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September 3rd – St. Pius X, Pope and Confessor |
Posted by: Stone - 09-03-2021, 09:38 AM - Forum: September
- Replies (1)
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September 3 – St. Pius X, Pope and Confessor
The primary aim of his pontificate Pius X announced in his first encyclical letter, viz., “to renew all things in Christ.” Here we need but allude to his decree on early and frequent reception of holy Communion; his Motu Proprio on church music; his encouragement of daily Bible reading and the establishment of various Biblical institutes; his reorganization of the Roman ecclesiastical offices; his work on the codification of Canon Law; his incisive stand against Modernism, that “synthesis of all heresies.” All these were means toward the realization of his main objective of renewing all things in Christ.
The outbreak of the first World War, practically on the date of the eleventh anniversary of his election to the See of Peter, was the blow that occasioned his death. Bronchitis developed within a few days, and on August 20, 1914, Pius X succumbed to “the last affliction that the Lord will visit on me.” He had said in his will, “I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor”—and no one questioned the truth of his words. His sanctity and his power to work miracles had already been recognized. Pius X was the first Pope canonized since St. Pius V in 1672.
The Roman Breviary has the most concise and beautiful account of this holy Pope’s life:
Quote:Pope Pius X, whose name previously was Joseph Sarto, was born in the village of Riese in the Venetian province, to humble parents remarkable for their godliness and piety. He enrolled among the students in the seminary of Padua, where he exhibited such piety and learning that he was both an example to his fellow students and the admiration of his teachers. Upon his ordination to the priesthood, he laboured for several years first as curate in the town of Tombolo, then as pastor at Salzano. He applied himself to his duties with such a constant flow of charity and such priestly zeal, and was so distinguished by the holiness of his life, that the Bishop of Treviso appointed him as a canon of the cathedral church and and made him the chancellor of the bishop’s curia, as well as spiritual director of the diocesan seminary. His performance in these duties was so outstanding and so highly impressed Leo XIII, that he made him bishop of the Church of Mantua.
Lacking in nothing that maketh a good pastor, he laboured particularly to teach young men called to the priesthood, as well as fostering the growth of devout associations and the beauty and dignity of divine worship. He would ever affirm and promote the laws upon which Christian civilisation depend, and while leading himself a life of poverty, never missed the opportunity to alleviate the burden of poverty in others. Because of his great merits, he was made a cardinal and created Patriarch of Venice. After the death of Pope Leo XIII, when the votes of the College of Cardinals began to increase in his favour, he tried in vain with supplications and tears to be relieved of so heavy a burden. Finally he ceded to their persuasions, saying I accept the cross. Thus he accepted the crown of the supreme pontificate as a cross, offering himself to God, with a resigned but steadfast spirit.
Placed upon the chair of Peter, he gave up nothing of his former way of life. He shone especially in humility, simplicity and poverty, so that he was able to write in his last testament: I was born in poverty, I lived in poverty, and I wish to die in poverty. His humility, however, nourished his soul with strength, when it concerned the glory of God, the liberty of Holy Church, and the salvation of souls. A man of passionate temperament and of firm purpose, he ruled the Church firmly as it entered into the twentieth century, and adorned it with brilliant teachings. He restored the sacred musick to its pristine glory and dignity; he established Rome as the principal centre for the study of the Holy Bible; he ordered the reform of the Roman Curia with great wisdom; he restored the laws concerning the faithful for the instruction of the catechism; he introduced the custom of more frequent and even daily reception of the Holy Eucharist, as well as permitting its reception by children as soon as they reach the age of reason; he zealously promoted the growth of Catholic action; he provided for the sound education of clericks and increased the number of seminaries in their divers regions; he encouraged every priest in the practice of the interior life; he brought the laws of the Church together into one body; he condemned and suppressed those most pernicious errors known collectively as Modernism; he suppressed the custom of civil veto at the election of a Supreme Pontiff. Finally worn out with his labours and overcome with grief at the European war which had just begun, he went to his heavenly reward on the twentieth day of August in the year 1914. Renowned throughout all the world for the fame of his holiness and miracles, Pope Pius XII, with the approbation of the whole world, numbered him among the Saints.
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September 2nd – St Stephen King of Hungary |
Posted by: Stone - 09-03-2021, 09:33 AM - Forum: September
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September 2 – St Stephen King of Hungary
“Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. The people with teeth of steel grinding the nations gives itself up as food to him, to whom was said: Kill and eat; the mouth of the Huns, formerly vomiting foam and rage, now distills the honey of charity. Such, O Christ, are thy miracles; such are thy works, O our God!” Thus does Baronius, on reaching in his history the year of Christ 1000, hail the arrival of the Hungarian deputies, who came to offer to the Roman Church the suzerainty of their land, and beseech the Vicar of Christ to confer the title of king upon their Duke Stephen.
We are carried back in thought a century earlier, when, led by Arpadus, the son of Almutz, under the banner of the hawk, the Magyars came down from the mountains of Transylvania into the plains watered by the Theiss and the Danube. Attila seemed to live again in these sons of his race, who poured like a torrent over Germany, Gaul and Italy. But the empire of the Huns over reconquered Pannonia was only to be lasting on condition of its ceasing to be the scourge of God, and becoming the rampart of his Church. In this world, while it is not yet time for eternal justice, the instruments of God’s anger are soon broken, unless they are amenable to love. Five centuries earlier, Attila in person was rushing like an overflowing river upon the capital of the world, when he was met by the Sovereign Pontiff. The Hungarian chronicles record the following message as having been then received from heaven by the universal devastator: “Hearken to the command of the Lord God, Jesus Christ. Thy pride shall not be suffered to enter into the holy city where lie the bodies of my Apostles. Return. Later on a descendent of thine will come to Rome with humility; and I will cause him there to receive a crown that shall last forever.” Attila thereupon recrossed the Alps, and had only just time to reach the Danube before he died. In the days of St. Stephen the heavenly promise was fulfilled. Let the reader not be astonished that we do not discuss its authenticity. Legendary or not, as to the forms with which national traditions have clothed it, there is nothing in this divine engagement that the historian need reject: it is in accordance with the rules of God’s Providence, which governs history. God never forgets a service; nor does apostolic gratefulness wear out with years: the debt of gratitude which Leo the Great contracted, Sylvester II paid at the appointed time. From that tomb respected by the plunderer, a virtue came forth, changing the avenger into an apostle. The crown, placed on the brow of Attila’s successor by Peter’s successor, was destined to be his as long as he should be preceded by the Cross, that other mark of honor conferred upon him. Like the Holy Empire, to which Hungary was to be later on united without however being absorbed by it, the Hungarian monarchy was founded upon Peter; for his sake it subsisted, and he alone, under God, was the safeguard of its future.
Let not the sad forebodings of the present hour make us forget the marvelous power shown on this feast by the Lamb the Ruler of the earth. Scarcely had the blood shed by the sons of Arpadus disappeared from the streets of the cities; scarcely had the smoke of burning ruins and the dust of crumbling walls been scattered; when their fierce energy, tempered like a choice blade in the waters of the sacred font, became the defense of Christianity in the East. A new sort of invasion began; the holiness sprung from Stephen put forth numerous branches, which, shedding their beautiful blossoms over the whole earth, filled all lands with perfumes for the Spouse.
Let us read the history of the apostolic king, as given in the Book of Holy Church.
Quote:Stephen introduced into Hungary both the faith of Christ and the regal dignity. He obtained his royal crown from the Roman Pontiff; and having been, by his command, anointed king, offered his kingdom to the Apostolic See. He built several houses of charity at Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople: and with a wonderfully munificent spirit of religion, he founded the archiepiscopal See of Gran and ten other bishoprics. His love for the poor was equaled only by his generosity towards them; for, seeing in them Christ himself, he never sent anyone away sad or empty-handed. So great indeed was his charity that, to relieve their necessities, after expending large sums of money, he often bestowed upon them his household goods. It was his custom to wash the feet of the poor with his own hands, and to visit the hospitals at night, alone and unknown, serving the sick and showing them every charity. As a reward for these good deeds his right hand remained incorrupt after death, when the rest of his body had returned to dust.
He was much given to prayer; and would spend almost entire nights without sleep, rapt in heavenly contemplation; at times he was seen ravished out of his senses, and raised in the air. By the help of prayer, he more than once escaped in a wonderful manner from treasonable conspiracies and from the attacks of powerful enemies. Having married Ghisella of Bavaria, sister of the emperor St. Henry, he had by her a son Emeric, whom he brought up in such regularity and piety as to form him into a saint. He summoned wise and holy men from all parts to aid him in the government of his kingdom, and undertook nothing without their advice. In sackcloth and ashes, he besought God with most humble prayer, that he might not depart this life without seeing the whole kingdom of Hungary Catholic. So great indeed was his zeal for the propagation of the Faith, that he was called the Apostle of his nation, and he received from the Roman Pontiff, both for himself and for his successors, the privilege of having the Cross borne before them.
He had the most ardent devotion towards the Mother of God, in whose honor he built a magnificent church, solemnly declaring her patroness of Hungary. In return the Blessed Virgin received him into heaven on the very day of her Assumption, which the Hungarians, by the appointment of their holy king, call “the day of the Great Lady.” His sacred body, exhaling a most fragrant odor and distilling a heavenly liquor, was, by order of the Roman Pontiff, translated, amidst many and divers miracles, to a more worthy resting place, and buried with great honor. Pope Innocent IX commanded his feast to be celebrated on the fourth of the Nones of September; on which day, Leopold I emperor elect of the Romans and king of Hungary, had, by the divine assistance, gained a remarkable victory over the Turks at the siege of Buda.
