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The Newchurch bishops would have you believe that they now have the sex crimes of themselves and their presbyters under control. Don't you believe it!
In Boston, a retired Newchurch presbyter already awaiting trial on child rape charges is facing new charges of molesting a mentally retarded person, prosecutors say. Anthony Laurano, 81, was arrested on April 25, 2005, on four counts of indecent assault and battery on a mentally retarded person who lived near him. Laurano was indicted a year ago on two counts of rape on an eight-year-old boy while pastor of a Novus Ordo church. [Boston Globe]
Is it really believable that these Newchurch bishops honestly thought that such ilk could be given six months of psychobabble psychology and returned to their former positions? Come on Cardinal Law. Come on Cardinal Levada. Come on Cardinal George. Are you for real?
As TRADITIO has stated many times before, anyone who continues to frequent a Novus Ordo church and put money into the till must now seriously ask himself whether he has crossed the line into Mortal cooperation in evil. Remember, according to the U.S. Bishops' own investigating committee, one out of seven of the victims of sex crimes by Newchurch bishops and presbyters are under the age of 10! The Newchurchers may has well be putting thirty tainted pieces of silver into the Newchurch collection till.
Today, April 30, being the feastday of St. Catherine of Siena, we pause to note that Catherine, the daughter of a humble tradesman, was raised up to be the guide and guardian of the Church in one of the darkest periods of its history when, for 68 years in the fourteenth century, the popes abandoned the See of Rome and took up residence under the power of the French king in Avignon, France.
When Catherine was seven years of age, she took a vow of virginity, and was persecuted bitterly for it. Yet, as He so often does, Almighty God, as the Blessed Virgin Mary put it in her Magnificat: "hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble" (Luke 1:52/DRV). And it was this humble woman who confounded a pope.
Today it remains almost hidden from Catholics that it was a woman, this woman, Catherine, who forced the pope to back to Rome -- a woman not moved by papal pomp and obsequious obedience. She browbeat Pope Gregory XI until he finally returned to Rome. Earlier, St. Bridget of Sweden denounced Pope Clement VI for abandoning Rome, calling him "a murderer of souls, more unjust than Pilate and more cruel than Judas."
So, when anyone tells you as a traditional Catholic that you have to be silent in the face of evils perpetrated by prelates of the Church, even the popes, you tell them the story of St. Catherine of Siena.
At his Wednesday General Audience on March 16, 2006, Newpope included in his address a statement that sounded vaguely Christian: "By their mere existence, the twelve [Apostles] called from different backgrounds have become a summons to all Israel to conversion and to allow themselves to be reunited in a new covenant, full and perfect accomplishment of the old."
That sounds like the Biblical and Catholic Church that the Old Covenant was abolished when Christ died on the Cross to redeem mankind, signified when "the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top even to the bottom" (Matthew 27:51/DRV). It is dogma that the Old Covenant has been abolished and that to be saved, all must be members of the New Covenant, Jews included.
Wait a minute! Did Benedict-Ratzinger have a lapsus memoriae? Is this the same Ratzinger, who in 2001 as Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the [Newchurch] Faith and President of its creature, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, issued the 210-page document entitled The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. He taught in that document that Jews and Christians share their wait for the Messias, although the Jews are waiting for the first coming and Christians for the second! That statement reeks with the odor of heresy.
Everything in this document was written under Ratzinger's personal direction and with his collaboration and approval, expressed concretely in the document's Preface. Nevertheless, Newvatican officials initially tried to hide this document, not giving it a formal announcement and not making it available in English, but only in Polish, Italian, and French, fearing criticism from traditional Catholics, and even "conservative" Newchurchers. The document has never been officially released in Latin to the world.
Ratzinger's document was resoundingly received in the Jewish community as "a clear affirmation of Judaism with no theological strings attached," as Rabbi Rudin, Senior Interreligious Adviser to the American Jewish Committee, put it. Rabbi Michael Signer, Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, said: "What's really new is the validation of the Jewish position as truth, that the Jewish waiting for the Messiah is a correct theological viewpoint."
Such a teaching by Ratzinger contracts the dogma expressed by Our Lord's Public Revelation in Sacred Scripture. Moreover, traditional Catholics heard the correct Catholic dogma repeated again and again in the Sunday Epistles of Lent, as St. Paul, a Jew converted to Christianity, leaves no doubt in his Epistles about the dogma that Jews must be accept Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Messias. Traditional Catholics also heard this dogma stated in the Litanical Prayer of Good Friday:
Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that our God and Lord would withdraw the veil from their hearts: that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Good Catholics, we have become quite familiar with the games played by the Conciliar popes to destroy the clarity of Catholic dogma. All that Newchurch wants is your money and your political backing. Therefore, it will simultaneously preach contradictory doctrines so that each person can pick and choose whatever he wants. It is not the purpose of Newchurch, from the pope on down, to stand for Catholic doctrine. The Conciliar popes are not called "foxes" for nothing. And the biggest fox of them all is the thoroughly Modernist-Liberalist Benedict-Ratzinger, who as "Fr. Ratzinger" at Vatican II, personally introduced the Modernist-Liberalist New Theology of the Church of the New Order.
If the worst sinner in the world confesses, then dies in the state of grace, the Church teaches he will go to Heaven. Yet the Church also teaches that if a good person who committed a mortal sin dies without Confession, he will not go to Heaven. Isn't this judging? Jesus tells us not to judge.
The Fathers Reply.
Wrong on both counts!
If a "good" person commits a mortal sin and dies without contrition, that is not a "good" person. If he was impeded from the Sacrament of Confession, he can still have contrition. The worst sinner who repented and confessed is actually the good person in the eyes of God. Nor would he likely see Heaven immediately, but would remain in Purgatory until the end of time because of the Temporal Punishment involved as the consequence of his sins.
Secondly, one must make a distinction between internal and external judgment. When Our Lord says: "Judge not, that you be not judged" (Matthew 1:7/DRV), His dictum refers to one man's judgment of another man's internal state of soul. Only God can see the internal disposition: was the external action done out of good or ill, out of friendship or fear, etc.? Man can see only the external result, not the internal intention.
On the other hand, we must make external judgments. We do this every day. A parent judges his child's action unacceptable and punishes him. A judge or jury judges a criminal guilty. We judge that murder is wrong, that adultery is wrong, that theft is wrong. These are external judgments that we must make by God's authority. Otherwise, the commonweal falls. We must judge the external action -- we don't want criminals walking around because they cannot be judged! God gives us that authority, as He established the State with its due authority: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Matthew 22:21/DRV).
This "judge not" is a typical ploy of the Modernists. It's a way of saying that we cannot judge anyone else's morals. We can't say that adultery is wrong, or homosexuality, or theft. Of course, not even the Modernists really believe this. They don't advocate the dismissal of law-courts. They don't advocate the firing of judges. They don't advocate letting murderers, thieves, and rapists go free with impunity. Obviously, even for them, external judgment is just and a necessity. They only judge differently, not in accordance with God's law.
So what does this "judge not" dictum really mean? St. John the Apostle clarifies it for us: "Judge not according to the appearance: but judge just judgment" (John 7:24/DRV). In other words, it is not judgment itself that is condemned, but unjust judgment. Catholic teaching is that just judgment is proper when it pertains to external judgment. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to judge an external act such as murder, to consign the murderer to the courts, and to execute the murderer if found guilty.
What we cannot do, as only God can do that, is judge the internal disposition. Perhaps the murderer was not compos mentis when he committed the murder. Courts can try to infer from external actions what might have been the internal motive, just as a priest can try to infer the culpability of a penitent, but only God knows the true heart as a certainty.
So, when someone gives you that "judge not" quotation to suborn every kind of moral and doctrinal perversion, tell them to go down to the courthouse, dismiss the judges and juries, and lock the doors! "Moral relativism is not only an intellectually bankrupt idea; its real-life consequences can be deadly." Otherwise, we would have no justice in this world -- just anarchy. (For further information, see FAQ10: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Beliefs in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics) in the article "Judge Not.")
"If you read the novel as history, you're in trouble. If you read it to find out what's interesting to you in history, that's good." [Via]
Whatever Mother Angelica's initial idea was in founding the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) Newchurch cable network in 1976, Almighty God seems to have been kind in hiding from her, now over 80 and in bad health, that it has by now sunk into a Protestant Charismatic sump-hole. A new book offers an expose about the unCatholic deception going on there, one of the Newchurch Monsignor "hosts" was caught in an illicit affair with a woman in a motel room, and one of the Franciscan "hosts" was mired in allegations of sex crimes. Now we find out that EWTN has been knowingly harboring a sex criminal of two decades since 1995-- five years before Mother Angelica turned over management of the network to a lay board in 2000. She suffered her first stroke after that turnover, in September 2001.
The Birmingham-based network, which deceptively calls itself "Catholic," said that Presbyter Real Bourque was really "unreal": he performed Mess, held weekly Bible study for EWTN workers and visitors, including children and adolescents, and gave talks at retreats. All this after EWTN knew as early as 1995 that Bourque was a self-admitted sex criminal. Caught with his pants down, EWTN President Michael Warsaw admitted: "It is clear that we should have asked a lot more questions" about Bourque before letting him remain with the network.
What more questions did you need to ask, Mr. Warsaw? You knew all that you needed to. The presbyter should have been ejected. Period. You yourself say on your network that presbyter sex criminals should be "severely punished." You say this partly to deceive your viewers into believing that your network is "conservative" and "Catholic." It is neither. It is hypocritical, as you do not apply the same standards to yourself that you apply to others in Newchurch.[Associated Press]
Good Catholics, use the OFF button on EWTN! No true Catholic can be watching this deceptive Protestant Charismatic drivel. If you want that, you may as well watch Robert Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral. At least his Protestantism "lite" doesn't pretend to be anything different from what it is.
Newvatican was reeling in 1976 after the Italian journal Borghese and Le Bulletin de l'Occident Chrétien published the Italian Register of Masonic Lodges, including names of purported Freemasons embedded within the Newchurch hierarchy to usher in the New Order. The Mason Register listed, by name and code name, more than 125 bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, many of them working in the Newvatican curia. The information was never denied by Newvatican.
In 1976, just a decade after Vatican II ended, Newchurch was still riding high on the "Springtime of Vatican II," although Pope Paul VI had already issued his famous 1972 statement that the Council had introduced the "smoke of Satan around the altar." Thus, the article gained less attention at that time than it would now, after Newchurch has been beset with patently false doctrine, invalid Messes, and criminality of a degree that the Mafia would envy.
Among the 125 names listed in the Masonic Register was a name very familiar to traditional Catholics: Archbishop Hannibal Bugnini, the Chief Architect of the New Order and of the New Mess. Bugnini was first insinuated into a Vatican liturgical commission in 1947 (undoubtedly in ignorance of what was to come) by Pope Pius XII in 1947. He became a consultant to the Sacred Congregation of Propagation of the Faith and to the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
Bugnini's code name was listed as "Buan," and we know that a note was written on July 14, 1964, penned by the Masonic Peerless Grand Master of Rome, who addressed Bugnini familiarly by that name, encouraging Bugnini to introduce the New Order into the Church after Vatican II:
Dear Buan,
We inform you of the task that the Council of Brothers has established for you in agreement with the Grand Master and the Princes to the Throne, and we charge you ... to spread de-Christianization by confusing rites and languages and to set priests, bishops, and cardinals against each other. Linguistic and ritualistic babble means victory for us, since linguistic and ritual unity has been the strength of the Church.... Everything must happen within a decade.
Names also of interest included on the Masonic Register were:
Fr. Malachi Martin, a Vatican insider, historian, and confidant of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, wrote prolifically about corruption within the Vatican II Church, documenting how Newvatican had become "a cesspool of secret societies and worship, involving members of most of the Church's separate and distinct orders, including the Jesuits." There is a growing body of evidence that Modernist-Liberalist elements were covertly introduced into the Catholic Church to subvert it from within.
In the 1960s, a French Catholic nurse, Marie Carré attended an auto-crash victim who was brought into her hospital. The man lingered there near death for a few hours and then died. He had no identification on him, but he had a briefcase in which there was a set of quasi-biographical notes. She kept these notes and read them, and because of their extraordinary content, decided to publish them. The book was originally published in May 1972 in French under the title ES-1025, ES standing for Élève Seminariste, or Seminary Student. In 1973 it was published in English as AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.
The book is an account of an atheistic Communist mole, who in 1940 was purposely sent by his superiors to infiltrate the Catholic priesthood, along with 1024 others at that time, charged with the mission to subvert and destroy the Church from within by helping effect its auto-destruction, a odd term specifically used by Paul VI years later in his December 7, 1968, Address to the Lombard Seminary at Rome. The Anti-Apostle and his 1024 colleagues were triumphantly successful, as far as the New Order Church goes.
Although the author never identifies the man, the narrative makes it clear that he attended a seminary in United States or Canada. It is certain that at least one of these 1025 men became a bishop. Curiously, although the author could not have known it at the time, the Anti-Apostle hailed from the same country as the man who was six years later to become pope: Poland. Coincidence or design? History will tell.
On April 22, Benedict-Ratzinger officially accepted the resignation on account of age (76) of Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima. TRADITIO readers will remember that this was the bishop who associated himself with the scandals at Fatima, previously reported here, concerning Shrine Rector Guerra's deliberate and public allowance of Hindu rites at the Novus Ordo altar in the shrine and the building of a Novus Ordo Basilica monstrosity for all Faiths, looking like a giant tennis racket. Newpope simply elevated Sousa's subordinate in the Portuguese diocese. Guerra remains as Rector of the shrine.
The Liberalists in Newchurch claim that they cannot "imagine Jesus standing on the border to turn back illegal immigrants." Could you please clarify for me what the traditional teaching of the Church is on this contentious issue?
The Fathers Reply.
Catholic teaching going back to the Fathers (e.g., St. Augustine) is that a country has a right to its existence, its laws, its defense, and its protection from intruders. Newchurch cardinal Mahony and other Newchurch bishops just choose to ignore the Catholic teaching and replace it with a Liberalist version of their own.
True, Our Lord would not have stood on the border and turned anyone back, but that would be so because He would not place Himself in that position in the first place! He eschewed politics. He said specifically that His kingdom was not of this world. There is not one word in the Gospels where He criticized the civil government of Pilate and the Romans. As a matter of fact, in most cases He spoke highly of Roman governmental officials, such as the centurion. Our Lord did, however, criticize the Church government of the time harshly, calling them "hypocrites" and "liars."
In fact, what is going on here is that Mahony and his cohorts are playing politics in the civil government instead of taking care of their own proper business: cleaning up the error, sacrilege, and crime in Newchurch. But why should they do that? They are a great part of that error, sacrilege, and crime, just as were1 Caiphas and his cohorts at an earlier time, among other things taking kickbacks from the Church treasury. Sounds just like Newchurch today, doesn't it?!
Any "conservative" Newchurcher who thought that Benedict-Ratzinger's episcopal appointments were going to be any better than JPII's had better give up that fantasy. First, Newpope scuttled off to Newrome the former archbishop of San Francisco, William Levada, who was up to his britches with sex-crime charges. Then, Newpope appointed as Levada's replacement George Niederauer, noted for his "gay-friendly" Newchurch theology. Maybe Benedict-Ratzinger is more of a Modernist than his predecessor, eh?
At any rate, Niederauer led a "protest march" having to do with a civil matter, illegal immigration, not a religious matter. Nevertheless, he did not divest himself of his clerical garb to show that he was marching as a private citizen. No, he deceptively wanted to make it appear that the march was "Catholic." Niedermauer's stooges carried signs reading "Free people not free trade" (even though free trade is a Catholic position) and "Deport racism" (even though illegal immigration is against the law irrespective of race). Then Niederauer involved himself with heretics in the march, reading a joint statement with Buddhists, Jews, and Protestants.
