reading of the current situation is that the critical point has passed. Fellay & Schmidberger are taken up more and more with the internal dissension within the SSPX that they have stirred up by toying with a sellout to Newchurch. They are also more taken up with political preparations for the SSPX election just a few months away. Newvatican, for its part, is taken up more and more with the consistory of the College of Cardinals to be held March 24-25, which is reputed to involve a reorganization of the Curia and personnel changes, perhaps at the top levels. As those of you in business organizations know, when rumors of a "reorg" get started, the organization can talk about little else. People are afraid for their jobs and power, and wonder where the "reorg" is going to leave them.The European press has already indicated that a March 23 "pre" meeting of the Curia, at which the SSPX topic was supposed to have come up, has been reorganized to focus on other matters more directly related to the Curia and the cardinalatial consistory. There have been some reports that the SSPX situation might be taken up at a new April 7 meeting. Our take on all of this is that the critical point has passed, and the SSPX issue is just not as hot for Newpope and Newvatican now as it was a few months ago. Thus, the topic is being bandied about, on and off the agenda, as a definitely secondary issue for Newvatican.
Even if the intensity of the "negotiations" has abated, there will now be significant internal consequences for the SSPX. The actions of Fellay and Schmidberger in trying to "muscle through" some kind of a sellout to Newchurch, if possible, didn't go down well within the Society, in that perhaps the most important issue that the Society faces, its association or dissociation with Newchurch, was handled in an entirely autocratic way. Fellay seems to have lost the trust of large numbers of SSPX clergy, even high clergy, and laity.
The Society itself is at a kairos. Its principles have blurred since 1991, the death of its Archbishop-Founder. Its constitution is flawed and does not recognize that fact that a one-man autocracy, giving that man more power than a Caesar, only leads to disastrous consequences. Even Archbishop Lefebvre wanted to spread authority around. Moreover, the Society's leadership over the last twelve years under Fellay has not been particularly good. Most of all, the Society has become self-focused and has essentially done nothing to get the traditional Catholic message out to the world, so that confused Novus Ordinarians can be evangelized to know that there is an alternative: traditional Catholicism, which is represented not only by the SSPX, but by other traditional groups, independent sites, clergy, and even laypeople, such as the well-known Mel Gibson.
There will be those who will nit-pick at some of the details of our analysis above, but we believe that, as a whole, we have fairly and accurately captured the Big Picture. Here at TRADITIO we are independent. We are neither "for" nor "against" the SSPX. The Society has both helped and hurt the Traditional Catholic Movement as a whole. In any case, it has played a significant role in the Movement, which is why we cover it so much.
It is our hope that the Society's organizational and personnel problems can be corrected, that the true principles of its Founder-Archbishop can be re-established, and that, once these two organizational priorities are taken care of, it can play a significant and cooperative role in evangelizing for converts to traditional Catholicism from the Newchurch instead of itself trying to become part of Newchurch.
As TRADITIO previously reported, notices in the press that Gibson was at Fatima to shot a film there were entirely erroneous. As a matter of fact, independent traditional Catholic Gibson is currently shooting his next epic after The Passion of the Christ in Veracruz, in the ancient Mayan area on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The Mayans were active in that area in the first Christian millennium.
This epic is at the same time similar to and different from Passion. Like his earlier film on the last days of Christ, Apocalypto is of epic proportions. Apocalypto, like The Passion, is being filmed in an ancient language, Yucatec Mayan, a descendant of ancient Mayan, just as The Passion was filmed in Latin and Aramean. But Apocalypto is set at a time in stark contrast to The Passion, which was set in the most civilized period the world has ever known, the period of the Pax Augusta, when Rome ruled the world with peace and justice and when literature, art, and culture flourished. Apocalypto, on the contrary, is set in the hellish period of ancient Maya, when grand temples were used as sites for human sacrifice.
The Passion netted Gibson over $1,000,000,000 in ticket sales, making it one of the biggest grossing films of all time and the third-largest grossing movie in the year of its release, 2004. Yet, Hollywood wouldn't touch it because it was "too religious." So, Mel ended up pocketing a huge profit, as he distributed the film through his own company, Icon Productions. Whereas the Disney Corporation wouldn't touch The Passion, a biblically-based, Christian film, Disney jumped at the chance to distribute Gibson's new pagan epic of human sacrifice!
Gibson will allow no one to trouble his independent traditional Catholicism. To remind him of how important his traditional Catholic faith is, he wears inside his shirt a cross with relics of the martyrs. He has already been criticized in some circles for portraying Mayans' human sacrifices (which is absolutely historical, just as The Passion was), blew off his silly critics by saying: "After what I experienced with The Passion, I frankly don't give a flying leap about much of what those critics think."
One Maya scholar stated that Gibson's treatment was the most accurate depiction of ancient Maya ever caught on film, just as biblical scholars praised the accuracy of Gibson's depiction of Christ's last days in The Passion. However, that didn't satisfy Liberalist Secular Jews, such as Abe Foxman of B'nai B'rith, who slammed Gibson for being "too Catholic."
Now it's coming out just how "traditional" Benedict-Ratzinger is -- not! He could have cancelled his participation at last October's World Youth Day, that Newchurch "Woodstock" featuring sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. But he didn't. Instead, his WYD was associated with "liturgies" that featured condemned and untraditional "liturgical dance," at which dancers, before dancing in the Novus Ordo "liturgy," like pagan Hindus, routinely chant a mantra over and over and then engage in "whole body prayer."
A common example of this paganism that is commonly seen in Newchurch parish Messes is the "hand-holding" after the "consecration," another condemned and untraditional practice. So, when those Novus Ordinarians try to tell you that these bizarre Novus Ordo Messes don't occur in their church, tell them where their hand-holding really comes from!
Poor Benedict-Ratzinger. He's not so good with the press, is he? First of all, the international press is denouncing his decision, reported earlier here on TRADITIO, that the press will have to pay to publish the pope's words. The press zinged Newpope for treating his words as "saleable merchandize" and engangering the Church's mission to "spared the Christian message."
In fact, Newpope charged a Milan publishing house $15,000 to publish just thirty lines of Newpope's speech to the conclave that elected him! Curiously, this papal edict is retroactive to John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI, and John XXIII, but not Pius XII and his predecessors. Perhaps because Pius XII and his predecessors were pre Vatican II, they don't count?!
Newpope is also having problems with "translations." Because the post-conciliar Newchurch has given in to polyglot vernacular "translations" of papal documents, every time the post-conciliar popes have something to say, it is delayed for weeks for "translation." It is also reported that Benedict-Ratzinger is not happy with these "translations," and all kinds of delays are being introduced.
Now here's a thought. Before the New Order gained hold, serious Vatican correspondents knew Latin and could deal with the authentic documents directly instead of in some fuzzy vernacular "translation." Maybe Newpope should put his decrees where his mouth is and say, "Official documents will be released in Latin only. Translations are your problem. Learn Latin." He wouldn't be any worse off than he is now!
Gene Robinson, the "gay" bishop who is ripping apart the Anglican Church because he publicly commits and advocates one of the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance, is now attacking the Catholic Church for being "too Biblical." (Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It wasn't too long ago that Catholics were being damned by Protestants for not being Biblical enough!)
He has called the Christian doctrine against homosexual sodomy as "vile." It is amazing that this ilk is considered a "bishop," even an invalid Anglican one. The Archbishop of Canterbury is nothing more than a gutless wonder for refusing to stand up to this anti-Christian. Many Scriptures, such as Romans 1:26-27 leave no doubt on Christ's position on the matter.
The French Revolution of 1789 forced priests to take an oath of fidelity to the State over the Church. A Roman Catholic monarch, Louis XVI, lost his head at the hands of the revolutionaries. The reign of terror of the Committee of Public Safety even went so far as to set a statue of The Goddess Liberty in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The Vendee region in the west of France on the Bay of Biscay, was destroyed by the revolutionaries because they gave their allegiance to the Church and not to the State.
Now, over 200 years later, protestors are once again standing up to the State. At Rocheserviere, a canton of 10,000 inhabitants forty kilometres south of Nantes, a large part of the local population is vigorously opposing the Newchurch presbyter of the local church. This presbyter wanted to destroy the high altar in order to create "more space in the choir for performing the ceremonies according to the present [Novus Ordo] liturgy", and the town council had given unanimously (except for one voice) its consent.
It was a done deal between Church and State until the people reacted. Seventy protestors met on March 7 to denounce vigorously the presbyter's Novus Ordo project. During the meeting charges against Newchurch flew:
The same evening all 70 protestors present addressed a letter to the Newchurch bishop, demanding that he get personally involved in this affair of "religious and emotional heritage." The presbyter of the Newchurch of Love had not dared to go to the March 7 meeting. Two days later the mayor of the city, Alain Leboeuf, signed an order suspending the project, since it was the city's public-works service that was supposed to destroy high altar for the presbyter. [RU Press Service]
Producer-director-actor and outspoken independent traditional Catholic Mel Gibson, who "doesn't often support political candidates," has distributed a letter across the State of California supporting State Senator Tom McClintock in November's Lieutenant Governor's race. McClintock is an outspoken conservative who ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor in the recall election of 2003.
Gibson maintains that the state government, which "was founded to protect our fundamental God-given rights is now becoming destructive of those rights." In his letter he writes that McClintock "can turn the Lieutenant Governor's office into a powerful engine for government reform."
Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, whose Church is being ripped apart it consecrated as a bishop a public homosexual, Gene Robinson, who lives openly with his paramour and advocates the "gay" lifestyle, has failed to condemn the act. Hundreds of Anglican clergy around the world, and hundreds of thousands of Anglican laypeople, have denounced Rowan and are currently meeting to make plans to leave his liberalist denomination and form their own "Traditional Anglican Church."
Pope Leo XIII proclaimed in an arguably infallible Solemn Papal Bull, Apostolicae Curae, that Anglican Orders are "absolutely null and utterly void." (For further information, see CURAE: Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae [On the Nullity of Anglican Orders], Given by His Holiness Pope Leo XIII in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).)
Yet the Pope Leo's conciliar successor, Benedict-Ratzinger, is personally going to restart "oecumenical" talks this year with this head of the Anglican Church, which openly "ordains" priestesses and "consecrates" bishopesses. Benedict-Ratzinger, enthusiastic laudator Novi Ordinis that he is, has spun like a child's top on this issue. Just five years ago, in his 2001 document Dominus Iesus, he claimed that Churches, such as the Anglican, that had not preserved the "valid episcopate" were not even "churches in the proper sense."
Dear Fathers:
Let us assume for a moment that all Novus Ordo messes have valid consecrations and that the presbyters and Novus Ordo bishops believe in the Real Presence. I know that's a false premise, but bear with me for a moment. Is it any surprise that they do not protect children from criminal presbyters if they are not even willing to protect what they supposedly think is the Body and Blood of Our Lord from sacrilege and offense?