Apostle and king, protect thy people, assist the Church, succor us all. At the close of that tenth century, when anarchy had penetrated even into the sanctuary, hope sprang up once more on the day whereon the Holy Spirit, the Creator and Renovator, chose thy race, in all its native vigor, to renew the youth of the world. Satan, who thought that the Papacy was humiliated once for all, trembled with rage when he saw new laborers coming to Peter, as to the only foundation on which it is possible to build. The proudest family that had ever caused the empire of Romulus to shake, asked of Rome the right to be counted among the nations of the West. How true it is that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the rock, against the Church founded thereon, against the holy city prepared on the top of mountains to draw all nations to itself. In vain had the storm stirred up the very mire of the torrents of the abyss: it was the hour when God lifted up his hand, as the prophet says, towards the far-off lands, and kings came, bringing to the ever holy Bride those unknown sons whom they themselves had educated for her.
No, the Lord confoundeth not them that wait for him. And therefore we will hope, even against hope, in the future of the noble nation established by thee upon the apostolic strength. A people justly proud of so many irreproachable heroes could not allow itself to be long led astray by a false liberty kept up by Jewish gold, and extolled by all the enemies of the country’s traditions. Martin watches together with thee over the land of his birth; and the sovereign of Hungary, the august Queen of heaven, will not suffer her loyal subject to the listen to the proposals of the infernal spirit.
✠ ✠ ✠
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September 1st – St. Giles, Abbot |
Posted by: Stone - 09-03-2021, 09:31 AM - Forum: September
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September 1 – St. Giles, Abbot
“A simple and upright man, and fearing God, and avoiding evil:” such is the description of the just man in the lessons of the night Office for the time, and it is the portrait of the holy monk whom the Church offers us today for our admiration, our imitation, and our devotion. Fleeing from men in order to find God, he quitted his native land, where his rank, and still more his virtues, prevented him from being unknown. He wandered from the coasts of Greece to the borders of the Rhone, and stopped at length in the forests of Septimania, where he seemed to have found his desired solitude. There for three years he dwelt in a cave hidden among the brambles, spending his time in giving thanks to God and praying for the salvation of the people. He lived on herbs and water, until our Lord sent him a hind to nourish him with her milk. But his little friend was soon to betray him. One day, hard pressed by the hounds, she fled in terror to the saint, followed by the royal huntsmen. Safe with her protector her fears were calmed; but an arrow, aimed at her, pierced Saint Giles’s hand, which was never afterwards healed; for he refused to have it dressed, in order that he might bear the pain of it for the rest of his life. But a greater trial awaited him: his retreat having been thus discovered, a monastery soon rose upon the spot, and he was forced to become its abbot; moreover he worked so many miracles that crowds came to see him. Farewell to the silence and oblivion of his beloved forest!
After the death of the servant of God, the place became more and more frequented. From north and east and south pilgrims poured in, to offer up their prayers and fulfil their vows at the tomb of one, who soon became known as one of the most helpful saints in heaven (St. Giles is the only confessor in the group of fourteen saints known as helpers, whose names are given in ancient missals in the following order: George, Blase, Erasmus, Pantaleon, Vitus, Christopher, Giles, Achatus or Acathius, Denis, Cyriacus, Eustace, Catharine, Margaret, and Barbara. He was even reckoned among the five privileged saints, vis. Denis, George, Christopher, Blase, and Giles, honored in a more special manner in certain places). Among the crowds came Pontiffs (Urban II, who consecrated the altar of the basilica where the holy body rested, Gelasius II, Callistus II, Innocent II; Clement IV was born at St. Giles’s; Julius II had held the abbey in commendam) and kings (Boleslas III of Poland, and St. Louis of France). But the most numerous classes of visitors to the holy relics were soldiers and little children, the former equipped for the crusades, the latter borne in their mothers’ arms; all confiding in the humble, gentle monk who, at the risk of his life, calmed the terror of the poor little hind; all imploring his assistance against the fear which even the bravest may feel in the hour of battle, or the fright that disturbs the little one in his cradle. St. Giles’s ranked as one of the three great pilgrimages of the west; the other two being Rome and Compostello.
Over the relics of the saint was raised a colossal church, which has been described as “the most perfect type of the Byzantine style when at the height of its splendor.” Around it a town of thirty thousand households has sprung up, where formerly there was but a desert. The most illustrious of the powerful Counts of Toulouse gave the preference over his other titles to the one he held from this noble city; he would be known to posterity as Raymund of St. Giles. A hundred years later, Raymund VI did penance at the threshold of the celebrated basilica, for his connivance with heresy; our saint, who had just given hospitality to Peter of Castelnau for his last resting place, opened his gates for the reconciliation of the martyr’s presumed murderer.
We should never end, were we to enumerate the churches, parishes, abbeys, and altars consecrated to St. Giles, in all parts of Christendom, which are so many sources of grace, and new centers for pilgrimages. Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Bavaria, Poland, rival France in this respect. England is second to no country in the world; she has one hundred and forty-six sanctuaries dedicated to the pious monk, and even the established church continues to honor him.
Let us hasten to give the short legend that remains to the holy abbot since the sixteenth century, when his feast ceased to be celebrated with nine lessons. Most of his precious relics are preserved in the rich treasury of the church of Saint-Sernin at Toulouse; Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, which had been obliged to give them up in order to save them from the sacrilegious hands of the armed heretics, had, in 1865, the consolation of discovering his original tomb.
Quote:Giles was an Athenian, of royal race, who from his childhood applied him so earnestly to the study of divine things and to works of charity, that he seemed to care for nothing else. On his parents’ death he distributed his whole fortune among the poor; even stripping himself of his own garment in order to clothe a poor sick man, who was cured as soon as he put it on. Many other miracles soon made his name so famous, that for few of renown he fled to St. Cæsarius at Arles. After two years Giles departed thence and retired into a desert, where he lived a life of wonderful holiness: his only food being the roots of herbs and the milk of a hind who came to him at fixed times. One day the hind being pursued by the royal huntsmen took refuge in his cave. Upon his discovery of the holy man, the king of France begged Giles to allow a monastery to be built on the site of the cave. At the king’s desire he was obliged, against his will, to undertake the government of this monastery; and after having, for several years, discharged that office with much piety and prudence, he passed away to heaven.
“Go to my servant … and offer for yourselves a holocaust: and my servant … shall pray for you: his face I will accept, that folly be not imputed to you.” This word is unceasingly fulfilled, O blessed Giles, in the innumerable sanctuaries where thou art honored. Make use of thy prerogatives for our benefit; hear our prayers, for the glory of Him who has crowned thy humility. In return for the beautiful peace thou didst ever preserve in thy soul, thou now hast power over the countless troubles which disturb our miserable existence, from the cradle even to the tomb. Thou aidest mothers to drive away from their babes the nightly phantoms raised by the enemy of the innocents; thou preservest the little ones from the terrible maladies to which childhood is liable. Thou watchest over the youth, to secure his good morals; and givest him the fear of God, which will make him a courageous and upright man. Thou makest him brave and calm in the midst of dangers, whether in thunderstorms or on the field of battle. Above all, thou preservest thy client from the most cowardly of all fears, that of human respect; and from the saddest kind of shame, that which would withhold him from acknowledging his sins in the sacred tribunal of Penance. The cares and disappointments of middle life do not disturb the peace of him who trusts in thee; old age has no anxious future for him; he falls into his last sleep, in the bosom of God, as in infancy he fell asleep in his mother’s arms. Deign to accept us among thy devout clients, and disappoint us not in our expectations.
Beneventum offers to our homage twelve brothers martyrs, natives of Africa, who suffered in divers places, but whose bodies she glories in possessing. Let us unite in the prayer which the Church offers to God, in honor of this admirable group of heroes.
Collect
Fraterna nos, Domine, martyrum tuorum corona lætificet: quæ et fidei nostræ præbeat incrementa virtutum, et multiplici nos suffragio consoletur. Per Dominum.
May the fraternal crown of thy martyrs rejoice us, O Lord, and may it procure for our faith increase of virtue, and console us with multiplied intercession. Through our Lord, &c.
We must not omit to mention briefly that with the Greeks this day is the first of the Calendar; they celebrate it as a feast, called of the Indiction, or of the new year.
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Pro-Life Win: SCOTUS Lets Texas Six Week Abortion Ban Stand |
Posted by: Stone - 09-02-2021, 07:38 AM - Forum: Abortion
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Pro-Life Win: SCOTUS Lets Texas Six Week Abortion Ban Stand
Breitbart | September 1, 2021
In a pro-life victory, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 5-4 on Wednesday not to block the new Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy while legal challenges to that law proceed in lower courts.
A narrow majority of justices held that the abortion-provider plaintiffs had failed to meet the high standard required for the Supreme Court to issue an injunction blocking a law before it goes into effect.
Signed in May by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ®, Senate Bill 8 effectively bans abortions in the Lone Star State the moment a fetal heartbeat is detected, which often occurs after six weeks of pregnancy. Since women do not often detect pregnancy prior to the sixth week, the law effectively bans abortions in the state. Multiple states have tried to implement similar measures only to be blocked by the courts.
The five-justice majority of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett did not issue a published opinion with their decision, so the precise reasoning of the Court remains unclear, including whether the Texas law would survive a constitutional challenge on the merits when that question is squarely before the Supreme Court.
“The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in dissent. “But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.”
Roberts explained that he was dissenting because an injunction would freeze the status quo while the courts work through whether Texas’s law violates a constitutional right to abortion, narrowly leaving open the possibility that he could vote in favor of the law down the road.
The three liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan issued strongly worded dissents against the Lone Star State’s law.
Legal proceedings in the lower courts might not move forward until a citizen attempts to enforce it against an abortion provider, leaving the pro-life measure in effect indefinitely. The Supreme Court will also hear a major abortion case this term, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, and it’s possible that this case and other abortion cases will be held in abeyance until the Supreme Court renders a decision in that case.