George, you've got too many problems in your own backyard in San Francisco to spend time playing civil political games. Your diocese is handing out children to immoral "gay" households, even though Newpope's Levada is now requiring you to stop it. Your diocese is inundated with sex crimes. Your churches are closing and being sold off to commercial interests. No wonder you want to hide your diocese's corruption by playing secular political games in which you have no business. You, George, are a prime example of why your Newchurch is sinking into offal before our eyes.
Isn't it interesting that for over thirty years we traditional Catholics have been called been called all kinds of nasty names by the Church of the New Order, particularly the S word. Now, the Newchurch admits that it was all a big mistake. Newchurch now admits that we traditional Catholics were right all along, after Newchurch persecuted us, calumniated us, and lied to us, but it has not asked our forgiveness! No, it won't make any practical difference. You still can't get the Traditional Latin Mass (well, at least the Modernized Mass of 1962) when you want it because the New Order bish1ops are still in control and will eke it out only when and where they want -- if they want (half of the Newchurch bishops in the United States don't want even one "indult" Mass in their diocese).
It seems that now Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez, a current member of the Ecclesia Dei Commission and former Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for [Novus Ordo] Divine Worship is the most recent Newchurch prelate to admit that the Traditional Latin Mass "was never abrogated." So, traditional Catholics, you were right all long! All the heartache that Newchurch has put you through for four decades, and continues to put you through, was all illegal, null and void.
Moreover, the Newchurch cardinal let a secret slip out about the March 25 cardinalatial consistory and its discussion about the "indult" and the SSPX. The cardinals, he reported, spoke about offering "a generous welcome" to Catholics who prefer the 1962 Mass under the terms of the 1988 Papal Epistle Ecclesia Dei. BUT -- and here's the kicker -- he said that the conversation had centered on Catholics who have maintained so-called "full communion with the Holy See," NOT the SSPX.
The cardinal said that the status of the SSPX group is "quite different," since it "broke with Rome in 1988." The cardinal recognized that whereas one faction of the SSPX [led by Fellay & Schmidberger] was "anxious to restore ties with [New]rome," another group [the traditional group faithful to Archbishop Lefebvre's principles] was "recalcitrant." The cardinal acknowledged that the reintegration of "traditionalists" into the structure of Newchurch might pose problems. The cardinal frankly admitted that before the SSPX could be accepted by Newchurch, "it will be necessary to resolve some doctrinal debates, particularly over the teachings of Vatican II." [CWN]
So, Fellay & Schmidberger, what's that point of your schmoozing up to the New Order? They're not going to do anything but waste your time in pointless ecclesiastical games. Go about the business of the Society. Start a Traditional Outreach program. Let Newrome sink in its own mire. Then it will be the traditional Catholics who will restore the Church, as the Roman martyrs did after the persecutions of three centuries.
Dear Fathers:
What are the obligations of charity in the face of the immorality and false teaching of Church officials? Does charity oblige Catholics remain silent and obedient in the face of ambiguous, if not erroneous, teaching by popes and bishops corrupted by the New Order? What about the personal immoral actions of the popes and bishops in committing or covering up crimes? Should they be tolerated silently because they are committed by prelates?
The Fathers Reply.
Over the last forty years it has become patently clear that a New Order has essentially taken over the "institutional" Church. That was maybe not so clear at Vatican II and immediately thereafter, as Newchurch had more of the trappings of the true Church at that time. In fact, it was only a few ecclesiastics, like Fr. Gommar DePauw, a Peritus at Vatican II and Founder of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in 1964, who saw clearly what was happening and what was to come. He was also Dean of Studies of the United States' premier seminary and undoubtedly saw there the corruption that was coming, so he left in 1963.
But Fr. DePauw was treated as a Cassandra, a true prophet who was not believed. Catholics in 1964 didn't want to hear the truth, any more than most want to hear it today. They find more comfort in sticking their heads in the sand like ostriches and hoping that all the evil will go away. But their inaction is causing the evil to get worse. Newchurch has become more and more mired in immorality from the pope on down. The New Order has shown its true colors with a now full-blown Protestant-Masonic-Pagan "service." Consequently, the Newchurchers are suffering rampant corruption and immorality in Newchurch that they could have stopped long ago, had they only spoken up and refused to cooperate with it. They have forgotten St. Augustine's dictum: "It is better that the truth be known than the scandal be covered up."
When traditional Catholics publicly challenge Church officials for straying from the true Faith and teaching error, we follow the Saints of the Church, who spared no directness in assailing the horrible errors and heresies of their time, even on the part of popes: St. Cyril, St. Basil the Great, St. Athanasius, St. Martin, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Gertrude.
The misconception that many people have is with their definition of "charity." Newchurch has deluded them into thinking that it is some kind of Casper Milquetoast sentimentality, some schlock to make everyone "feel good." Our Lord Jesus Christ taught and acted quite differently from that. Christ Himself assailed bitterly the ecclesiastical officials of his time, who were just as corrupt and immoral as those of our time. For example, the high priest -- the pope, if you will -- was selling commercial concessions in God's temple, as the historian Flavius Josephus tells us. So, it is Christ Himself who sets the example for us in resisting publicly and harshly the errors of churchmen, because the consequences of their errors have such widespread consequences, as St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's Principal Theologian, teaches us.
"Charity" is not the abandonment of true doctrine and Christian morality -- quite the opposite. It is love of God and His Commandments first and foremost. We should be appropriately forgiving in personal situations, yes, but public error, especially of churchmen in the conduct of their offices in the Church, is a different matter indeed. Christ and the Saints make it very clear that we are to speak out even against popes who are falling from the true Faith and leading the people astray. If you have any doubt about that, read the Scriptures! Galatians 2:11 shows St. Paul chastising the first pope to his face because that pope was teaching false doctrine, contrary to the Apostolic Faith. St. Paul's chastisement was the occasion for St. Peter to correct his error. Thus, true charity was fully served in that instance.
Sometimes people get the mistaken idea that Newchurch has gone sour only in the United States. No, its corruption is worldwide.
Mexico has been stunned by the Easter murder and dismemberment by a Newchurch presbyter of his pregnant concubine after his Novus Ordo service. Apparently, the presbyter had been raping the girl since she was 13. On Easter Sunday, he strangled the woman to death, then used a kitchen knife to cut off her head and hack her body to pieces. [Associated Press]
Don't talk about phony "eucharistic miracles" to make the Novus Ordo cookie seem more than the invalid thing it is. The Novus Ordo sacraments are devoid of grace. To the contrary, at times it seems that the inspiration for the New Order is from below, not from above. Our Lord Himself warned us that false "miracles" can be used by Satan to deceive: "For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect" (Matthew 24:24/DRV).
Dear Fathers:
It seems that now the SSPX's Canadian District Superior has gone ballistic and lashed out at TRADITIO and other sources that have exposed the plans of the Liberal Faction of the Society of St. Pius X. Why is it that so many in the SSPX leadership can't take even constructive criticism?
The Fathers Reply.
It is from reactions like this on the part of the SSPX Liberalist Fringe that we know the TRADITIO Network is hitting the mark of accuracy. If we were off the mark, the Fellay-Schmidberger Faction would simply ignore us and the other sources that have criticized it for movement toward Newrome. Instead, the Fellay & Schmidberger Corp. has been able to cow most other sites, except for a few courageous ones in France and the independent European press, but we continues to show that the emperor wears no clothes.
What the Fringe seems ignorant of is that it is only shooing itself in the foot, as the attacks have simply pushed up our readership. SSPX members and traditional Catholics in general want not a babel of propaganda (notice that TRADITIO was not one of the multitudinous sources that predicted that Newpope was going to issue some kind of "indult" during Holy Week), but knowledgeable, experienced analysis.
Facts, rumors, and propaganda are a dime a dozen, but the kind of experienced analysis that we bring from before Vatican II is rarely available elsewhere. According to his official biography, Fellay had not even reached the age of reason when Vatican II opened. He was a babe in arms when Pope Pius XII died. Of all the SSPX bishops, only Bishop Williamson has had actual experience of the pre-Vatican II period.
All of the screams from the SSPX's Liberalist Fringe have been shown over and over again to be just so much propaganda. Fellay & Schmidberger have been caught in so many prevarications, best documented by the French sites (75% of the Society hails from France) and by the independent European press, that they are forced to paint a picture of themselves that is no more accurate than that of Hans Christian Anderson's emperor with clothes! (Isn't it interesting, for example, that when two editors of traditional-leaning U.S. periodicals chastised them for movement toward Newrome, Fellay & Schmidberger embraced it, but when TRADITIO had said the same thing months earlier, they went ballistic? Such examples show the fortress mentality to which the management of the SSPX has sunk since the death of the Archbishop.)
Remember too that it is now the official policy of the Liberalist Fringe of the Society, announced on its official French web site, to support attacks on those who raise any objections to what the current leadership is doing. Fellay & Schmidberger don't want anyone to question their tactics. They want knee-jerk obedience, the same obedience that Newchurch wants to the New Mess and Sacraments. It appears that the methodology of the two organizations' leadership is the same; it is only the personalities that are different.
Yet how at odds with their Archbishop-Founder are they! We knew the Archbishop, a great gentleman of great charity toward persons, but at the same time a mitred bishop who would tolerate no compromise with the true Faith and those ecclesiastical officials who would forswear it. Were he alive today, the great Archbishop would exile Fellay & Schmidberger to the Black Sea, just as Augustus did Ovid! The conduct of Fellay & Schmidberger is just another example of the autocracy into which Fellay & Schmidberger and their cohorts in the Liberalist Faction are turning the Society after the death of its Archbishop-Founder.
Also, one must be aware of the context in which all of this is occurring. There is a major election coming up in July to elect a Superior General for the Society for the next twelve (!) years. The TRADITIO Network's SSPX sources in Europe are telling us that Fellay & Schmidberger are trying to stack the deck by appointment of electors loyal to them and by putting the strong arm on their district superiors (like the one you mentioned in Canada) to come out in their favor and attack those in the Society opposed to them.
As we Fathers have previously written, the Society is now at a kairós, a crossroads. Will it re-elect Fellay to an unprecedented 24-year term so that he can be a lifetime dictator like Julius Caesar and continue the sellout to the New Order that was started after the election of Benedict-Ratzinger? That sellout is certainly going much slower now than Fellay & Schmidberger had anticipated. They didn't expect the outcry from their own members that resulted when reports of the attempted sellout to the New Order were carried in the independent European press. Well, Julius Caesar had pretensions to being Rex Romanorum too. Fellay & Schmidberger should pay more attention to the lessons of history!
It seems that Cardinal "Mad" Mahony of Los Angeles must have flunked a few courses in Moral Theology. He doesn't recognize the basic right of a country to defend itself and to protect its national integrity by its borders. He doesn't recognize the right of the courts to subpoena personnel records. Richard Nixon yielded his records to the courts, but Mahony has been the only U.S. Newchurch bishop consistently to refuse to turn over personnel records in criminal cases. The scuttlebutt is that his records show such flagrant and widespread sex crimes that he doesn't want to release the information.
Mahony has even been criticized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops for refusing to follow the law. In 2004, the USCCB's National Review Board reported that his actions "did little to enhance the reputation of the Church in the United States for transparency and cooperation." That's saying a lot, since the USCCB usually is on the side of concealing crimes and has been called a "Mafia" by two of its National Review Board chairmen in succession.
Mahony will now have to cough up the records. The U.S. Supreme Court, the last court of appeal, has turned down his request to review a California appellate court decision that, like any employer, he must turn over records in criminal cases when compelled by subpoena. The Los Angeles District Attorney said that his inability to review such confidential records had hampered his investigation of two presbyters. The documents initially will remain part of secret grand-jury proceedings, but could become public later in criminal court. (The cases involved are criminal cases, not civil cases.)
Acting in the hypocritical way that we have now come to expect from Newchurch bishops, Mahony had publicly pledged to cooperate with the authorities, but in reality played a cat-and-mouse game to shelter what some authorities claim is the most crime-ridden diocese in the United States. Mahony himself is an active player in these events. One of the two presbyters now charged criminally admitted to Mahony that he had committed sex crimes against children, and Mahony returned to him the active ministry after "therapy." Moreover, Mahony failed to alert the parish or the police. This is apparently just one of the pieces of information in the files that Mahony didn't want released. We can see now why! [Los Angeles Times]
Dear Fathers:
You have probably answered this before, but since it is now in the Novus Ordo news daily, can you remind your readers about the truth behind so-called "Divine Mercy" Sunday created by JPII and about the truth behind Sr. Faustina? The Novus Ordo media, including that Charismatic cable station EWTN, are buzzing with hype of this "Divine Mercy" Sunday to no end. Why? The Novus Ordo has replaced with "Divine Mercy" Sunday the Octave Day of Easter, the highest Feast Day of the Catholic liturgical year.
The Fathers Reply.
No one can deny that Newchurch is in desperate need of divine mercy, having abandoned the Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, Faith, and morals for an Oecumenical One-world Religion. But to establish a Novus Ordo cult that is more bogus than the Da Vinci Code or the "Gospel" of Judas is certainly not the way to obtain divine mercy for itself! Since the Novus Ordo will celebrate "Divine Mercy" Sunday today, the Octave Day of Easter, it would be good to review how this Novus Ordo cult came into being.
A local devotion under this title, which is associated with one Sr. Faustina and a chaplet of the Divine Mercy, was approved by the Ordinary of Vilnius, Poland, in 1936 and from there spread rapidly, especially after World War II in the United States. It appears that Sr. Faustina could not write, except for a few lines phonetically. Most of her "diary" was concocted by her sisters after her death. Because of the incongruities of the dairy (different handwriting, different use of terms), the devotion was suppressed, and the book of her diary was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum [Index of Forbidden Books]. This decision was upheld by Pope John XXIII in 1958/59.
In early 1978, a Polish cardinal petitioned the Vatican to remove the suppression of the devotion, which was being practiced without sanction in his diocese, and the Vatican replied in the negative, confirming the suppression. By this time the original devotion had been replaced by an oecumenized version framed in Novus Ordo terminology -- with substantially changed prayers to promote non-Catholic beliefs and the heresy of universal salvation. Later in 1978 a Polish pope was elected, and the now modernized version, twice condemned by popes, was now entered onto the Novus Ordo liturgical calendar on the high feast of the Octave of Easter.
The Octave Day of a feast, particularly of the greatest feast, Easter, is a significant day in itself. The "Divine Mercy" cult is thus in contravention of the focus of the Catholic liturgy for that day, which is on the Resurrection of Our Lord and faith in His Divinity. As Dom Gueranger, the noted Benedictine liturgical scholar, commented in his fifteen-volume Liturgical Year: "Such is the solemnity of this Sunday that not only is it of greater double rite, but no feast, however great, can ever be kept upon it." That is the Roman Catholic attitude, which the New Order spurned.
Not surprisingly, the cult in Conciliar times is increasing in its association with another cult, that is, the cult of "Catholic" Charismaticism. This Charismatic Movement is far from true Catholicism, but is a derivative of the Protestant heresy, based on the erroneous notion that emotional experience always accompanies the conferral of grace, whereas the Catholic doctrine is that the only sensible indication of the conferral of grace is the Sacrament itself. Perhaps the cult's association with New Age ideas is why it has become lionized in recent years, whereas popes up to JPII have condemned it.
Is it any wonder that the New Order pushes this corrupted devotion over the traditional devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus? The devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is a much more ancient devotion, having grown in the early Middle Ages through the efforts of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Doctor of the Church, and St. Gertrude. However, it was in the latter half of the seventeenth century that news of three private revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque concerning the Sacred Heart swept the Catholic world and shortly led to the establishment of a feast on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi (the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost).
The Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was extended to the Universal Church by Pope Pius IX in 1856, became a feast of atonement for human ingratitude toward God in spite of the supreme sacrifice of Calvary. The theme for the new Mass and the Divine Office was taken from the words of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary: "Behold the Heart which has loved men so greatly, but which has been given so little love in return."
Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus has been richly indulgenced by the Church, and a Litany of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of only five approved for public recitation. Given the apparent New Order's corruption of the original devotion to divine mercy and the pushing of this Charismatic novelty condemned by two popes, traditional Catholics will continue to stand with the more ancient and universally-approved devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and reject this New Order novelty.
TRADITIO has constantly called the invalid Novus Ordo service "Protestant-Masonic-Pagan." Hannibal Bugnini and the six Protestant ministers who fabricated the Novus Ordo Mess stated at the time that their goal was to enable both "Catholics" and Protestants to perform the service together. Well, here is further proof that the Novus Ordo Mess is Protestant.
On Easter Sunday, a minister of the Protestant Church of Ireland was invited by Novus Ordo authorities to concelebrate the Novus Ordo Mess publicly at the Novus Ordo table with three Novus Ordo presbyters at the Newchurch Augustinian priory in Drogheda Co Louth. Two of the celebrants were current and former prior (heads) of the monastery. In addition, 15-20 members of the Protestant minister's congregation received the Novus Ordo cookie and joined in slobbering the juice in the Protestant "cup." In attendance were a mayor, members of the borough council, representatives of the legislature, and a former prime minister.
Can there be any doubt that Newpope and Newchurch will shortly "approve" of intercommunion with Protestants? Remember, Benedict-Ratzinger himself gave the Novus Ordo cookie at a public papal Mess to a Protestant minister, Brother Schutz of Taize.
Russian Orthodox schismatic Metropolitan Kirill has revealed in a Vatican publication that on May 25, 2005, in Bari, in southern Italy, just a month after the election of Benedict-Ratzinger, Walter Cardinal Kasper, the "Oecumenical-Friendly Ghost" and President of the pope's Council for Promoting Christian Unity organization, brought to the schismatic Metropolitan a proposal from Benedict-Ratzinger for an Oecumenical Council open to the participation of Eastern Orthodox schismatics. Newpope's minister stated on behalf of the pope that "Benedict XVI will open the way for such a plan in the future."
Traditional Catholic director Mel Gibson's new film in ancient Mayan has been delayed because of heavy rains in the Yucatan, where Apocalypto is being filmed. The release date of the film has been postponed from August 4 to December 8, announced the Disney Corporation, which passed on Gibson's Christian film, The Passion of the Christ, but jumped at the opportunity to distribute Gibson's latest film, set in the ancient pagan times of pre-Columban Mexico.
Sometimes we Fathers get messages about footnoting our "sources." It seems that some people are so concerned to read the fine print of footnotes that they overlook reading the text itself. To understand what is going on in Newchurch, one must get past the details to see the Big Picture. The truth is not to be found in one or another "source" or in footnotes or in a literal reliance on printed documents, but in finding overall patterns, trends, and characteristics. Only this approach yields the overarching Truth.
In many ways, the best modern Church historian was Hilaire Belloc. His books are not 500-page tomes reaching no conclusion, but 75-150 pages on some of the biggest topics one could tackle: the Inquisition, the "Reformation," the Crusades. His writing is crystal clear and to the point. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find a single footnote in any of his books. He didn't have to footnote anything. Neither did Herodotus, the Father of History. Nor did Thucycides, perhaps the greatest historian of all time.
Some people seem to think that if a supposed "fact" is published in some printed form that this "fact" has greater weight than "rumor." What these people fail to realize is that the vast majority of "journalists" writing on religious topics since Vatican II don't have a clue about Catholicism. They combine "beats" on other subjects: one day the papal election, the next day extraterrestrials! They don't even know the proper Catholic names for things. Take, for example, vestments. To these ignoranti everything is a "robe." They don't know a chasuble from a maniple! (Just check the next story you read for its vocabulary.)
Recently we had a case in point. A well-known Vatican monthly published a picture supposedly of Sister Lucia, of Fatima, but the picture was actually of one Mother Maria Celina. Now this is a periodical that pretends to be "conservative" or "indult" minded, but when the error was pointed out by a traditional Catholic publication, the Vatican periodical made a pro-forma correction and then attacked traditional Catholics for being "conspiracy maniacs"!
So, here is a Vatican print magazine that charges a whopping $50 for a year's subscription, and its staff can't even identify Sister Lucia in the feature picture! So much for reliance on these print "sources." Next time look to the analytical powers, knowledge, and experience of the writers involved. If they know the difference between a chasuble and a maniple, maybe you've got people who know what they're talking about!
Dear Fathers:
I would appreciate, if you can, an assessment of the first year's pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. We all know that JPII is remembered as the "media" pope. What are your thoughts about Benedict and his future pontificate? Do you think that he will have the courage (whether right or wrong) to go against almost all his bishops and grant an universal indult for the Modernized Mass of 1962? Any other thoughts would be appreciated.
The Fathers Reply.
To believe that Benedict XVI is a "traditionalist" in any way is like believing that extraterrestrials exist -- but our times are so confused that more people believe in aliens than in Our Lord and Savior!
The Church of the New Order is falling down around itself. It is mired in seamy immorality all the way up to the pope. The Newchurchers leaving by the droves to go to strange sects like Seventh Day Adventism or Mormonism or Unitarian Universalism, or just to an agnostic secularism (well, that's pretty much what Unitarianism is!). The "bloom" is off the Vatican II poisoned rose. The $75,000,000 JPII Center in Washington, D.C., honoring the "Great" Pope of the New Order, can barely manage to attract 200 visitors a day. In Europe, attendance at the Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service is generally below 5%, whereas in the United States it isn't that much better at a scant 15%.
Newchurch is becoming strapped for money again. Its treasury has been depleted to pay off billions of dollars for sex crimes that Newchurch bishops aided, abetted, and covered up, with the full knowledge of Ratzinger, both in his previous position as Sex-crimes Czar for JPII and now in his own right as pope. In the face of a sinking Newchurch, Benedict-Ratzinger has pressed all the old buttons. He has approached the Eastern Orthodox schismatics, who spit vitriol in his face. He has approached the Anglicans, who went ahead and consecrated a "gay" bishop in his face. He has even tried to approach the Liberalist wing of the Society of St. Pius X to get it to sell out to the New Order. Smoke and mirrors.
Benedict-Ratzinger is a CEO whose New Order corporation is dying. People want Classic Coke, not New Coke. He has to pull any rabbit out of the hat to get more buyers. It's simply economics, not religion. (If he were really smart, he would have bought the "Gospel of Judas" and made a mint for Newchurch coffers!) More smoke and mirrors.
Oh, yes, you'll see in many naive "talking-head" reports that Benedict-Ratzinger is the most "traditionalist" pope since the Novus Ordo cookie. You have to understand that these talking-heads, mostly "conservative" Newchurchers recently converted from Protestantism want desperately to believe in the personnel of the Church of the New Order. They will talk themselves into any fantasy to make it come out that way. But, of course, it never will. They are simply deluding themselves. Newchurch is a servant of the New Order, not of the true Catholic Faith. More smoke and mirrors.
So, here is Benedict-Ratzinger, during Holy Week yet, blazoned across television, handing out the Novus Ordo cookie into sweaty palms, just like the rankest presbyter at the local "Clown Mess." Here is Benedict-Ratzinger, who before the public cameras, handed out a cookie to a leading Protestant, Brother Schutz. More smoke and mirrors.
Fr. Ratzinger, one of the leading Modernist lights of Vatican II, who personally arranged for that Council to scrap the dogmatic teaching that the Catholic Faith is the one, true faith of Christ, has no new answers. His answer to the problems in Newchurch is more of the same: more of the Vatican II-based New Order. He is promoting the same phony Novus Ordo that his Conciliar predecessors have. Just read his First Speech, Gratia copiosa (if that isn't a misnomer!), his inauguration speech to the College of Cardinals on the day after his election. He portrays himself as a rabbi of Vatican II -- then, now, and forever. Oh, yes, he may do it with the grace of a little more Latin and a little more Gregorian chant. But has the Modernist leopard really changed his spots? More smoke and mirrors.
Oh, yes, his Newvatican people may titillate the poor, deluded indultarians about "universal indults" for the Modernized Mass of 1962, but remember that an "indult" is merely a temporary privilege, not a right. Catholics were already given an absolute right in perpetuity by Pope St. Pius V and the dogmatic Council of Trent to the Traditional Latin Mass of the Apostles and the Fathers. Why do the indultarians keep playing the phony "indult" game when they already have all the rights they need to stand up to any Newchurch bishop, if they really want?
If Benedict-Ratzinger issues an unconditional "indult" even for the Modernized Mass of 1962, with every Novus Ordo presbyter being given the power to celebrate the Mass in public in spite of the will of his bishop, we'll eat our birettas! Maybe there will be some saccharine words issued, of no real force, or presbyters may be permitted to say "private" 1962 Masses, but any presbyter now can celebrate a private Mass of 1962 in private. Who would know? Anyway, the Modernist Mass of 1962 is a just a kind of pre-Novus Ordo knockoff of the fully traditional Mass of Pope Sts. Pius V and X.
Good Catholics, when you read diaphanous "talking heads" going on and on about the "traditionalist" Benedict XVI, take that grain of salt and put it in your coffee so that you wake up to the bite of reality. Even those talking heads have now, for the first time, dared to come out publicly against a pope, because they claim that he is "soft on homosexuality," as evidenced by his recent soft ball on "gay" Novus Ordo seminaries. Now one "conservative" Novus Ordo organization, is claiming that since the New Order took hold in Newchurch in 1969, 70% of the Newchurch bishops in the United States are "gay."
Remember the old ad, in which the lady kept asking, "Where's the beef?" Well, our analysis of Benedict-Ratzinger is that there is no beef. Just more smoke and mirrors. So, if you like your Novus Ordo beef smoked and filled with lethal additives, you're going to love Benedict-Ratzinger. If you like prime, corn-fed, organic beef, you'll stick with the true, traditional Roman Catholic Church of two millennia and spurn phony "indults" -- universal or otherwise.
It seems that this Easter has been the occasion for the anti-Christian and anti-Catholic "crazies" to come out of the woodwork in profusion. Here is just a sample of what has filled the TRADITIO Mailbox while the Fathers were devoting their attentions to celebrating the fully-traditional rites of the Sacred Triduum:
This report would be unbelievable except that even several Vatican officials have publicly admitted to the Italian press that Newchurch is beset with Satanism and have issued a call for more exorcists. Fr. Malachi Martin, a scholar, Vatican insider, and best-selling author, reported: "The contention that there are Satanists in Rome is completely correct. Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had and still has his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome."
Now a criminal trial is about get under way in Toledo, Ohio, for a presbyter accused of murdering a nun. The evidence indicates that the Newchurch presbyter murdered the nun in a Satanic rite. The nun was strangled, stabbed, branded with a cross by a letter opener, and enshrouded in an altar cloth. After more than twenty years, police found the evidence that pointed to the presbyter who performed her funeral Mess!
The police suspected the Newchurch presbyter in 1980, but didn't have enough to charge him. Then, in 2003, a woman went to the Toledo Newchurch diocese seeking reimbursement for her therapy, claiming that she was a childhood victim of "Satanic ritualistic sexual abuse" perpetrated by a number of presbyters, who were involved in a cult. The police are also investigating an official cover-up, as there is evidence that under the nose of the Newchurch bishop, a coven of presbyters conducting satanic rituals was going on. In fact, the bishop had let the now-accused murderer function for 24 years as a presbyter until his arrest in 2004. [Toledo Blade, MSNBC]
Why should we be surprised? Newchurch bishop after Newchurch bishop has been caught concealing, aiding and abetting, or even participating in sex crimes. Since the Church of the New Order has lost the grace of the Sacraments, it is only natural that the forces of evil rather than the forces of good should gain the ascendancy. Newchurch has chosen its poison by affiliating itself not to the Catholic Church, but to an unCatholic New Order. The consequences of that are only natural, and we see them all around us.
Dear Fathers:
As a young person, I was taught that Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays because of the poor fisherman in Italy and that one of the popes signed a decree many centuries ago. I have not been able to find anything documenting this to be true. How did we as Catholics start the practice of not eating meat on Fridays?
The Fathers Reply.
You can't find anything because it is not true. It is nonsense. In any case, there is no obligation to eat fish on Friday. One can just as well eat grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and food other than fleshmeat.
Explicit mention is made of the practice of abstaining from fleshmeat on Fridays in a document from the end of the first century A.D., the Didache of the Apostles, as well as by St. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian in the third century. The perpetual tradition of the Church is clear beyond possibility of mistake on this matter, that from the earliest times the Christians at certain seasons denied themselves fleshmeat and wine, or even restricted themselves to bread and water (Concilium Laodicaeum Canon 50).
The Friday abstinence was the universal custom from the very beginning, as Friday was dedicated to the memory of the Passion of Our Lord, as a day on which we should make a special effort to practice penance. It is in recognition of the fact that Christ suffered and died, and gave up his human flesh and life for our sins on a Friday that Catholics do not eat fleshmeat on Fridays, not for the crass purpose of subsidizing fishermen. By our abstinence on Friday, we recall, and participate in some small way, in the great sacrifice of Our Lord for us on that Good Friday. Moreover, by abstaining from fleshmeat, we give up what is, on the whole, the most pleasant as well as the most nourishing food, and so make satisfaction for the temporal punishment due to sin even when its guilt has been forgiven.
The law of abstinence forbids only fleshmeat and gravies and soup made from fleshmeat. All persons over seven years of age must abstain. This means that they may not take fleshmeat, meat gravy, or meat soup at all on days of complete abstinence, which are all Fridays (except on holydays of obligation), Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday (until noon), and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas. (By the decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, December 3, 1959, abstinence on the Vigil of Christmas may, at the option of the individual, be anticipated on December 23.) They may take meat, but only at the principal meal, on days of partial abstinence, which are Ember Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the Vigils of Pentecost and of All Saints' Day.
The abstinence from fleshmeat is an ecclesiastical law with associations to Divine Positive Law, as expressed, for example, in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (9:25) and Second Epistle to the Corinthians (6:5). It has long obliged under pain of mortal sin. Pope Nicholas I in the ninth century and Pope Innocent III at the beginning of the 13th century confirmed this teaching, and Pope Alexander VII anathematized those who would minimize the character of a breach as only venially sinful. Traditional Catholics know full well that they have a grave obligation of maintaining this immemorial practice since the Apostles. They can and should confess a knowing and willful breach as a Mortal Sin.
The Church does not forbid certain kinds of food on the ground that they are impure (the Jewish belief, disputed by St. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:4). The abstinence required is a reasonable one and is not exacted from those who it would injure in health or incapacitate for their ordinary duties. Abstinence is a means, not an end, and is meritorious only insofar as it proceeds from faith and love of God (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, q. 146, a. 1). Abstinence promotes our spiritual health by enabling us to subdue our flesh (1 Corinthians 9:27).
What does it say when Newchurch turns its back on such an Apostolic practice of the Church? Can we not do such a little self-mortification for our spiritual health by abstaining from fleshmeat on that one day of the week, which so many non-Catholics do so do anyway for reasons of mere bodily health? (For further information, see FAQ11: How Do You Explain These Traditional Catholic Practices? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).)