The Novus Ordo hierarchy is duplicitous. Out of one side of its mouth, it preaches righteously the protection of unborn children, then out of the other side, it protects criminals who assault children on sacred ground and aggressively argues in court against paying victims because the diocese "cannot afford it." Since when is bankruptcy an excuse for not making temporal reparations for sin?
Why anyone is surprised that the same bishops and presbyters who have clown messes and half-nude women in front of what they supposedly think is the Blessed Sacrament would cover up and be complicit in sins against children is beyond me. Why anyone is upset that diocesan funds have to be used to make reparations to the victims of these predators when the same people keep giving money to the wolves in the collection basket is also stunning. At least with the lawsuits the money is going to help someone who was harmed rather than funding laser shows and conga drums for the latest shindig in front of the table at the local Novus Ordo temple.
When you look at it, it all makes sense in some kind of disturbing and sick way. If they don't respect and protect the innocence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, why would they respect and protect the innocence of children?
It is the common "rap" that the only thing that separates the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) from Newchurch is some technical tittle about "full" communion. No, there is a deep chasm between the two -- and should be. The SSPX tries (though sometimes fails) to stand up for fully traditional Roman Catholicism, whereas Newchurch is another kind of beast, like the ancient satryr, a hybrid animal with a man's head and a goat's body.
Archbishop Lefebvre, the Society's founder, left no doubt about that. The archbishop was a straight-talker, unlike the Society's current leader, Fellay. Lefebvre openly said that "Conciliar Rome is no longer Catholic Rome," but "apostate" from the Roman Catholic Faith. Lefebvre was a St. Pius V, who took on the "Butcher" Queen, Elizabeth I, and the Mohammedan general Ali Pasha, to Fellay's Liberius, the "Prevaricating" pope.
It appears that at least one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre has been a straight-talker too. Bishop Richard Williamson, the senior SSPX bishop, has said that he and Newvatican officials "belong to two different religions." In his monthly newsletter, Williamson disclosed that he had made that observation as far back as August 2000 to Cardinal Hoyos, Newpope's "indult" puppet in his capacity as president of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. When Cardinal Hoyos replied that he and the SSPX leader shared a common faith in the Eucharist and the doctrines of the Catholic Church, Williamson retorted: "We do and we don't; mainly we don't. We do belong to two different religions.
The bishop continued: "If one mathematician believes that two and two can make four or five, while another believes they can only make four and nothing other than four, do they have the same arithmetic in their heads? Surely not! The arithmetic of the first mathematician may not exclude the truth, but what use is that if it excludes no error either? True arithmetic on the contrary excludes any and every error that is out of line with reality.
The Society should show a lot more of this kind of "tough love" toward Newchurch rather than pandering to it. The virtue of charity does not mean compromising the faith and tolerating error, but, as St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's Principal Theologian, stated [IV Sententiarum]:
Some say that fraternal correction does not extend to the prelates either because man should not raise his voice against heaven, or because the prelates are easily scandalized if corrected by their subjects. However, this does not happen, since when they sin, the prelates do not represent heaven, and, therefore, must be corrected.
Catholic World News previously reported that Fellay has had to back off his earlier "collaborative" mentality with Newrome because SSPXers, having been alerted to the potential of a Fellay sellout first by the TRADITIO Network then by other sources, are now stating publicly that they will not follow Fellay into the New Order. "If we sign today," he disclosed, "not all of our faithful would follow us." The traditional wing of the SSPX, which CWN says is led by Bishop Richard Williamson, the SSPX's senior bishop, has indicated that it is likely to oppose any sellout to the New Order and that such a sellout would rip the Society in two.
Isn't this just the height of Newchurch criminality?! The diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, and its bishop, Joseph Latino, actually tried to argue in court that the "separation of Church and State made the Church autonomous." In other words, it could break the law at will. Last year the Mississippi Supreme Court laughed Latino out of court, holding that "the First Amendment does not prohibit lawsuits against the diocese of Jackson over sexual-abuse allegations."
Good Catholics, Newchurch, Newvatican, and Newpope have never faced up to the moral horror that they have condoned, and continue to condone, in the rape and pillage of their young people. Instead of ejecting their predatory presbyters and bishops, they try to get away with their crimes by alleging such things as First Amendment rights for crime!
Well, we know their ilk. The Newchurch bishops have stopped at nothing to perpetuate their crime mafia. What is harder to swallow is that the pew Novus Ordinarians continue to support the Newchurch mafia. But isn't that what has gone on in Italy for decades? There were even allegations under the previous papacy that JPII was soft on La Cosa Nostra because he was under their thumb. Some say that JPI was assassinated because he had announced that he was going to crack down on them.
St. Joseph was the one man among all the men of the world chosen by God to be the protector of the Holy Family. Poor and obscure in this world's possessions and honors, he was rich in grace and merit, in nobility of character and holiness of person.
Many Catholics are unaware that it is St. Joseph, together with St. Michael the Archangel, who are God's designated protectors of the Church. Because St. Joseph represented the Eternal Father on earth and was the divinely-appointed father of the Holy Family, Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed him the father of the family of God, the Patron of the Universal Church on earth.
Devotion to St. Joseph was widespread in the East from the early centuries. In the post-modern world, when the traditional teachings of the true Church are under attack as perhaps never before, the Roman Catholic faithful can do no better than to turn to this gentle protector of our Church and our families, and have recourse to his powerful intercession.
(For further information about St. Michael and the Confraternity of St. Michael, see Confraternity of St. Michael.)
In a bunko scheme that would make Charles Ponzi proud, Detroit Novus Ordinarians are wondering how Newchurch's Adam Cardinal Maida is going to pay them back for a "loan" of $17,000,000 from archdiocesan coffers to support the failed Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, opened in Washington, D.C., in 2001. They are wondering now how Maida got away in the first place with his rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme that has left the archdiocese in bad straits. Maida has also hocked the archdiocese to secure the $23,000,000 mortgage for the Center, so if the Center collapses, the Detroit may join the Newchurch dioceses of Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, in going into bankruptcy.
Now it is coming out that Maida apparently lied to the Novus Ordinarians of the United States when he promised donors a world-class landmark in Washington, D.C., with an all-star lineup of famous scholars and stupendous exhibits of priceless artworks like Michelangelo's Pieta. When a Newvatican official was asked about the plan to display the Pieta, his two-word reply was cutting: "Very funny."
Maida, in a video shown to potential donors in the 1990s, claimed that the center would be "the greatest thing to happen in the Catholic [sic] Church in the United States for the next 100 years." Maida's budget was $30,000,000 for the building; he spent $73,000,000. Meanwhile, the JPII bloom has worn off among Novus Ordinarians. Maida's planned 800,000 visitors has turned out to be less than a tenth of that number. In 2004, one donor visited the Center with his wife and teenage grandson. They found the parking lot and galleries so empty that they were unsure whether the center was open! [USAToday]
Now the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center stands as a while elephant, a $73,000,000 monument to another flash-in-the-pan, conciliar pope who is now known primarily for his penchant for "Clown Messes" and his monumental administrative incompetence, which allowed even his own bishops and cardinals to rape thousands of young people without any censure from the pope.
Once again the members of Newchurch have been both literally and figuratively raped by their "Most Reverend" hierarchy. And the really disappointing thing is that the Novus Ordinarians don't have the guts to do what their Roman Catholic predecessors did and throw out the bums! It is sad to say, but now, since the can no longer claim ignorance of what how their "Church of the New Springtime" has done in their Roman Catholic Faith, but instead continue to cooperate with it, they justly reap what they themselves have planted, and "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8:12/DRV).
I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore. I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell -- "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" --Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the film Network (1976)
Taking their cue from Howard Beale, Novus Ordo fathers in Newchurch are tired of waiting for any Newchurch bishop to own up honestly and fully to rampant ecclesiastical crimes. They are tired of hearing propaganda that the crime problem in Newchurch is getting "better," when they know it is getting worse. That are tired of Newvatican sheltering accomplices (like William Levada, Benedict-Ratzinger's Sex-Crimes Czar) in the highest places. They are tired of Newpope giving the soft-shoe to the real problems in his "seminaries." The Newchurch bishops had their chance and blew it. Now the lay fathers are taking their shot.
The Dan O'Connor Society, named after a father killed by a Newchurch criminal-presbyter, is an organization of Novus Ordo fathers who are going to name names during Lent to rout the bishop and presbyter criminals out of Newchurch. Founder Dr. David Pence told the press that the Society has compiled evidence not only on presbyters but on bishops that are allowing and facilitating crime.
Dr. Pence was trained in theology and classical languages before receiving his Medicinae Doctor degree. Once a jailed activist of the left, Pence is now a defender of the trinity of loyalties to God, Country, and Marriage, which he says constitute the American polis (civic culture). Dr. Pence has written on the forty-year American "inversion ritual" since Vatican II, which has confused the public and the private, honor and shame, obedience to the Living God with obedience to corrupt officials, and manhood with feminism.
The first target of the Society is Minneapolis-St. Paul's Vicar General, Kevin McDonough, who before his appointment as Vicar General in 1992 was the diocesan Chancellor and the Rector of the local seminary. The second target is Dale Korogi, who took over from McDonough as Rector of the seminary from 1990 until 1992 and is currently the pastor of Christ the King parish. The third target is Jerome Boxleitner, who headed Catholic [sic] Charities and St. Joseph Orphanage in the diocese. Dr. Pence proclaimed: "It is distasteful to name names, but it is individuals who are responsible for the corruption of the priesthood [sic]. It is better to name the traitors than to dishonor Christ's reputation and the purity of the ancient priesthood."
Dr. Pence explained that it is common practice in Newchurch dioceses where presbyters are found to be sex criminals to place those abusive priests in administrative positions so as to "keep them out of harm's way." However, says Pence, those positions are often the judicial positions that would deal with ecclesiastical sex crimes. "We are granting abusers lifetime employment in the very judicial positions needed for clergy reform and diocesan justice. Putting these abusers in 'administrative positions' is like the President appointing a rapist to the Supreme Court as a way to keep him out of the general population." Dr. Pence says that the Society sees the destructive tendencies in Newchurch to be tied to radical feminism and its attack upon the proper role of men and fathers. Thus, the Society aims to re-establish that fraternity among men -- a fraternity of fathers -- spiritual and biological.
All well and good, Dr. Pence. But the sad thing is that you are fighting not for the Roman Catholic priesthood, as you think, but for the New Order "presbyterate," which is not Catholic and thus is self-destructing. You see the evidence of that before your eyes.
Dr. Pence, why are you not fighting as courageously for the Roman Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments? Why have you stood by for forty years while the vaunted "Church of the New Springtime" was exposed as the "Church of the Winter of Discontent," shoveling phony Messes, Sacraments, doctrine, and morality like just so much manure to Novus Ordinarians?
Dr. Pence, if you and your associates had told the U.S. bishops then: "We're not going to swallow this offal. Take your unCatholic Mess and shove it!," you would not be dealing with the moral evils that have now become, after forty years of Vatican II, institutionalized into Newchurch. You've got the right idea, Doctor, but the wrong target. You're trimming off a few dead branches instead of replanting the tree from the roots up.