The case is Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, No. 21A24 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Satire: The Oopsilon Variant |
Posted by: Stone - 09-02-2021, 06:52 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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The Oopsilon Variant
Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic | September 1, 2021
In a remote location outside Washington D.C., a group of the nation’s most powerful political, business, and medical leaders sat at a large table in a super-secret, super-secure conference room.
“We’ve discovered a new COVID variant,” Dr. Rachel Kielbasa, head of the Center for Disease Commerce, announced. “Over a hundred cases in Texas within the last month, forty-four cases in Florida the last two weeks.”
The people around the conference room smiled. A new variant out of Texas and Florida was a good thing. It would show those yahoos.
“So why all this secrecy and rigamarole, what’s another variant?” Albert Moola asked. He was the CEO of Liezer, a giant pharmaceutical concern.
“Liezer’s vaccine drops to zero effectiveness in two days,” Kielbasa responded.
“So people will need a new booster every two days. That’s a lot of shots, but with adequate funding from the government, I’m sure Liezer can rise to the challenge. For the good of the country, of course.”
“And the good of Liezer,” Speaker of House of Representatives Nanny Pelfosi said. Her tone was bitingly sarcastic, but she was bitingly sarcastic about everything. She was actually delighted, she owned a ton of Liezer stock.
“I’m afraid this isn’t as auspicious as it sounds, for Liezer or the rest of us,” Kielbasa said. “We know the current vaccine drops to zero effectiveness because the variant virus essentially eats it all up. It not only resists, it obliterates your vaccine, Albert, and every other vaccine now on the market. After two days we can’t find a drop of vaccine, and the spike proteins that the vaccines are supposed to make the recipient produce are gone, too. Everything is just gone.”
“But we’re counting on those vaccines to make people sick, so we can blame it on COVID and give them more vaccines to make ’em sicker, kill ’em!” shrieked Camela Sparus, Vice President of the United States.
“I assume Bill Negates has been notified?” Pelfosi said.
“He was our first call,” Kielbasa said. “He’s pledged five billion to find a vaccine. He said his contribution would have been ten billion, but his divorce has left him a little short. He’s personally supervising the effort, says there’s no time to spare. He sends his regards. Of course everyone else is going to kick in on this. They have to.” There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice. “There’s more bad news.”
“What could be worse than this?” Sparus shrieked.
“The variant appears to have no adverse effects at all. In fact, it wipes out every other COVID variant. Patients have even said that it leaves them feeling happier and more confident. ”
Moola whistled “It leaves them healthier and happier?”
“Yes.”
“This is intolerable!” Sparus shrieked. “I will not tolerate it!”
“How contagious is it?” Moola asked.
“It’s the most contagious variant yet.”
“So this will spread like wildfire, knocking out other variants, making people healthier, happier, and essentially unvaccinated. My god! Have you been able to isolate the variant?”
“We have.” Kielbasa dimmed the lights and used her laptop computer to put an electron microscope image on a screen, an indistinct speck.
“Can you increase the magnification?”
Kielbasa repeatedly hit a button on her computer and the speck grew larger and larger, until it almost filled the screen. At that size, it appeared that the virus’s spike proteins formed a pattern on the surface of the virus, a smiley face. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Kielbasa turned off her computer and turned on the lights.
“What are you calling this variant?”
“The upsilon variant.”
A little man jumped up from his seat, Dr. Antonio Ouchy, the Director of the National Institute of Adverse and Ineffective Drugs. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. He hurried over to a white board and picked up a red marker. He wrote Upsilon on the board. “What do you think the press is going to make of this when they get ahold of it?” He wrote Oopsilon on the board. “Did any of you think about the optics here? Does anybody in your outfit have a functioning brain cell, Kielbasa?”
“The press isn’t going to say a word about this until we have a vaccine.” Pelfosi said sternly. “Jen, there will be no problem with the regular media.”
“Of course not, Ms. Speaker, they’ll do as they’re told.” Jen Pschloki, the White House press secretary answered. “I don’t think anyone will be so foolish as to ask questions, but they’ll get circled back if they do.”
“What about social media, Mark, they’ll do likewise?”
“Certainly,” Mark Yuck said. He was the CEO of Wastebook, a social networking company. While there were billions of “friends” on his network, he had no non-virtual friends. His smug too-perfectness and weird haircut provoked a visceral desire among his many enemies to punch his teacher’s pet face. “We see a peep about this and whoever posts it will be deplatformed so fast their head will swim. The other big platforms will be on board. The problem is those darn websites and bloggers. You knock one out and two more spring up to take their place. Ms. Pelfosi, after this meeting I’d like to talk to you about legislation to get rid of these disruptive elements. I guarantee you’ll have the full support of Silicon Valley.”
“We’ll address the problem. An emergency like this always gives us opportunities and we won’t let them go to waste.”
“Nan, we’re going to need a lot more than Negates’s $5 billion, that’s a drop in the bucket,” Dr. Ouchy said. “This requires an all-out effort, the equivalent of war. You’ve got to get emergency legislation and big-time funding—I’m talking trillions—through Congress and pronto! We need a vaccine now, and not like the wishy-washy ones we already have. It has to eradicate this Upsilon variant completely, wipe it out!”
“Any ideas on how I sell a vaccine for a virus that leaves people healthier, Tony?”
“Perception management,” Senator Chuck Wormer interjected. “We’ve got to rework the vaccinated-unvaccinated division we’ve done so well with. The trick is to make health and happiness seem like abnormal conditions that pose a threat to the rest of us. Someone else’s good mood can kill you. Enlist everyone—if you see something, say something. And because this Upsilon variant is so dangerous and contagious, we have to separate those who get it from everyone else.”
“The camps.” Pelfosi smiled.
“Exactly. We’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Dr. Ouchy said. “Before long people are going to notice that the ones in the camps aren’t sick or dying, that they’re healthy. Because this virus is so contagious we won’t be able to get people into the camps fast enough and the health of the general population will improve too. I think this requires more stringent measures . . . until we get a vaccine, of course.”
“The Population Control Project!” Vice President Sparus cackled.
Wormer said, “We’ve always known there would come a time when to protect people, to show our concern for them, we’d have to eliminate them. That time has arrived.”
“Talk about tough sells,” Moola said.
“We’ll stop calling diseased people ‘people’,” Dr. Ouchy said. “We’ll call them carriers, or better yet, vectors. We kill mosquitos that carry malaria and rats that carry plague because they’re disease vectors. This is no different—humans are vectors. Who’s going to worry about vectors?”
“There may be protests, but it’s for the good of the country,” Pelfosi said. “Anyone who objects is being selfish, placing their own interest before the public interest.”
“You can’t make a filet mignon without breaking eggs!” exclaimed the President of the United States.
His Vice President glanced at him. “Looks like it’s time for somebody’s sedative and nap.”
This story is fictional. Any similarity between its characters and actual people is intentional.
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Early-Warning Pandemic Cartoon |
Posted by: SAguide - 09-01-2021, 07:22 PM - Forum: General Commentary
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The original was removed from YT. However, you can view the cartoon from any of these four sources:
G. Edward Griffin comment:
Here is a cartoon from the earliest days of motion-pictures that likely was a commentary on the 1918 Spanish-Flu epidemic. We have been unable to verify its origin, but the singing radio that appears in the cartoon is the exact design as radios made by the Atwater Kent company, which was in business from 1921 to 1936. The value of this cartoon lies not in its antiquity or rarity, but its editorial commentary that is stunningly contemporary to our present day. Popular sentiment a hundred years ago clearly was far more aware of an agenda behind the propaganda and, as you will see in the final message of the cartoon, folks knew who was behind it and what the end game was. An amazing time capsule of truth. Republished 2021 June 1.
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Audiobook series: The Spiritual Combat by Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli (1530-1610) |
Posted by: Stone - 09-01-2021, 08:09 AM - Forum: Resources Online
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Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli (1530-1610) was the author of The Spiritual Combat, one of the most important works of Catholic spirituality. In 1589 in Venice the first edition of the work of his life was printed. At once it gained huge esteem and became a bestseller. The Combat is a practical manual of living. At first it teaches that the sense of life is incessant fighting against egoistic longings and replacing them with sacrifice and charity. The one who does not do this loses, and suffers in Hell; the one who does it, trusting not in his own, but God's power, triumphs and is happy in Heaven. The work of Scupoli analyses various usual situations and advises how to cope with them, preserving a pure conscience and improving virtue. It emphasizes also the boundless goodness of God, which is the cause of all good. What is bad originates from the human who rebels against God.
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Archbishop Viganò: considerations on the Great Reset and the New World Order |
Posted by: Stone - 09-01-2021, 07:08 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Viganò: considerations on the Great Reset and the New World Order
Only by turning to Christ can the wicked project of the New World Order be defeated and the Holy Church be purified of traitors and renegades.
Tue Aug 31, 2021
(LifeSiteNews) – Editor’s Note: the following is a speech delivered by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on August 28, 2021.
LIBERA NOS A MALO
Considerations on the Great Reset and the New World Order
No one will be part of the New World Order
unless he carries out an act of worship to Lucifer.
No one will enter the New Age unless he receives Luciferian initiation.
David Spangler
Director of the United Nations Planetary Initiative Project
(Reflections on The Christ, Findhorn, 1978)
For more than a year and a half we have been helplessly witnessing the succession of incongruent events to which most of us are unable to give a plausible justification. The pandemic emergency has made particularly evident the contradictions and illogicalities of measures nominally intended to limit contagion – lockdowns, curfews, closures of commercial activities, limitations of public services and classes, suspension of citizens’ rights – but which are disavowed daily by conflicting voices, by clear evidence of ineffectiveness, by contradictions on the part of the same health authorities. There is no need to list the measures that almost all the governments of the world have taken without achieving the promised results. If we limit ourselves to the presumed advantages that the experimental gene serum should have brought to the community – above all immunity to the virus and renewed freedom of movement – we discover that an Oxford University study published in The Lancet (here) stated that the viral load of those vaccinated with a double dose is 251 times greater than the first strains of the virus (here), despite the proclamations of world leaders, starting with the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, according to whom “whoever gets vaccinated lives, whoever does not get the vaccine dies.” The side effects of the gene serum, cleverly disguised or deliberately not registered by the national health authorities, seem to confirm the danger of taking the vaccine and the disturbing unknowns for the health of citizens which we will soon have to face.
