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| New York ends religious exemption for COVID vaccine mandate: 450,000 healthcare workers affected |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-31-2021, 07:22 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual]
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New York ends religious exemption for COVID vaccine mandate: 450,000 healthcare workers affected
Healthcare employees in the state must take the experimental injection or face termination regardless of religious objections.
![[Image: Covid-vaccine-coercion-scapegoat-unvacci...0x500.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Covid-vaccine-coercion-scapegoat-unvaccinated-feature-1-800x417-1-810x500.jpeg)
Mon Aug 30, 2021
ALBANY, New York (LifeSiteNews) — Healthcare workers in the state of New York ordered to get the COVID-19 jab will not have the option of a religious exemption, thanks to emergency authorization passed late last week.
In Thursday’s decision, a New York State Department of Health board unanimously approved a COVID-19 mandate for all New York healthcare personnel.
In passing the measure the board also scrubbed the option for a religious exemption, effectively forcing the more than 450,000 healthcare workers in the state to get the jab whether they have religious objections to the abortion-tainted injection or not.
Under the new rules, no more religious exemptions will be granted, and previously obtained religious exemptions will be invalidated.
The new emergency mandate took effect immediately, and will be subject to review after 90 days.
As noted by Becker’s Hospital Review, the mandate will apply to those working in hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic and treatment centers, adult care facilities, certified home health agencies, hospices, long-term home health care programs, AIDS home care programs, licensed home care service agencies, and limited licensed home care service agencies.
Personnel subject to the new rules include all employees, members of the medical and nursing staff, contract staff, students, and volunteers, “who engage in activities such that if they were infected with COVID-19, they could potentially expose other covered personnel, patients or residents to the disease,” the Democrat & Chronicle reported.
Employees working in hospitals and nursing homes must get the first dose of their shot by September 27, while employees of other facilities named in the statement must get their first dose by October 7.
Those who refuse to take the injection may be fired.
Many people have strong reasons for opposing the experimental shot, particularly those whose religious beliefs lead them to oppose the murder of unborn babies through abortion.
Such moral positions have led many to object to the COVID-19 “vaccines,” since all of the coronavirus injections currently on the market have close ties with abortion.
Moderna and Pfizer used cell lines derived from aborted babies for testing, while J&J’s shot was directly produced in the human fetal cell line PER.C6, which was derived from retinal tissue taken from an 18-week-old baby boy who was aborted in the Netherlands in 1985 and reduced to a fetal cell line in 1995.
But the Department of Health has made no allowances for religious objection to the shots.
Department of Health (DOH) attorney Vanessa Murphy said no facilities in the state will be permitted to offer religious exemptions moving forward.
“We’re not constitutionally required to provide a religious exemption,” Murphy explained. “You see that with the Measles and the Mumps requirement for health care workers.”
It is unclear how the mandate will be enforced, but it appears the matter will be left up to individual facilities to decide.
Administrators of hospitals and other institutions subject to the order will be granted authority to determine how to require employees to abide by the mandate.
“I think in terms of compliance and enforcement, it’s at the facility level,” Murphy said. “We’ve built in provisions to require covered entities upon request to report information to us. I don’t know if we’ve worked out the details of how we would audit or ensure compliance.”
Alternatives to vaccination, like masking and bi-weekly testing, were not discussed during the Thursday meeting.
Failure to comply with the mandate may result in termination of employment.
As reported by the New York Post, the rules passed by the DOH states that “[c]overed entities may terminate personnel who are not fully vaccinated and do not have a valid medical exemption and are unable to otherwise ensure individuals are not engaged in patient/resident care or expose other covered personnel.”
The strict mandate requiring healthcare workers to get the experimental drug has led some to fear that employees may quit their jobs rather than submit to the injection.
During the public comment segment of the Thursday meeting, Al Cardillo, CEO of the Home Care Association of New York State, said he was worried the mandate would lead to a depletion of an already strained workforce.
“We really encourage you to consider the shortage, in the emergency situation that we have,” Cardillo said, asking the board to give healthcare workers more time than allotted by the mandate’s deadline.
Journalist, conservative author, and former New York Times writer Alex Berenson, who has written significantly on COVID-19 restrictions and mandates over the past 18 months, reported there is a significant chance of a major shortage of nurses starting October 1 due to the implementation of vaccine mandates.
The existing shortage of skilled healthcare workers may be a point of leverage for those opposed to taking the experimental drug.
Berenson, who has spoken to many in the healthcare industry who have shared their worries about the experimental injections, said many are choosing to walk away from their jobs rather than take the shot.
“They’re quitting because they don’t want to be vaccinated,” Berenson said in an August 27 tweet.
Earlier this month Berenson shared an email from a source who told him that “nurses are the tip of the spear in the resistance to vaccine mandates.”
In another email, an Orange County, California nurse told Berenson she and her colleagues have been ordered by the state government to get the shot by the end of September, but “[t]here are currently 70 NICU nurses refusing vaccination.”
According to the anonymous California nurse, “That unit will be in bad shape if they lose 70 staff members. Many nurses in other units are also refusing.”
In response to Berenson’s many tweets slamming vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and Big Tech censorship, Twitter permanently suspended Berenson on Saturday.
Thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions to the experimental coronavirus inoculations have been reported to the American government’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS).
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| 2002: 'Foods as production and delivery vehicles for human vaccines' |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-31-2021, 07:04 AM - Forum: Health
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Maybe this will be next...