Dear Fathers:
Here in France Yves Chiron, a French analyst in religious topics, who has contacts with Newrome, has published in his monthly newsletter a statement that on March 23 a second meeting will occur between Benedict-Ratzinger and SSPX's Fellay. Recently, the editorial of the two major U.S. traditional periodical editors, joining TRADITIO's call of several months ago for Fellay to desist from a sellout to Newrome, has been published here in a French translation and has been yet another bombshell.
March 23 is the same day that Benedict-Ratzinger will meet the heads of the Newvatican dicasteries (after which, on March 24-25, the cardinalatial consistory will be held to receive the fifteen new bishops and to discuss the topics of "the Church in the World" and the reform of the Roman Curia). Yves Chiron writes that the topic of the sellout of the SSPX has been put on this dicasterial agenda.
Meanwhile, the Italian journal Il Tempo writes that the SSPX will have to accept "in their totality all the documents of the Second Vatican Council," thus betraying the principles of the Society and its founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, just two days before fifteenth anniversary of his death on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (March 25, 1991). Il Tempo also reports that within the SSPX there is a debate underway and that there are those who hold that a return to the Church of Newrome and acceptance of Vatican II would be a betrayal of the two-thousand-year Tradition of the Church. On this point Newrome cannot make any concessions and the SSPX must deal with this fact.
Update. The day after his original report, Yves Chiron reports that the meeting with Fellay was changed to a preparatory meeting for the Curial Meeting, and that the dicasterial meeting has been postponed to April 7, without the SSPX topic no longer being on the agenda. Frankly, the issue of the SSPX is a drop in the bucket for Newchurch. What is far more important is the Curial shakeup that is expected on March 24-25. The guys in scarlet are fearing for their jobs. That always takes priority!
You've probably read about that misnomered "traditional" Ave Maria University that is being created in Florida by Pizza King Thomas Monahan, who founded Domino's Pizza. TRADITIO has previously exposed this institution as a handmaiden of "Fessio Enterprises," run by a Novus Ordo presbyter who talks about "obedience" to his "bosom buddy" Benedict-Ratzinger and then himself wouldn't obey his Newchurch Jesuit order, which assigned him to be assistant chaplain to a hospital in Southern California. Fessio is a groupie of the Novus Ordo Mess, just as long as it is done in the way he wants. As TRADITIO previously reported, with photographs, Monaghan is building a church for his university that is almost as much a monstrosity to Catholic taste as the Taj Mahony cathedral in Los Angeles.
Recently the university received from an inquirer the following question:
Is the Mass offered [at the university] the true Mass or is the heretical service of Vatican II? I have read with great interest about the community being formed, but I want to know if it is Roman Catholic or if it is the Protestant Vatican II sect.
The inquirer received the following Dear John reply from the university's chaplain:
Yes, the Mass offered here is the true traditional Mass of the Second Vatican Council. Three times per week in Latin and the rest in English.... I am unfamiliar with any "heretical service" or Protestant sect that came from Vatican II.
Is this chaplain bereft of a brain, or is he attempting to rewrite reality? There is no "traditional Mass of the Second Vatican Council." The Second Vatican Council's Mass is not the Traditional Latin Mass, even the Modernized Mass of 1962, but the New Mess that issued from Vatican II's liturgical implementation committee headed by the banished Freemason Archbishop, Hannibal Bugnini.
Good Catholics, just wait. Already Newchurch has attempted to confuse you by substituting for the "Indult" Mass the Novus Ordo Mess in Latin. Now it's going to start calling that Novus Ordo Mess, which is just as invalid in Latin as in the vulgar tongues, the "Traditional Latin Mass of the Second Vatican Council"!
P.S. We're getting our pizzas from Round Table from now on!
Dear Fathers:
If it is true that the SSPX goes by the New Order/post Vatican II canon laws, then, pray tell, why doesn't it just follow suit with all the rest of the Newchurch heresies, i.e., communion in the hand, "altar girls," Mess with the priest facing the people and in the vernacular, etc.? What does the Society feel that it is achieving by partial obedience to Newrome? Why doesn't it accept the whole ball of wax, or nothing New Order at all? I feel rather cheated now that I know for sure that the Society has been doing this all along.
Dear Fathers:
Now I see, once again, just as in the year 2000, I believe, that certain Newchurch bishops are giving a "special dispensation" from the Friday abstinence for St. Patrick's Day. As a traditional Roman Catholic American of Irish descent, I find this offensive to both my Catholic upbringing and my ethnic background. My maternal grandmother, who was 100% Irish, laid down her rule during Lent: fasting every weekday and abstinence every Friday until Easter Sunday. Now we have these Newchurch "bishops" proclaiming that we can do otherwise. The New Order just keeps getting better!
Switzerland, or Helvetia in Latin, will be displaying in Philadelphia in June its Federal Charter, or Carta Federalis Helvetiorum, the 700-year-old Latin-language document that constituted the Swiss government, which now must operate in three official languages: German, French, and Italian. It was so much simpler when most of the world operated in one language: Latin!
Much of what we know about the origins of Switzerland are contained in Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico [Gallic War], which many Catholic and public high-schoolers used to read routinely in third-year Latin. No more under Newchurch, which chides the European Union for not mentioning God in its constitution, but itself does next to nothing to promote the language that made the Roman Catholic Church universal. No wonder that Newchurch is fragmenting now with the Babel of vernacular tongues.
William Levada, former archbishop of San Francisco, who was whisked off by Benedict-Ratzinger to the diplomatic immunity of the tiniest "country" in the world before he could be fully implicated in all the presbyter sex crimes going on in San Francisco, is in hot water again. This Levada was appointed by Newpope to be head of the Sex-Crimes Congregation of Newvatican and was appointed to become a cardinal as well.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Levada has written the new archbishop of San Francisco to stop its adoption services because "Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption in homosexual households." It seems that Levada does not practice what he or Newpope preaches, since Levada himself, in the last five years, had placed 1 in 20 Catholic orphans to the immorality of "gay" and "lesbian" households. Newvatican has proclaimed: "Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children." So Levada, by his own doctrine, did violence to innocent orphans.
It is said that you can tell the quality of a leader by the people he surrounds himself with. If that is true, we know all we need to know about Newpope and his ministers, as this is one of the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance: "You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan" (Exodus 22:22/DRV).
TRADITIO is expanding with the marked increase of our readership base since the election of Benedict XVI and the puzzling developments within the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). Well over 3,500,000 traditional Catholics have turned to TRADITIO for the most experienced, knowledgeable, and always independent coverage and analysis of what is going on in matters of interest to traditional Catholics. For example, our analysis of the developments between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) have come more quickly and more accurately than any other source, so more and more traditional Catholics have come to rely on TRADITIO for getting the word first and fastest, free of organizational bias.
Watch in coming months for more exclusive reports from within Rome and traditional organizations, from TRADITIO correspondents from all over the world: France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, India, and many others. The expertise of our Fathers allows TRADITIO to be conversant not just in English, but in Latin, French, German, and Italian as well. Much is reported in European sources that never makes it into English (and forget those ridiculous internet "translation" programs that generate only gibberish).
TRADITIO doesn't bore you with lengthy "original" sources (which aren't original at all, but usually warmed-over third hand material, biased toward anti-traditional interests). We let you see the forest instead of letting you lose your way among all the trees. We respect your time and don't subject you to endless "blind leading the blind" chatter on "blogs" and "chatrooms," or "armchair" writers who wouldn't know what is traditionally Catholic if it hit them over the head. They weren't even around at Vatican II, as our Fathers were.
Since documents and printed sources often aren't the best sources for what is really going on (that is why the Catholic Church puts Tradition ahead of Scripture), we also get our readers direct information from the bowels of organizations, where the real news is. In everything, we apply our long experience in and knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church (we're not recent neocon converts from Protestant Fundamentalism, but "cradle" Catholics).
Stay tuned. In the words of the Holy Roman Emperor Lotharius, "Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis"!
Dear Fathers:
When will traditional Catholics know that it is "all clear" in what, for lack of a better term, we could call the "institutional Church"? Under what conditions would true Catholics know that the New Order is at an end, and that orthodoxy has returned?
The Fathers Reply.
We would suggest the criteria that the Great Fathers & Doctors of the Church, such as Augustine, Ambrose, Athanasius, and Basil, who experienced similar problems of heresy and fallen bishops and popes in the "institutional Church" (to use your term, which is not the best) of their time and would absolutely not cooperate with them. Of course, those officials, as part of the Arian heresy of the time, which denied the complete divinity of Christ, were outside the Church, even though they appeared to be the "institutional Church," supported by the emperors. In fact, St. Augustine and St. Eusebius, as you may recall, even took an public oath that they would not obey the pope of the time because of his pro-Arian actions.
The Great Fathers "hung tough" against the heresy, as well as the bishops and popes that supported it. After about a century the "institutional Church" returned to complete orthodoxy. Not that it ever departed completely, but St. Jerome tells us that in his time four out of five bishops were heretics. St. Basil the Great wrote in his Epistles to his people at the time, making an important distinction between support of the Catholic Faith and support of the "institutional Church" in times of conflict between the two:
Who has lost and who has won in the struggle -- the one who keeps the premises [buildings] or the one who keeps the Faith? The Faith obviously. That therefore the ordinances which have been preserved in the churches from old time until now may not be lost in our days,... rouse yourselves, brethren,... seeing them now seized upon by aliens.
Since Christ stands with His Church, it will return to complete orthodoxy after our time of testing, as it did after the tests of the Catholic faithful in previous centuries. Balance will be restored, and the "institutional Church" will once again function in an undoubtedly Catholic way that all can proudly and correctly be a part of. This we have consistently maintained as a point of Catholic Faith and Hope.
Our role in our time is to keep the Faith and to hold the Traditions that we have been taught, just as our faithful predecessors did in their times of trial. We are perfectly happy to leave it to Christ to work out His organizational and personnel problems!
(For further information, see POPELIM: The Limitations of Papal Authority from the Writings of Roman Catholic Popes, Councils, Saints, and Theologians in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).)
St. Patrick never swilled green beer, wore goofy plastic party hats, or shouted "Erin go bragh." He never chased snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he wasn't even Irish; he was Roman. Now that we have gotten all the secular folderol out of the way, let us recognize St. Patrick for what he really was: a dynamic man who brought Christianity to the land then called by the Romans Hibernia.
Roman expansion into Britain had brought Roman law and order, advanced culture, an infrastructure of highways and aqueducts, and eventually Christianity. Ireland, on the other hand, remained a harsh, difficult place where warring kings ruled violent little kingdoms throughout the land, and pagan Druid priests performed human sacrifices. Well, maybe St. Patrick did drive the snakes out of Ireland, metaphorically. The snake was a symbol of the Druids, so in that sense Patrick drove the pagan "snakes" from the island and converted Ireland as a whole to Christianity, though it took him thirty years.