This Easter shows shocking statistics about how far Newchurch infant baptisms (or, as Newchurch likes to call it, "initiation") have fallen -- by half, a Newchurch sociologist has admitted. Among Newchurchers the rate of baptisms has fallen faster than the rate of decline in births. Even the huge influx of illegal aliens from "Catholic" countries and a pittance of adult converts cannot make up for the precipitous drop in Newchurch baptisms.
The study attributes the drop by half in baptisms to the fact that more and more Newchurchers are marrying outside the Church (thus choosing to excommunicate themselves from the Catholic Church) and to the fact that Newchurch since 1983 no longer requires those in a Newchurch marriage to rear their children as "Catholics." Newchurch requires only "a general recognition by the couple that the Catholic partner's faith will be respected." In other words, it's okay for Newchurchers to raise their children as Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or whatever.
If baptism is the door to the Faith, where did all those people go? Well, the Assemblies of God, a Protestant denomination that baptizes, grew from from 1,800,000 to 2,800,000 in some twenty years. Apparently, Benedict-Ratzinger's teaching that "we all worship the same god" and "all gods are equal" is having its impact. Newchurchers are moving to Fundamentalist Protestantism! One Presbyterian ministress said that she now does baptisms "lite," with an emphasis on "angels, fairs, leprechauns, and Santa Claus." This trend bears a resemblance to some Newchurchers, who place their faith more in "Fatima" than in Jesus Christ and Public Revelation in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
Those traditional Catholics who have been able to worship at ancient Traditional Latin Rites of Holy Week, before the New Order changes introduced by Hannibal Bugnini in 1956, have truly had a great blessing and a profusion of graces. These rites are regulated for small churches most recently by Benedict XIII's 1725 Memoriale Rituum pro Aliquibus Praestantioribus Sacris Functionibus Persolvendis in Minoribus Ecclesiis, which provides for carrying out in small churches the rites of the blessing of candles and the procession on Candlemas, the blessing and distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the blessing of palms and the procession on Palm Sunday, and the rites of the Triduum Sacrum, that is, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.
The Fully Traditional Ceremonies of Holy Week. The Masses of Holy Week with their marvelous rites, like all other Masses, are properly celebrated in the morning. Holy Communion is received fasting from midnight. On Good Friday and Holy Saturday, none but the celebrant communicates, thus commemorating Our Savior's Death and Burial until the triumph of the Resurrection. Holy Week begins with the elaborate blessing of the palms. This takes the form of a Missa Sicca (a Mass without a consecration) with its own Introit, Collect, Epistle, Tract, Gospel, Preface, and Sanctus.
Traditional Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The Triduum Sacrum (Sacred Triduum) consists of three full days of intense devotion for the faithful generally. After the Mass of Maundy Thursday, with the ringing of the bells throughout the recitation of the Gloria in Excelsis, the Most Blessed Sacrament is taken in procession to the Altar of Repose. There, with adornments and a blaze of candles reminiscent of the Holy Sepulchre, Our Divine Lord is adored by a succession of the faithful throughout the whole of the day and the following night, until the Liturgy of Good Friday. Then the hours between the morning Liturgy and Tenebrae (as Matins and Lauds of the Divine Office is termed during the Triduum Sacrum) allows time for both public and private devotions to Our Savior's Passion and Death.
Traditional Holy Saturday. The early-morning rites and Mass of Holy Saturday are the longest and most complex of the liturgical year. They begin in the church porch, with the blessings of the New Fire and of the grains of incense. Then comes the procession to the sanctuary, with the deacon bearing the triple candle in its reed (arundino). At three stages of the procession (on entering the church, in the middle of the church, and before the altar), one candle of the triple candle is lit in turn, and all kneel as the deacon sings Lumen Christi, with the response Deo gratias. There follows in the sanctuary the unique solemn blessing by the deacon of the Paschal Candle, the Exsultet. After the Twelve Prophecies comes the blessing of the Baptismal Font, concluded with the doubled chanting of the Litany of the Saints. Throughout the Ceremonies the sacred ministers repeatedly change the types and colors of their vestments, to conform to the liturgical roles they are fulfilling. The beginning of Easter joy is marked by the bells throughout the Gloria in Excelsis of the First Mass of Easter at noon, the unveiling of the statues, and the singing of the triple Alleluia. The Mass concludes with the shortest Vespers of the liturgical year.
The Liturgical Revolutionaries Gut the Fully Traditional Rites in the 1950s. Unfortunately, in the late 1940s and the 1950s, the liturgical revolutionaries, who eventually took over at Vatican Council II, showed a marked distaste for the contemplative glories of the most holy, traditional rites of the Church. For more than a millennium previously, the glories of Catholic art had been centered on the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy -- its texts, ritual, vestments, altar vessels, music, painting, and architecture. But in the pre-Conciliar period all those centuries were dismissed as a period of liturgical "decadence," when the desire to worship God and Savior digne, attente et devote [with dignity, attention, and devotion] waned. The liturgical revolutionaries, led by Hannibal Bugnini, the Chief Architect of the New Order, began to prevail, at first in small ways, upon Pope Pius XII to introduce the beginning of the changes that would result in the unCatholic Mess and Sacraments following Vatican II.
The Easter Vigil Is First Tampered With. In 1951 the use of an evening Easter Vigil, instead of the traditional morning Vigil, was tried ad experimentum. This was apparently the first introduction in 2000 years of an "experiment" in the Sacred Liturgy, which instead was supposed to have been handed down by the Apostles and Great Fathers of the Church. (Traditional Catholics, however, got the laugh on the revolutionaries when, within a few decades, the Novus Ordo version of the Easter Vigil was advanced from midnight, earlier and earlier, so that now the Easter Vigil Mess in Novus Ordo churches is held not in the rays of the rising orb, but in the blazing mid-afternoon sun. So, at the present time, the Newchurchers have reverted almost to the traditional practice -- without really realizing it!)
Hannibal Bugnini Slips Through a "New" Holy Week without the Pope's Specific Approval. In 1953 the ancient Apostolic Eucharistic Fast from midnight was optionally "mitigated," again ad experimentum, and a three-hour abstention from solid food and one hour from non-alcoholic drink floated. In 1955, when Pope Pius XII was just three years away from death from a grave illness that sapped his vigor, Bugnini got through extensive changes in both the Calendar and rites, and slipped in, without specific papal approval, "New" Holy Week ceremonies. So already Novus-Ordoized were these rites that very few changes had to be made when the full-blown Novus Ordo was introduced in the later 1960s. Many European priests were so outraged at these novelties that they refused to use them and continued celebrating the ancient traditional rites. In the United States, the priests, less educated and cultured, generally went along with the "new."
The "Restoration" Excuse Is First Used. It was first in 1956 that the liturgical revolutionaries started using the fabrication that they were "restoring" the rites -- the lie that they later used to justify the institution of the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Service. The Missale Romanum was thrown out for Holy Week and a brand new liturgical book substituted, called Ordo Hebdomadae Sacrae Instauratus [Order of the "Restored" Holy Week].
"New" Rites of Holy Week Are Introduced. In the "New" Palm Sunday rite, the elaborate Missa Sicca with its blessing of palms was replaced with an embarrassingly simple one. The Last Gospels in the three principal Masses of Holy Week were suppressed, as were the prayers of preparation for the Midnight Mass at the end of the "New" Easter Vigil. The previously day-and-night watching before the Altar of Repose became a token couple of hours between the end of the Maundy Thursday evening Mass and midnight. On Good Friday afternoon, the Mass of the Presanctified, at which only the celebrant receives Holy Communion pre-sanctified, that is, consecrated at the previous day's Mass, was turned into a general communion free for all. Thus, the stark reality of Good Friday being the one day in the liturgical year when the Church is deprived of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as Christ is gone from us, was turned into a chummy "eucharistic service," at which all could communicate. At the Easter Vigil the triple candle disappeared, and a vernacular renewal of baptismal promises was introduced.
The "New" Rites of Holy Are Replaced with Even "Newer" Rites. Pope Pius XII's liturgical revolution remained intact only until 1960. Then John XXIII made further changes in the calendar and in the rites themselves. That new reform, however, was expressly provisional, until the upcoming Vatican II could decide the principles on which a definitive "reform" would be based.
The Traditional Clergy Are Now Returning to the Fully Traditional Rites of Holy Week. The New Catholic Counter-reformation, which had its beginnings after the Vatican II years (1963-1965), intensified with the advent of the doctrinally compromised New Mess of 1969, and saw a demand for the restoration of the integral traditional rite. Paradoxically, it was the coming of the much needed new generation of independent priests and fully traditional groups such as the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV) that saw how Roman Catholicism had been compromised in the latter years (from 1947) of Pius XII when Bugnini took charge and in the years of John XXIII.
"Mad" Mahony, of Los Angeles, has publicly defied Benedict-Ratzinger in organizing "protests" in favor of an illegal-immigrant policy. Newpope, in his Christmas Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est, clearly ordered the Newchurch bishops to stay out of politics, stating that such is the role of the lay faithful:
Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.... The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics.... The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible.... The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity.
"Mad" Mahony is not a layman, and his crass political activism is clearly in violation of the Newpope's Encyclical Letter.
Traditional Catholics, when the Newchurchers give you unjust guff about not "obeying the pope," just remember that Cardinal "Mad" Mahony, Cardinal "Muslim" McCarrick, and all the other Newchurch bishops in conference, routinely disobey the pope. Therefore, their whole system can be rejected outright as ultra vires, null and void.
After being sexually abused when he was in high school, John Nesbella, of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stayed with Newchurch. He even became a presbyter in 2002 and took a strong public stand against homosexuality in the Newchurch presbyterate. In 2003 Nesbella was one of three Altoona-Johnstown presbyters to receive vitriolic hate mail from supposedly fellow Newchurch presbyters who demanded an end to his "harassment of homosexual clergy." As if this weren't bad enough, Bishop Joseph Adamec didn't stand with the moral doctrine of the Catholic Church and Natural Law, but instead expelled Nesbella because he was too "outspoken and controversial" against sexual abuse of children by "gay" presbyters of the New Order.
Subsequently, Presbyter Nesbella left Newchurch. Newpope has not lifted a finger to support this orthodox presbyter, adding more fuel to the recent charges that Benedict-Ratzinger is actually pro-gay. "This is the end of a sad tale of how wicked so-called Catholic priests and bishops drove me and a few other priests out because we dared to speak up about the corrupt brotherhood of homosexuals in the priesthood," Nesbella said. "[It is] the immoral mess we have in our Church."
Adamec refuses to comment, but since Newchurch's Great Sex & Embezzlement Scandal erupted to national attention in January 2002, he has paid out $3,700,000 for sex crimes. Nesbella traces his disillusionment with Newchurch back to his high school years, when he says that he was abused by a presbyter. Before Nesbella, James Foster, another outspoken presbyter who often criticized Adamec's support of homosexual presbyters, was expelled in 2003.
Nesbella had studied for the Novus Ordo presbyterate at the United States' premier seminary in Baltimore and found it a cesspool of immorality. He says that after his Newchurch ordination in 2002, he was told that Newchurch doesn't "want men like me who are traditional." Nesbella blames Vatican II and the resulting liberalization of Roman Catholic rites and customs for the cesspool of immorality now plaguing Newchurch.
It was from that seminary that independent traditional Catholic priest Fr. Gommar DePauw, who had been Dean of Studies there from 1955-1963, seeing what was on the horizon, left his position and went to New York City to found the Catholic Traditionalist Movement.
The Newchurch EWTN Charismatic Cable Network pulled the March 2 program in its Life on the Rock series because it featured Stephen Bennett, a former homosexual who is now happily married with children. The theme of the program was to be Homosexuality to Heterosexuality Happens. This program was not the first EWTN program dealing with homosexuality to be pulled from Canadian and European audiences. Another Life on the Rock episode, which aired December 15, 2005 was also yanked from EWTN's Canadian and European feeds.
It appears that evidence is mounting that Newchurch, and even Newpope, are pro-gay, though they try to conceal it -- for the time being. Newpope is coming under increasing fire from "conservative" Novus Ordo columnists for his pro-gay stance in Newchurch seminaries and for his appointments of pro-gay bishops in the United States.
A few months ago San Francisco's Newchurch archbishop William Levada was whisked away to Newrome to the bosom of Benedict-Ratzinger while Levada was still under subpoena in two U.S. Federal Court for interrogation on what his involvement was in sex crimes in two West-coast archdioceses. Then it came out at the same time that Levada was being made a cardinal, that he had placed Novus Ordo orphans with "gay" couples. Now the spotlight has turned to his pal, the new Newchurch archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederauer, to see whether he will reverse the archdiocese's pro-"gay" adoption policy (now condemned by Levada in his new capacity as Benedict-Ratzinger's Sex-crimes Czar!) that Levada started.
Two major Newchurch organizations in San Francisco are publicly advocating homosexuality: Catholic [sic] Charities and the Jesuit University of San Francisco. Brian Cahill, Executive Director of Catholic [sic] Charities, continues to assert the charity's "right to place children with homosexual parents," and his second-in-command, Glen Motola, is in fact a public "gay" and adoptive father. Presbyter James Allen, in a talk at the University of San Francisco, told his audience that Benedict-Ratzinger is "sympathetic to homosexuality." Apparently, conservative New Order writers agree, since this is the only topic on which they have dared to zing Newpope publicly.
Meanwhile, two pastors in San Francisco's Newchurch parishes have advocated homosexual adoptions. Presbyter Charles Gagan, the Newchurch pastor of St. Ignatius, abused the pulpit at two Novus Ordo services, calling for disobedience to the Catholic teaching on homosexuality, to the applause of the morally-defective Newchurchers. Presbyter John Greene, the Newchurch pastor of St. Monica, also advocated "gay" adoption from the pulpit. In addition, Most Holy Redeemer Newchurch parish participates each year in the "Gay Pride" Parade, an often profane and obscene celebration of homosexuality, displaying both actual and artificial phalli, and the archdiocese under Levada flew the "gay" rainbow flag on the day of the parade.
In the midst of such corruption in the Newchurch archdiocese of San Francisco, "gay" advocate San Francisco supervisors call themselves with impunity "practicing Catholics" and have never been corrected, either by Levada or by Niederauer. The Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution calling upon Catholic Charities to defy Levada's new directive against the homosexual adoptions, in which he himself engaged.
Mayor Gavin Newsom calls himself a "practicing Catholic" who advocates "gay" marriage, abortion, artificial contraception, divorce, and embryonic stem cell research, as well as amnesty for illegal alien criminals. He illegally issued "marriage" licenses to "gay" couples and has been lobbying to bring a state embryonic stem cell and cloning center to San Francisco. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, an open homosexual, publicly advocates "gay rights" and the implementation of a sex-education curriculum in city schools that promotes homosexuality and other perversions. He calls himself a "gay Catholic," as well as a "gay father and grandfather." Ammiano is a "father" by virtue of sperm donation to a lesbian couple.
Niederauer has the reputation of being "notoriously pro-gay" from his activities in his former diocese of Salt Lake City. When he was appointed as Newchurch archbishop of San Francisco, "gay" advocacy groups like Dignity and New Ways Ministry, rejoiced in his appointment. He has just returned from Rome, where he attended the cardinalatial installation his high school and seminary buddy, Levada, with whom he has jointly bought a multi-million-dollar "retirement" home, according to local press accounts.
Presbyter Cameron Ayres, Newchurch pastor of St. Agnes in San Francisco, praised Benedict-Ratzinger for appointing pro-gay bishops like Niederauer for the United States. He pointed to Niederauer's reputation for "listening and dialoguing with persons in the gay and lesbian community." Niederauer himself was pastor for some thirty years in a pro-gay parish in the Newchurch diocese of Los Angeles. Even the San Francisco Board of Supervisors appears to believe the new archbishop shares their pro-gay point of view. That resolution against the proposed ban on gay adoptions by Catholic [sic] Charities pointedly targeted Newvatican and Levada, but notably avoided mentioning Niederauer.