From science to scientism
The art of medicine – which is not science, but the application of scientific principles to different cases each time, on an experiential and experimental basis – seems to have renounced its prudence, in the name of an emergency that has risen to the level of priesthood of a religion – the religion of science, in fact – which in order to be such has cloaked itself in a dogmatism bordering on superstition. The ministers of this cult have constituted themselves as a caste of untouchables, exempt from any criticism even when their claims are denied by the evidence of the facts. The principles of medicine, considered universally valid until February 2020, have given way to improvisation, to the point of being advised to vaccinate at the height of the pandemic, the obligation of masks being imposed although they are useless, the arbitrary mandating of bizarre distances, the prohibition of treatments with effective drugs and the imposition of experimental gene therapies in violation of normal safety protocols. And just as there are new Covid priests, so there are also new heretics, that is, those who reject the new pandemic religion and want to remain faithful to the Hippocratic Oath. Not infrequently, the aura of infallibility that surrounds virologists and other more or less titled scientists does not seem to be questioned due to their conflicts of interest or by the substantial financial benefits received by pharmaceutical companies, which under normal conditions would be scandalous and criminal.
What many fail to understand is the inconsistency between the stated aims and the means that are adopted in a constantly changing manner in order to achieve them. If in Sweden the absence of lockdowns and masks did not lead to higher infection rates than those in countries where people have been confined to their homes or where they have had masks put on even in primary schools, this element is not considered as proof of ineffectiveness of the measures. If in Israel or in Great Britain mass vaccination has increased infections and made them more virulent, their example does not induce the rulers of other countries to be cautious in the vaccination campaign, but rather pushes them to evaluate the mandatory nature of their giving of the vaccine. If ivermectin or hyperimmune plasma prove to be valid treatments, this is not enough to authorize them, let alone recommend them. And those who wonder the reason for this disconcerting irrationality end up refraining from judgment, giving a sort of fideistic acceptance to the pronouncements of the Covid priests, or conversely considering doctors as unreliable sorcerers.
A single script under a single direction
As I said earlier, we are faced with a colossal deception, based on lies and fraud. This deception starts from the premise that the justifications put forward by the authorities in support of their actions are sincere. More simply, the mistake consists in believing that the rulers are honest and in assuming that they do not lie to us. So we persist in finding more or less plausible justifications, with the sole purpose of not recognizing that we are the object of a conspiracy planned to the smallest detail. And while we try to rationally explain irrational behavior, while we attribute logic to the illogical actions of those who govern us, cognitive dissonance leads us to close our eyes to reality and to believe the most shameless lies.
We should have understood – I wrote it some time ago – that the Great Reset plan was not the result of the ravings of some “conspiracy theorist” but the crude evidence of a criminal plan, conceived for decades and aimed at establishing a universal dictatorship in which a minority of immeasurably rich and powerful people intends to enslave and subjugate the whole of humanity to the globalist ideology. The accusation of “conspiracy theory” could perhaps have made sense when the conspiracy was not yet evident, but today denying what the elite has planned since the 1950s is unjustifiable. What Kalergi, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, Klaus Schwab, Jacques Attali and Bill Gates have been saying since World War II has been published in books and newspapers, commented on and taken up by international bodies and foundations, made up precisely by parties and government majorities. The United States of Europe, uncontrolled immigration, the reduction of wages, the cancellation of trade union guarantees, the renunciation of national sovereignty, the single currency, the control of citizens under the pretext of a pandemic, and the reduction of the population through the use of vaccines with new technologies are not recent inventions, but the result of a planned, organized and coordinated action – an action that clearly shows itself perfectly adhering to a single script under a single direction.
The criminal mens
Once it is understood that the present events have been intended in order to obtain certain results – and consequently to pursue certain interests on behalf of a minority part of humanity, with incalculable harm for the majority – we must also have the honesty to recognize the criminal mens [mind] of the authors of this plan. This criminal design also makes us understand the fraud perpetrated by civil authority in presenting certain measures as an unavoidable response to unpredictable events, when the events have been artfully created and magnified with the sole purpose of legitimizing a revolution – which Schwab identifies as the fourth industrial revolution – intended by the elite to the detriment of all humanity. The enslavement of authority is on the other hand the result of a process that began even earlier, with the French Revolution, and which made the political class the servant not of God (whose Lordship it disdainfully disregards) nor of the sovereign people (which it despises and uses only to legitimize itself), but of the economic and financial potentates, of the international oligarchy of bankers and usurers, of multinationals and pharmaceutical companies. In reality, on closer inspection, all these subjects belong to a small number of well-known very rich families.
Equal enslavement is also evident in the media: journalists have accepted – without any scruple of conscience – prostituting themselves to the powerful, going so far as to censor the truth and spread shameless lies without even trying to give them the appearance of credibility. Up until last year journalists counted the numbers of the “victims” of Covid by presenting anyone who tested positive as terminally ill; today those who die after being vaccinated are always and only taken by a vague “illness,” and even before the post mortem examinations they officially decide that there is no correlation between a person’s death and the administration of the gene serum. They twist the truth with impunity when it does not confirm their narrative, bending it to fit their purposes.
What has been happening for a year and a half had been widely announced, down to the smallest detail, by the creators of the Great Reset themselves; just as we were told the measures that would be adopted. On February 17, 1950, testifying before the United States Senate, the well-known banker James Warburg said, “We will have a world government, whether you like it or not. The only question that arises is whether this world government will be established by consensus or by force.” Four years later, the Bilderberg Group was born, which has counted among its members characters such as [Italian businessman Gianni] Agnelli, Henry Kissinger, Mario Monti, and the current Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. In 1991, David Rockefeller wrote: “The world is ready for a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is certainly preferable to the national self-determination practiced in past centuries.” And he added: “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the ‘right’ global crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” Today we can affirm that this “right crisis” coincides with the pandemic emergency and with the “lockstep” outlined since 2010 by the Rockefeller Foundation document “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” in which the events we are now witnessing are all anticipated (here).
In short, they have created a false problem in order to be able to impose population control measures as an apparent solution, cancel small and medium-sized businesses with lockdowns and the green pass to the benefit of a few international groups, demolish education by imposing distance learning, lower the cost of manpower and employees with “smart working,” privatize public health for the benefit of Big Pharma, and allow governments to use the state of emergency to legislate in derogation of the law and impose so-called vaccines on the entire population, making citizens traceable in all their movements and either chronically ill or sterile.
Everything the elite wanted to do, they have done. And what is incomprehensible is that in the face of the evidence of the premeditation of this terrible crime against humanity, which sees the leaders of almost the whole world as accomplices and traitors, there is not a single magistrate who opens a file against them to ascertain the truth and condemn the guilty and complicit. Those who disagree are not only censored but pointed out as public enemies, as infectors, as non-persons for whom no rights are recognized.
Deep state and deep church
Now, in the face of a criminal plan it would be at least logical to denounce it and make it known, in order to then be able to avert it and try those who are guilty. The list of traitors should start with the heads of government, with cabinet members and elected officials, and then continue with the virologists and corrupt doctors, the complicit officials, the leaders of the armed forces incapable of opposing the violation of the Constitution, the sold-out journalists, the cowardly judges and the obsequious unions. In that long list that will perhaps be drawn up one day, the leaders of the Catholic Church should also be listed, starting with Bergoglio and not a few of the Bishops, who have become zealous executors of the will of the prince against the mandate received from Christ. And certainly, in that list, one would know the extent of the conspiracy and the number of the conspirators, confirming the crisis of authority and the perversion of civil and religious power. In short, it would be understood that the corrupt part of the civil authority – the deep state – and the corrupt part of ecclesiastical authority – the deep church – are two sides of the same coin, both instrumental to the establishment of the New World Order.
However, in order to understand this alliance between civil and religious power, it is necessary to recognize the spiritual and eschatological dimension of the present conflict, framing it in the context of the war that Lucifer, ever since his fall, has waged against God. This war, whose outcomes have been decided ab æterno with the inexorable defeat of Satan and the Antichrist and the overwhelming victory of the Woman encircled with the stars, is now approaching its conclusion. This is why the forces of darkness are so wild at present, so impatient to cancel the name of Our Lord from the earth, to not only destroy his tangible presence in our cities by tearing down churches, demolishing crosses, and suppressing Christian holidays; but also by eliminating memory, cancelling Christian civilization, adulterating its teaching, and debasing its worship. And in order to do this, the presence of a faithful and courageous Hierarchy, ready to suffer martyrdom in order to defend Christian faith and moral teaching, is certainly an obstacle. This is why, from the very initial phase of the globalist plan, it was essential to corrupt the Hierarchy in morals and doctrine, to infiltrate it with fifth columns and sleeper cells, to deprive it of any supernatural yearning, and to make it vulnerable to blackmail thanks to financial and sexual scandals; all with the purpose of excluding it and eliminating it once its purpose has been achieved, according to established practice.
This infiltration operation began at the end of the 1950’s, when the project of the New World Order was just taking shape. It began its own work of subversion a few years later, with the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in view of which the election of Roncalli and the expulsion of Cardinal Siri, Pacelli’s “dauphin” or probable successor as pope, represented a reason for enthusiasm both for the progressive and modernist element within the Church, as well as for the communist, liberal, and Masonic element of the civil world. Vatican II represented within the ecclesial body what the Tennis Court Oath [of the French Revolution] was for civil society: the beginning of the Revolution. And if on many occasions I have drawn attention to the subversive nature of the Council, today I believe that a historical analysis deserves attention in which apparently disconnected facts acquire a disturbing significance, explaining many things.