It has taken Vatican II and Newchurch to bring the snakes back to Ireland. Once a solidly Catholic country, Ireland is now as pagan as any you might mention, Ireland now welcomes abortion, divorce, and the New Mess. As Ireland loses the Roman civilization it once saved and sinks back into paganism, let us turn once again to the intercession of this civilizing and Christianizing Saint. Perhaps he can yet save it!
Readers of TRADITIO may remember the "Indian Feather" Mess performed by Archbishop Charlie "Comanche" Chaput, of Denver, sporting Indian feathers and tom-toms. And Chaput is what passes in Newchurch for a "conservative"! (See TRADITIO's Novus Ordo Service Photo Gallery.) Now we have the full-blown "Indian Chief" Mess, in which a Jesuit presbyter dons an Indian chief's headdress and performs the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service.
This farce was justified on the basis of Vatican II's corrupt principle of "inculturation," the idea that the Novus Ordo is not Roman, but whatever crazy, made-up pagan notion any presbyter can come up with. This Novus Ordo performance was held in conjunction with the Tekakwitha Conference, named after the Novus Ordo beata by that name. Of course, the virginal Kateri Tekakwitha knew nothing of the Novus Ordo Mess and would be horrified by what is being done in her name.
But all this pales when you discovered who else was present at this farce, submitting to being "blessed" by an Indian with an Indian feather during the Novus Ordo "liturgy": none other than Newpope's Liturgy Czar, Newchurch Francis Cardinal Arinze, who, as Newpope's Liturgy Czar, is in charge of all Newchurch's invalid Protestant-Masonic-Pagan services! And they call this papacy "conservative"! God help the Novus Ordinarians when Benedict-Ratzinger plays off the scene.
Traditional Catholic writer Patricius Anthony has previously exposed the Modernist agenda of Arinze. For further information, see ARINZE.HTM: Cardinal Arinze's Changing Church in the TRADITIO Features department.
TRADITIO previously reported on the plans that producer-director-actor Mel Gibson and Mel's 87-year-old father, Hutton Gibson, had to build an independent traditional Roman Catholic in the Pittsburgh area. The Pittsburg Tribune-Review reports that construction plans are underway for a St. Michael the Archangel Chapel with a seating capacity between 200 to 300.
Construction will be financed by the World Faith Foundation, associated with the Gibsons and others, which bought the Mt. Pleasant property for $315,000. A contractor is currently being selected to build the chapel, which it is hoped can be completed in eight months to a year. Soil tests are complete, and the township has approved installation of a septic system.
Hutton Gibson has been attending Mass at St. Joseph the Protector Chapel, another independent traditional Roman Catholic chapel, in Greesnburg, Pennsylvania, for the past year, and his son Mel visited the chapel last year. A spokesman for St. Michael's stated that the Traditional Catholic Movement "is growing as more Catholics seek a return to pre-Vatican II rituals and doctrines." The movement consists of many organizations, such as the Society of St. Pius V, the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, the Society of St. Pius X, some "indult" sites, several smaller groups, and sites independent of specific groups.
It is reported that some SSPX "chatrooms" are buzzing livid about the Gibsons' plans to build an independent traditional Roman Catholic chapel in Pittsburgh, as the Society has a chapel on the other side of town, although the Society itself does not hesitate to knock heads by putting SSPX chapels where independent chapels already exist. Apparently, the Gibsons think that "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." The Gibsons have never affiliated themselves with the Society of St. Pius X.
One has to wonder what it is about Ron Howard's new film, Da Vinci Code, slated for release on May 19, that has scared the Newchurch bishops of the United States so much that they have launched an attack on it? Could it be that, in the words of Shakespeare, "the lady doth protest too much"? Has Dan Brown's work of fiction hit perhaps a little too close to the truth about Newchurch's inner-workings?
Dan Brown's book depicts the Newchurch organization Opus Dei as a secretive and malevolent organization. There seems to be evidence that this may well be the case. In 1982 John Paul II created this group as a so-called "personal prelature," the only such organization. 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. In a second maneuver that raised eyebrows, the pope placed the founder of Opus Dei on the "fast track" for Newchurch sainthood, accelerating an often centuries-long waiting-period for canonization to a mere twenty years.
Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, anticipated and developed 30 years before Vatican II a revolutionary, new, secular theology of the laity, and accepted the principle of pluralism and indifferentism: a Novus Ordo Seclorum. Opus Deistas are part of the New Order Church. Although sometimes wrongly described as "traditional," Opus Dei is a chameleon organization, being liberal or conservative, whichever benefits its agenda. Juan Estruch in his book Saints and Schemers described this as "dual ethics." Michael Walsh, in his book, Opus Dei: An Investigation into the Secret Society Struggling For Power Within the Roman Catholic Church, has also written in detail about the inner workings of Opus Dei.
Yes, Dan Brown's work of fictions contains a lot of nonsense about Christ and Mary Magdalene, as well as about mediaeval church history too, but at least it tilts at exposing the dark recesses of one part of Newchurch.
Dear Fathers:
Fr. Schmidberger is currently doing the rounds of the SSPX Chapels in Canada. We are a little worried about what his purpose is at this point in time. I hope that he still remembers Archbishop Lefebvre's repeated warnings: "NO COMPROMISE with apostate, antiChrist Rome." I note that Bishop Williamson has recently declared that Benedict XVI is "a hopeless case." And in the year 2000, he told Cardinal Hoyos that he and the cardinal did not belong to the same Church. So these trips undertaken by Fr. Schmidberger leave us perplexed and wondering.
Just as most these days who call themselves "Catholics" are not really so by any traditional definition, but following a kind of Modernistic-Liberalistic-Cultural pseudo-Catholicism, the same is true of those who call themselves "Jews." Very few of these are Jews by any traditional definition. Hardly one in ten ever attend synagogue, and fewer yet follow the Mosaic law. They are merely politicians, pushing liberalist causes or supporting the political state of (modern) Israel. Modern "Judaism," just as Modern "Catholicism," is counterfeit, a "great facade" as Malachi Martin termed it, to put a seemingly religious veneer on ultra-liberal secular politics.
Perhaps the best-known voice for this un-Jewish Judaism is Abraham Foxman, national director of the ultra-liberal Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. He throws around the term "anti-Semitism" (a term that has been so abused the last fifty years that, like "racism," it really has no objective meaning any longer) against anyone that doesn't fit his liberal political agenda. You may remember that in 2004 the main target of his attacks was traditional Catholic producer-director-actor Mel Gibson, who dared to produce an unabashedly Christian film, The Passion of the Christ.
Ol' Abe hates Christians and is desperate to make Christians responsible for the all the ills of the world. He want to turn his "anti-Semitism" into "anti-Christianism." In a new book, he once more attacks Mel Gibson because the story of the Passion of Christ is intrinsically "anti-Semitic." (Abe has a problem with other peoples' religions and freedom of speech if their opinions don't agree with his own.)
Abe now wants Christians to rewrite the Bible, to rip out "large sections of the New Testament." He condemns Christ's incendiary attacks on the leaders of the Jewish Church, the Pharisees, whom He called "whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness" (Matthew 23:27/DRV). Abe also censors the "Beloved Apostle" John, because he wrote: "Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son" (1 John 2:22/DRV). John also wrote: "Behold, I will bring of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but do lie" (Apocalypse 3:9/DRV).
But Foxman would most like to rip out the multitude of passages in all the Gospels that reveal that the Pharisee leaders hatched a conspiracy to entrap and finally murder Christ. The four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, written by St. Luke, lays blame for the crucifixion squarely upon the officials of the Jewish Church, the Chief Priests Annas and Caiphas, and the Pharisees of the Sanhedrin Council.
The fact that the New Testament is "anti-Semitic" is actually rather humorous. All of the authors of the New Testament were Jews: Matthew Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter, Jude, and Paul. Paul was actually a former Pharisee Jewish leader himself. Moreover, the most authoritative contemporary secular author who confirms the biblical accounts, Flavius Josephus, was a Jew.
Foxman and his B'nai B'rith liberalists, goes farther still. He says that Christians should be feared because they want to take over America! They seek the power to impose their faith on everyone in America, "replacing pluralism and tolerance with theocracy." Modern Christianity, Foxman asserts, is based on "hateful, vengeful lies spread by the New Testament. Christians who try to convert Jews to Christianity are inherently anti-Semitic." There he goes again throwing around that now meaningless "anti-Semitic" moniker!
No wonder the public rejected Foxman's calumnies against Mel Gibson, one of the nicest figures in Hollywood. They gave his traditional film, The Passion of the Christ, one of the biggest box offices of all time. Gibson is a man who is humble, religious, and self-deprecating. As between "Fanatic" Foxman and "Gentile" Gibson, the U.S. electors would take traditional Catholilc Gibson in an instant!
The signs are all around us. Since Ratzinger at Vatican II introduced into the documents of Vatican II (Lumen gentium, November 21, 1964, para. 8) the timebomb: "Unica Christi Ecclesia ... subsistit in Ecclesia catholica," that the sole Church of Christ merely subsists in the Catholic Church, not is the Catholic Church, Newchurch has been teaching that Catholicism is not the only true religion, but that all religions hold the truth.
And remember that it was Fr. Ratzinger at Vatican II who personally introduced this Modernistic statement, if there ever was one, into Vatican II. The blame for what has turned into rampant heresy in Newchurch can be laid directly at his feet. This statement is contrary to the expression of Pope Pius XII, according to which "The Roman Catholic Church is the only Church of Jesus Christ," which has been the 2000-year dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church.
In the first draft of the Vatican II constitution Lumen gentium, it was still put: "the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church." But that was too clearly a condemnation of Protestantism. A German Protestant, Pastor Schmidt, an observer invited by Cardinal Bea to take part in the Council, made the written proposal that the word est be replaced by substitit in (substists in, rather than is). He gave the proposal to Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, who was at the time the peritus of Cardinal Frings of Cologne. Fr. Ratzinger in turn gave the proposal to Cardinal Frings, who presented it before the Council, and the words subsistit in were incorporated into Lumen gentium.
Now all Hell has broken loose. Il Corriere reports that Newvatican, in the person of Raffaele Renato Cardinal Martino, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, wants an hour of Islamic religion to be taught to Muslim students in schools in Italy, which is no longer a Catholic country (there are none, since Newchurch forced all formerly Catholic countries to remove the provision from their constitutions). "Only dialogue and religious freedom can avert fundamentalism, whether of a political and secular or religious nature," said Martino. Now we understand what the real enemy is for Newvatican: it is "fundamentalism," regardless of denomination (Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, etc.). That is why Newvatican rejects traditional Catholics: they are the dreaded Catholic "fundamentalists"!
Modernism has infected even fundamentalist Protestants. Televangelist Jerry Falwell is reported to be agreeing with New Order Modernists (including Ratzinger in his statement for the Pontifical Biblical Institute a few years ago) that Jews, as God's supposed Chosen People, do not have to be "saved" through faith in Christ. Falwell already flipflopped on fighting homosexuality and other moral ills, and now supports "gay rights."