From a 2002 NIH article posted from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition:
Foods as production and delivery vehicles for human vaccines
Abstract
Vaccination is a great asset for eradication of infectious diseases in humans and animals. With the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains and an alarming increase in new and re-emerging pathogens, the need for vaccination continues to be a high priority for mammalian diseases. In the last several years, a novel approach for developing improved mucosal subunit vaccines has emerged by exploiting the use of genetically modified plants. It has been demonstrated that plant-derived antigens are functionally similar to conventional vaccines and can induce neutralizing antibodies in mammalian hosts. Using genetically engineered plants for the production of immunogenic peptides also provides a new approach for the delivery of a plant-based subunit vaccine, i.e., oral delivery, provided these immunogenic peptides are expressed in an edible part of the plant, such as grain or fruit. Thus, food crops can play a significant new role in promoting human health by serving as vehicles for both production and delivery of vaccines.
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| 8 states have already signed legislation banning vaccine passports |
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Posted by: SAguide - 08-30-2021, 10:52 PM - Forum: COVID Passports
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Republicans in states including Arkansas and Montana are pushing to
give unvaccinated people the same civil rights protections as those based
on race, gender and religion - as the US vaccination rate stalls at 68%
- Arkansas and Montana Governors Asa Hutchinson and Greg Gianforte signed legislation that bans discrimination on the basis of vaccination status
- Eight GOP states have also already banned so-called vaccine passports
- Republicans are pushing forward with laws that give unvaccinated Americans the same protections awarded on the basis of gender, religion and race
- The latest bills come as the national vaccine effort has slowed substantially
Arkansas and Montana Governors Asa Hutchinson (left) and Greg Gianforte (right) signed into law legislation that bans
private and public entities in their respective states from discriminating on the basis of vaccination status against COVID-19
'When we think about the normal discrimination statutes,' Pearson said, 'we have protected classes based on something that is sort of inherent to you, with religion maybe being the one that is a choice.'
'But vaccination status you certainly can control,' he added.
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota, all states with Republican governors, have already banned so-called 'vaccine passports.' A slew of Republicans in other states have proposed such legislation, but many are doomed to fail as they are in Democrat-run areas.
Montana and Arkansas specifically have made it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of vaccination status – similar to anti-discrimination laws related to gender identity, race and religion.
New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination prohibits requiring a COVID-19 vaccine only in cases of disability, doctor guidance against the jab or 'sincere held religious beliefs.'
'An individual may not be required to receive any vaccine whose use is allowed under an emergency use authorization or any vaccine undergoing safety trials,' reads Montana's bill, which was signed May 7, 2021 and immediately put into effect.
STATES' CORONAVIRUS VACCINE-RELATED LAWS
Anti-discrimination laws
Montana: 'An individual may not be required to receive any vaccine whose use is allowed under an emergency use authorization or any vaccine undergoing safety trials.'
The law bars discrimination in form of denying a person 'services, goods, facilities, advantages, privileges, licensing, educational opportunities, health care access, or employment opportunities based on vaccination status'
Arkansas: 'The state, a state agency or entity, a political subdivision of the state, or a state or local official shall not discriminate against or coerce in any way an individual for refusing to receive a vaccine or immunization for coronavirus.'
House Bill 1547 bars 'coercion' in forms of threats, conditional employment and benefits or 'positive incentives' to those who do receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
New Jersey: 'An employer can require that an employee receive the COVID-19 vaccine in order to return to the workplace, unless the employee cannot get the vaccine because of a disability, because their doctor has advised them not to get the vaccine while pregnant or breastfeeding, or because of a sincerely held religious belief, practice or observance.'
The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination prohibits employers from mandating anything an employee is religiously against – including vaccines.
Proposed legislation
Student exemptions: Minnesota, New York, South Dakota and Tennessee
Banning vaccine Passports: Kansas, Minnesota, Vermont
States that have already banned 'vaccine passports': Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota
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| Eric Clapton's Covid mandate-protest music videos |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-30-2021, 06:42 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Eric Clapton's Covid mandate protest music videos
gloria.tv | August 29, 2021
Eric Clapton who wrote the beautiful tribute to Our Lady - Holy Mother - released a protest song/video on Friday against COVID mandates titled, "This Has Gotta Stop".
According to Billboard, Clapton will not play shows that require patrons to show proof of vaccination.
The lyrics begin with: "This has gotta stop, enough is enough/ I can't take this BS any longer/ It's gone far enough, you wanna claim my soul/ You'll have to come and break down this door."
Clapton wrote a COVID-19 themed protest song with musician Van Morrison called "Stand and Deliver."
"Do you wanna be a free man/ Or do you wanna be a slave?/ Do you wanna wear these chains/ Until you're lying in the grave?", "Stand and deliver/ You let them put the fear on you."
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| A program that pays farmers not to farm... |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-30-2021, 06:40 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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While the following liberal Politico article bemoans the fact that enough farmers aren't submitting to the environmentalists' plan to have the government pay them to not plant their crops, it does outline what that plan's goals are...
A program that pays farmers not to farm isn't saving the planet
A decades-old program that pays farmers to leave land fallow is being heralded by the Biden administration as a climate solution, but environmentalists don’t see it that way.
![[Image: ?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2...0280-1.jpg]](https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/8b2253f/2147483647/resize/1920x/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F93%2F5a%2F3401a37a4192a1507c6cd077d4f8%2Fgettyimages-1211310280-1.jpg)
A tractor plows under what would have been Spring Mix
Politico [emphasis mine] | 08/29/2021
President Joe Biden wants to combat climate change by paying more farmers not to farm. But he’s already finding it’s hard to make that work.
