Pope Francis skips Sign of the Cross to impart blessing ‘valid for all religions’
Pope Francis' deliberate avoidance of making the sign of the cross when imparting a closing blessing to young people in Indonesia has raised eyebrows. Others have praised him for being sensitive to the local Muslim culture.



Pope Francis gestures to the sky, during a meeting with Scholas Occurrentes in Jakarta.
Vatican News stream/screenshot

Quote:Here, you are from diverse religions, but we have only one god, he is only one.

And in union, in silence, we shall pray to the lord and I shall give a blessing for all, a blessing valid for all religions.

May God bless each of you.

May he bless all your desires.

May he bless your families.

May he bless you present (here).

May he bless your future. Amen.

Quote:By tracing the cross on our body, we remind ourselves how much God loved us, to the point of giving his life for us; and we repeat to ourselves that his love envelops us completely, from top to bottom, from left to right, like an embrace that never abandons us. And at the same time, we commit ourselves to bear witness to God-as-love, creating communion in his name.

Taken from The Recusant #62 - Autumn 2024 [slightly adapted]:

• “Take for instance the Novus Ordo Mass. The New Rite as a whole so diminishes the expression of essential Catholic truths...that it is as a whole so bad that no priest should use it, nor Catholic attend it.” (Eleison Comments #387)
  
  
• “The New Mass is in any case illicit. In any case, it’s designed to please Protestants, it’s designed to undo Catholicism. It’s intrinsically offensive to God, it’s intrinsically evil. That’s how it was designed and that’s how it turned out. … If the New Mass is valid but illicit, may I attend? NO! The fact that it’s valid does not mean it’s ok to attend.”  (See The Catacombs; see also audio, here)
  

• “Bishop Williamson: There are a number of decent priests still operating as decent priests inside the Novus Ordo… if you look somewhere in your area within reach of your car’s petrol tank, your gasoline tank, you will find, somewhere, you will find a decent Novus Ordo priest. … I believe there are some who do understand it and who still want to practice as good priests. Now, they’re  forced to celebrate the New Mass. …
  
  Interviewer: People who go to those [Novus Ordo] Masses, in the vast majority of cases, are of a liberal mindset, they go into the church and come out and answer a survey saying: abortion is acceptable in some circumstances, homosexuality is acceptable, this is acceptable. You, your excellency, are asking me, in this heresy, in this just absolute cesspool of heresy, to try to maybe find some priest which I don’t even think exists, to hear my confession. But to me it is so obvious that this whole thing is fake! How can I participate in it? It’s fake! This has nothing to do with Vatican I, it has nothing to do with the teachings of Pius X, it’s got nothing to do with Pius IX, it has nothing to do with Thomism. It’s Protestantism and Communism. So how can I even approach this as an honest Catholic?
  
  Bishop Williamson: OK, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand where you’re coming from. I only say, I think there’s a little more white around you and available if you look for it than you believe. … but don’t believe that you’re up against a world in which everything is either black or, well I’m sorry, in which all of the grey is all black. No, if it’s grey, then there’s some white mixed in with the black. It’s your business to sort out the white from the black, to frequent the white as you say, not to frequent the black, not to go along with the black, not to go along with this fake religion as you quite rightly say. The new religion of Vatican II is a fake religion, no question about it, and it’s at war with the true religion. I’m obviously not saying go along with the new religion. What I’m saying is: I do believe in the terrible mixture of grey and black that exists, in this vale of tears, that’s almost everywhere in this vale of tears … Now you say that the Novus Ordo is all completely gone and rotten. I understand and you can’t afford to eat a half-poisoned cake. I understand. But if the cake is half-poisoned then there’s half of it that isn’t poisoned. And if you’re using your mind a point comes when you can begin to distinguish what is poisoned and what isn’t. So when you come to applying - the principles are absolute but their application is - the principles are in black and white, no mixture, but the application is in a world of greys, so when it comes to applying the principles you’ve got to - [talks about Novus Ordo miracles] . . .
  
  I’m obviously not pushing the new religion. What I'm saying is that there is still part valid in the new religion along side all that is fake. I may well admit readily that in many cases there’s much more fake than there still is validity. That’s not the question. The question is what you should do where you are. And have you got to stay away from every anything that’s got anything to do with the Novus Ordo. My answer to that absolute question is: no. You don’t have to stay absolutely away. I’m not saying follow the new religion. I’m saying you’re young and you’re strong, you can drive around the diocese. That SSPX priest probably knows some conservative priest in the area, probably. Ask him.”  (Youtube interview, 4th August, 2022)
  

• “There are cases where even the Novus Ordo Mass can be attended with an effect of building one’s Faith instead of losing it. … Be very careful with the Novus Ordo … But, exceptionally, if you’re watching and praying, even there you may find the grace of God. If you do, make use of it in order to sanctify your soul.”  (Mahopac, New York, 28th June 2015)
  
  
• “I do not say that every person should stay away from every single Novus Ordo Mass.”  (Ibid.)
  