Good Catholics, you see what happens when the true Church of Christ is taken over by the Counterfeit Church of the New Order. The Roman Catholic Church used to be a homing beacon for truth, even to the Protestants, but Newchurch now actually draws Protestants away from the Catholic Faith. And Newpope is the one who, as Fr. Ratzinger, first opened the floodgates to the "All Religions Are Equal" notion. Certainly no "traditionalist" he!
Dear Fathers:
Here in France, Minute, a conservative periodical, has published on March 8 its interview with Bishop Williamson, the senior SSPX bishop, who is considered a "hard-liner" against Newrome. On the same day it was reported that that SSPX Superior General Bernard Fellay has invited to a meeting at Flavigny all the priors of SSPX chapels in France for a secret meeting. The topic of this meeting has not been made public.
Minute prefaced its interview, in French, with Bishop Williamson by a statement that "in a few weeks, according to its information, a substantive meeting would occur between Pope Benedict XVI and Bishop Bernard Fellay," as the sell-out may accelerate. The two U.S. traditionally-bent periodicals that recently called upon Fellay not to sell out to Newchurch, according to an earlier report on TRADITIO, can be worried. Here are some highlights of the Minute interview, in which Bishop Williamson stated that:
This initiative of Bishop Williamson, who is known as a "hard-liner" against Newrome, is being understood here as an attempt to stop the final step of the sell-out of the SSPX by Fellay-Schmidberger to Benedict.
The feastday today of this great Saint, who can provide practical wisdom and strategies for Catholics living now, might be overlooked because it falls in Lent. Traditional writer Patricius Anthony discusses how this pope can show the way to those lost in the current apostasy. For further information, see the Special Feature St. Gregory the Great Shows the Way.
Back in November 2004, TRADITIO apprised you of the goings-on in the Newchurch diocese of Spokane. The diocese of Spokane is in bankruptcy proceedings, and there were early indications that all of the 82 parishes could be sold to pay victims of crimes by New Order clergy. All Novus Ordo schools may close. Even the dead are not safe from the predations of the New Order: Catholic cemeteries may be sold, and the bodies disinterred.
So what did the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops do? Why, it elected the Bishop of Spokane, William Skylstad its President! Is Newchurch so bereft of competent clergy that it has to appoint a bankrupt as its President? Yes!
Now the Spokesman-Review newspaper reports that a woman has filed a claim that when she was she was a minor, she was sexually abused personally by Skylstad over a period of three years. Skylstad is already down for $45,700,000 to pay off 75 Spokane victims of sex abuse. 60 more claims are yet to be processed.
The question now is whether Skylstad will himself observe the principles adopted by the U.S. Newchurch bishops in 2002 and step down while his case is being investigated. Moreover, will Newpope's Sex-Crimes Czar and Cardinal-to-Be, William Levada, lay down the law and insist on that Skylstad step aside? (Don't hold your breath!)
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal involving a constitutional challenge to an anti-Newchurch statue depicting a Roman Catholic bishop with a grotesque facial expression wearing a miter that resembles a phallus. The statue was entitled Holier than Thou. It was placed at one of the busiest locations on the campus of Washburn University, a tax-supported public university located in Kansas.
Traditional Catholics may have mixed feelings about this case. First of all, it is certainly not equitable to single out any one religion for derision. The University's President defended the display as art that has the purpose of engaging the community intellectually and emotionally, and refused to remove it. Yet, the University officials admitted that they would never permit an anti-Jewish, anti-black, or anti-gay/lesbian statue on campus. Therefore, the University should welcome a prominent statue depicting Martin Luther King caught in adultery or Mohammed massacring Christians.
On the other hand, there is an element here of fair political comment. It is not, in essence, the Newchurch religion that is being derided, but the bishops of that religion, who, as an organized group, have undeniably participated in sex crimes and embezzlement, aided and abetted sex crimes and embezzlement, and obstructed investigation of sex crimes and embezzlement by themselves and their Newchurch clergy. No individual is singled out in the statue, but a general political statement is made. Fine, but let's just get those derisive statues of Martin Luther King and Mohammed up as quickly as possible!
Isn't Newchurch sometimes so ridiculous that you want to belly-laugh?! Going back to Apostolic times, there have been days of abstinence from meat, meat being considered something of a delicacy. There are even indications of this in Sacred Scripture. It seems that the days in the early Church were Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, the same days that traditional Catholics observe as Ember Days this first week of Lent. The penitential nature of the period we call in English-speaking countries Lent after an Anglo-Saxon word for spring, but which the Church calls Quadragesima after the Latin word for forty, including provisions for fasting, also goes back to Apostolic times.
Now some French Newchurch bishop has turned the traditional fast and abstinence of Lent into just the reverse, a recommendation for consumption -- of chickens, which are traditionally prohibited "meat"! Is this for some strange New-Order religious reason? No. It is purely commercial. Because of recent fears of avian influenza, consumption of poultry in France "is showing a marked decline," and poulterers are suffering. Philippe Breton, however, has no concern for Christ and Lent. Otherwise, he would be telling his Novus Ordinarians to observe the traditional Lenten fast and abstinence.
Isn't it revealing how, after Vatican II, the Novus Ordinarians are eager to embrace severe diets only for reasons of surface physical appearance, but won't fast at all for their interior spiritual beauty in the eyes of Christ? Many of the early Fathers of the Church -- St. Jerome, Pope St. Leo the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Isidore of Seville -- tell us that the season of Lent was instituted by the Apostles themselves from the very commencement of the Church. From the first they legislated a universal fast to serve to purify our souls of sin and to subdue our passions and inclination to sin.
The ember days are days of self-mortification prescribed at the beginning of the seasons. Ember comes from the Latin word tempora, meaning seasons. Ember days were first decreed by Pope St. Callixtus in the third century. They were prescribed for the entire Church by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) for the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of the weeks after December 13 (Feast of St. Lucy), of Ash Wednesday, of Pentecost, and of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14). The purpose of introducing the Ember Days was to thank God for the gifts of nature and to teach us to make use of them in moderation. We also offer our fast and abstinence for the sanctification of the clergy, as traditionally ordinations are held on Ember Saturdays.
Dear Fathers:
I have been a Catholic since I was born in the 1930s, having attended Catholic schools through grade and high school, along with having had an extremely saintly mother to teach me my religion. Since I am a traditional Catholic, I have always been under the assumption that the Lenten fast and abstinence should be followed according to the practice before the New Order came into being in the mid to late 1960s.
Therefore, I was shocked to find in the Ash Wednesday bulletin of the SSPX site in [city], the following Novus Ordo statement:
All Catholics ages 14 and up are obliged to abstain from meat this Ash Wednesday. And all Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 are obliged to fast this Ash Wednesday (New Code Canons 1251 & 1252). All Catholics are encouraged, though no longer under pain of mortal sin, to keep the fast throughout the remainder of Lent excepting Sundays. The fast of Lent is no longer obligatory under pain of sin except Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, which still oblige under pain of mortal sin. The obligation to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year still obliges under pain of venial sin.
It sounds to me as though the SSPX has one foot in the Novus Ordo Church and the other in Tradition!
The Fathers Reply.
Many SSPXers may not be aware that the official policy of the Society (and some others) follows the Novus Ordo in many cases, and this is just one of those cases. What is stated in the SSPX bulletin you quote is right out of Novus Ordo, and does not conform to traditional practice.
Even more shockingly, the SSPX officially accepts the sacrilegious Novus Ordo Presto-Fast for Communion. This allows for SSPXers to gorge themselves with the Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny's (two buttermilk pancakes, two eggs, two bacon strips, two sausage links, hash browns or grits or bread, glass of juice, and coffee) up to fifteen minutes before Mass and be belching their stomach contents all the way up to the Communion rail. There is nothing Catholic about this practice.
The traditional abstinence from fleshmeat on all Fridays of the year, Ash Wednesday, and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas, traditionally binds under pain of mortal sin all persons over seven years of age. The fast on all weekdays of Lent traditionally binds under pain of mortal sin all persons over 21 and under 60 years of age. (There are several medical and work conditions that can dispense one from the Lenten fast, so in case of doubt, one should consult his confessor.) The SSPX's statement of a binding Friday abstinence under pain of venial instead of mortal sin seems to be entirely contrived, with no basis in traditional practice -- or Novus Ordo practice, for that matter.
The bulletin you quote even refers explicitly to the Novus Ordo "Canon Law" of 1983, which the Society's founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, found gravely flawed. These matters of Lenten practice and Eucharistic fast seem to confirm what TRADITIO has been pointing out about the Society: (1) that since the death of its founder in 1991, it has diverged in significant ways from the Archbishop's founding principles for the Society, and (2) in significant ways the Society officially already accepts a number of practices of the New Order. Perhaps the possibility of a sell-out to the New Order, in this light, is not as surprising as some think. In many ways, elements of the Society have been moving in the direction of the Novus Ordo since 1991.
In all fairness, it should be pointed out that these SSPX deviations from traditional practice concern a number of the more traditional priests of the Society, some of whom personally and courageously stand up against Novus-Ordoizing tendencies in the Society.
The traditional Catholic practices of fast and abstinence are presented in detail in the current year's edition of the Official Traditional Catholic Directory. If you do not yet have a copy of this year's edition, see the top of this page for ordering information.
Not satisfied with being criminals in sex crimes and embezzlement, in aiding and abetting such crimes in concert as a "mafia," as one FBI official termed it, and obstructing justice so that Newchurch youth can be deflowered by presbyters at will, the U.S. Newchurch bishops have now announced that they will violate the federal law on immigration, which is currently being debated in the U.S. Congress to obstruct terrorists and illegals' theft of U.S. health care and social security.
Following the lead of Cardinal "Mad" Mahony, who devoted Ash Wednesday in Los Angeles not to penitence for sin against God, but to a blatant political harangue in favor of illegal immigrants, the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops have said that they may break a proposed immigration law, saying that "the laws of the gospel always exceed the laws of the land." Their comments were directed at a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December, and currently before the Senate, to tighten border controls.
Now, "Arch-heretic" Mahony was already exposed in a U.S. News & World Report magazine article ("The Deathcare Business," March 23, 1998, pp. 50-58) for "cutting a deal with a funeral chain" that give Mahony and his minions a kickback in the form of "an undisclosed percentage of the proceeds from each funeral [performed] at the cemeteries, money that will help Cardinal Roger Mahony realize his dream of building a $100 million cathedral downtown." In other words, the corrupt Mahony took money from bereaved families at their moment of grief so that he could build his pagan temple. It was a classic "confidence game" or, in religious terms, simony.
Traditional Catholics know Our Lord's teaching about the civil law. In a land where many of the residents hated their civil government, Our Lord Jesus Christ rebuked their lawlessness by charging them: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21/DRV).