Liaisons dangereuses
As Michael J. Matt has reported in a recent video at The Remnant (here), today we are beginning to put together all the pieces of the mosaic, and we discover – by the very admission of one of the protagonists – that Msgr. Hélder Câmara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in Brazil, had a meeting in those years with the young Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum and theorizer of the Great Reset. Once Schwab recognized Câmara for his opposition to the traditional Church and his revolutionary and pauperist theories, he invited him to the Davos Forum, considering his participation in this event as extremely important in view of the project of the New Order. We know that Hélder Câmara was among the organizers of the “Pact of the Catacombs,” which was signed by about forty ultra-progressivist Bishops on 16 November 1965, a few days before the closing of the Council. Among the heretical theses of that document, there is also collaboration in the establishment of “another, new social order” (here, n. 9) based on justice and equality. And we are not surprised to learn that among the signatories there was also Msgr. Enrique Angelelli, the auxiliary bishop of Cordoba in Argentina, “[a] point of reference for then-Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio” (here). Bergoglio himself declared right from the beginning of his Pontificate that he agreed with the demands of the Pact of the Catacombs. On 20 October 2019, during the Synod on the Amazon, the celebration of the pact between the conspirators was repeated in the Catacombs of Santa Domitilla (here), confirming that the plan begun at the Council had found fulfillment precisely in Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Far from distancing himself from the ultra-progressivists who support him and who determined his election at the last Conclave, Bergoglio never misses an opportunity to give proof of his perfect coherence with the plan of the New World Order, beginning with the collaboration of Vatican commissions and dicasteries with environmentalism of a Malthusian matrix and their participation in the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, a global alliance with the Rothschilds, the Rockefeller Foundation, and large banks. So on the one hand we have David Rockefeller with the Trilateral Commission, and on the other we have Klaus Schwab, who is related by marriage with the Rothschilds (here), with the World Economic Forum, and both of them are arm-in-arm with the head of the Catholic Church to establish the New Order by means of the Great Reset, as has been planned since the 1950’s.
The world depopulation plan
Among the associates of this pactum sceleris there must also be counted some members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which recently had its organizational structure overturned by Bergoglio himself when he removed the members who were most faithful to the Magisterium, replacing them with supporters of depopulation, contraception, and abortion. There should be no surprise at the Holy See’s support for vaccines: in June 2011 the Sovereign Independent carried the headline on its front page: “Depopulation Through Forced Vaccination: The Zero Carbon Solution!” (here). Beside the headline, a photograph of Bill Gates was accompanied by a quote from him: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive services [abortion and contraception], we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” This is what Bill Gates said eleven years ago. Today he is one of the shareholders of the Black Rock group that finances the pharmaceutical companies that produce the vaccines, one of the main sponsors of the World Health Organization (WHO), and also of a myriad of public and private entities connected to health. At his side we curiously find George Soros, the “philanthropist” of the Open Society, which together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently invested in a British company that produces swabs for Covid testing (here).
And since we are talking about economic issues, I would like to recall that the Holy See has held shares worth about €20 million in two pharmaceutical companies that have produced a contraceptive drug (here), and more recently it invested in a fund that guaranteed very high profits in the event of a geopolitical or pandemic crisis thanks to speculation on international currencies, the “Geo-Risk” fund managed by the Merrill Lynch investment bank, which had to close it because of its skyrocketing yields after the first few months of the pandemic (here). Other capital, coming from the “Peter’s Pence” collection, had been used to finance various other initiatives, even collaborating with [Italian businessman] Lapo Elkann, whose endeavors include Rocketman, the autobiographical film of Elton John. To say nothing of the real estate speculations and the purchase of the London building at 60 Sloane Avenue that the news coverage has amply informed us on, a purchase that I know, from a reliable source, was decided on by Bergoglio himself. And then there’s China: always in the name of “coherence” and the “church of the poor for the poor” that is so dear to Bergoglio’s heart, there are those who believe that the secret Accord prepared by the Jesuits and former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick may have obtained substantial funding from the communist regime in Beijing in exchange for the Vatican’s silence over the persecution of Catholics and the violation of human rights (here).
Deep state interference
There have been manifold examples of interference by the deep state in the life of the Church. We cannot forget the emails of John Podesta and Hillary Clinton, which show the intention to oust Benedict XVI from the papacy and so to initiate a new “springtime of the Church” that would be progressivist and globalist, which later came about with the resignation of Benedict and the election of the Argentine. Nor can we overlook the interference of entities and institutions that are anything but close to religion, such as the B’nai B’rith, in dictating the direction of the “renewal” of the Church after Vatican II and most of all under this Pontificate. Finally, we should remember on the one hand the disdainful refusals to grant audiences to conservative political and institutional personalities, and on the other hand the passionate smiling encounters with leaders of the Left and of progressivism, along with expressions of enthusiastic satisfaction on the occasion of their election. Many of them owe their success to having attended universities run by the Society of Jesus or circles of Catholicism that in Italy would be called Dossettian,1 where the network of social and political relations constitutes a sort of progressive Freemasonry and ensures dazzling careers for so-called “adult Catholics,” those who use the name “Christian” without behaving consistently with Christian faith and morality in their service of public affairs: Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi; Romano Prodi, Mario Monti, Giuseppe Conte, and Mario Draghi; to name only a few. As we can see, the cooperation between the deep state and deep church is long-standing and has now produced the results hoped for by its supporters, with very serious damage to both the State and religion.
The closure of churches in early 2020, even before the civil authorities imposed the lockdowns; the prohibition of the celebration of Masses and the administration of the Sacraments during the pandemic emergency; the grotesque ceremony performed on 27 March 2020 in Saint Peter’s Square (here); the insistence on vaccines and their promotion as morally legitimate despite having been produced with cell lines originating with aborted fetuses; Bergoglio’s declarations that the genetic serum represents a “moral duty” for every Christian; the introduction of the “Green Pass” health passport in the Vatican and more recently in Catholic schools and in some seminaries; the Holy See prohibiting Bishops from announcing that they are against the vaccination obligation, promptly endorsed by certain Bishops’ Conferences – these are all elements that demonstrate the subordination of the deep church to the orders of the deep state, and the way in which the Bergoglian church is an integral part of the globalist plan. If we combine all this with the idolatrous cult of the pachamama right under the arches of Saint Peter’s Basilica; the insistence on irenicist ecumenism, pacifism, and pauperism; the endorsement of situation ethics and the substantial legitimization of adultery and concubinage in Amoris Laetitia; the declaration that the death penalty is morally illicit; the endorsement of left-wing politicians, revolutionary leaders, and abortion activists; the words of understanding for LGBT issues, homosexuals, and transsexuals; the silence over the legitimization of homosexual unions and the even more disconcerting silence over the blessing of sodomitical couples by German Bishops and priests; and the prohibition of the Tridentine Mass with the abolition of Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, we realize that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is carrying out the task entrusted to him by the globalist elite, which wants him to be the liquidator of the Catholic Church and the founder of a philanthropic and ecumenical sect of Masonic inspiration that is meant to constitute the Universal Religion in support of the New Order. Whether this action is being carried out with full awareness, out of fear, or under blackmail, nothing detracts from the gravity of what is happening, nor from the moral responsibility of those who promote it.
The Luciferian matrix of the New World Order
At this point, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by the “New World Order,” or rather what its creators mean, regardless of what they say publicly. Because on the one hand, it is true that there is a project, that certain people conceived it and are charged with carrying it out; but on the other hand it is also true that the inspiring principles of the project are not always disclosed, or at least they cannot be openly admitted to be closely related to what is happening today, since such an admission would arouse opposition even from those who are the most peaceful and moderate. It is one thing to impose the “Green Pass” with the excuse of the pandemic; but it is quite another to recognize that the purpose of the passport is to accustom us to being tracked; and still another to say that this total control is the “mark of the Beast” of which the Book of the Apocalypse speaks (Rev 13:16-18). The reader will forgive me if, in order to demonstrate my argument, I must resort to using quotations of such gravity and wickedness that they arouse bewilderment and horror – but this is necessary if we are to understand what the real intentions of the architects of this plot really are, and the true nature of the epochal battle they are waging against Christ and His Church.
In order to understand the esoteric roots of the thought that lies at the foundation of the United Nations, once longed for by [19th-century Italian political activist] Giuseppe Mazzini, we cannot fail to consider characters such as Albert Pike, Eliphas Levi, Helena Blavatsky, Alice Ann Bailey, or other disciples of Luciferian sects. Their writings, published since the late nineteenth century, are quite revealing.
Albert Pike, a friend of Mazzini and a fellow Freemason, gave an address in 1889 in France to the highest levels of Freemasonry, which was then reprinted on 19 January 1935 by the English journal The Freemason. Pike declared:
Quote:That which we must say to the crowd is, we worship a god, but it is the god one adores without superstition […]. The Masonic religion ought to be maintained in the purity of Luciferian doctrine by all of us who are initiates of the highest degrees. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay [sic] [the God of the Christians] whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion of science, would Adonay and his priest calumniate him?
“Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also God. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being necessary to light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive… the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.
This profession of faith in the divinity of Satan is not only an admission of who the real Great Architect that Freemasonry adores is, but also a blasphemous political project that passe through the ecumenism of Vatican II, whose first theorist was Freemasonry:
Quote:The Christian, the Jew, the Moslem, the Buddhist, the follower of Confucius and Zoroaster can unite as brothers and join together in prayer to the only god who is above all the other gods (cf. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, ed. Bastogi, Foggia 1984, vol. VI, p. 153).