Meanwhile, if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs into law a bill from the California legislature, every single textbook used in California schools will have to be revised to include references to the "contributions of 'gays.'" Algebra texts, chemistry texts, Latin texts, music texts, English texts, physics texts, and more. Never mind appreciating a painting for its artistic value. California children would be required to "appreciate" it for the sexuality of the artist. California children would be required to learn about the sexual proclivities of the scientist, the author, the teacher.
Good Catholics, during this Holy Week do not neglect to pray to Our Savior to get rid of popes, cardinals, and bishops who have perjured themselves by selling out the Catholic Faith that they swore to uphold under pain of death. Lord, grant us another Pope St. Pius V or Pope St. Pius X, who did not take guff from anybody when it came to defending the true Catholic Faith!
Newpope and Newbishops had better watch out. They may soon find themselves tossed into Tiber River the way the early Roman faithful got rid of bad popes and bad bishops. Even the Newchurchers are getting "mad as hell, and they're not going to take this anymore," to paraphrase Peter Finch's well-known words in Network. Newchurchers are getting sick and tired of their Newchurch bishops closing their traditional churches as if these bishops were some kind of Gilbert and Sullivan Grand Poobahs.
TRADITIO recently covered the story of St. Augustine Church in New Orleans, where the parishioners were resisting Newchurch Archbishop Hughes' decree of closure. So autocratic has Newchurch become that the new pastor, Michael Jacques, brought in plainclothes police with guns to keep the parishioners suitably in line. His threats didn't work. The parishioners threw their pastor out. The poor man was so afraid of his parishioners that he had to have a police guard escort him to his car. Good riddance, say the Augustinians.
Well, here's more of the story. As of Palm Sunday, St. Augustine's Church, founded in 1841, is back in business, and the Newchurch bishop has been routed by the determined parishioners. The parishioners had occupied the church rectory for 19 days in defiance of the Newchurch bishops. Now Jacques is out for good, and Jerome LeDoux is back, who had been pastor for 15 years before being ejected by the bishop in favor of his henchman, "Close 'Em" Jacques. Deo volente, St. Augustine's one day will return just as courageously to the Catholic Church.
What is the lesson to be learned here? These Newchurch bishops are paper tigers. They act like petty potentates, but when they come face to face with a few dedicated people, they cave like a sump hole! These Newchurch bishops live off of "obedient" Newchurchers putting their mites into the collection plate so that the Newchurch bishops can buy multi-million-dollar retirement homes and pay off tens of thousands of victims of their continuing sex crimes.
More than three dozen Novus Ordo presbyters from Chicago and environs have gone on a hunger strike to give amnesty to 11,000,000 illegals. It just boggles the mind that Newchurch presbyters, who make a big show of promoting social injustice would look the other way Catholics are illegally deprived of the graces of the Holy Mass and Sacraments, taught false doctrine, and shown the example of immorality by the clergy up to Newpope.
Just think of what the Catholic Church would be today if in 1964 numbers of Catholic priests had followed the example of Fr. Gommar DePauw, who founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in that year. Instead, supposedly Catholic priests sold out en masse to a New Order Counterfeit Church. Those that stayed, that is. Hundreds of thousands of priests around the world simply deserted the Church, either formally or informally, to become modern-day Martin Luthers, to marry unfrocked "nuns."
The immoral and graceless Newchurch is the natural result of the unholy Church of the Vatican II Wintertime.
The French periodical Le Figaro reports that the Conférence des évêques de France (Newchurch French Bishops' Conference), concluding its 2006 Spring Conference on April 7, issued a warning to the Society of St. Pius X, if the Society should sell out to Newrome. The salient part of the Newchurch bishops' statement warned:
It [a sellout to Newrome] means, at the same time, abandoning all systematic controversies and all desire for confrontation. Truth implies being clear on our points of dissension. In fact, the latter affects acceptance of the magisterium more than questions of liturgy, in particular, that of the Second Vatican Council and of popes of the last decades. Communion may be accompanied by questions, requests for precision or further reflection, but it cannot tolerate a systematic rejection of the [Second Vatican] Council, criticism of its teaching, or denigration of the liturgical reform decreed by the Council.
In other words, for Newchurch propaganda purposes, the Society of St. Pius X can be tolerated, but only if it sells out the principles of its Archbishop-Founder and embraces the New Order totally by:
There is no mention of the Newchurch French bishops:
In other news, there is continuing speculation/reports on some kind of document on liturgy, supposedly coming out Maundy Thursday. The periodicals do not agree at this time on what liturgical topic is to be covered, whether of the Novus Ordo or the Modernized Mass of 1962.
Whatever such a document turns out to be, traditional Catholics should remember that they do not look to the Modernist-Liberalist New Order for "permission" to assist at the true Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, any more than they look to it for Catholic doctrine and morals. To do so would be a very dangerous and unCatholic position. Newchurch would certainly benefit by deluding more "indultarians" into the New Order, just as the current "indult" Masses are metamorphosing into hybrids with the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service, shared cookies with the Novus Ordo, communion standing, New Bible readings, and altar girls.
As a side note, it took over a year, but Benedict-Ratzinger on April 8 finally got around to appointing the members of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Commmission for the Doctrine of the Faith (replacing Ratzinger, who was on the commission when he had the same title), Jean-Pierre Bernard Cardinal Ricard of Bordeaux, France (who had been first appointed to the Commission by John Paul II), and Antonio Cardinal Canizares Llovera of Toledo, Spain. Ricard has been a Talmud student of Avi Weiss, the rabbi who was involved with the expulsion of the Carmelite nuns from Auschwitz in 1989.
The impending issuance of a "translation" of the Coptic Gnostic "Gospel" of Judas won't shake Protestant Fundamentalists who cling to the "King James Bible" as the only divinely inspired Biblical text. Of course, the Protestant heretics are wrong in this, as they are in so many other matters of the Christian Faith.
Granted that the King James Bible is an excellent work of Elizabethan literature, it certainly was not "inspired," having been produced some three millennia after the first book of the Bible and some millennium and a half after the last book of the Bible were written in a language that the Jews, nor Christ, nor the Apostles ever used. In fact, English did not even exist when the Bible was written!
On the contrary, the Latin Vulgate is the only version of the Bible that the Church has ever been dogmatically declared to be in conformity with the original Greek and Hebrew texts in all that concerns faith and morals. But some Fundamentalists counter: "The Bible was not written in Latin, was it?" Probably not, although ancient evidence suggests that the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Latin and perhaps St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Here is the account of how the text of the Bible came to be established and distributed to the world.
The Latin Vulgate Bible was compiled by St. Jerome (342-420) at the request of Pope St. Damasus I (366-384). It is important to know that the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts (autographs) of the Bible no longer exist. However, St. Jerome in the fourth century had access to manuscripts for his Latin Vulgate that are no longer available to us, manuscripts much closer in both time and text to the original autographs of the inspired writers than the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts available to us now. Moreover, the Latin Vulgate is purer than the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts now extant and has been far better conserved from textual corruptions. These circumstances make the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome our best single modern reference for biblical accuracy.
In fact, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that we have today is not the one at the Jews used at the time of Christ. They, who had essentially given up Hebrew for Koine Greek, used the venerable Greek text known as the Septuagint, from around the third century B.C. Actually, the Hebrew text used today is substantially the version of the Massoretic Judaistic scholars in Persia, who reconstructed the Old Testament ca. A.D. 900, especially to downplay the prophecies fulfilled by Christ. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which contain fragments of the Hebrew version from around the time of Christ, confirm this fact.
If one must use a translation -- and remember the no translation accurately reflects the original, but is merely an approximation of it -- he can find no closer one than the Douay-Rheims Version. The New Testament was published at Rheims in 1582, and the Old Testament, at Douay in 1609, two years before the King James Version. In 1749-1752 Bishop Richard Challoner revised the Douay-Rheims version and modernized the language. This revision is sometimes called the Douay-Rheims-Challoner version and is the one most commonly found. As a matter of fact, the King James translators consulted the Douay-Rheims Version extensively, and scholars say that the Douay-Rheims Version in fact had a large influence upon the King James Version.
The Douay-Rheims is essentially a word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible of St. Jerome. Contrary to the procedure of modern Bible translators, when a passage seemed strange and unintelligible, the Douay-Rheims translators left it alone, even if obscure. Modern Bible translators, on the other hand, will often look at an obscure passage, decide what they think it means, then translate it in words that bring out their meaning. The result is that the English is usually easier to understand, but it is not necessarily what the Bible says; rather, it is their interpretation and understanding of what the Bible says.
The result is that contemporary translations are usually easier to understand, but do not necessarily reflect accurately and completely what the Bible says. Rather, modern "translations" reflect the biased interpretation and understanding of what particular contemporary translators think that the Bible says.
Having already given up this year the pope's historical title, "Patriarch of the West," reportedly to play up to the Eastern Orthodox schismatics, is Benedict-Ratzinger currently considering the demand of Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev to give up his title "Vicar of Christ," a title believed to have been first used in the year 495 for Pope Gelasius I (492-496).
The Russian Orthodox bishop, who is the Eastern Orthodox schismatics' main representative in Europe, has also demanded that the pope's title "Successor of the Prince of the Apostles" and "Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church" be dropped as "unacceptable, even scandalous." Newpope has already de facto given up the latter title, as he has said that he will do nothing except with the collegial consensus of the Newchurch bishops. Benedict-Ratzinger, who has made reconciliation with the Eastern Orthodox schismatics a priority of his papacy, is considering the demand.
"Only renouncing titles stressing the universal jurisdiction of the pope, and the ecclesiological doctrine hidden behind that, would be a real step on the path toward reconciliation between the Orthodox and Catholic churches," Bishop Hilarion wrote. Walter Cardinal Kasper, Newvatican's top official for "oecumenism," said that Newchurch no longer had any desire to convert Eastern Orthodox schismatics to the Roman Catholic Faith, since the latter is no longer considered exclusively the true Faith.
You may have heard a little speculation about some kind of another "indult" for the Modernized Mass of 1962 from Newpope. TRADITIO has always maintained the possibility of some kind of P.R. move from Newpope to play the "indultarians" with more paper-hanging of impotent "documents."
Any meaningful unconditional "indult" for the Modernized Mass of 1962 would be virtually inconceivable, but an end-run would not be. If anything at all should happen, one method would be to handle the problem of the Modernized Mass in a "very low-key way," as an official interpretation of Newchurch Canon Law. In other words, the Commission for the Interpretation of Canon Law could just issue a ruling that Novus Ordo presbyters have always had that right and that it simply had not been made explicit in the law itself.
You may remember that in 1986 JPII appointed a cardinalatial commission of nine cardinals to examine the legal status of the traditional rite of Mass, sometimes inaccurately known as the "Tridentine Mass." The Commission of cardinals of the Roman Curia (Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, Bernard Cardinal Gantin, Paul Augustin Cardinal Mayer, Antonio Cardinal Innocenti, Silvio Cardinal Oddi, Petro Cardinal Palazzini, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Anfons Cardinal Stickler, and Jozef Cardinal Tomko). (For further information, see ECCLESIA: Letter "Quattuor Abhinc Annos," Statement of the Papal Commission to Examine the Legal Status of the Traditional Rite of Mass, the Proposed Norms of 1986, Decree of Excommunication "Dominus Marcellus Lefebvre," Apostolic Letter "Ecclesia Dei," Letter from Cardinal Meyer to the Bishops of the United States, Decree of the Sacred Congregation for the Faith (the "Honolulu" Decision) in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).
That commission unanimously determined that Paul VI never gave the Newchurch bishops the authority to forbid presbyters from celebrating the traditional rite of Mass; that presbyters could not be obliged to celebrate the new rite of Mass; and that the Newchurch bishops could not forbid or place restrictions on the celebration of the traditional rite of Mass, whether in public or in private. Because this was not the answer desired and because the Northern European bishops threatened to go into formal schism over it, JPII never published the findings of the commission.
Newchurch will never realistically given any presbyter a meaningful, absolute right to say the Modernized Mass in public without some involvement of the local bishop. Newchurch is in fact run by its bishops, not by the pope. The bishops will ignore any such papal letter, just as they have in essence ignored Ecclesia Dei. Newchurch, Newvatican, and Newpope are committed to the Novus Ordo, not to the traditional Roman Catholic Mass. The only way of fully restoring the true Mass is to get rid of the New Order.
But even if there were some kind of another "indult," traditional Catholics could not play into it, for a number of reasons:
Traditional Catholics do not look to the Modernist-Liberalist New Order for "permission" to assist at the true Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, any more than they look to it for Catholic doctrine and morals. To do so would be a very dangerous and unCatholic position. Even if Catholic and Apostolic Tradition weren't clear enough about that, the dogmatic Council of Trent and Pope St. Pius V, by canonizing the right and obligation to the Traditional Latin Mass in perpetuity, were!
Tristissimum opus est mihi nuntium vobis dare Patrem Suitbertum die 3 mensis Aprilis obdormivisse in Domino. Funus ejus apud Ecclesiam Monialium Carmelitarum, urbe Graz, Austria, habebitur die 10 Aprilis. Postea omnibus sodalibus Familiae Sancti Hieronymi de ejus vita et morte epistulam mittere intendimus. Interim preces pro anima carissimi Patris Suitberti devote offeratis.
The Fathers Reply.
Fr. Suitbertus was the priest who gave such a vivid account, previously published on TRADITIO, of Pope John XXIII's solemn promulgation of the Apostolic Consitutition Veterum sapientia of 1962, renewing the requirement that seminary courses be taught in Latin and that all Roman Catholic priests be able to read, write, and speak Latin fluently. For further information, see LATNECES: 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 in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).
Boston, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Spokane, Portland in Oregon -- the litany of Newchurch dioceses falling into bankruptcy or engaging in deep church closings has filled the press over the last several years, as the New Order continues its putrefaction.
But on March 29 Newchurchers woke up to the shock of hearing that the Big Apple, which thus far had escaped the closures, had in fact rotted to the core. That day's New York Times announced that the Newchurch Archdiocese of New York had plans for a sweeping shutdown of its facilities: 31 parishes and 14 schools throughout the metropolitan region. The closings would hit the archdiocese the hardest in its southern parts: the Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan, Yonkers, and central Westchester. The Bronx and Manhattan alone accounted for 17 of the 31 parishes that are to be closed. Sadly, these are the most traditionally-constructed edifices.
The archdiocese has had to confront the fact that very few men are interested in becoming Newchurch presbyters and that Newchurchers, finally growing tired of a silly Sunday service that a Protestant would be ashamed of and reeling from daily revelations that Newchurch bishops and presbyters have been committing sex crimes and thefts against their congregations to the tune of $1,500,000,000 just so far, are giving up in droves the "Springtime of Vatican II," now turned to a cold, dead winter.
Is it any wonder that Newpope and Newvatican want to entice the presence and money of the "indultarians" into some kind of a semi-Modernist "indult" arrangement, where Newchurch, for the price of a little Latin, can keep these semi-traditionalists coughing up desperately-needed dollars to pay off for Newchurch's sex crimes? And for the same "indult" nickel, Newchurch can turn these captive "indultarians" into full-fledged Newchurchers, sharing their cookies in the New Order tabernacle and singing from the same Novus Ordo hymnal?
Newchurch's puppet "indult" Bishop in Campos, Brazil, Fernando Rifan, has been in Europe trying to soften opposition in the SSPX to selling out to Newrome. His palaver is to call those members of the Society who wish to stay with Archbishop Lefebvre's principles "radicalists" and "fundamentalists." In his mouth, these are terms of criticism, not of the praise they should be.