And what is it that these criminal bishops object to? Among other things, the bill being debated would obligate churches and other social organizations to ask immigrants for legal documentation before providing assistance. Anyone who knowingly "assists, encourages or directs" someone to reside in the U.S. illegally would be guilty of alien smuggling and subject to up five years in prison under the bill. What's so bad about that. Catholic theology has always taught that a country has a God-given right to protect its borders and its citizens.
Let us offer these clueless "bishops" another alternative: give their beloved illegals a one-way airline ticket to Newrome. After all, Newpope loves immigrants, itinerants, circus people, and clowns. Let him take care of them with all the resources of Newchurch! It would be much cheaper for U.S. citizens and preserve justice in the United States against the theft now being perpetrated by illegals to the tune of $67,000,000,000 to $87,000,000,000 against the citizens of the United States (National Science Foundation Study, 2003).
The idea that Novus Ordinarians "obey" the pope while traditional Catholics "disobey" the pope is quite a laugh: merely a cover-story invented by the Novus Ordinarians to conceal their own disobedience. Moreover, it seems that the biggest debate in the Novus Ordo these days is not Christ and His teaching, the Blessed Virgin Mary and her devotion, Catholic morality, or the true worship of God -- but whether to sit or stand!
Novus Ordinarians of the Neocatechumenal Way movement have told the pope: "Buzz off." On January 12 Benedict-Ratzinger told them to stand, not sit, when they receive the Novus Ordo cookie and to obey the other Novus Ordo rubrics. The Neocatechumenals eat their cookies seated, around a large, square dinner table. They divide and consume an invalid large leavened loaf, made with two-thirds white flour and one-third whole wheat flour. They swill the grape from cups that are passed from hand to hand, always in a seated position.
These Neocatechumenals are so daft that they base their buzz-off to Newpope on the grounds that Christ has His disciples "sit down," as written in St. Luke's Gospel (12:37). These Neocatechumenals are as ignorant of Greek as they are of Catholicism! St. Luke uses the word anaklinei (Latin discumbere), which in no way means to sit; it means to lie on one's back. So, if these ignoscenti want to follow Scripture, all the Novus Ordinarians should eat their cookies lying on their backs (as the custom of the time was to eat reclining on a couch, propping yourself up with your left arm.)
Several Newchurch bishops, such as the bishop of Guam, have supported the Neocatechumenals against Newpope. It remains to be seen whether Benedict-Ratzinger fires these bishops and suppresses the Neocatechumals. (Don't hold your breath. Newrome is a paper-tiger.)
Here is just another indication of how much of an unCatholic fraud Newchurch and its bishops are. Several members of a Newchurch parish in Southern California's Orange County have been expelled for insisting upon kneeling at the Agnus Dei of the New Order service. The New Order pastor condemned and expelled the "conservative" Novus Ordinarians as follows:
If you intentionally oppose these liturgical norms, particularly by not standing after the "Lamb of God" and at the "Final Blessing," either as individuals or as a group, it is totally wrong and a serious matter/sin: intentional disobedience not simply to the local bishop, but also to Rome, and ultimately to God.... That is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin, separating oneself from the Church.
As we all know, in Newchurch, the Great God is the Newchurch bishop. His word, not God's, is law. He sits upon his throne in the center of the sanctuary with his back to the altar. But now it appears that the Newchurch Pastor is a Demi-god at least. What a wonderful "Church of Love" Newchurch is. People can be expelled simply for being "too reverent."
And all this from the Newchurch institution that no longer believes in Mortal Sin, let alone Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, and Temporal Punishment -- the Newchurch institution in which every unrepentant sinner goes to Heaven, and every traditional Catholic goes to the non-existent Hell. So, thrice-divorced congressmen, homosexual advocates, bishop embezzlers and sex criminals, and presbyter perverts are all in Heaven, but in Hell there are only those traditional Catholics who kneel before God! Good Catholics, the New Order is certainly perverted, and no true Catholic should have anything to do with it.
The Newchurch bishop of the area, Tod Brown, would naturally object to kneeling at the Agnus Dei. His vision of a "Mass" is the one performed at San Juan Capistrano Mission, site of one of those "Indult" Masses too (you know what the "Indult" Mass is by the company it keeps), in which, as described in the diocese's own newspaper, two laypeople, Jerry Nieblaus and Kathy Sandoval:
performed a blessing, the sacred Four Directions ceremony, during the Mass [sic]. Carrying an abalone shell filled with burning white sage, Nieblas pointed to the four directions as Sandoval, wearing a willow bark skirt, fanned the smoke with red-tail hawk feathers and prayed. "We honor the creator, our homeland and ancestors and ask them to pray for us and to be with us on this day," said Nieblas.
Now there's a real "Catholic" service for you!
Actually, the ultimate reason for the expulsions was the deceptive "Indult" Mass, which existed at the church before and deceived the people into staying with Newchurch. This Mass was subsequently yanked away by Brown. The new pastor consequently ridiculed the kneeling Novus Ordinarians by pointing out:
[The former pastor] was allowed to have only the Tridentine Mass [sio] here at St. Mary's with its own norms: communion by tongue, with one species, no sign of peace, kneeling after "Agnus Dei"/Lamb of God, which some parishioners here name the "traditions" of St. Mary's.
Just another instance of an "Indult" Mass down the drain when it didn't serve its deceptive purpose any longer. Actually, the Newchurch pastor has done these people a service. They have been expelled not from the Catholic Church, but from the Newchurch of Hate, the Counterfeit Church, the Great Facade. The expellees should feel liberated and should find their nearest traditional Catholic Church, as they should have done all along.
The Ecclesia Dei so-called "indult" has, since its inception in 1988 to buck heads with the Society of St. Pius X and other traditional organizations and priests, has increasingly been shown to be a cheap trap to keep semi-traditional and "conservative" Catholics ponying up their money to support the New Order. In the almost twenty years since the "indult," the once-vaunted Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has been browbeat into submission to the New Order by Newchurch bishop Fabian "Phony" Bruskewitz. The Institute of Christ the King (ICK) has been riddled with morality problems since its former superior and one of its priests have been convicted of multiple felonies.
Now newly-named Cardinal O'Malley, best known for his autocratic closing of Boston's historic churches, says that he won't allow a "Tridentine Indult Parish," slapping down requests from FSSP and ICK. Holy Trinity, which used to offer the "Indult" Mass will be closed, and the "Indult" Mass will be relegated to St. James in Chinatown. "It is not the intention of the Archbishop to begin a Tridentine Rite parish ... as we can provide for the celebration of the Mass on a weekly basis." The Vicar General indicated that that the "indult" relates only to providing for a liturgical "preference," albeit in a very minimalist way.
Said one Novus Ordinarian of the denial for an "indult" parish: "I think this is a very wise move. Such a church runs the distinct danger of setting it self apart from the body of the Church, and the pride and arrogance it seems to instill are negatives in anyone's book of Christianity." Yes, indeed. God and His truth don't matter in Newchurch. It is prideful and arrogant to insist on the unadulterated Roman Catholic Faith rather than "oecumenizing" with protesting Protestantism, murderous Mohammedanism, Eastern elitism, and Buddhist buffoonery.
You can do what is right in Newchurch and still get zinged. Newchurch Archbishop Harry Flynn, of Minneapolis-St. Paul, has silenced one of his presbyters, Robert Altier. Now what did the poor presbyter do to merit such ignominy? He spoke out against an explicit sex program being taught by the archdiocese to Newchurch children, saying that the program usurps parents' roles in teaching their children about sexuality. That's it.
Altier wasn't going around raping children. He wasn't preaching heresy (from the Newchurch perspective). He wasn't embezzling his parishioner's donations. He wasn't growing marijuana in his rectory. All these things are rampant in Newchurch. No, he stood up for the moral rights of Catholic parents. That's it.
It's cases like this that make mincemeat out of any thought of selling out to Newchurch for the crumb of an occasional Modernized Mass of 1962. As Malachi Martin so rightly pointed out, Newchurch is simply a Counterfeit Church, a Great Facade. It is not marble, but papier-mache. It is not to be given respect, but rejected as an unCatholic deception.
While "conservative" Novus Ordinarians constantly talk about the "supreme power" of the pope, they have apparently missed the fact that popes after Vatican II have been relinquishing their authority and redefining the papacy itself. Paul VI, though crowned as pope, later gave away the papal tiara. JPI didn't even bother to be crowned as pope, nor did JPII. (For further information, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics) in the article "Papal Tiara.")
In 1995, in his Encyclical Letter, Ut unum sint, "On the Commitment to Oecumenism," JPII attempted to justify false oecumenism by a statement that carries the odor of heresy: "the spirit of Christ uses non-Catholic churches as a means of salvation." JPII went on to state: "I am convinced that I have a particular responsibility in his regard, above all in acknowledging the oecumenical aspirations of the majority of the Christian communities and in heeding the request made of me to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nevertheless open to a new situation."
Subsequently, Benedict-Ratzinger has indicated that he would not exercise the office of the papacy independently, but would exercise it only in "collegiality" (a Vatican II concept) with the other Newchurch bishops. Now Benedict-Ratzinger has gone one step further: he has laid down his title as "Patriarch of the West" to further false oecumenism with the Eastern Schismatics. The 2006 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican yearbook, has dropped the pope's historical title, "Patriarch of the West." Newpope, who reportedly made the decision himself to drop the title, evidently wished to eliminate any notion that the Holy See represents the Roman (Western) Church.
The more the Conciliar popes separate themselves from Rome, its Faith and its Tradition, the more they bring their papacy into doubt. Benedict-Ratzinger is already increasingly having to fend off allegations that he is not the Bishop of Rome, because he was not consecrated a bishop in the unquestionably valid traditional rite.
And to what purpose Newvatican's schmoozing with the Eastern Schismatics? Already the Schismatic Moscow Patriarchate has rebuffed Newpope:
It remains a mystery how the omission of the Patriarch of the West title can improve relations between the Holy See and the Orthodox Church. On the contrary, this omission could be viewed as further claims to the church's worldwide jurisdiction, which is reflected in the pontiff's other titles.
On February 28, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling clearing pro-life protesters of a 20-year old suit brought by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws. All well and good, but when are is the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops going to be prosecuted under the RICO Act?
Such federal prosecution is long overdue. There is no question that every single U.S. Newchurch bishop has been involved in some way in a pattern of cover-up of sex and embezzlement crimes. They have used letters, telephone calls, E-mail, and other forms of interstate commerce to hide criminal presbyters, to obstruct the work of law enforcement, and even to aid and abet (if not participate in) the crimes themselves. Not a single bishop has resigned from the corrupt USCCB since the Great Sex & Embezzlement Scandal became public.
It's pretty clear why the federal "justice" system would rather take on average citizens protesting abortion than an organization of bishops. Nevertheless, the time is coming when the feds will have to deal with this matter. Maybe then we can start getting ride of counterfeit bishops posing as "Catholic."
While Newchurch revels in its Kumbaya hootenanny and warmed-over Beatles music, traditional Catholics can take great pride this year in the 250th anniversary (on January 27) of the birth of the Catholic composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart festivals are being held around the world, and particularly at Salzburg, where he composed most of his religious music for the Prince Archbishop.