His Agriculture Department is far behind its goal for enrolling new land in one program that has that goal, with participation being the lowest it's been in more than three decades.
Even though the USDA this summer more than doubled key incentive payments for the program that encourages farmers and ranchers to leave land idle, high commodity prices are keeping it more worthwhile for growers to raise crops.
On top of that, the plan, known as the Conservation Reserve Program, takes land out of production for only 10 to 15 years — so those acres could release carbon into the atmosphere if the land is planted again and thus cancel out its environmental benefit.
The slow pace of enrollment and the temporary nature of the program raise questions about whether it will ever contribute significantly to efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It also shows how difficult it is for government programs to voluntarily draw in the farm industry to combat pollution.
“I guess my bottom line is, it's not a great climate solution,” said agriculture and environment consultant Ferd Hoefner, who was the founding policy director for the nonprofit National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of USDA’s Farm Service Agency, which oversees the conservation program, acknowledges that participation this year has been lower than hoped for, but he is still optimistic that the additional money the administration is providing will spur more landowners to join.
“Our position at the Farm Service Agency is that we have to start to talk about working lands and conservation in the same breath,” Ducheneaux said in an interview.
The added incentives the USDA has introduced “definitely made the program more attractive than it was last year,” said Cristel Zoebisch, policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
But she noted that high commodity prices this year could be more lucrative than any additional money the Biden administration is offering. “It's a trend that we've seen time and time again that whenever commodity prices are good, CRP enrollments go down,” Zoebisch said.
The Biden administration aims to enroll 4 million new acres in 2021 but only 2.8 million have been added so far.
Even last week, when the USDA announced the low enrollment, it touted the added benefits to the environment from the program. By participating in the decades-old initiative, USDA noted that farmers agree to undertake conservation measures such as planting trees or grass that prevent soil erosion, improve water quality or provide habitat for wildlife. In exchange, FSA pays farmers rent for the 10 to 15 years the land is enrolled and shares in the costs of making the conservation changes.
But it’s not clear how USDA measures whether the program is a good conservation effort. Ducheneaux said that the department relies on independent analysis from universities and environmental nonprofits to help quantify the program’s success.
USDA asserts the program has prevented more than 12 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Still, that’s a pittance compared with how much of the greenhouse gas the USDA said the ag industry releases each year (698 million metric tons in 2018).
Environmentalists praise certain aspects of the program, which doles out about $2 billion each year to farmers and ranchers. For instance, they have commended other conservation benefits that come from sign-ups, such as improved water quality.
Currently, there are nearly 21 million acres of farmland enrolled in CRP, but the program can enroll up to 25 million acres this year. Ducheneaux attributed the lower enrollment to the fact the program had been cut and ignored for years, even in times when commodity prices were suffering and farmers could have benefited from the added revenue.
“As it was being implemented in the past, folks weren't being drawn to it,” Ducheneaux said. “The incentives clearly weren't enough to get folks to even step out of the volatile commodity markets and engage in these conservation practices.”
The program also has supporters including many members of Congress and powerful ag interests that prefer voluntary incentives over mandatory regulations to slash emissions.
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), a House Agriculture Committee member, is among them and noted that CRP isn’t the only tool the Biden administration will use to fight climate change.
“This is a complex problem, and we have got to basically be able to look at what we're going to be able to do together,” Bustos said. “Bring farmers to the table and figure out how we're gonna have the most comprehensive approach possible.”
Bustos, who has 10,000 family farms in her Northwest Illinois district, also said she hoped the added financial incentives the administration has introduced will draw in more farmers.
“We can be part of the solution. We want to be part of the solution,” Bustos said. “But we've got to connect all those dots as far as being financially healthy, and being able to make a living and helping the environment.”
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the large farm lobby, also backs CRP, because it can help farmers and ranchers stay profitable.
Regions battling wildfires, extreme temperatures and drought such as the Pacific Northwest and the broader Western U.S. might have higher rates of enrollment this year, said Shelby Myers, an economist at the Farm Bureau.
Environmental groups, like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, are also backing the administration’s efforts to attract more farmers to the program.
But some conservationists are worried that FSA will take land that scores low on the environmental benefits index to meet the goal of enrolling more acres, simply to prove that the program fares better under Biden than it did under former President Donald Trump.
The quality of land enrolled in the program is a constant worry, Zoebisch said. She added that taking in land that scores low would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“There's definitely a benefit to having certain parts of agricultural fields taken out of production and protected with permanent grasses and cover,” Zoebisch said. “But we also don't want to be just allowing any land into the CRP general sign-up. We want it to be of high environmental benefit.”
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| August 29th – Decollation of St John the Baptist |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-29-2021, 10:16 AM - Forum: August
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August 29 – Decollation of St John the Baptist
“At that time, Herod sent and apprehended John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, the wife of Philip his brother, because he had married her. For John said to Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. How Herodias laid snares for him, and was desirous to put him to death, and could not. For Herod feared John, knowing him to be a just and holy man, and kept him, and when he heard him did many things; and he heard him willingly. And when a convenient day was come, Herod made a supper for his birthday, for the princes, and tribunes, and chief men of Galilee. And when the daughter of the same Herodias had come in, and had danced, and pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him, the king said to the damsel, Ask of me what thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he swore to her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask, I will give thee; though it be the half of my kingdom. Who, when she was gone out, said to her mother, What shall I ask? But she said, the head of John the Baptist. And when she was come in immediately with haste to the king, she asked, saying, I will that forthwith thou give me in a dish the head of John the Baptist. And the king was struck sad; yet because of his oath, and because of them that were with him at table, he would not displease her; but sending an executioner he commanded that his head should be brought in a dish. And he beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a dish, and gave it to the damsel, and the damsel gave it to her mother. Which his disciples hearing, came, and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.”