He even admitted that he meets with the bishops of the Newchurch dioceses that he visits as "a way of indicating to the 'traditionalists' the necessity of communion" with the New Order. The term "communion" to him means integration into the structure of the New Order. In that mindset, he is also pushing a "Campos" arrangement, by which the "indult" and the Novus Ordo lines are greatly blurred, so that in fact the "indult" bishop becomes simply a cog in the Novus Ordo system, even performing the Novus Ordo service.
And why should not SSPX priests perform the Novus Ordo service, as he does? "For me, of course, the Traditional Mass is better than the Novus Ordo Mass, so I guide people to the Traditional Mass. But the Novus Ordo Mass is a valid Catholic Mass." So, he equates the validity of the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of St. Peter, the Mass of the Great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the Mass of the Saints, as being equivalent to the unCatholic, sacrilegious, irreverent, scandalous, blasphemous, idolatrous, and conclusively invalid Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service, composed by a Freemason with the assistance of six Protestant ministers to ensure its acceptability to the Protestants and Freemasons.
Curiously, Rifan goes on to deny the evidence of the photographs that were published by the Society of St. Pius X, and widely circulated, showing Rifan concelebrating the Novus Ordo. Even so, Rifan admits that "if I concelebrated, I would not have committed any sin, of course." He says that he doesn't understand "this scandal" made about it, "as if I had committed a very big sacrilege." And this is a man who claims to be "traditional"?!
Rifan maintains that for a bishop or priest to refuse to perform the Novus Ordo represents "a formal refusal of communion with the pope and with the Catholic episcopate." As a matter of fact, some of his priests have also celebrated the Novus Ordo service.
So, you in the SSPX, watch out. If you are forced into a "Campos" deal, you will soon be forced into the Novus Ordo Service! This lesson of the Campos sellout to Newchurch after just three years is crystal clear.
Dear Fathers:
In a sermon on the fortieth anniversary of his episcopal ordination (October 3, 1987), Archbishop Lefebvre used the phrase "experiment of Tradition" in the following context:
But if Rome really wants to give us true autonomy, the one that we have now, but with submission, we would want this; we have always desired to be subject to the Holy Father. It is not a question of despising the authority of the Holy Father; on the contrary. But we have been as if thrown outside because we were traditionalists. Well, if, as I have often asked, Rome agrees to have us make the experiment of Tradition, well then, there will be no more problems. We will be free to continue the work that we are doing, as we are doing it now, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. Obviously that calls for solutions that must be looked at, that must be discussed, which are not easy to settle in their details. But with the grace of the Good Lord, it is possible that we will find a solution that will permit us to continue our work without abandoning our Faith, without abandoning that light of which I was speaking to you, which has been that of my forty years as a bishop, which is the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
How does Archbishop Lefebvre's use of this term in 1987 differ from Bernard Fellay's in 2006? Thank you for your assistance in helping us understand the current events going on within the Society.
The Fathers Reply.
Although Archbishop Lefebvre may have used the same phrase (not really the same phrase, as the Archbishop gave his sermon in French, and no phrase has exactly the same connotation in two different languages), the reference of the phrase seems to be quite different. As you have quoted: "But if Rome really wants to give us true autonomy, the one that we have now." Well, "now" (in 1987) was absolute independence from Newchurch. To the contrary, in his March 25 "interview" with the Society's press agency, Fellay appears willing to accept some kind of "Campos" deal, in accordance with which, as the Society itself has publicized with pictures, the "indult" bishop of Campos, Fernando Rifan, is participating, before the cameras, in Novus Ordo services.
It is clear that Archbishop Lefebvre did not consider the Conciliar Popes to be popes that could be obeyed, as they were promoting a New Order, involving not just a New "Mass," but new doctrine. He even called them "antiChrist" and "not Catholic Rome," and by name put Cardinal Ratzinger in the same boat. So, one has to careful to analyze all these statements in their context. Even the same statement can mean two different things when used by two different people. We have certainly learned that lesson from Newchurch!
If Archbishop Lefebvre was so eager to be part of Newchurch, he could easily have accepted the 1988 Ecclesia Dei "indult" deal. He didn't. To us, that says more than a perhaps infelicitous choice of words. Acts rather than words usually show real intentions, particularly in the post-Vatican II era, in which words are often selected to serve the god of Public Relations rather than the God of Truth.
During Holy Week, being the most sacred week of the Catholic liturgical year, Holy Mother Church offers special indulgences to the faithful who share in Christ's Passion and Death.
By far, the most important sources of grace during this period is received from assisting at the Solemn Rites of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. We Fathers have seen many miracles worked in the spiritual lives of those who follow Christ every day this week.
If you have an option, you should assist at the fully traditional rites before they were changed in 1958-1962. If you do not have access to these rites, you should do the best you can to follow them day by day in your traditional handmissal. We recommend particularly for this purpose the St. Andrew Daily Missal with Vespers for Sundays and Feasts and Kyriale (1945). For further information, see FAQ05: What Traditional Books Do You Recommend in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).
Plenary Indulgences for the living and the dead are granted by Holy Mother Church under the usual conditions during Holy Week to the faithful who:
For the usual conditions pertaining to the meriting of indulgences, refer to the chapter "Traditional Indulgences" in the current year's Official Traditional Catholic Directory.
It would be apropos here to point out that various Newchurch bishops, such as Cardinal "Mad" Mahony, of Los Angeles, are attempting to secularize Passiontide and Holy Week by calling for fasts on behalf of illegal aliens and other secular purposes, even of illegal acts. This should be no surprise to anyone, since these bishops are, without exception, mired in crime themselves. Traditional Catholics would do well to remember that the Church sets these special days for individuals to reconcile themselves to God, Who, in the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, died to redeem us. It does no good to blame society. It is individuals who are at fault and must take individual responsibility.
We are society; sin starts with us, in our individual relationship to God. Let the lawless Newchurch bishops fast for their own salvation. They are going to need it, as St. John Chrysostom, Great Eastern Doctor of the Church, taught: "The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of rotten bishops."
There are certain "conservative" Newchurchers around, such as Presbyter Joseph Fessio of the Ignatius Conglomerate, who claim that Vatican II was not properly implemented in the Novus Ordo Service. They want Newchurch to issue a New, New Order, a "reform of the reform," as they call it. They have blinded themselves to the forty years of history that show Vatican II as being a second "Robbers' Council" (like the first Robber's Council, or Latrocinium, of 449, which was annulled by Pope St. Leo the Great).
Presbyter Tom Elich, Director of the Brisbane Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission, recently condemned this notion, saying:
This dovetails with the philosophy of what is sometimes called "the reform of the reform," that is, the desire to have another run at the liturgical reform and produce a different (and more conservative) result. The presumption is that the reform of the liturgy undertaken by the Second Vatican Council has gone off the rails and itself is in need of a reform. To my way of thinking this betrays a lack of trust in the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the Council and an indictment of the direction in which the Holy Spirit has led the Church these last few decades. [Liturgy News, March 2006]
Newchurch doesn't want anything more "conservative" in the New Order. It wants more Modernism-Liberalism. Presbyter Elich is deficient in his theology as well. The Catholic Church does not teach that the Holy Ghost acts in every Council, particularly in the case of Vatican II, which Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI said had no dogmatic authority. As indicated above, Pope St. Leo the Great annulled the Robbers' Council of 449. Pope Pius VI annulled the Council of Pistoia of 1794. Others have been annulled. It is of particular interest that Pistoia was a kind of pre-Vatican II. It advocated a table instead of an altar and demanded a "simplified" Mass (the same condemned term used by Vatican II) said entirely out loud in the vernacular (errors condemned by the dogmatic Council of Trent).
The Newchurchers, desperate to impose an unCatholic New Order on the Church under the color of false "authority," have tried to divinize Vatican II, whereas in fact Vatican II was merely a pastoral council, having no dogmatic authority, and like the decisions of many pastoral councils in the past, can be changed or rejected entirely. For further information, see FAQ08: What Is the Authority of Vatican II? in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).
Dear Fathers:
Fr. Malachi Martin, a traditional Catholic priest, wrote in his later books that he thought Satan was at work in the Vatican, and that a number of the officials there were possessed. Do you Fathers agree with this explanation of what is going on in the Modern Vatican?
The Fathers Reply.
Fr. Malachi Martin, a recognized theologian, authority on the Catholic Church, and former professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Institute, wrote frequently on this issue in books that were worldwide bestsellers. It is to Fr. Martin, who said the Traditional Latin Mass privately in his domestic chapel every day, that we owe the term "Great Facade" to describe what we here call Newchurch, which he described as not the Catholic Church, but the servant of the New Order codified at Vatican II. Fr. Martin had been a Jesuit since 1958, but in 1964 asked Pope Paul VI to secularize him (i.e., remove him from the Order to become a secular priest) because the Conciliar Jesuits had abandoned the Catholic Faith. From that point he retired to New York and wrote fifteen works of fiction and non-fiction on the basis of his extensive insider knowledge of the Vatican.
Fr. Martin was an experienced exorcist, who had performed hundreds of exorcisms at Rome and elsewhere. He did claim that Satanic influences were at work in Newvatican. But he was not alone in this contention. A number of Vatican officials have admitted the same to the European press. Moreover, Pope Paul VI proclaimed publicly in 1972, just seven years after the close of Vatican II, that "the smoke of Satan has entered the sanctuary." Newvatican officials have more recently spoken of the increased need for exorcisms in Newvatican.
Fr. Martin first made explicit reference to a Satanic rite held in Rome in his 1990 non-fiction bestseller about geopolitics and Newvatican, The Keys of This Blood, in which he wrote:
Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops' chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the "superforce." Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI's reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to "the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary" ... an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia -- rites and practices -- was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel's rites.
But Fr. Martin revealed much more about this alleged ritual in his last work, Windswept House: A Vatican Novel, written in 1996, three years before his death. Windswept House was a mixed work of fact and fiction, which argues that, since Vatican II, certain officials in Newvatican are Satanically laying the groundwork for a New World Order after the Masonic, oecumenical pattern, and that these Newvatican officials have cohorts at targeted local parishes around the world.
In Windswept House Fr. Martin vividly described a Satanic ceremony called "The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer," supposedly held in St. Paul's Chapel within the Vatican on June 29, 1963, barely a week after the election of Paul VI. According to The New American, Fr. Martin confirmed that the ceremony did indeed occur as he had described. "Oh yes, it is true; very much so. But the only way I could put that down into print is in novelistic form." Fr. Martin named names, but because he feared assassination attempts, he used pseudonyms. TRADITIO, however, has made available to its readers a key to the names of the Newvatican officials involved, which was prepared by a contributor at the time. For further information, see Who's Who in "Windswept House": A Key to the Characters in Fr. Malachi Martin's "Windswept House" in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Catholic Apologetics).
At his death Fr. Martin was at work on what he said would be his most controversial and important book. Entitled Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church Became a Creature of the New World Order, it was to deal with power and the papacy, and analyzed the revolutionary shift in the ancient dogma of primacy that lies at the heart of what many now see as the first breakdown of papal power in two millennia.
In a radio interview in New York, Fr. Martin was asked whether he feared for his life since writing Windswept House. Fr. Martin said that he was, but that he was too old to change his ways. Fr. Martin soon met his death under very suspicious circumstances. He was found unconscious and bleeding in his home with hard wood fragments imbedded in his skull. In a coma, he regained consciousness just briefly enough to declare that it was a murder attempt, but that he did not get a chance to see who did it. Fr. Martin fell back into coma and died on July 27, 1999. Some who followed Fr. Martin's career believe that he was murdered because he knew too much about the Satanic cabal that infiltrated and took over Newvatican.
What do we Fathers of TRADITIO of all this? Well, Fr. Martin was undoubtedly a brilliant publicist of his works. He appeared regularly on radio and television to explain his contentions. We suspect that he "gilded the lily" a bit for publicity purposes, but he seems to have been sincere in his contentions and certainly quite knowledgeable about Newvatican.
In the past, we were content to rely on more normal explanations for what is going on in Newvatican. The Seven Capital Sins, especially Pride, Avarice, and Lust, seem to explain a lot. St. Thomas Aquinas spoke of the sources of evil as being the world, the flesh, and the devil, with most evils coming from the former two. Yet, as the Church of the New Order has developed since Vatican II before our eyes these last forty years, it is becoming harder and harder to deny the possibility of diabolical influences in the mix. After all, Newchurch, because it is lacking the graces of many Sacraments, including the Most Blessed Eucharist, would certainly be expected to have little protection against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Traditional Catholics pray at the end of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (just one of many prayers that have been suppressed in the Novus Ordo Service) against Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo. It may well be the protection of the graces flowing in profusion from the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments, and the continued recitation of this prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, whom Scripture teaches us will be God's final instrument against Satan, that has preserved traditional Catholics from the daemonic frenzy that seems to have affected the Church of the New Order.
Dear Fathers:
A scandal is growing here in France, as a site said to be engineered by the SSPX's Liberalist Fellay Faction is attacking its own SSPX priests who oppose a sellout to Newrome. A web site containing calumnies against laypeople, priests, and web sites that oppose the possibility of a sellout has been constructed. It is said that the Fellayite Faction is using private folders that the SSPX owns, such as marriage case files for the annulments that the Society has presumed to give out, to halt the opposition to an eventual sellout.
This is the pit into which Fellay, Schmidberger, and their cohorts have progressively fallen, in order to ensure the sellout. Archbishop Lefebvre would have fired such people using such methods. TRADITIO has commented on numerous occasions in the past that the Schmidberger (1982-1994) and Fellay (1994-2006) administrations have had serious management problems, which they refuse to address -- or even to admit, instead choosing to attack those of their own Society who simply want better management in accordance with the Archbishop's founding 1principles.
The Fathers Reply.
We all have to ask ourselves: why have the Fellayites gone "ballastic," as you say? Why are they paying so much attention and giving so much publicity to the very sources that oppose them, thereby shooting themselves in the foot?! The Fellayites undoubtedly thought that they could sell out the Society in a "slam dunk" without getting a consensus with their own bishops, their own priests, and their own laypeople, let alone the Traditional Catholic Movement as a whole. And giving "lectures" around the world is not "consultation."
However, opposition to the Fellayite Liberalist Faction has been steadily mounting. TRADITIO was the first to expose what that Faction is doing to sell out the Society to Newrome, starting back in mid 2005 (which explains why the Fellayites are so livid against TRADITIO), then the French web sites, then the priests of the Society (with some of them already starting to leave over the possibility of a sellout), then bishops and superiors of the Society, then editors of well-known traditional journals in the United States and France. If you were Fellay & Schmidberger, wouldn't you be "ballistic" that your liberalistic programme was being so vehemently opposed by such a widespread chorus?
The current Fellayite leadership is based on absolute control. It doesn't like its own SSPX personnel or independent voices holding its actions up to analysis. It expects knee-jerk compliance to its will. It is the published policy of the Fellayite Faction of the SSPX (as admitted by its own official French organ) to encourage calumnies -- and worse -- against its own and others in an attempt to enforce its will. It is this very attitude that has led to some to call it "cultish."
Instead of taking just criticism from many of its own bishops, superiors, priests, and laypeople seriously and trying to improve its management, as any credible managers of an organization would, all the Fellayite Faction can seem to do is lash out against those who don't agree with its actions 100%. Whatever the Fellayite Faction may fabricate against others changes not one wit of the truth about what has happened to the management of the Society since the death of its Archbishop-Founder in 1991. Fellay & Co. would do better to take the criticism of many of its own bishops, superiors, priest, and laypeople to heart and invest its time in improving the organization and to hearken back to the principles of Archbishop Lefebvre.