During all the Sundays of the year 2006, except for Lent and Advent, a celebration will be held with a Mozart Mass in one of the main churches of the Old City. Two special weeks, from October 22 to November 5, will finish the year of Mozart at Salzburg, with free religious concerts every day in the Old City. Mozart's religious music was not written for the concert hall, as was Beethoven's, for instance, but for actual liturgical celebrations of the traditional Roman Rite.
But whenever the name of Mozart comes up, someone always asks, but wasn't Mozart a Freemason? The answer is a qualified yes. Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment as an adult and became a Freemason in 1784. However, his lodge, the same one in which his devout father Leopold and his mentor Joseph Haydn were both members, was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one. Both composers were at the time furnishing church music in the court of the Catholic Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.
According to Msgr. Philip Hughes, one of the most noted Catholic historians of the first half of the 19th century, Freemasonry in Mozart's time, before the French Revolution, which occurred some eight years after Mozart's death, didn't necessarily include the anti-Catholic fanaticism, which after the Revolution became obligatory and was later universally condemned by the Church, but could be considered, at least in the Catholic lodges, as an humanitarian work compatible with the Faith. It wasn't until the mid 1790s, in the turmoil of the war with France that the Austrians grew concerned about secret societies, and in the mid 1790s Masonry was forbidden in Austria.
Moreover, some latter-day historical revisionists -- as well as Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus -- want to make of Mozart a libertine, which he absolutely was not. Mozart's letters, especially to his father Leopold, a very strict Catholic, indicates Mozart's devout Catholicism. He wrote: "I always have God before my eyes.... He never abandons His servant." From Paris he wrote to his father: "Here in Paris, I never miss saying my rosary and visiting Our Lady of Victories." Aged 25, he writes to his father, on June 13, 1781: "I hear the Mass all Sundays, and if it is possible, also on workdays."
Mozart died in Christ's peace on December 5, 1791, "without having been afraid of death", while creating his two major religious works: the anthem Ave Verum Corpus and the Requiem, the latter lying uncompleted at his death.
Readers of TRADITIO are quite familiar with "Mad" Mahony, Newchurch's Roger Cardinal Mahony, of Los Angeles, whom some call the "Arch-heretic of Newchurch." He is also the Sara Winchester of Newchurch, being the constructor of Taj Mahony, the new cathedral of the New Order diocese, which looks more like a pagan temple than a Christian church.
Mahony openly used a solemn religious day, Ash Wednesday, to urge legalization of illegal immigration, which has practically thrown California into a state of bankruptcy. In his political tirade on behalf of crime, which Novus Ordinarians were forced to listen to on Ash Wednesday, Mahony criticized legal citizen groups like the Minuteman Project to police the border on their own time and at their own expense.
Is the Internal Revenue Service listening? It should yank Mahony's religious tax-exemption just as it should yank the exemption of Protestant churches that use their pulpits for political purposes. Mahony's politics are part of a campaign by the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops, which calls for "justice" for criminals, but seems incapable of seeing that justice is done against Newchurch presbyters and bishops who are fornicating and raping Newchurch youth at an ever increasing rate. And Los Angeles is one of the most crime-ridden dioceses of the entire United States.
Bad as is this Newchurch official's flagrant politicking under the guise of religion, Mahony said he would instruct his priests to defy legislation -- if approved by Congress -- that would require churches and other social organizations to ask immigrants for legal documentation before providing assistance and penalize them if they refuse to do so. Mahony's open call to his presbyters to disobey a federal law is considered to be a first for a Newchurch "cardinal."
Dear Fathers:
I would like to know the origins of the priest's vestments at Holy Mass. The Bible seems to indicate that Our Lord dressed simply. I hope that you can enlighten me.
The Fathers Reply.
The vestments are based on the common clothes of the time. For example, the alb is the Roman tunic, the chasuble is a kind of Roman poncho. Over time, the vestments became stylized and artistic, but they are still based on the simple clothing of the early Church.
Moreover, our Lord's garments were not as humble as you think. Remember, the Roman soldiers on Calvary cast lots over his tunic, which "was without seam, woven from the top throughout" (John 19:23/DRV). If this were not a valuable garment, the soldiers would hardly have cast lots over it, and St. John point out just why it was valuable.
There has been a rumor circulating in some circles recently that Mel Gibson was in the "vision site" of Medjugorje to shoot another film. TRADITIO didn't fall for it, as so many did, because we know Gibson, and we know that the rumor was unfounded. Gibson himself has denied it; moreover, he is in Mexico shooting his new film, Apocalypto. Now, the originators of the rumor have retracted their story.
Mel Gibson is an independent traditional Roman Catholic. He has scrupulously stayed away from affiliation with any organization (like the SSPX) and had maintained a very rational traditional stance, based in the traditional Mass, Sacraments, Faith, and Morals of the Roman Catholic Church. He has not gone off onto tangents, as all too many have, to put what should be their faith in Jesus Christ into an assortment of silly seers, visionaries, and the like. And Medjugorje has got to be one of the silliest in recent years!
Dear Fathers:
I love to hear the recorded music of classical Masses. Unfortunately, we do not have music at our Holy Masses here. Could you tell me which are most famous ones actually sung at Catholic Masses?The Fathers Reply.
Most of the Masses of the Classical Period (roughly from the 18th century), and even some before, were never intended to be used liturgically. For example, Bach's High Mass in B Minor would be far too long (two hours) for such a use. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in D (which he considered his greatest work) was intended for the concert hall, not the cathedral. Verdi's Requiem was intended as a non-liturgical musical memorial to Manzoni.
The inspiration provided by the traditional Roman liturgy has been so fruitful that it has inspired composers, whether Catholic or not, to write their greatest music -- until the barbarity of the Vatican II period shut virtually all of that down, as the international church musicians' association sadly admitted within a decade of Vatican II. In the opinion of many musicologists, the greatest Mass ever, written by the greatest composer to have lived, was the High Mass of Johann Sebastian Bach (at least nominally a Lutheran, although many think that he was a closet Catholic, like Shakespeare). His Mass was written on commission from Prince Augustus the Strong von Sachsen (Saxony), who had just converted to Catholicism to become eligible to be elected King of Poland.
Classical Masses written for actual liturgical use include those of Mozart, who wrote prolifically for the cathedral at Salzburg. Haydn's Masses were written similarly. The Faure Requiem is another example of a classical setting (20th century) that, by its nature (like Mozart's Requiem and unlike Verdi's Requiem) could be used in a liturgical setting.
Masses from earlier periods, such as Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli, are of a scale that would be much more suitable to, and were in fact written for liturgical use. This particular Mass, which Palestrina wrote during the Council of Trent, is said to have persuaded the Council Fathers by its sublimity not to censure the use of polyphony altogether at the celebration of Mass. Of course, there is always the authentic music of the Catholic Church, known as Gregorian chant, which does not need elaborate accompaniment, but can be sung a capella or with organ accompaniment.
If your church or chapel offers the Sacred Chant or Sacred Polyphony, you have a most special treasure that should be encouraged and augmented.
TRADITIO readers may remember back in mid February our Commentary on the resignation of Fr. Trytek from the SSPX because he disagreed with the "erroneous recognition of Benedict XVI as a Catholic pope by the Society [of St. Pius X] and the resulting consequences." One Fr. Jenkins of the SSPX had made a public announcement of the resignation and then "went ballistic" when his public announcement was commented upon here worldwide on TRADITIO before any other source. Fr. Trytek has sent out his own Apologia from Cracow on the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2, which confirms in every respect the information in the TRADITIO Commentary at the time.
Certain elements of the Society don't want it to get out that, internally, more and more of its priests are turning to the sede-vacantist hypothesis to explain the current state of the Church. There is nothing too surprising in this because the sede-vacantist hypothesis has been gaining ground in recent years, as the Church sinks deeper and deeper into the unCatholic New Order or, as the SSPX's own Archbishop-Founder put it: "Rome is no longer Catholic Rome." The problem for the Liberalist Faction of the SSPX is that it cannot "negotiate" with Newrome if substantial numbers of its clergy and laity doubt (or even reject) the position of Benedict-Ratzinger.
Fr. Trytek, alluding to the current dealings of Fellay & Ratzinger "negotiating" with Newrome, wrote in his Apologia:
I reject as hypocritical the SSPX stance of insisting on a game "at two fronts," of which, effectively, the real one, and concurrently the one most damaging to the souls of the faithful, is to protect and legitimize the culprits of the current universal apostasy by assigning them attributes of legality, and, what is more, of power of jurisdiction over Catholics. Such a stance is the result of backsliding from the holy duty of conveying the whole integral Deposit of the Catholic Faith.
Fr. Trytek concludes his Apologia by stating:
My responsibility as a Catholic is the confession of the unadulterated Catholic Faith, the same what was universally practiced till the death of the Holy Father Pius XII. In particular as a Catholic priest I summon all lovers of Truth to reject any compromise with the Modernistic occupants, and to join the common battle for the Catholic cause in our hearts and in our Fatherland! This struggle will be hard and may seem hopeless from a human point of view; however, what greater honor than to take part in the struggle for the triumph of the Holy Church, which shall eventually be victorious!
Fr. Trytek's clarion call should rouse every true Catholic to stand fast with the true Faith, not "negotiating" with the Modernism of the New Order. Surely, it should rouse the Liberalist Faction of the SSPX to adhere to the principles of their founder and prudently stay out of the lair of "that fox" (as Our Lord called Herod) in Newrome.
The SSPX's Liberalist Faction of Fellay & Schmidberger and their ploy of calling independent coverage of their dealings with Newchurch "rumors" is sinking fast. Those two want to create their own rumors! They don't want other sources out there, such as TRADITIO, to give an independent analysis from a knowledge and experience that extends before Vatican II. Now, in their March 2006 issues, two major traditionally-oriented monthly periodicals have come on board with TRADITIO's original analysis of the SSPX situation since the accession of Benedict-Ratzinger:
The writers of this document, as editors of two widely-distributed traditional Catholic journals, wish to go on record in support of Bishop Fellay and the Society of Saint Pius X exercising utmost caution in any negotiations with present-day Rome at this most perilous moment in history. In this Statement we intend to present our reasons for concluding that, alas, the time has not yet come for the SSPX to make a deal.
TRADITIO welcomes the fact that these periodicals, however belatedly, have come on board with TRADITIO's own independent analysis of the situation, which we have already been pointing out for almost a year now. In fact, TRADITIO is distinguished to have been by far and away the first source of independent analysis of what was going on, from almost a year ago, before the latter-day "blogs" and other sources finally caught on.
It seems that TRADITIO's forthright independent analysis, in spite of attacks by the Liberalist Faction of the SSPX, has brought more and more traditional Catholics to confront the reality of a possible SSPX sellout, just as TRADITIO in the past brought large segments of the Traditional Catholic Movement around to confront the invalidity of the Novus Ordo "cookie." That is why the SSPX Liberalist Faction has tried to do a "hit job" on independent coverage of their activities, the kind of organization-independent coverage that TRADITIO's millions of readers have come to rely on.