Thus died the greatest of them that are born of women: without witnesses, the prisoner of a petty tyrant, the victim of the vilest of passions, the wages of a dancing girl! Rather than keep silence in the presence of crime, although there were no hope of converting the sinner, or give up his liberty, even when in chains: the herald of the Word made flesh was ready to die. How beautiful, as St. John Chrysostom remarks, is this liberty of speech, when it is truly the liberty of God’s Word, when it is an echo of heaven’s language! Then, indeed, it is a stumbling-block to tyranny, the safeguard of the world, and of God’s rights, the bulwark of a nation’s honor as well as of its temporal and eternal interests. Death has no power over it. To the weak murderer of John the Baptist, and to all who would imitate him to the end of time, a thousand tongues, instead of one, repeat in all languages and in all places: It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.
“O great and admirable mystery!” cries out St. Augustine. “He must increase, but I must decrease, said John, said the Voice which personified all the voices that had gone before announcing the Father’s Word Incarnate in his Christ. Every word, in that it signifies something, in that it is an idea, an internal word, is independent of the number of syllables, of the various letters and sounds; it remains unchangeable in the heart that conceives it, however numerous may be the words that give it outward existence, the voices that utter it, the languages, Greek, Latin and the rest, into which it may be translated. To him who knows the word, expressions and voices are useless. The Prophets were voices, the Apostles were voices; voices are in the Psalms, voices in the Gospel. But let the Word come, the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God; when we shall see him as he is, shall we hear the Gospel repeated? Shall we listen to the Prophets? Shall we read the Epistles of the Apostles? The Voice fails where the Word increases … Not that in himself the Word can either diminish or increase. But he is said to grow in us, when we grow in him. To him, then, who draws near to Christ, to him who makes progress in the contemplation of Wisdom, words are of little use; of necessity they tend to fail altogether. Thus the ministry of the voice falls short in proportion as the soul progresses towards the Word; it is thus that Christ must increase and John decrease. The same is indicated by the decollation of John, and the exaltation of Christ upon the cross; as it had already been shown by their birthdays: for from the birth of John the days begin to shorten, and from the birth of our Lord they begin to grow longer.”
The holy Doctor here gives a useful lesson to those who guide souls along the path of perfection. If, from the very beginning, they must respectfully observe the movements of grace in each of them, in order to second the Holy Ghost, and not to supplant him; so also, in proportion as these souls advance, the directors must be careful not to impede the Word by the abundance of their own speech. Moreover, they must discreetly respect the ever-growing powerlessness of those souls to express what our Lord is working in them. Happy to have led the bride to the Bridegroom, let them learn to say with John: He must increase, but I must decrease.
The sacred Cycle itself seems to convey to us too a similar lesson; for during the following days, we shall see its teaching as it were tempered down, by the fewness of the feasts, and the disappearance of great solemnities until November. The school of the holy Liturgy aims at adapting the soul, more surely and more fully than could any other school, to the interior teaching of the Spouse. Like John, the Church would be glad to let Gold alone speak always, if that were possible here below; at least, towards the end of the way, she loves to moderate her voice, and sometimes even to keep silence, in order to give her children an opportunity of showing that they know how to listen inwardly to him who is both her and their sole love. Let those who interpret her thought, first understand it well. The friend of the Bridegroom who, until the Nuptial-day, walked before him, now stands and listens; and the voice of the Bridegroom, which silences his own, fills him with immense joy: This my joy therefore is fulfilled, said the Precursor.
Thus the feast of the Decollation of St. John may be considered as one of the landmarks of the Liturgical Year. With the Greeks it is a holy day of obligation. Its great antiquity in the Latin Church is evidenced by the mention made of it in the Martyrology called St. Jerome’s, and by the place it occupies in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries. The Precursor’s blessed death took place about the feast of the Pasch; but, that it might be more freely celebrated, this day was chosen, whereon his sacred head was discovered at Emesa.
The vengeance of God fell heavily upon Herod Antipas. Josephus relates how he was overcome by the Arabian Aretas, whose daughter he had repudiated in order to follow his wicked passions; and the Jews attributed the defeat to the murder of St. John. He was deposed by Rome from his tetrarchate, and banished to Lyons in Gaul, where the ambitious Herodias shared his disgrace. As to her dancing daughter Salome, there is a tradition gathered from ancient authors that, having gone out one winter day to dance upon a frozen river, she fell through into the water; the ice, immediately closing round her neck, cut off her head, which bounded upon the surface, thus continuing for some moments the dance of death.
From Macherontis, beyond the Jordan, where their master had suffered martyrdom, John’s disciples carried his body to Sebaste (Samaria), out of the territory of Antipas; it was necessary to save it from the profanations of Herodias, who had not spared his august head. The wretched woman did not think her vengeance complete till she had pierced with a hairpin the tongue that had not feared to utter her shame; and that face, which for seven centuries the church of Amiens has offered to the veneration of the world, still bears traces of the violence inflicted by her in her malicious triumph. In the reign of Julian the Apostate, the pagans wished to complete the work of this unworthy descendant (by her grandmother, Mariamne, granddaughter of Hyrcanus) of the Machabees by opening the Saint’s tomb at Sebaste, in order to burn and scatter his remains. But the empty sepulcher continued to be a terror to the demons, as St. Paula attested with deep emotion a few years later. Moreover, some of the precious relics were saved and dispersed throughout the East. Later on, especially at the time of the Crusades, they were brought into the West, where many churches glory in possessing them.