  
• “I don’t say to everybody inside the Novus Ordo, priests and laity, I don’t say: ‘You’ve got to get out!'" (St. Catharine’s, Ontario, 5th November 2014)
  
  
• “The Novus Ordo is false, but it’s not only false, it’s part true part false. The false part is very dangerous, but the true part enables souls to keep the Faith.”  (Veneta Oregon, 19th September, 2016)
  
  
• “Therefore, it seems to me, if James is convinced that to save his soul he must stay in the Newchurch, I need not hammer him to get out of it.”  (Eleison Comments #348)
  
  
• “As an essential part of the subjective and ambiguous religion, the Novus Ordo Mass can be what you make of it. A priest can celebrate it decently, a Catholic can attend it devoutly.”  (Eleison Comments #447)
  
  
• “Question: Then, does it mean that those knowing what they know, such as the souls here could go to that [Novus Ordo Mass] and expect to receive grace?
  
  
• Bishop Williamson: If anybody here who knows what the Novus Ordo means went back to the Novus Ordo - pffff! - then [pause] - why would they want to go back?
  
  [laughter] Well, it’s, I would - they can receive grace. But they have to judge the priest…”  (Emmett, Kansas, 18th September, 2016)
  

• “I’m sure you ask yourselves: ‘What kind of word are my children going to have to grow up in? How are they going to keep the Faith?’ Very good questions. By prayer and Charity and by frequenting the sacraments, so long as they are still available, so long as it’s at all still possible to reach the sacraments. And some Novus - I’ve got into quite a lot of controversy for saying this, but it’s true - there is no question that some Novus Ordo Masses are valid. And if they’re valid, then it’s defined by the Council of Trent that grace passes, “ex opere operato” is the strict phrase.”  (Vienna, Virginia, 20th May 2016)
  

Taken from The Recusant, Issue #62 - Autumn 2024 [slightly adapted]:

This conference was given by Archbishop Lefebvre at the priory in Sierre, Switzerland, on 27th November 1988, just a few months after the episcopal consecrations. The title (“Le libéralisme, le pire ennemi de l’Église”) and subtitles are from Fideliter in which it first appeared. The remainder of the text is as it was spoken. The translation is our own.

Quote:‘We want Jesus Christ, Son of God and Redeemer of mankind, to reign not only over the individual, but over families large and small, over nations and the entire social order; this is the great thought that unites us especially this week.’ - this was in 1926 - ‘From this social reign of Jesus the King, a reign legitimate in itself and necessary for us, there is no more formidable adversary by its cunning, its tenacity, its influence, than modern Liberalism’.

Quote:‘The Catholic Week at the beginning of 1926, organised by the Apostolic League, entrusted us with a desire, that of possessing a catechism setting out the fact and nature of the kingship of Jesus Christ; it is in response to this desire that these pages are being published. Under the pretext of following the lights of conscience alone, we have got into the habit of leaving the fulfilment of all duties to the free disposition of conscience: the rights of truth and especially those of the Supreme Truth are trampled underfoot.

Our catechism calls for a great act of faith, the act of faith in God and in Jesus Christ intervened by authority. People must know that in all relations between man and man, between society and society, between country and country, in everything that constitutes the innermost being of a nation, they depend on God and on Jesus Christ. On this point, as on the very existence of God, we must all bow our heads and repeat the Creed with all our soul. God has blessed our work, and in less than six months we were able to sell out our first edition, thanks to the self-imposed propaganda of our zealots’.

New Amazon rite of the Mass to enter 3-year ‘experimental phase’
The ‘Amazon rite,’ inspired by local traditions and customs in the region and proposed at the 2019 Amazon Synod, will enter a three-year ‘experimental phase’ in late 2024, a Vatican theologian has said.



Pope Francis during the closing Mass for the concluding the Synod of Bishops, the Amazon synod.
Vatican News

Quote:The case of the Zairean rite suggests a promising path also for the possible elaboration of an Amazonian rite, in that the cultural needs of a specific area of the African context are received, without distorting the nature of the Roman Missal, to guarantee continuity with the ancient and universal tradition of the Church. We hope that this work can help to move in this direction.