But Fellay & Schmidberger can't do that any more. They have lost the respect and trust of large segments of the Traditional Catholic Movement. The truth of what they deceptively called "rumors" has been verified by publications around the world, as well as from their own lips and their own publications! Now they have to take on not only TRADITIO, but recognized members of the European press, and French web sites -- and call everything "rumors."
If all these sources are carrying what are purely "rumors," as Fellay & Schmidberger have tried to maintain, it appears that the SSPX Liberalist Faction is becoming as paranoid as it is autocratic. Prominent Italian publications, such as L'indipendente, Il Giornale, and La Stampa, as well as publications in the United Kingdom, France, and elsewhere have been carrying reports, later confirmed in fact, which Fellay & Schmidberger originally condemned as "rumors." More and more web sites have sprung up, particularly in France, where the SSPX is most numerous, to analyze the activities of Fellay & Schmidberger in Europe, to which these Europeans have far greater access and memory than latter-day English-bound sources in the United States. And now even U.S. traditional periodicals are finally carrying the information.
TRADITIO has, throughout, maintained a balanced, independent view of the SSPX. We are neither 100% rooters for it (as the fanatical fringe of the SSPX is) nor condemners of it (as some, but not all, sede-vacantist groups are). We have always pointed to the good that it has done, as well as its all too frequent authoritarianism and mismanagement under the Fellay & Schmidberger administration since 1992. In particular, we have been more supportive of the SSPX's Archbishop-Founder's and his original principles than the SSPX Liberalist Faction is today.
We are still waiting however, for Fellay & Schmidberger to take up the TRADITIO Challenge, issued on February 22, the Feast of St. Peter's Chair at Antioch:
This is "TRADITIO's Challenge." The only way to put all these "rumors" to rest is a joint statement by the High Council and bishops that they will engage in no "negotiations" with Newchurch, until Newchurch rejects the errors of Vatican II and the phony Novus Ordo service. Until then, Fellay & Schmidberger can complain about "rumors" all they want, but their own continued association with Newrome officials confirms the validity of the "rumors." Until TRADITIO's Challenge is met, as far as we're concerned, all the "rumors" of a sellout have continuing validity.
Bernard & Franz, we, and the whole Catholic Traditional Movement, are still waiting to see whether you will meet the challenge.
If Benedict-Ratzinger were the real lover of the Church's sacred language that so many "conservatives" try to paint him to be, his February 22 audience would have had the same teeth in it that Pope John XXIII gave to the uncompromising use of Latin, not only in the Sacred Liturgy but also in the training of priests.
To be sure, on that date, Benedict-Ratzinger, in a Latin address to a group of students and faculty of Christian and Classical Literature at Rome's Pontifical Salesian University, called for a renewal in the study of Latin, said:
can help the faithful foster a firmer understanding of sound doctrine, contained in Church teaching and literature. My predecessors rightly encouraged the study of [this] great language in order to achieve a better understanding of the sound doctrine contained in the ecclesiastical and humanistic disciplines. In the same way, we encourage the continuation of this activity, so that as many people as possible may perceive the importance of this treasure and attain it.
Sounds like the usual papal lip-service with no teeth. Pope John XXIII, on the contrary, had teeth! Exactly 44 years ago, that pope issued his Apostolic Constitution, right in the middle of Vatican II, in the most solemn form, canonizing the uncompromised use of Latin in the Church's liturgy and the thorough study of the Church's language in seminaries.
Contrary to the image that some give of him, Pope John was absolutely traditional when it came to the Church's Sacred Liturgy. He was against the use of the vernacular languages in the Sacred Liturgy and not only said so with his lips but also carried it into the most solemn of Papal Bulls. Yet because the reporters and commentators on the Council were almost exclusively Modernists, they suppressed mention of this Papal Bull. To this day, you rarely see it even mentioned in connection with Vatican II, while Pope John is erroneously pictured as some liturgical "reformer." Nothing could be farther from the truth!
The atmosphere in St. Peter's Basilica on that date, February 22, 1962, must have been electric. In front of the entire College of Cardinals, the Supreme Pontiff was carried in, vested in full papal regalia, upon the sedia gestatoria, the pontifical litter, so that all could see the Pontiff above them as he was carried to the Papal Throne at the altar of the great Basilica. Then the Supreme Pontiff promulgated, in the rarely used solemn form, the Papal Bull, Veterum sapientia, on the promotion and uncompromised use of Latin in the Church and its seminaries. We have the eye-witness report of the event, published in Latin by a German priest who was personally present, Fr. Suitbertus a S. Ioanne a Cruce:
Egomet ipse praesens adfui sat proxime stans proper altare S. Petri in Basilica Vaticana cum ipse Ioannes Pp. XXIII hoc documentum Veterum Sapienia publici iuris fecit. Et res ita accidit: Tota Basilica Vaticana ingenti multitudine fidelium repleta, Summus Pontifex ingressus est et sermonem habuit praeclarum quo momentum et valorem huius documenti (Veterum Sapientia) sat fuse et abundanter audientibus explicavit et inter cetera hoc quoque dixit:
"Ne postea dici possit hunc Summum Pontificem iam aetate provectum non bene intellexisse quali documento nomen suum subscribendo apposuisset, sed tantummodo subscripsisse, quia alii hoc documentum illi ad subscribendum dedereunt, Ego vobis dico me scire quid nunc subscribam et me quod in documento scriptum est re vera velle et propeterea hoc documentum coram omnibus vobis in hoc altari Sancti Petri sollemniter subscribam."
Et coram omnibus nobis, me -- ut dixi -- sat proxime adstante, documentum subscripsit. Hoc est historice certum, quia ante tot testes public factum est.
[I myself was present, standing very closely to the altar of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica when Pope John XXIII enacted this document, Veterum Sapientia, as a public law. And the event occurred as follows. The whole Vatican Basilica was full of a large crowd of the faithful. The Supreme Pontiff entered and gave an outstanding sermon by which he explained at length and in detail to the audience the importance and weightiness of this document, and among other things said the following also.
["Lest afterwards it may be said that this Supreme Pontiff, now advanced in age, has not well understood what kind of document he has enacted by signing his name, but has signed it only because others gave this document to him for his signature, I say to you that I know what I was signing and I willed in truth what was written in the document, and consequently I solemnly signed this document before you all on this altar of St. Peter."
[And before all of us, while I -- as I said -- stood very closely by, he signed the document. This is historicaly certain, because it was done publicly before so many witnesses.]
Among many other requirements for the use and promotion of Latin, the Supreme Pontiff decreed the following:
For further information, see the TRADITIO Library of Files for LATNECES.TXT: Necessity of Latin for the Roman Catholic Church, including the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia [On Promoting the Study of Latin], Given by His Holiness Pope John XXIII.
The Novus Ordinarians, even "conservatives," and the semi-traditionalists, talk a lot about "obedience to the pope." Well, here is a pope, and here is a solemn Papal Decree. How many Newchurch bishops have obeyed it? Not a single one! While Novus Ordo clergy constantly write in favor of services in the vulgar tongues, while Novus Ordo clergy on the whole are abysmally ignorant of the Church' language, while New Order "seminaries" rush to teach Spanish, the vulgar offspring of Latin, very few teach even the rudiments of the mother tongue of Western civilization, of Roman civilization -- and of the Roman Catholic Church.
It seems that the "rumor control" of SSPX's Bernard Fellay has gone awry. In trying to deny "rumors," he has ended up revealing damaging information that contradicts what he has said in the past and confirms the so-called "rumors" reported on TRADITIO, on French web sites, and in the Italian press.
On February 19, Fellay gave yet another one of his propaganda lectures to SSPXers, this time in Denver. One reporter was surprised when Fellay seemed to confirm at least two "secret" meetings, which he had previously denied as "ridiculous rumors" or "mere rumors." Then there was the telephone conversation with Newpope's "hit man," Cardinal Hoyos, before the February 13 curial meeting in Rome.
Fellay & Schmidberger's modus operandi of calling everything that they don't want to get out as "rumors" has now been once and for all discredited. One reporter wrote:
The rumors may have not been entirely confirmed, but anyone who usually follows this news must be amazed at how many rumors have been confirmed so far (this degree of "rumor-confirmation" is unparalleled for any kind of Catholic news). The August meeting, the November meeting, the talks of an Apostolic Administration, the talks of phone calls between the Vatican and the SSPX, some kind of petition for the lifting of the censures (or excommunications, whatever one wishes to call the action), the Papal-Curial meeting of February 13 (of which there had been "rumors" at least since early January) -- each and every one of these were at first called "rumors", "absurd rumors" even, before being confirmed. Is there a pattern here?... But if one wishes to dismiss all "rumors" as implausible, then one denies the very fact that so many of these rumors have ultimately been proven to be true.
Absolutely there is a pattern. And TRADITIO has demonstrated this pattern ever since the accession of Benedict-Ratzinger, and even before. "Rumor" after "rumor" that has been reported here, relayed to us from officials inside the SSPX, within Newvatican, and in the foreign press has been confirmed. Good Catholics, the Fathers have been around for over fifty years. We've seen it all before. We have the detailed knowledge and lengthy experience to cut through the nonsense to analyze for you, our readers, the Big Picture, as no one else has the guts to do.
In formerly Catholic Mexico City, the traditional Asperges, or penitential sprinkling of the congregation before the principal Mass on Sunday, has been replaced by shots from a water pistol.
Reforma reports that Presbyter Marcos Monzalvo, faced with a decline of Sunday attendees to the Novus Ordo in Pachuca, now shoots his congregation with water from a water pistol. He admits that the purpose is the replacement of Tradition, by innovation. The loony Novus Ordinarians are, meanwhile, slurping it up.
One of the most significant disputes between Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) concerns the authority of Vatican II. The Archbishop held that, since it was called and promulgated by the popes merely as a pastoral council without dogmatic authority, it in fact taught in a way that could easily be interpreted heretically.
What most people have forgotten, apparently including the leaders of the SSPX, is that Archbishop Lefebvre condemned Cardinal Ratzinger by name as attempting to "dogmatize Vatican II," that is, to make its unCatholic content falsely take on the aspect of dogma, a bizarre interpretation that even Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI rejected! From Econe on January 29, 1986, he wrote in a letter to Jean Madiran:
Rome is no longer Catholic Rome. The prophecies of Our Lady of La Salette and of Leo XIII in his exorcism [of 1903] are coming true.... Cardinal Ratzinger tries one more time hard to dogmatize Vatican II. We are dealing with persons with no notion of the Truth. We shall consequently be more and more forced to act by considering this new conciliar Church as not being Catholic any more.
We can no longer, without failing gravely to tell the truth and in charity, allow those who listen to us or who read us to believe that the pope is irreproachable, that he is full of wishes to return to Tradition, and that it is only his entourage that is guilty....
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