And the identity of the “only god who is above all the other gods” has been well explained in the preceding quotation.
In another letter, Pike wrote to Mazzini:
Quote:We will unleash the nihilists and atheists and provoke a formidable social cataclysm that will clearly demonstrate to the nations, in all its horror, the effect of absolute atheism, the origin of barbarism and bloody subversion. Then citizens everywhere, forced to defend themselves against a world minority of revolutionaries, […] will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, finally revealed to the public’s view; a manifestation that will be followed by the destruction of Christianity and also of atheism, which will be conquered and crushed at the same time! (cf. Letter of 15 August 1871 to Giuseppe Mazzini, Library of the British Museum, London).
It will not escape notice that the “great heresy of separativeness” sounds curiously in agreement with the ecumenism condemned by Pius XI in his Encyclical Mortalium Animos, an ecumenism that was adopted by the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae and recently merged into the doctrine of “inclusivity” formulated by those who allowed idolatrous worship to the pachamama to be offered in Saint Peter’s Basilica. It is clear that the term “separativeness” intends to designate in a negative key the necessary separation of good from evil, of true from false, of the right from wrong that constitutes the criterion of moral judgment of human behavior. “Inclusivity” opposes this distinction, allowing oneself to be deliberately contaminated by evil to adulterate the good, equating the true and the false in order to corrupt the former and give legitimacy to the latter.
The shared ideological roots of ecumenism
If one does not understand that the ideological roots of ecumenism are intrinsically linked to Masonic Luciferian esoterism, one cannot grasp the connection that links the doctrinal deviations of Vatican II to the plan of the New World Order. The revolution of 1968 was a sad example of those pacifist and ecumenist ambitions, in which the “Age of Aquarius” was celebrated by the musical Hair (1969) and then by John Lennon with Imagine (1971):
Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us. Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
This manifesto of Masonic nihilism can be considered the hymn of globalism and the new universal religion: it is no coincidence that it was used as the theme song for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and more recently for those in Tokyo. A soul that is not led astray can only feel horror at these blasphemous words. The same is true for the words of Lennon’s no-less-blasphemous song God (1970):
God is a concept by which we measure our pain. […]
I just believe in me.
I understand that for many it is distressing to accept that the Hierarchy may have allowed itself to be deceived by its enemies, making their requests their own in questions that touch the very soul of the Church. It is certain that there were Masonic prelates who succeeded in introducing their ideas into the Council by disguising them, but in the full awareness that they would inexorably lead to the realization of that demolition of Religion that is the premise for the establishment of the New Era – the Age of Aquarius – in which Our Lord is banished from society in order to welcome the Antichrist. One can then understand the winking indulgence given to Freemasonry by many Catholic personalities – I am thinking of Cardinals Martini and Ravasi, among the many – and their opposition to the excommunications that the Popes renewed against the sect. One also understands the reason for the enthusiasm of the Masonic Lodges at the election of Bergoglio, and conversely their ill-concealed hatred toward Benedict XVI, considered as the kathèkon [“the one who restrains” (cfr. 2 Thess 6:7)] to be eliminated.
It should also be remembered, with some embarrassment, that certain statements by Ratzinger suggest an attempt to “Christianize” the globalist project, without condemning it as antichristic and anti-Christian:
Quote:Let the Child of Bethlehem take you by the hand! Do not fear; put your trust in him! The life-giving power of his light is an incentive for building a new world order ( here).
These words, unfortunately, confirm the fallacy of Hegelian thought, which influenced the professor from Tubingen right up to the Throne. Certainly the Pontiff’s failure to take a position permitted him to be considered in some way an ally of the globalist plan, if Italian President Giorgio Napolitano was able to affirm in his 2006 year-end address speech to the Italian people: “There is harmony between Pope Benedict and me in supporting a New World Order” (31 December 2006). On the other hand, the Hegelian process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis echoes the motto of alchemy, Solve et Coagula, which was adopted by Freemasonry and by Luciferian esoterism. It is the motto that appears on the arms of Baphomet, the infernal idol adored by the highest levels of the Masonic sect, as is admitted by its most authoritative members. In his essay Lucifer Rising, Philip Jones specifies that the Hegelian dialectic “combines a form of Christianity as thesis with a pagan spiritualism as antithesis, with the result of a synthesis that is very similar to the Babylonian mystery religions.”
The globalist pantheism of Theilard de Chardin
Ecumenism is one of the key themes of globalist thought. This is confirmed by Robert Muller, who was the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations: “We must move as quickly as possible towards a one-world government, a one-world religion, and a single world leader.” Before him, one of the advocates of the League of Nations, Arthur Balfour, created the “Synthetic Society,” which had as its purpose the creation of the “one-world religion.” Pierre Theilard de Chardin himself, a Jesuit heretic condemned by the Holy Office and today a celebrated theologian of progressivism, considered the United Nations as “the progressivist institutional incarnation of his philosophy,” expressing his hope that “a general convergence of religions on a universal Christ who fulfills them all….seems to me to be the only possible conversion of the world, and the only form in which a religion of the future can be conceived” in order to “reduce the gap between pantheism and Christianity by drawing out what could be called the Christian soul of Pantheism or the pantheistic aspect of Christianity.”
It will not escape notice that the pachamama and the attribution of Marian connotations to Mother Earth turns these concepts of Theilard de Chardin into a disturbing reality. And that’s not all: Robert Muller, the world government theorist who is also a disciple of the theosophist Alice A. Bailey, declares:
Quote:“Teilhard de Chardin influenced his companion [the Jesuit Father Emmanuel Saguez de Breuvery, who held important positions at the UN], who in turn inspired his colleagues, and they in turn initiated a rich process of global and long-term thought within the United Nations, which has affected many nations and people all over the world. I was profoundly influenced by Teilhard.”
In his book The Future of Man, Theilard writes: “Even if its form is not yet visible, tomorrow humanity will wake up in a pan-organized world.” Muller was the founder of the World Core Curriculum, which aimed
Quote:“to orient our children towards global citizenship, earth-centered beliefs, socialist values and the collective mindset, which are becoming a requirement for the work force of the 21st century” (New Man Magazine).
And if he proudly claims Alice A. Bailey among his inspirers, we discover that she was a disciple of the Theosophic Movement founded by Helena Blavatsky, a declared Luciferian. In order to correctly understand Blavatsky’s character, here are a few citations from her writings:
Quote:Lucifer represents Life, Thought, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence… Lucifer is the Logos, the Serpent, the Savior.
And, almost anticipating the pachamama:
Quote:The Celestial Virgin thus becomes, at the same time, the Mother of Gods and Demons, because she is the ever-loving beneficent Divinity… But in antiquity and in reality the name [of this god] is Lucifer. Lucifer is the divine and earthly Light, both the Holy Spirit and Satan at the same moment.”
And last but not least:
Quote:It is Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god.
It was Alice A. Bailey who founded the Lucifer Publishing Company, which is now known as the Lucis Publishing Company, closely related to the Lucis Trust, formerly the Lucifer Trust, recognized as an NGO by the United Nations. If we add to this heap of infernal ramblings the words of David Spangler, the Director of the Planetary Initiative Project of the United Nations, we will realize how terrible is the threat that is hanging over all of us:
Quote:No one will be part of the New World Order unless he carries out an act of worship to Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he receives a Luciferian initiation (Reflections on the Christ, Findhorn, 1978).
Alice A. Bailey writes about the New Age:
Quote:The achievements of science, the conquests of nations and the conquests of territory are all indicative of the method of the Age of Pisces [the age of Christ], with its idealism, its militancy, and its separativity in all fields – religious, political, and economic. But the age of synthesis, of inclusivity, and understanding is upon us, and the new education of the Age of Aquarius [the age of the Antichrist] must very delicately begin to penetrate the human aura.
Today we see how the teaching methods theorized by Muller in the World Core Curriculum have been adopted by almost all nations, including LGBT ideology, gender theory, and all other forms of indoctrination. This is confirmed by the former director of the WHO, Dr. Brock Chisolm, explaining what the UN educational policy would like to achieve:
Quote:In order to achieve a world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, fidelity to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas (cf. Christian World Report, Marzo 1991, Vol. 3).
Behold once again the fil rouge that links not only Klaus Schwab to Hélder Câmara, but also Robert Muller and Alice A. Bailey to Pierre Theilard de Chardin and Emmanuel Saguez de Breuvery, always in a globalist key and under the ill-omened inspiration of Luciferian thought. An in-depth analysis of these disturbing aspects will make it possible to shed light on the truth and reveal the complicity and betrayals of not a few churchmen who are enslaved to the enemy.
Our response to the crisis of authority
The corruption of authority is such that it is very difficult – at least in human terms – to hypothesize a peaceful way out. In the course of history, totalitarian regimes have been overthrown by force. It is difficult to think that the health dictatorship that has been established in recent months can be fought differently, since all the powers of the State, all of the means of information, all the international public and private institutions, all of the economic and financial potentates are complicit in this crime.
Faced with this bleak scenario of corruption and conflict of interest, it is indispensable that all those who are not subservient to the globalist plan unite in a compact and cohesive front, in order to defend their natural and religious rights, their own health and that of their loved ones, their freedom, and their goods. Where authority fails in its duties and indeed betrays the purpose for which it has been established, disobedience is not only lawful but obligatory: non-violent disobedience, at least for now, but determined and courageous. Disobedience to the illegitimate and tyrannical diktats of ecclesiastical authority, wherever it shows itself to be an accomplice of the infernal plan of the New World Order.