The Modernist Pedigree of Francis’s Synod on Synodality, and Its Implications

Quote:“The Tyrrellian Church is as elastic as its dogma. ‘The notion of a complete ecclesiastical organism produced directly by a divine fiat the day of Pentecost’ is pure fantasy. The Church is not an institution like the ecclesiastical empire of the Vatican; she is the life of a people in progress. The inspiration of Christ first set the Church in motion; it is sufficient that she maintain that movement until the end of time. The monarchical, Roman Church must be clearly distinguished from the collective consciousness of the People of God, which is always healthy and robust, and which truly possesses authority and infallibility.”

Quote:“George Tyrrell (1861-1909) was the posthumous son of an Anglican journalist in Dublin. Raised in poverty, he converted in 1879 and joined the Jesuits the following year. . . At that time, the philosophy dominant in Jesuit institutions was a kind of Thomism peculiar to themselves, being mediated through the 16th-century Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suárez. Disagreeing with this stance, Fr Tyrrell came into conflict with other faculty members, and in 1896 was transferred to Farm Street, the celebrated church of his order in London. There he discovered the work of the French philosopher Maurice Blondel, which heavily influenced him. Fr Tyrrell published a book attacking scholasticism in general in 1899. He maintained that the truths of the Faith must be re-expressed in every age – even if that meant contradicting earlier expressions of the Faith. . . His views – similar to those held by a number of Jesuits and Dominicans in particular – were seen as eroding the immutable nature of Catholicism. Fr Tyrrell was asked to recant them in 1906; refusing to do so, he was expelled from the Society of Jesus. The following year, Pope St Pius X in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi condemned these ideas, dubbed ‘Modernism,’ as the 'synthesis of all heresies.’ Fr Tyrrell attacked these documents in the London Times, was excommunicated in 1908, and died in 1909.”

Quote:“A term as abstract or theoretical as synodality has thus begun to be embodied in a concrete experience. From listening to the People of God a progressive appropriation and understanding of synodality ‘from within’ emerges, which does not derive from the enunciation of a principle, a theory or a formula, but develops from a readiness to enter into a dynamic of constructive, respectful and prayerful speaking, listening and dialogue. At the root of this process is the acceptance, both personal and communal, of something that is both a gift and a challenge: to be a Church of sisters and brothers in Christ who listen to one another and who, in so doing, are gradually transformed by the Spirit.”

Quote:“Thanks to the guidance of the Spirit, the People of God, as sharers in the prophetic function of Christ (cf. LG 12), ‘discern the true signs of God's presence and purpose in the events, needs and desires which it shares with the rest of modern humanity’ (GS 11). For this ecclesial task of discernment, the Holy Spirit bestows the sensus fidei, which can be described as ‘the instinctive capacity to discern the new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church’(Francis, Address for the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015). Discernment commits those who participate in it at a personal level and all participating together at a community level to cultivate dispositions of inner freedom, being open to newness and trusting surrender to God’s will in order to listen to one another so as to hear ‘what the Spirit is saying to the Churches’ (Rev. 2:7)."

Quote:“Philosophical and theological modernism, which Pope Pius X condemned more than a hundred years ago, has been realized in all its devastating consequences in the life of the Church of our day. What’s more, even high-ranking ecclesiastical authorities in our day are promoting this modernism by various statements and official acts.”

Quote:“St. Augustine says that God is so good that He would not permit evil in any way unless He were powerful enough that from each evil He could draw some good (see Enchiridion, 11). Through heresies those who are good and firm Christians are also made manifest, and their faith stands out all the more. . . . And St. Augustine further explained: ‘While the hot restlessness of heretics stirs questions about many articles of the Catholic faith, the necessity of defending them forces us both to investigate them more accurately, to understand them more clearly, and to proclaim them more earnestly; and the question mooted by an adversary becomes the occasion of instruction’  (The City of God, 16:2). The evil ones exist in the Church, says St. Augustine, either so that the faithful may exercise themselves in patience or advance in wisdom (see ibid.).”

• Whereas the Synod asserts that the truths of the Faith can evolve to mean something different from what they have always meant, we affirm that the truths of the Faith are immutable.
  
• Whereas the Synod asserts that the truths of the Faith are known through a process of communal discernment of the People of God, we affirm that the truths of the Faith were given to the Church by God.
  
• Whereas the Synod asserts that “all the baptized” are members of the Synodal Church, we affirm Pope Pius XII’s teaching in Mystici Corporis that “only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith.”
  
• Whereas the Synod promotes the false ecumenism that proliferated after Vatican II, we affirm that the Catholic Church remains the sole ark of salvation.
  
• Whereas the Synod encourages Catholics to “accompany” sinners and their sins, we affirm that true charity consists of teaching souls that we must all strive to overcome our sins if we wish to serve God and save our souls.