Prayer
![[Image: santa-sabina.jpg?resize=193%2C300&ssl=1]](https://i0.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/santa-sabina.jpg?resize=193%2C300&ssl=1)
Deus, qui inter cetera potentiæ tuæ miracula, etiam in sexu fragili victoriam martyrii contulisti: concede propitius; ut qui beatæ Sabinæ Martyris tuæ natalitia colimus, per ejus ad te exempla gradiamur. Per Dominum.
O God, who among other miracles of thy power, has granted even to the weaker sex the victory of martyrdom, grant, we beseech thee, that we who celebrate the festival of thy blessed martyr Sabina, may walk to thee by her example. Through our Lord, &c.
Let us return to the Precursor, and make our own the following formulæ found in the Gregorian Sacramentary for the feast of the Decollation.
Prayer
Sancti Johannis Baptistæ et Martyris tui, Domine, quæsumus, veneranda festivitas, salutaris auxilii nobis præstet effectum. Per Dominum.
We beseech thee, O Lord, that the venerable festival of St. John Baptist, thy precursor and martyr, may procure for us the effect of salutary help. Who livest, &c.
Super Oblata
Munera tibi, Domine, pro sancti Martyris tui Johannis Baptistæ passione deferimus, qui dum finitur in terris, factus est cœlesti sede perpetuus; quæsumus, ut ejus obtentu nobis proficiant ad salutem. Per Dominum.
We present our offerings to thee, O Lord, in honor of the passion of thy holy Martyr John Baptist, who, closing his life on earth began to live eternally in heaven; we beseech thee, that by his intercession these gifts may profit us unto salvation. Through our Lord.
Preface
Vere dignum et justum est, æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere, Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, æterne Deus: Qui præcursorem Filii tui tanto munere ditasti, ut pro veritatis præconio capite plecteretur: Et qui Christum aqua baptizaverat, ab ipso in Spiritu bantizatus, pro eodem proprio sanguine tingeretur. Præco quippe veritatis, quæ Christus est, Herodem a fraternis thalamis prohibendo, carceris obscuritate detruditur, ubi solius divinitatis tuæ lumine frueretur. Deinde capitalem sententiam subiit, et ad inferna Dominum præcursurus descendit. Et quem in mundo digito demonstravit, ad inferos pretiosa morte præcessit. Et ideo cum Angelis …
It is truly meet and just, right and available to salvation, that we should always and in all places give thanks to thee, O holy Lord, Father Almighty, eternal God: who didst enrich the Precursor of thy Son with so great a grace, that he was beheaded for proclaiming the truth: and he who had baptized Christ with water, was baptized by Christ in the Spirit, and for his sake was washed in his own blood. For having as a herald of the truth which is Christ, forbidden Herod to keep his brother’s wife, he was cast into a dark prison, where he enjoyed no light but that of thy divinity. Afterwards he endured the punishment of death, and went down to limbo as the precursor of the Lord, preceding thither, by his precious death, him whom on earth he had pointed out with the finger. And therefore with the Angels …
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| Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-29-2021, 09:06 AM - Forum: Pentecost
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INSTRUCTION ON THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
From Fr. Leonard Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year 36th edition, 1880
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The Introit of the Mass excites in your heart an ardent desire for heaven, with these words: Behold, O God, our protector, and look on the face of thy Christ: for better is one day in thy courts above thou- sands. How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord. (Ps. Ixxxiii.) Glory, &c.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. Keep, We beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with Thy perpetual favor; and because without Thee the weakness of man is ready to fall, may it be withheld by Thy aid from all things hurtful, and devoted to all things profitable to salvation. Thro'.
EPISTLE. (Gal. v. 16—24.) Brethren, Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh: for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things that you would. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are, fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I foretell to you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences.
What is it to walk in the spirit?
It is to obey the inspirations of the Holy Ghost always, and in all things. He who does this, says St. Paul, will not do the evil woiks of the flesh, which are here enumerated, but he will rather suppress and mortify all sensual desires, in this manner crucify his flesh together with its vices and lusts, and make himself worthy of the fruits of the Holy Ghost, which are also mentioned; he will belong to Christ, and secure for himself eternal happiness. On the contrary, he who lives according to the flesh, that is, gives way to the desires of the flesh, has no hope of salvation.
Is it not strange, that all Christians wish to belong to Christ and become heirs of His kingdom, but are unwilling to crucify the flesh and its lusts, though Christ says to all; If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (Matt. xvi. 24.)
ASPIRATION. Intercede for me, O St. Paul, that God may give me grace to crucify my flesh with its lusts, that I may have part with thee in Christ.
GOSPEL. (Matt. vi. 24 — 33.) At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will sustain the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat, and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air; for they neither sow, nor do they reap , nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you, by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit? And for raiment, why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they labor not, neither do they spin; but I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. Now, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which is to-day, and to morrow is cast into the oven, how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not solicitous, therefore, saying: What shall we eat or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and his justice; and all these things shall be added unto you.
What is meant by serving God?
Doing the will of God, or performing faithfully and zealously all that God asks of us according to our age and condition, and for love of Him.
Who are the two masters whom we cannot serve alike?