Conclusion
Allow me to conclude this reflection with a brief spiritual thought. Everything that we know, discover, and understand about the global conspiracy currently unfolding shows us a tremendous reality that is also at the same time sharp and clearly-defined: there are two sides, the side of God and the side of Satan, the side of the children of Light and the side of the children of darkness. It is not possible to come to terms with the Enemy, nor is it possible to serve two masters (Mt 6:24). The words of Our Lord must be engraved in our minds: “Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters” (Mt 12:30). Hoping to build a world government in which the Divine Kingship of Jesus Christ is outlawed is insane and blasphemous, and no one who has such a plan will ever succeed. Where Christ reigns, peace, harmony and justice reign; where Christ does not reign, Satan is a tyrant. Let us consider this well, whenever we have to choose whether to make agreements with the adversary in the name of a false peaceful coexistence! And let those prelates and civil leaders who think that their complicity only affects economic or health issues, pretending not to know what is behind all this, also consider this well.
Let us turn to Christ, Christ who is the King of hearts, of families, of societies, and of nations. Let us proclaim Him as Our King and Mary Most Holy as Our Queen. Only in this way can the wicked project of the New World Order be defeated. Only in this way can the Holy Church be purified of traitors and renegades. And may God listen to our prayer.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
28 August 2021
S. Augustini Episcopi et Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris
1 Father Giuseppe Dossetti (1913-1996) is considered the founder of the “Bologna School” of “progressive Catholicism.” He served as a peritus at Vatican II to Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, archbishop of Bologna, and was highly influential in controlling the procedures of the Council.
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Australia: Unprecedented surveillance bill rushed through parliament in 24 hours. |
Posted by: Stone - 09-01-2021, 06:31 AM - Forum: Global News
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Australia: Unprecedented surveillance bill rushed through parliament in 24 hours
Australian police can now hack your device, collect or delete your data, take over your social media accounts - all without a judge's warrant.
Tutanota blog | 2021-08-31
The Australian government has been moving towards a surveillance state for some years already. Now they are putting the nail in the coffin with an unprecedented surveillance bill that allows the police to hack your device, collect or delete your data, and take over your social media accounts; without sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse of these new powers.
This month the Australian government has passed a sweeping surveillance bill, worse than any similar legislation in any other five eye country.
The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 gives the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) three new powers for dealing with online crime:
1. Data disruption warrant: gives the police the ability to "disrupt data" by modifying, copying, adding, or deleting it.
2. Network activity warrant: allows the police to collect intelligence from devices or networks that are used, or likely to be used, by those subject to the warrant
3. Account takeover warrant: allows the police to take control of an online account (e.g. social media) for the purposes of gathering information for an investigation.
The two Australian law enforcement bodies AFP and ACIC will soon have the power to modify, add, copy, or delete your data should you become a suspect in the investigation of a serious crime.
What makes this legislation even worse is that there is no judicial oversight. A data disruption or network activity warrant could be issued by a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, a judge's warrant is not needed.
Australian companies obliged to comply
When presented with such warrant from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Australian companies, system administrators etc. must comply, and actively help the police to modify, add, copy, or delete the data of a person under investigation. Refusing to comply could have one end up in jail for up to ten years, according to the new bill.
Required hacking activities could include: altering, copying and deleting data; intercepting and modifying communications; surveilling networks; and changing account credentials.
Justification of the bill
Politicians justify the need for the bill by stating that it is intended to fight child exploitation (CSAM) and terrorism. However, the bill itself enables law enforcement to investigate any "serious Commonwealth offence" or "serious State offence that has a federal aspect".
In fact, this wording enables the police to investigate any offence which is punishable by imprisonment of at least three years, including terrorism, sharing child abuse material, violence, acts of piracy, bankruptcy and company violations, and tax evasion.
Criticism of the surveillance bill
The Australian surveillance bill was heavily criticized by Senator Lidia Thorpe, the Greens spokesperson for Justice:
"The Richardson review concluded that this bill enables the AFP and ACIC to be ‘judge, jury and executioner.’ That’s not how we deliver justice in this country. The bill does not identify or explain why these powers are necessary and our allies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand do not grant law enforcement these rights."
"In effect, this Bill would allow spy agencies to modify, copy, or delete your data with a data disruption warrant; collect intelligence on your online activities with a network activity warrant; also they can take over your social media and other online accounts and profiles with an account takeover warrant."
End of Human Rights
The new Australian surveillance bill signals the end of respect for Human Rights in Australia.
For lawyer Angus Murray, Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia’s Policy Team, the hacking powers pose a serious risk to our civil liberties.
"This is now a regime in Australia where we have conferred power on law enforcement agencies to hack Australians’, and potentially overseas persons’, computers and to take over accounts and modify and delete data on those accounts," he told Information Age.
"Australia doesn’t have constitutionally enshrined rights to political speech and other human rights, but if we’re going to give law enforcement these powers, that should be checked and balanced against a human rights instrument at Federal level."
Murray warns that there could come a point where this power is used against society. In theory, at least, the police could put something like child exploitation images onto your computer. While something like this is not the intention of the bill, there are also no significant safeguards against it.
Surveillance is power
Having the ability to secretly hack into people’s computers, take over their social media channels, and spy on them fundamentally undermines our right to privacy.
Surveillance is power, and that is a threat to our free and open societies.
In Germany, we know from recent history how devastating a surveillance state is.
Together we must fight for privacy!
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August 31st – St. Raymond Nonnatus, Confessor |
Posted by: Stone - 08-31-2021, 08:18 AM - Forum: August
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August 31 – St. Raymond Nonnatus, Confessor
August closes as it began, with a feast of deliverance; as though that were the divine seal set by Eternal Wisdom upon this month—the month when holy Church makes the works and ways of Divine Wisdom the special object of her contemplation.
Upon the fall of our first parents and their expulsion from Paradise, the Word and Wisdom of God, that is, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, began the great work of our deliverance—that magnificent work of human Redemption which, by an all-gracious, eternal degree of the three Divine Persons, was to be wrought out by the Son of God in our flesh. And as that blessed Savior, in his infinite wisdom, made spontaneous choice of sorrows, of sufferings, and of death on a cross as the best means of our redemption, so has he always allotted to his best loved friends the kind of life which he had deliberately chosen for himself, that is, the way of the Cross. And the nearest and dearest to him were those who were predestined, like his Blessed Mother, the Mater Dolorosa, to have the honor of being most like himself—the Man of Sorrows. Hence the toils and trials of the greatest Saints; hence the great deliverances wrought by them, and their heroic victories over the world and over the spirits of wickedness in the high places.
On the feasts of St. Raymund of Pegnafort and St. Peter Nolasco, we saw something of the origin of the illustrious Order, of which Raymund Nonnatus added such glory. Soon the august foundress herself, Our Lady of Mercy, will come in person to receive the expression of the world’s gratitude for so many benefits. The following Legend recounts the peculiar merits of our Saint of today.
Quote:Raymund, surnamed Nonnatus, on account of his having been brought into the world in an unusual manner after the death of his mother, was of a pious and noble family of Portelli in Catalonia. From his very infancy he showed signs of his future holiness; for, despising childish amusements and the attractions of the world, he applied himself to the practice of piety so that all wondered at his virtues, which far surpassed his age. As he grew older he began his studies; but after a short time he returned at his father’s command to live in the country. He frequently visited the chapel of St. Nicholas, built near Portelli, in order to venerate in it a holy image of the Mother of God, which is still more honored by the faithful. There he would pour out his prayers, begging God’s holy Mother to adopt him for her son and to deign to teach him the way of salvation and the science of the saints.
The most benign Virgin heard his prayer, and gave him to understand that it would greatly please her if he entered the Religious Order lately founded by her inspiration, under the name of the Order of “Ransom, or of Mercy for the redemption of captives.” Upon this Raymund at once set out for Barcelona, there to embrace that institute so full of brotherly charity. Thus enrolled in the army of holy religion, he persevered in perpetual virginity, which he had already consecrated to the Blessed Virgin. He excelled also in every other virtue most especially in charity towards those Christians who were living in misery, as slaves of the pagans. He was sent to Africa to redeem them, and freed many from slavery. But when he had exhausted his money, rather than abandon others who were in danger of losing their faith, he gave himself up to the barbarians as a pledge for their ransom. Burning with a most ardent desire for the salvation of souls, he converted several Mahometans to Christ by his preaching. On this account he was thrown into a close prison and after many tortures his lips were pierced through and fastened together with an iron padlock, which cruel martyrdom he endured for a long time.
This and his other noble deeds spread the fame of his sanctity far and near, so that Gregory IX determined to enroll him in the august college of the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. When raised to that dignity the man of God shrank from all pomp and clung always to religious humility. On his way to Rome, as soon as he reached Cardona, he was attacked by his last illness, and earnestly begged to be strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church. As his illness grew worse and the priest delayed to come, Angels appeared, clothed in the religious habit of his Order, and refreshed him with the saving Viaticum. Having received It he gave thanks to God, and passed to our Lord on the last Sunday of August in the year 1240. Contentions arose concerning the place where he should be buried; his coffin was therefore placed upon a blind mule and by the will of God it was taken to the chapel of St. Nicholas, that it might be buried in that place where he had first begun a more perfect life. A convent of his Order was built in the spot, and there famous for many signs and miracles he is honored by the concourse of all the faithful of Catalonia, who come there to fulfill their vows.
To what a length, O illustrious Saint, didst thou follow the counsel of the Wise man! The bands of Wisdom, says he, are a healthful binding. And, not satisfied with putting thy feet into her fetters and thy neck into her chains, in the joy of thy love thou didst offer thy lips to the dreadful padlock, not mentioned by the son of Sirach. But what a reward is thine, now that this Wisdom of the Father, whose twofold precept of charity thou didst so fully carry out, inebriates thee with the torrent of eternal delights, adorning thy brow with the glory and grace which radiate from her own beauty! We would fain be forever with thee near that throne of light; teach us, then, how to walk in this world by the beautiful ways and peaceable paths of Wisdom. Deliver our souls, if they be still captive in sin; break the chains of our self-love, and give us instead those blessed bands of Wisdom which are humility, abnegation, self-forgetfulness, love of our brethren for God’s sake, love of God for his own sake.