In that light, the Traditional Catholic Movement should be encouraged that in recent weeks the growing ground-swell of opposition to an SSPX sellout to Newrome is involving more and more the bishops, superiors, priests, and laypeople of the Society itself. That is as it should be. We who are independent of the Society can point to its internal problems, but only the Society itself can fix its own problems. This, as we have said before, is the kairos, the critical time, for the Society. The entire Traditional Catholic Movement will be monitoring it carefully to see whether the good elements within the Society will find the courage to stand up to those who would sell out the great principles of its Archbishop-Founder.
Dear Fathers:
What do I do when the closest Traditional Latin Mass is over 100 kilometres away, and even that one isn't scheduled every Sunday? I was always under the impression it was an mortal sin not to attend Mass on a Sunday. If I cannot get to a Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday, what should I do?
The Fathers Reply.
First of all, your question should remind all those traditional Catholics who have a priest who professes the traditional Roman Catholic Faith, celebrates exclusively the Traditional Latin Mass, and administers the traditional Sacraments, that they have a very special gift for which hundreds of thousands of traditional Catholics around the world are praying ceaselessly. Support him, help him, be loyal to him, pray for him.
Yes, one has a serious obligation to worship God, but not just any which way, but the way that Christ established -- what we now call "Mass," that is, the Catholic and Apostolic Mass, the Mass of St. Peter, the Traditional Latin Mass (excepting a few Eastern rites that retain their Apostolic form, comprising less than 1% of the Church). Otherwise, you may as well fell free to attend the Methodist service down the street, the local Jewish synagogue, or the Buddhist temple.
FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE REMOTENESS OF THE TRUE MASS, THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS, IS NEVER A JUSTIFICATION TO ATTEND THE INVALID, PROTESTANT-MASONIC-PAGAN NOVUS ORDO SERVICE, ANY MORE THAN YOU WOULD ATTEND A PROTESTANT SERVICE.
The Novus Ordo service is not a Mass. Most of the time the Newchurchers don't even call it a "Mass." But whatever they call it, it is a fabricated Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service, which is invalid under the conditions of the Papal Bull "Apostolicae Curae." For further information, see CURAE.TXT: 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 Catholic Apologetics).
Surely if the pope declared the High Anglican service invalid -- a service that (particularly in 1896) was far closer to the Traditional Latin Mass than the Novus Ordo service of today--, a fortiori the Novus Ordo service is invalid for the same reasons that the pope decreed that service invalid. Moreover, the Novus Ordo service uses an invalid form for consecration, usually invalid matter, and probably defective intention as well. This was already pointed out by several theologians, including the Cardinal Pro-Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, as early as 1967.
There is no secret about who fabricated the Novus Ordo service. It was not even Vatican II. It was a priest named Hannibal Bugnini, who worked with the assistance of six Protestant ministers on the Council to Carry Out the [Vatican II] Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, in order to ensure that the resulting service would be acceptable to Protestants. And it was. The Novus Ordo service, as has been shown in previous TRADITIO Commentaries, is in fact being used by a number of Protestant congregations.
Second, get a copy of the current annual Official Traditional Catholic Directory (see above) and search for Traditional Latin Masses in your area. Very often people are unaware that there is one in their own backyard!
Third, try to worship at the true Mass, even if it is only once or twice a year. The graces you are receiving there are incalculable, augmented by your devotion in making a special effort to be present.
Fourth, it would be correct to say that in the history of the Church, most Catholics never had the blessing of worshipping at a Mass every Sunday. So, if you are in a position of not having a Traditional Latin Mass at which to worship every Sunday, first of all tend to your own soul by the time-tested practices for Catholics in that situation. For further information, see ABSENT.TXT: Method of Hearing Mass Spiritua1lly for the Absent in the TRADITIO Library of Files (FAQs and Traditional Apologetics).
Fifth, after you have established regular traditional practices for the sake of your own soul, then try to build a traditional Catholic community slowly in your area. That may start by being two people saying the Divine Office or Rosary together, reading spiritual works together and discussing them, studying the Propers of the Missal, discussing articles in TRADITIO's Library of Files (FAQs and Apologetics), viewing Catholic videotapes, or any of many other possibilities.
Sixth, once a small community has been formed, check TRADITIO's Traditional Catholic Priests Wanted and Available department and the current annual Official Traditional Catholic Directory for traditional priests nearby, and invite one of them to say Mass for you. Even if it is only a couple of times a year, that is two times more than you have now.
On April 1 another French "interview" of Bernard Fellay, the SSPX's Superior General until July 2006, was posted on the site of the SSPX's press agency. If one reads the interview carefully, one is bound to notice a subtle shift of Society policy away from its Archbishop-Founder's uncompromising stand on principle against the New Order to a "practical" goal of proving to Newchurch that the "experiment of Tradition" can work.
We learn that apparently Fellay is going to capitulate to Newrome and submit the demanded written request that the phony excommunications of 1988, including that of Fellay himself, be "lifted." Such a written request must be viewed as an act of hypocrisy, since even Fellay admits that the excommunications are invalid. So, why will Fellay kowtow to the demands of Newrome by requesting the recission of what wasn't valid anyway and which had no authority in the first place? Fellay is already dancing to the pipe of his new master.
Furthermore, Fellay no longer speaks of a "universal indult," flawed as that idea is. He has softened that "non-negotiable demand" to a mere "liberalization of the use of Saint Pius V Missal." Apparently, Fellay is now willing to accept the "lawfulness" of the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan Service. He even uses Newchurch's term for it: not the Traditional Latin Mass, but the "Mass of Pius V," just as the Novus Ordo is the "Mass of Paul VI." Pick your pope; pick your Mess! This is a far cry from the words of Pope St. Pius V himself:
It shall be unlawful henceforth and forever throughout the Christian world to sing or to read Masses according to any formula other than that of this Missal published by Us; this ordinance to apply to all churches and chapels.
The interview shows a marked shift in policy on the part of Fellay. He is no longer fighting, as his Archbishop-Founder did, 100% for the uncompromisable principles of the Roman Catholic Faith. Rather, he is willing to sell out to the New Order in order to let the Society "prove itself in fieldwork." "In this manner," he says, "we can help Rome to solve the crisis in the Church." So now Fellay is going to become not the opponent, but the helpmate, of Newchurch. In this, he has set himself in disobedience to his Archbishop-Founder, who clearly ordered: "NO COMPROMISE with apostate, antiChrist Rome."
In essence, Fellay has shifted the Society from being an active defender of the true Church to being a passive recipient of Newchurch's favors, so that it can act "practically, pastorally" (doesn't that sound just like Vatican II!). He wants to show the "experiment of Tradition at work." So now, to the Liberalist Fellay, Tradition has become an "experiment," not the True Faith. It is quite clear to see the work of "that fox," Benedict, at work here. It seems that in just a one half-hour meeting, the Modernist Fr. Ratzinger that introduced the "all religions are equal" notion into Vatican II has now won over another Modernist "devil's disciple," Bernard Fellay!
When Fellay was asked directly by the interviewer, "Is your course of action shared by most of the priests and faithful attached to Tradition?", Fellay refused to answer. He refused to acknowledge that two, if not three, of the four SSPX bishops have rejected Fellay's pro-Novus Ordo stance. He refused to acknowledge that growing numbers of SSPX priests are speaking against a sellout to Newrome. Some of these priests have already left the Society over this issue.
We have to give Fellay credit for being more cunning that we thought. Apparently, he has learned much sitting at the feet of his newfriends in Newrome. He is subtly laying the groundwork within the Society for an abrogation of the Society's traditional Catholic principles under Archbishop Lefebvre. The Society is truly at a crossroads. July will tell whether it will continue with any semblance of traditional Catholicism or whether it will be merely a "conservative" handmaiden of Newchurch under Bernard Fellay.
If this isn't where the false-oecumenism heresy -- "all religions are equal" notion -- leads! Now the unCatholic EWTN Charismatic Cable Network is recommending that those who don't like Catholicism should go to the heretical Protestant Church.
Specifically, that EWTN Presbyter Levis, who has been caught in theological errors before, answered a viewer's question: "Some close friends of mine left the Catholic Church to join the Baptist Church. This disturbs me, but a family member told me, at least they are going to some Church. That is better then not going at all. I disagree."
Presbyter "Bob" replied: "Somehow they find Christ with the Baptists, and didn't find him in Catholicism, so in this case, it is better to attend some Church than none.
Would Presbyter "Bob" have replied the same if the friends wanted to join a Traditional Latin Mass site if they found Christ there? No, that would be going too far. In Presbyter Bob's world, better Baptist than traditional Catholic!
It seems that some press outlets are reporting speculation that a so-called "universal indult" for the Modernized Mass of 1962 might emanate from Newrome. We still think that such an event is unlikely, or would amount to little more than a P.R. ploy, as the Newchurch bishops will not allow their power and commitment to the Novus Ordo to be compromised in any essential way, nor does Benedict-Ratzinger, a Conciliar Modernist of the first rank, have any desire to see traditional Catholicism be restored in the Church. But if such a "universal indult" were issued by Newrome, traditional Catholics could not embrace it for a number of reasons:
From a practical point of view, the bishops run Newchurch. If they want their presbyters to celebrate the "Indult" Mass, they have that authority now. But in fact, they don't want celebration of the "Indult" Mass and would, as a matter of diocesan policy, require that such Masses be pre-"approved." If a presbyter stood on his "privilege" to celebrate the "Indult" Mass, the bishop could just demote him, transfer him out, or otherwise get rid of him, so the Newchurch presbyters are not about to act independently of their bishop and lose their positions, their incomes, and their health plans.
In practice, the so-called Ecclesia Dei "indult" of 1988 has been a dismal failure. After almost twenty years of full papal "approval," half of the dioceses in the United States do not have a single "Indult" Mass. Those dioceses that have an "Indult" Mass have, in most cases, only one for the entire diocese, and most have it in a temple that simultaneously performs the unCatholic Novus Ordo service.
At best, it is clear that the "Indult" Mass is viewed by the New Order bishops as a means of sucking in borderline Catholics so that it can get their money, and Novus Ordo-ize them over a period of time. A little Latin doesn't make the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service valid. No, it is still the gas chamber of the soul.
To accept such another "indult," Traditional Catholics would have to reject the very Tradition that they claim to uphold! They would become the same hypocrites that they claim the Newchurchers are.
Dear Fathers:
To what Saint or pope do we owe the wonderful selections from Scripture that we find for each day of Lent? Every year from the Ash Wednesday exhortation of Joel, straight through to the twelve prophecies of Holy Saturday, I am astounded by the sublime cohesion of these timely treasures. A person would have to be a fool not to use these as the centre of his daily meditation. Indeed, it was a crime when they were tampered with and reduced in 1956.The Fathers Reply
Although these Masses go back in essence to the Apostolic age, it was probably Pope St. Gregory the Great who gave them their final arrangement. As a matter of fact, these Masses were the final catechism lessons for the catechumens who were to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. So your suggestion that they be used for daily Lenten meditations is quite appropriate.
Traditionally, in addition to Palm Sunday, the last three days of Holy Week were Holydays of Obligation: Maundy Thursday (April 13 this year), Good Friday (April 14), and Holy Saturday (April 15). Even today, all Catholics are encouraged to continue this commendable practice, advocated by St. Augustine and numerous other Saints throughout the centuries.
If you have not observed this Lent as much as you should have, Passiontide, Palm Sunday, and most especially the Sacred Triduum await. Plan now, as much as possible, to set aside your worldly concerns during these last days of Lent and worship at the especially beautiful and instructive solemn and ancient rites recalling Christ's passion and death. You could not join the Apostles in the suffering of Our Lord and Savior during those most special of days, but you do have the opportunity to take part in the solemn commemoration of these most sacred days, sanctified by so much faith and devotion since the early Church. Even if it takes some extra sacrifice on your part, you have a choice of following the example of Peter and Andrew, who ran away, or of Mary and John, who stayed with Our Lord to the bitter end.
No traditional Catholic who has the opportunity should fail to be with Our Lord each day of the coming Holy Week. If we don't, we are merely hypocrites.
Newchurch is in meltdown on many fronts, but its most spectacular meltdown seems to be in the area of Catholic morality. Much as Newpope, Newvatican, and Newchurch bishops want to sweep the sex crimes under the rug, there is no sign that the problem has been resolved, and legal claims are driving diocese by diocese into bankruptcy.
The latest annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops showed that pay-outs for the episcopal and presbyteral crimes of the New Order have tripled, reaching $1,500,000,000 -- and rising by 219% just last year! The President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops, William Skylstad, laboring under charges of his own sex crimes, admitted: "It is disheartening to us bishops, as it must be to all Catholics, to find that there are still some allegations of abuse by clerics against today's children and young people." Skylstad's own diocese of Spokane has gone into bankruptcy because of rampant crime.
So far, 12,537 children have been deflowered, and 4,827 presbyters have been involved. Virtually all of the crimes were committed by Newchurch presbyters after Vatican II. After all of the administrative folderol played by the Newchurch bishops for public-relations effect, the Conference was stunned to learn that some ten new cases of sex crimes against children occurred in 2005. Half of all the crimes were against children aged 10-14; one-seventh, against children under age 10! The typical abuser was a Novus Ordo presbyter in his late 30s.
When will Newpope, Newvatican, and Newchurch bishops end this farce? It's clear that they are incompetents and should all be chased out of office never to come back -- yes, Benedict-Ratzinger too, who is so deep into the sex-crimes business that he is now being attacked by even "conservative" Newchurchers. Just this year Francis Cardinal George, of Chicago, was discovered to have left a known presbyter-pervert right in the middle of a ministry involving children!
Newchurchers, when will you stop supporting and paying for your Newchurch's crimes? How can you assuage your conscience, knowing that your collections are going to support Newchurch bishops and presbyters, one out of seven of whose victims are under age 10! The sin is now yours -- personally.
You Newchurchers out there, here's another report on how your collection money is being spent.
In Cleveland, two women were caught blackmailing a Newchurch presbyter for sex. They were threatening to go public with proof that a local presbyter has been having sex with both women for some time. This presbyter is actually a Franciscan on loan to the local Newchurch parish.
The Cleveland Police Department and the Office of the Newchurch bishop are investigating to what extent the presbyter has stolen money from the parish collections to support his "recreations." It seems that not only can he not keep his cassock buttoned, but he does not hesitate to steal from the collection plate to support his "recreations."
This is just another reason for traditional Catholics to cut off all contact with Newchurch and its lawless immorality, and for Newchurchers to rethink their Catholicism and return to the Roman Catholic Mass, Sacraments, doctrine, and morality. The Novus Ordo is not Catholic, but perverted through and through. Catholics are obliged to avoid the "proximate occasion of sin." And the Novus Ordo certainly is that!
For some reason it seems that even traditional Catholics these days have pretty much forgotten everything about the Blessed Virgin Mary except for Fatima. Here is some recent news about the most famous Marian shrine: the Holy House of Loreto.
The basilica of Loreto, Italy, adorned by many famous artists, serves as the setting of a tiny cottage, measuring 10 metres long by 4 metres wide by 4.5 metres high. Within an elegant marble casing stands the Altar of the Apostles at one end beneath a statue, blackened with age, of the Virgin Mother and her Divine Infant. As the inscription, Hic Verbum caro factum est, reminds us, this building is honored by Catholics as the very cottage at Nazareth in which the Holy Family lived and in which the Word became incarnate. It was here that the Mother of God was born; here that she was saluted by the Angel; here that the eternal Word of God was made Flesh. As the account goes, Angels conveyed this house from Nazareth eventually to the town of Loreto, more than 600 years ago.