God and Mammon or riches, whereby also the other goods and pleasures of the world are understood. These we cannot serve at the same time, because they command things diametrically opposed to each other; for instance, God prohibits usury, theft, deceit &c; to which the desire for wealth impels us. God commands that we keep holy Sundays and holy days, and devote them to His service; the desire for riches tempts man to omit religious worship and to seek temporal gain; it disturbs him even in church, so that he is only present with his body, but absent in mind with his temporal goods and business.
To whom can riches be useful?
To those who, like the saints, perform works of mercy with them, and thus lay up treasures for themselves in heaven.
Why does Christ call our attention to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field?
To excite in us confidence in the providence of God, which preserves even the birds and the flowers. Surely, if God feeds the young ravens which cry to Him; (Ps. cxlvi. 9.) if He nourishes the birds which neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns; if He vests the flowers of the field so beautifully, how much more will He care for man whom He has made to His own image and likeness, and adopted as His child, if he only acts as such, keeps His commandments, and always entertains a filial confidence in Him.
Should we therefore, lay aside all care and never work?
This does not follow from what has been said. Christ condemns only the superfluous cares, which cause man to
forget God and to neglect the salvation of his soul. Besides, God has Himself ordered [Gen. iii. 17-19.) that man should obtain the fruits of the earth with much labor, that he should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. St. Paul says: If any man will not work, neither let him eat. (ii Thess. iii. 10.)
What should preserve us from superfluous cares?
A firm and lively faith, that God can, and will help us. That He can, is evident, because He is almighty; that He will, is certain, because He promises it in so many passages of Holy Writ, and because He is infinitely faithful to all His promises. Christ encourages us to this lively-confidence with these words: All things whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive and they shall come unto you. (Mark xi. 24.) Therefore the apostle also commands us to throw all cares upon the Lord, who provides for us. (i Pet. v. 7.) And why should God not care for us. since He sent us His Son and with Him all; for which reason St. Augustine says: "How can you doubt that God will give you good things, since He vouchsafed to assume evil for you!"
PRAYER. O Lord Jesus! give me a firm confidence in Thy Divine Providence, and daily increase it in me, that when in necessity I may confidently believe if I seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, the rest shall be added unto me.
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CONSOLATION IN POVERTY
Be not solicitous for your life. (Matt. vi. 25.)
If you are born in poverty, or accidentally, or through your own fault become poor, be consoled, because God has sent you this poverty for your own good; for good things and evil, life and death, poverty and riches, are from God. (Ecclus.xi. 14.) Therefore receive it from the hand of Hod without impatience or murmuring, as a means by which He wishes to keep you from forgetting Him, which would, perhaps, happen if He were to bless you with temporal prosperity, Riches are a source of destruction for many. If you have brought poverty upon yourself by a licentious and sinful life, receive it in a spirit of penance as a just and salutary chastisement, and thank God that He gives you an opportunity to do penance for your sins. But if you have become poor through no fault of your own, be consoled by the example of the saints, of whom St. Paul says: they bear the unjust taking away of their goods with joy, because they know that a better and an unchangeable treasure is in store for them in heaven. (Hebr. x. 34.) But you should particular take courage from the example of Christ who, being rich, became poor for us, (ii Cor. viii. 9.) and had not a place whereon to lay His head. (Matt. viii. 20.)
In your distress say with Job: The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: as it pleased the Lord, so it is done: blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. (Job. i. 21.) Fear not my son, says Tobias, we lead indeed a poor life, but we shall have many good things if we fear God, and depart from all sins, and do that which is good. (Tob. iv.2s.) To serve God and to be content with few things always brings rich reward, if not in this, at least in the next life. Therefore Christ promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit, that is, not only to the humble, but also to the poor who imitate Christ in all patience and resignation. Follow, therefore, the poor Jesus, follow His poor mother, by imitating their example, and you will possess the kingdom of heaven.
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INSTRUCTION CONCERNING USURY
You cannot serve God and Mammon. (Matt. vi. 24.)
USURY is to demand more than legal interest from our neighbor, to whom we have lent something, or who is otherwise indebted to us. Those are also commonly called usurers, who, in times of want, hoard up necessary food, such as grain, flour, &c, and only sell it at an exorbitant price; or who buy up all such articles to sell them to the needy for enormous prices. This is a grievous sin, and usurers are threatened with eternal death, for Christ expressly prohibits lending with usury. (Luke vi. 34, 35.)
Usurers are the real leeches of the poor, whom they rob of their sweat and blood, and since they transgress the natural law, but still more the divine, which commands us to love our neighbor, and be merciful to the needy, they will surely not possess the kingdom of heaven. Would to God, the hard-hearted sinner might consider this, and take to heart the words of Christ: What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul! (Matt. xvi. 26.)
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| Traditional Catholic Institutes to Discuss ‘Traditionis Custodes’ Amid Talk of Visits |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-28-2021, 07:54 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Traditional Catholic Institutes to Discuss ‘Traditionis Custodes’ Amid Talk of Visitations
The head of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter said the meeting would be to ‘exchange points of view and to see what we can do together’
ahead of any future possible restrictions imposed by the Vatican.
NCR [adapted]| August 26, 2021
VATICAN CITY — Superiors general of apostolic institutes that exclusively celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass according to the traditional form of the Roman rite plan to meet next week to discuss Pope Francis’ new decree limiting the older use of the sacred liturgy. The meeting follows the release in July of Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of the Tradition), Francis’ apostolic letter issued motu proprio that limits celebration of the older form of the Latin rite.