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August 30th – St Rose of Lima, Virgin |
Posted by: Stone - 08-31-2021, 08:10 AM - Forum: August
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August 30 – St Rose of Lima, Virgin
The fragrance of holiness is wafted today across the dark Ocean, renewing the youth of the Old World, and winning for the New the good will of heaven and earth.
A century before the birth of St. Rose, Spain, having cast out the Crescent from her own territory, received as a reward the mission of planting the Cross on the distant shores of America. Neither heroes nor apostles were wanting in the Catholic kingdom for the great work; but there was also, unhappily, no lack of adventurers who, in their thirst for gold, became the scourge of the poor Indians instead of leading them to the true God. The speedy decadence of the illustrious nation that had triumphed over the Moors was soon to prove how far a people, prevented with the greatest blessings, may yet be answerable for crimes committed by its individual representatives. It is well known how the empire of the Incas in Peru came to an end. In spite of the indignant protestations of the missionaries: in spite of orders received from the mother country: in a few years, Pizarro and his companions had exterminated one third of the inhabitants of these flourishing regions; another third perished miserably under a slavery worse than death; the rest fled to the mountains, carrying with them a hatred of the invaders, and too often of the Gospel as well, which in their eyes was responsible for atrocities committed by Christians. Avarice opened the door to all vices in the souls of the conquerors, without, however, destroying their lively faith. Lima, founded at the foot of the Cordilleras, as metropolis of the subjugated provinces, seemed as if built upon the triple concupiscence. Before the close of the century, a new Jonas, St. Francis Solano, came to threaten this new Ninive with the anger of God.
But mercy had already been beforehand with wrath; justice and peace had met, in the sound of a child, who was ready, in her insatiable love, to suffer every expiation. Here we should like to pause and contemplate the virgin of Peru, in her self-forgetful heroism, in her pure and candid gracefulness: Rose, who was all sweetness to those who appreciated her, and who kept to herself the secret of the thorns without which no rose can grow on earth. This child of predilection was prevented from her infancy with miraculous gifts and favors. The flowers recognized her as their queen; and at her desire they would blossom out of season. At her invitation, the plants joyfully waved their leaves; the trees bent down their branches; all nature exulted; even the insects formed themselves into choirs; the birds vied with her in celebrating the praises of their common Maker. She herself, playing upon the names of her parents, Gaspard Flores and Maria Oliva, would sing: “O my Jesus, how beautiful thou art among the olives and the flowers, and thou dost not disdain thy Rose!”
Eternal Wisdom has, from the beginning, delighted to play in the world. Clement X relates, in the Bull of Canonization, how one day when Rose was very ill, the Infant Jesus appeared and deigned to play with her; teaching her, in a manner suited to her tender age, the value and the advantages of suffering. He then left her full of joy, and endowed with a lifelong love of the Cross. Holy Church will tell us, in the Legend, how far the Saint carried out, in her rigorous penance, the lesson thus divinely taught. In the superhuman agonies of her last illness, when someone exhorted her to courage, she replied: “All I ask of my Spouse is that he will not cease to burn me with the most scorching heat, till I become a ripe fruit that he will deign to cull from this earth for his heavenly table.” To those who were astonished at her confidence and her assurance of going straight to heaven, she gave this answer, which well expresses her character: “I have a Spouse who can do all that is greatest, and who possesses all that is rarest, and am I to expect only little things from him?” And her confidence was rewarded. She was but thirty-one years of age when, at midnight on the feast of St. Bartholomew in the year 1617, she heard the cry: Behold the Bridegroom cometh! In Lima, in all Peru, and indeed throughout America, prodigies of conversion and miracles signalized the death of the humble virgin, hitherto so little known. “It has been juridically proved,” said the Sovereign Pontiff in his Bull of Canonization, “that, since the discovery of Peru, no missionary has been known to obtain so universal a movement of repentance.” Five years later, for the further sanctification of Lima, there was established in its midst the monastery of St. Catherine of Sienna, also called Rose’s monastery because she was in the eyes of God its true foundress and mother. Her prayers had obtained its erection, which she had also predicted: she had designed the plan, pointed out the future religious, and named the first superior, whom she one day prophetically endowed with her own spirit in a mysterious embrace.
Let us read the Church’s beautiful account of her life.
Quote:The first flower of sanctity that blossomed in South America, the virgin Rose was born of Christian parents at Lima. From her very cradle she gave clear signs of her future holiness. Her baby face appeared one day changed in a wonderful way into the image of a rose, and from this circumstance she was called Rose. Later on the Virgin Mother of God gave her also her own name, bidding her to be called thenceforward Rose of St. Mary. At five years of age she made a vow of perpetual virginity, and when she grew older, fearing her parents would compel her to marry she secretly cut off her hair which was very beautiful. Her fasts exceeded the strength of human nature. She would pass whole Lents without eating bread, living on five grains of a citron a day.
She took the habit of the third Order of St. Dominic and after that redoubled her austerities. Her long and rough hair-shirt was armed with steel points, and day and night she wore under her veil a crown studded inside with sharp nails. Following the arduous example of St. Catharine of Sienna, she wound an iron chain three times round her waist, and made herself a bed of the knotty trunks of trees, filling up the vacant space between them with potsherds. She built herself a narrow little cell in a distant corner of the garden, and there devoted herself to the contemplation of heavenly things, subduing her feeble body by iron disciplines, fasting and watching. Thus she grew strong in spirit, and continually overcame the devils, spurning and dispelling their deceits.
Though she suffered greatly from severe illnesses, from the insults offered her by her family and from unkind tongues, yet she would say that she was not treated as badly as she deserved. During fifteen years, she suffered for several hours a day a terrible desolation and dryness of spirit; but she bore this suffering, worse than death itself, with undaunted courage. After that period, she was given an abundance of heavenly delights, she was honored with visions, and felt her heart melting with seraphic love. Her Angel-Guardian, St. Catharine of Sienna and our Lady used often to appear to her with wonderful familiarity. She was privileged to hear these words from our Lord: “Rose of my heart be thou my bride.” At length she was happily introduced into the paradise of this her Spouse, and being famous for miracles both before and after her death, Pope Clement X solemnly enrolled her among the holy virgins.
Patroness of Peru, ever watch over the interests of thy fatherland. Respond to its people’s confidence in thee by warding off from them the calamities of even this present life: the earthquakes which spread terror through the land, and political convulsions such as have already so severely tried its independence. Extend thy guardianship to the neighboring young republics; for they too love and honor thee. Hide from them and from thy native land the Utopian mirages which rise from the old world. Preserve them from the rash impulses and illusions to which their youth is liable. Guard them against the poisonous teachings of condemned sects, lest their hitherto lively faith should be corrupted. Lastly, o thou our Lord’s beloved Rose, smile upon the whole Church, who is enraptured today at the sight of thy heavenly beauty. Like her, we all desire to, as the Collect of the Mass says, “run in the fragrancy of thy sweetness.”
Teach us to let ourselves be prevented, like thee, by the dew of heaven. Show us how to respond to the advances of the divine sculptor, who one day allowed thee to see him making over to his loved ones the different virtues in the form of blocks of choice marble, which he expects them to polish with their tears, and to fashion with the chisel of penance. Above all, fill us with love and confidence. All that the material sun accomplishes in the vast universe, causing the flowers to bloom, ripening the fruits, forming pearls in the depth of the ocean, and precious stones in the heart of the mountains; all this, thou didst say, thy divine Spouse effected in the boundless capacity of thy soul, causing it to bring forth every variety of riches, beauty and joy, warmth and life. May we profit, even as thou didst, of the coming of the the Sun of Justice into our hearts in the Sacrament of union; may we lay open our whole being to the influence of his blessed light; and may we become, in every place, the good odor of Christ.
The holy Martyrs Felix and Adauctus won their palms in the reign of Diocletian. Their tomb, which lies close to that of the Apostle of the Gentiles, is adorned by one of the beautiful epitaphs of Pope St. Damasus. Let us address to God the prayer, wherein the Church implores their powerful protection.
Collect
Majestatem tuam, Domine, supplices exoramus: ut, sicut nos jugiter Sanctorum tuorum commemoratione lætificas, ita semper supplicatione defendas. Per Dominum.
We suppliantly beseech thy Majesty, O Lord, that as thou dost ever rejoice us by the commemoration of thy Saints, so thou wouldst always defend us by their supplication. Through our Lord, &c.
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Covid Vaccines Less Effective at Preventing Hospitalization, CDC Says |
Posted by: Stone - 08-31-2021, 08:01 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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Covid Vaccines Less Effective at Preventing Hospitalization, CDC Says
GP | August 30, 2021
The CDC on Monday came out and said Covid vaccines are less effective at preventing hospitalizations, particularly for people over 75.
The drop in vaccine effectiveness is being blamed on the Delta variant.
ABC reported:
Quote:The COVID-19 vaccines’ ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.
The CDC has previously estimated that 97% of people in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but that data was collected before the spread of delta, a hyper-transmissible variant that many doctors have warned appears to be making people sicker.
The latest CDC analysis estimates that the ability of the COVID vaccines to keep a person out of the hospital is now between 75% to 95%.
For people older than 75 in particular, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization experienced the steepest decline, from more than 90% to 80% between June and July.
The CDC made this announcement 11 days after its director said that people who received the Covid vaccine early on are at an increased risk for severe disease.
“We are seeing concerning evidence of waning vaccine effectiveness over time and against the Delta variant,” Walensky said a couple weeks ago.
Walensky continued, “Reports from our international colleagues, including Israel, suggest increased risk of SEVERE disease amongst those vaccinated early.”
Joe Biden is in discussions with Fauci for a Covid booster every 5 months.
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