Unlike the more recent Fatima, the Holy House, site of numerous miraculous cures, has been honored by some fifty popes, and an immense number of Papal Bulls and Briefs from Julius II in 1511 on, which proclaim without qualification the identity of the Santa Casa di Loreto with the Holy House of Nazareth. Pope Pius IX wrote in the 1852 Papal Bull Inter Omnia: "Venerated in Loreto is that House of Nazareth, so loved by the Heart of God, and that, built in Galilee, was later separated from its foundations and, by divine power, translated beyond the sea, first to Dalmatia and then to Italy." Even JPII visited the Holy House in September 2004.
This papal recognition was emphasized by an insertion in the Martyrologium Romanum in 1669, which currently reads:
Laureti, in Piceno, Translatio sacrae Domus Genetricis Dei Mariae, qua in domo Verbum caro factus est. Ipsam vero beatissimam Virginem, Lauretanae titulo nuncupatam, Benedictus Papa Decimus quintus omnibus aeronautis praecipuam apud Deum Patronam attribuit.
[At Loreto, in Picenum, the Translation of the Holy House of Mary, the Mother of Got, in which house the Word was made flesh. Moreover, Pope Benedict XV conferred before God especially upon those traveling by air that Most Blessed Virgin, called by the title of Our Lady of Loreto.]
Pope Clement IX also conceded a Proper Office and Mass for the Translation of the Holy House of Loreto (Our Lady of Loreto) on December 10. Deep veneration has been paid to the shrine by such holy men as St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and others. Even the French skeptic Montaigne in 1582 professed himself a believer in the reality of these miracles.
Curiously, the stone on which the original walls of the Santa Casa are built and the mortar used in their construction are not such as are known in the neighborhood of Loreto, but are chemically identical with the materials most commonly found in Nazareth. Yet there have been skeptics about the archaeological science involved. Enter, in 2006, architect Nanni Monelli and archaeologist Fr. Giuseppi Santarelli, who conducted a new study based upon the most current techniques of archaeology, which has shown that the stones in the Grotto of the Annunciation in Nazareth have the same origin as those of the altar at the Holy House of Loreto.
Perhaps dating to this time is the Our Lady's Litany, Litaniae Lauretanae, the Litany of Loreto, which you can find in the back of any complete handmissal. This litany consists of the most beautiful, poetic phrases of praise to the Blessed Virgin Mary, taken from the Scriptures, from both the Old and Testaments, from the Church Fathers, and from mediaeval Latin hymns, such as those found in the Divine Office.
If you are looking for other traditional Marian devotions than the Rosary, try the Litany of Loreto. Approach your traditional priest and ask him to schedule the Latin Litany of Loreto to be recited, or better chanted, after Mass, especially before Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The beauty of this litany of Our Lady penetrates right to the soul.
St. Anthony of Padua in Montignies-sur-Sambre is one of the rare Belgian churches that is packed every Sunday for Mass, with a congregation of 2000 from throughout Belgium and even northern France. This is not the Novus Ordo Mess, but the Traditional Latin Mass. Pere Samuel, an Aramaic Catholic, left the persecutions of Turkey in the mid 1970s and became an independent traditional Catholic priest in the Latin Rite in 2001 after leaving the Newchurch bishop of Tournai then because the diocese had become a "thoroughly secularised, modernist diocese." Pere Samuel then purchased St-Antoine-de-Padoue Church in Montignies-sur-Sambre, in a derelict, rust-belt area to the south of Brussels, and there he celebrates Mass according to the Traditional Roman Catholic Rite.
Pere Samuel is obviously doing things right. Of course, the Newchurch bishop of Tournai, Guy Harpigny, is against him because he is traditional. But now the state has been enlisted to persecute this independent traditional priest. The Belgian authorities, in the guise of the Center for Equal Opportunities and Racism, are bringing the popular traditional priest to penal court on charges of "incitement to racist hatred" because of a remark he made in a 2002 television interview when he said: "Every thoroughly Islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority." Pere Samuel openly speaks out against secularism, but also against the "Islamic invasion" of the West. He says that as an Aramaic Catholic in Turkey, he has witnessed there what the future has in store for Europe. He claims that the Muslims are invading Europe and warns about an impending civil war.
This modern Traditional Catholic martyr reacted to the penal charge by repeating his original statement and adding that he would be "honoured if he had to go to jail for speaking his mind." He added that Our Lord Jesus Christ too had been unjustly persecuted by the authorities. He called upon his congregation to accompany him to court, "driving there in full buses"! [Brussels Journal]
Meanwhile, the Newpope of Newchurch, a slave to Vatican II false oecumenism, wants to schmooze with the Muslims because "we all worship the same god" and "all religions are equal." Certainly Benedict-Ratzinger is no Pope Pius XI, who decreed that every year, on the Feast of Christ the King," the last Sunday of October, all Catholics pray, before the Most Blessed Sacrament Exposed, against "the darkness ... of Islamism."
A 4th- or 5th-century Coptic manuscript of some 26 paginae was discovered in Egypt in the 1970s and sold to a dealer in illicit antiquities. The stolen document was smuggled into Switzerland by a private foundation. The foundation then sold the rights to the National Geographic Society because the foundation could not sell the purloined document legally.
The National Geographic Society will milk the document for its commercial "shock value." A purported "translation" will be released around Easter. It has not been announced whether the authentic document itself will be released. (Coptic is the language of the Egyptians around the time of Christ. It is a later form of ancient Egyptian and was instrumental in Francois Champoleon's decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.)
Although the pre-publicity misleadingly calls the document a "gospel" from the New Testament, it was actually written well over 100 years after the crucifixion of Christ (the last authentic Gospel, St. John's, was written about fifty years after the crucifixion of Christ). Of course, the ignoscenti around the world will be duped into thinking that there is something special about this work, now being called the "Gospel of Judas." There isn't. These phony "gospels," written by the Gnostic heretics of the early centuries of the Church, are a dime a dozen. Some years ago the equally phony "Gospel of Thomas" gained some temporary notariety.
It appears that the phony "Gospel of Judas" is actually a work condemned by St. Irenaeus (ca. 180), one of the Apostolic Fathers, that is, one of those Church Fathers who studied directly under the Apostles, in his work Adversus Haereses (that is the canonic Latin title of the Saint's work, which was written in Greek).
The Gnostics, who wrote phony "gospels" and put Apostles' names on them to confuse the early Christian faithful, made Christ into some kind of magician, having a knowledge of the occult and associated with fantastical cosmological ideas. The Gnostics also taught that Judas, rather than Christ, was the hero of the gospel story and that the serpent of the Garden of Eden was God's servant, who created the material world. This latter teaching reflected the philosophy of the Platonists, who considered the material world evil -- a belief condemned already in the early Catholic Church.
At one time this pseudepigraphion (false writing) would be the subject of careful study by scholars conversant with the original languages and the historical and religious context. These scholars would be interested to learn how the writer of the work perceived the cosmos and where his teachings fit into what little is known about the Gnostics and early heretical ideas. But it appears that the National Geographic Society has sold out to commercial interests to make this pseudepigraphion (spurious writing) a "best-seller" to confuse the ignoscenti and support the anti-Christians.
One scholar of the subject was so bold as to say that by subordinating scholarship to opportunistic money-making and giving the public a distorted picture of what was found, both the Swiss thieves of the manuscript and the National Geographic Society have played a role much like that of Judas in betraying Christ.
Talk about being hoisted by your own petard! Newchurch Francis Cardinal George was castigated as "an accessory to soul murder" for letting a paedophile presbyter remain a threat after being accused of sex crimes.
Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a psychologist who was hired by the U.S. Conference of Catholic [sic] Bishops, sent a March 2 letter to George containing that accusation. She suggested in her letter that George remove his pectoral cross for Lent and replace it with a faux millstone, in remembrance of Christ's words: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6/DRV).
Frawley-O'Dea was unusually blunt in her report about the Newchurch bishops. She said that "the revelations of the past week ... appear to signal a return to the pre-Dallas pattern of protecting an alleged priest [sic]-perpetrator and the institution while endangering children." One former chairman of the USCCB's own Sex-crimes Commission, a state governor and FBI agent, had previously called the U.S. Newchurch bishops, "a Mafia, not the Catholic Church." Another former chairman reported that the bishops' Sex-crimes Commission had been created as just a facade for public-relations purposes, but that the sex crimes of U.S. bishops and presbyters were increasing rather than decreasing. Frawley-O'Dea's report this month confirms the reality.
When Governor Frank Keating spoke the truth, Cardinal "Mad" Mahony of Los Angeles got him fired. Now Frawley-O'Dea has been called "vile" and "horrible" by George's spokesman for speaking the harsh truth. What is clear is that Newchurch bishops are interested not in resolving the sex crimes, but in perpetuating them, not in routing out perverts from Newchurch, but giving them cushy positions in "seminaries" and "chanceries."
Of course, the vast majority of remaining Newchurchers, who seem to be in the grip of fantasy and haven't noticed that the "Springtime of Vatican II" has become the "Winter of Discontent," still support, financially and otherwise, their criminal bishops and presbyters. They deserve exactly what they are paying for.
US Newchurch officials are confronting a plunge in youth pursuing religious vocations. It seems that after Vatican II the native perspicacity of youth determined that the Newchurch was not the Catholic Church and left it in droves. Since 1965 vocations are less than half. Over 3000 Newchurch parishes are without a presbyter. The number of nuns has dropped by two-thirds.
Propaganda videos by Newchurch and inane "God is Happiness" campaigns don't seem to be working with the "tramp teen" culture. Youth used to be attracted to the sublimity of Catholic theology, art, and music, and the beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass. No more. The Novus Ordo culture is garbage, and even the "tramp teen" culture is not attracted to it. As any teacher knows, if you lower standards, students won't even meet the lower standards. Better to offer the heights and challenge youth to rise to them -- and they will.
Dear Fathers:
I have forgotten the reason why statues are covered in violet during Passiontide. Could you explain the reason for this practice?
The Fathers Reply.
Today, Passion Sunday, traditional Catholics will enter their churches and chapels to see all statues and images shrouded in violet. Passion Sunday begins the last two weeks of Lent, the period called Passiontide. It is the more solemn part of the Lenten season, concentrating our attention on Christ's Passion and Death on the Cross for us. Even more so than in the first four weeks of Lent, the Church relinquishes any signs of joy. The organ is silent except to accompany the chant; the altar is unadorned.
Today's Gospel uses the words: "Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple" (John 8:59/DRV). Thus derives this Sunday's most striking aspect: the altar crucifix images (except for the reredos behind the altar) are veiled in the wrappings of violet, the color of penitence and an outward sign of the inward sorrow of the season.
In the traditional Divine Office and Mass, yet another layer of joyfulness is stripped back. Since Septuagesima, we have not heard the Alleluia. Now, with Passiontide, we no longer hear even the Gloria Patri at the Asperges, at Holy Mass, or at the Responsories at the Hours of the Divine Office.
At the center of Catholic devotion is the recitation of the Seven Penitential Psalms: #6 - Domine, ne in furore, #31 - Beati quorum, #37 - Domine, ne in furore, #50 - Miserere,, #101 - Domine, exaudi, #129 - De profundis,, and #142 - Domine, exaudi. These will be found in the more complete handmissals, or directly out of the Latin Vulgate, or in the Douay-Rheims version. Holy Mother Church grants an indulgence of seven years for their recitation. It is interesting to note that the great scientist Galileo Galilei, who is often erroneously portrayed as some kind of secularist apostate, was actually a devout Catholic who recitated the Seven Penitential Psalms every day of his life.
Also central to Passiontide is the devotion of the Via Crucis, or Stations of the Cross. There are a number of forms that this devotion can take: the Franciscan, the Liguorian, etc. All that is required, however, is to hold a blessed crucifix, to recite one Pater, Ave, and Gloria for each of the fourteen Stations, five more of each in honor of the Five Sacred Wounds of Our Lord, and one for the intentions of the Roman Pontiff, which are set by Pope Benedict XIV in Inter praeteritos as the exaltation of Holy Church, the propagation of the Faith, the extirpation of heresies, concord among Christian rulers, and the welfare and tranquillity of the Christian people.
To assist TRADITIO readers in performing the Via Crucis, we have provided pictures for the meditations upon each Station. See TRADITIO's Holy Cards, California Missions & Stations of the Cross department.
Protesting that the closure of their St. Augustine Church and its merger with St. Peter Claver Church were illegal, numbers of New Orleans Newchurchers shouted down the presbyter and swarmed the aisles of St. Augustine's with signs during the Novus Ordo Mess on March 26. The protestors succeeded in stopping the Mess because "church officials said they felt threatened by protesters."
Actually, it was the Novus Ordo protesters who should have felt threatened. Presbyter William Maestri had invited no fewer than ten armed police officers in plain clothes to "make sure we had taken precautions in case things got out of hand." Presbyter Maestri apparently had prepared for an armed conflict. Sandra Gordon, a member of the parish council said that she realized that armed men were among parishioners when "one of them got up during the Mass and pulled his jacket back, and I told my husband, 'Oh my God. he's got a gun.' "
All in a day's work for the Newchurch of Love. So now the Newchurch officials are feeling threatened by their parishioners. Well, it's about time! They've been pretty much free to commit whatever ecclesiastical or civil crimes they please, and Newpope and Newvatican won't lift a finger. Now the Newchurchers are taking a page out of the book of their Roman predecessors who ran errant bishops and popes out of town. The council member said that she wept after Mass saying, "I feel like I'm in The Twilight Zone.
Well, Sandra, you've been in The Twilight Zone for almost forty years now. Did you weep when Newchurch took away from you the true Mass? Did you fight against the predators, as many of your British Catholic predecessors did, when Elizabeth I did the same? Did you weep when Newchurch began changing Catholic doctrine that you said at one time you believed in? Did you weep when your presbyters and bishops, with the connivance of the Newpopes, started raping your youth? Or did you just continue to plunk your thirty pieces of silver into the Newchurch collection plate as usual?
One St. Augustine parish member Linda Santi said, "There was a boiling point reached, and that boiling point has been building over weeks and weeks. At no time has the parish felt as if we've had an honest dialogue with the archdiocese about St. Augustine's future." Well, Linda, It's taken you four decades, but you've finally got it. Newchurch has made despots of your Newchurch bishops. Newrome will do nothing while these illegitimate predators take over your Catholic property, and Newpope says that he has set aside is papal authority in favor of a "collegial consensus" with these criminal bishops.
What goes around, comes around. Presbyter Maestri said that he "felt threatened" by protesters on Sunday. "I was followed to my car with police protection," he said. This from the presbyter who brought in ten armed men to browbeat the congregation!
When Bishop Fulton Sheen was appointed to lead the Newchurch diocese of Rochester shortly after Vatican II, in 1966, his first act was to close a church. When the parishioners heard about it, they decided that no Newchurch bishop was going to take their church away from them. When he drove up to the church, the parishioners surrounded the limousine of this world-famous television and radio personality and pounded on the roof of the limousine, screaming, "You're not going to close our church, you son of a b----" [Reeves, Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen, America's Bishop]." The next day Sheen rescinded his action.
Sometimes you just have to screw up your courage and take up the fight for what is important. As Our Lord said: "When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things are in peace which he possesseth" (Luke 11:21/DRV).
It has been revealed by the Worcester Voice that "gay marriages" were being performed in the Worcester, Massachusetts, Newchurch diocese before it was "legal" in Massachusetts or Newchurch. A videotape has been released as part of a lawsuit, which shows Presbyter Gerard Branconnier already "marrying" two men in 1989 in a "Catholic" marriage rite.
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