Father Andrzej Komorowski, superior general of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), said the superiors were gathering “to exchange points of view and to see what we can do together.” He added that the idea came from the local superiors of traditional institutes in France soon after the publication of Traditionis Custodes.
While there has been speculation over further Vatican restrictions on the institutes, Father Komorowski stressed next week’s planned discussion was not based on the unconfirmed reports, but added that these have made the meeting “more urgent and may have even accelerated it.”
The priestly fraternity is the largest of three international traditional institutes of apostolic life that celebrates Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite — the form of the Mass that was universally used for nearly 500 years before the reforms of Pope St. Paul VI in 1970. The other two institutes are the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) and the Institute of the Good Shepherd (IBP).
Pope Francis issued sweeping restrictions to the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass when he published Traditionis Custodes on July 16, reversing previous papal decrees that had liberalized the Mass celebrated before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council and limiting its practice. In particular, bishops were given “exclusive competence” to authorize the Mass and instructed to find alternate locations for groups practicing it without creating new parishes.
Under Traditionis Custodes, responsibility for traditional institutes has been transferred from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life whose prefect, Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, was reportedly considered an “enemy” of the older form of the Mass when he was archbishop of Brasilia.
The Pope said he took the action as he believed the liberalizing reforms of Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI of the older form of the Mass had been exploited to create division. He also said he was “saddened” the use of 1962 Missal has led to abuse, “often characterized” by a rejection of the Council and the liturgical reforms that followed.
Francis’ motu proprio caused dismay among adherents to the traditional Latin Mass who viewed the clampdown on the ancient sacred liturgy as unwarranted and carried out in an unjustifiably swift and harsh manner. But to date only a small minority of bishops have fully or partially suppressed celebration of the traditional Latin rite in their dioceses; most have allowed them to continue without restriction.
Recent Speculation
According to recent speculation, the Vatican plans to prohibit traditional institutes from receiving candidates for the priesthood until each of them has received a canonical or apostolic visitation from the Vatican.
Critics of Traditionis Custodes allege that the Vatican will produce a document, possibly as early as next month, on the general application of the Traditionis Custodes which could deepen restrictions on the celebration of the old Mass.
In Aug. 25 comments to the Register, Father Komorowski said he assumed a visitation would take place “as it’s a normal procedure” and because the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life “doesn’t know our institutes and probably wants to know us better.”
But on the possible restriction of accepting new candidates, he said these were “so far only rumors on the internet,” not from “an official source,” and so he said it is “very difficult to have a clear strategy on how to respond” at the moment. He also said that, in any case, the motu proprio has had “no immediate effect so far” and he expected no changes under bishops favorable to the traditional Latin Mass.
He added that he and his fellow superiors from the ICKSP and IBP have not been summoned to the Vatican as some have speculated. “We have not been informed about such a meeting in Rome. We have had no official (or informal) contacts with the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life so far.”
The Holy See Press Office and Cardinal Braz de Aviz did not respond to Register requests asking if they could confirm or refute the reports. But a senior Vatican official told the Register he thought such restrictions on candidates for the priesthood were unlikely, that the publication a document addressing that issue would be “too soon,” and ascribed the reports to “unfortunate speculation.”
Concerns over Pope Francis’ possible moves to restrict traditional institutes date back to 2016 when a new Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis — fundamental principles for priestly formation — was published by the Congregation for Clergy.
Then-prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal Beniamino Stella, said the document proposed only one priestly formation which was to apply to all institutes of apostolic life including traditional ones “on the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei” — the commission Pope St. John Paul II founded in 1988 partly to accommodate these institutes.
Further indications emerged in 2019 when Francis suppressed the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. Its Secretary, Archbishop Guido Pozzo, was sent away to become treasurer of the Sistine Chapel Choir and not replaced, while the commission’s duties were subsumed into a “special section” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Following the publication of Traditionis Custodes, three of the four officials working in that section were dismissed and work began on transferring the section’s responsibilities, files and archives to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments — a process to be completed by October.
Bucking the Trend
Pope Francis’ motu proprio came at a time when traditional institutes have shown significant growth over the past two decades, bucking the trend of the wider Church with a steadily increasing number of vocations and growing Mass attendance.
As of November 2020, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which was founded in 1988, had 330 priests, tripling in number since 2001, and 162 seminarians. As of May 2020, the Institute of Christ the King, founded in 1990, had 120 priests, 100 seminarians and a presence in 12 countries, while last year, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, founded in Rome in 2006, had 48 priests in 10 countries.
“Each institute has a high attendance of young people and young families,” observed a Rome-based traditional priest. “These people of all extractions and ages are immediately attracted by the sheer transparent Catholicity of the Mass in all its simplicity, with a simple aim to praise God and further the interior life, conscious of the need to abandon sin and live in a state of grace and reparation in the company of the saints of God.”
But Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes after having “carefully considered” the results of a nine-point survey the CDF sent to bishops last year to assess the implementation of Summorum Pontificum (Of the Supreme Pontiffs), Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio liberalizing the traditional Latin Mass.
That survey, thought to contain some accounts of the abuses and exploitation that Francis mentions in his accompanying letter to the motu proprio, has not been made public and is unlikely to be placed in the public domain. The senior Vatican official told the Register the survey is “in the possession of the Holy Father, it’s sub secreto [under the Pontifical Secret] and we don’t have access to it.”
Father Komorowski called the abuses and misinterpretations Pope Francis mentioned as “alleged,” as he personally had not had much experience of them.
“I can understand there are always and everywhere some faithful and even priests who don’t always speak in a very diplomatic way,” he said, but added that the Fraternity had “not been asked in any way to give our opinion, so it’s a very unfortunate situation.”
Similarly, he said the Vatican should consult the traditional institutes to see if they have ideas on how to implement the motu proprio. “If we’re asked to come and give our opinion on all these things, we would be glad to help,” he said.
In the meantime, Father Komorowski said the priestly fraternity was trying to remain hopeful.
“We have to remain positive,” he said. “We just want to live our charism and remain attached to our Constitutions and remember that our Constitutions were approved by the Holy See, so if there is something coming from there to change our charism and our Constitutions, it should be done in the proper way through a general chapter and respecting the will of the founders and members.”
“We should really try to stay focused on our apostolic activities,” he added, “and pray and hope, as we’ve been doing so far, that divine Providence will help us to get through this crisis.”
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| 'This Ends The Debate' - Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x More Effective Than Vaccines |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-28-2021, 06:57 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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'This Ends The Debate' - Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x More Effective Than Vaccines At Stopping Delta
ZH | AUG 27, 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci and the rest of President Biden's COVID advisors have been proven wrong about "the science" of COVID vaccines yet again. After telling Americans that vaccines offer better protection than natural infection, a new study out of Israel suggests the opposite is true: natural infection offers a much better shield against the delta variant than vaccines.
The study was described by Bloomberg as "the largest real-world analysis comparing natural immunity - gained from an earlier infection - to the protection provided by one of the most potent vaccines currently in use." A few days ago, we noted how remarkable it was that the mainstream press was finally giving voice to scientists to criticize President Biden's push to start doling out booster jabs. Well, this study further questions the credibility of relying on vaccines, given that the study showed that the vaccinated were ultimately 13x as likely to be infected as those who were infected previously, and 27x more likely to be symptomatic.
Alex Berenson, a science journalist who has repeatedly questioned the efficacy of vaccines and masks at preventing COVID, touted the study as enough to "end any debate over vaccines v natural immunity."
Here's an excerpt from a report by Science Magazine:
Quote:The new analysis relies on the database of Maccabi Healthcare Services, which enrolls about 2.5 million Israelis. The study, led by Tal Patalon and Sivan Gazit at KSM, the system’s research and innovation arm, found in two analyses that people who were vaccinated in January and February were, in June, July, and the first half of August, six to 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the coronavirus. In one analysis, comparing more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher.
This time, the data leave little doubt that natural infection truly is the better option for protection against the delta variant, despite the fact that the US won't acknowledge the already infected as having antibodies protecting them from the virus.
As the first country to achieve widepsread coverage by the vaccine, Israel is now in an unthinkable situation: daily case numbers have reached new record levels as the delta variant penetrates the vaccines' protection like a hot knife slicing through butter.
At the very least, the results of the study are good news for patients who have already successfully battled COVID but show the challenge of relying exclusively on immunizations to move past the pandemic.
"This analysis demonstrated that natural immunity affords longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization due to the delta variant," the researchers said.
Unfortunately, the study also showed that any protection is time-limited. Protection offered by natural infection wanes over time, just like the protection afforded by vaccines: The risk of a vaccine-breakthrough delta case was 13x higher than the risk of developing a second infection when the original illness occurred during January or February 2021. That's significantly more than the risk for people who were ill earlier in the outbreak.
What's more, giving a single shot of the vaccine to those who had been previously infected also appeared to boost their protection. Still, the data don't tell us anything about the long-term benefits of booster doses.
This latest data showing the vaccines don't offer anywhere near the 90%+ protection that was originally advertised by the FDA after the emergency authorization. Other studies are finding harmful side effects caused by the mRNA jabs are also more prevalent than previously believed.
[Study can be viewed and downloaded here.]
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| August 28th – St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-28-2021, 06:49 AM - Forum: August
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August 28 – St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger (1841-1875
![[Image: 6.png?w=527&ssl=1]](https://i1.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/6.png?w=527&ssl=1)
Today Augustine, the greatest and the humblest of the Doctors, is hailed by heaven, where his conversion caused greater joy than that of any other sinner; and celebrated by the Church, who is enlightened by his writings as to the power, the value, and the gratuitousness of divine grace.
Since that wonderful, heavenly conversation at Ostia, God had completed his triumph in the son of Monica’s tears and of Ambrose’s holiness. Far away from the great cities where pleasure had seduced him, the former rhetorician now cared only to nourish his soul with the simplicity of the Scriptures, in silence and solitude. But grace, after breaking the double chain that bound his mind and his heart, was to have still greater dominion over him; the pontifical consecration was to consummate Augustine’s union with that divine Wisdom, whom alone he declared he loved “for her own sole sake, caring neither for rest nor life save on her account.” From his height, to which the divine mercy had raised him, let us hear him pouring out his heart:
“Too late have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient and yet so new! Too late have I loved thee! And behold thou wast within me, and I, having wandered out of myself, sought thee everywhere without … I questioned the earth, and she answered me: I am not the one thou seekest; and all the creatures of earth made the same reply. I questioned the sea and its abyss and all the living things therein, and they answered: We are not thy God; seek above us. I questioned the restless winds, and all the air with its inhabitants replied: Anaximenes is mistaken, I am not God. I questioned the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they said: We are not the God whom thou seekest. And I said to all these things that stand without at the gates of my senses: Ye have all confessed concerning my God that ye are not he, tell me now something about him. And they all cried with one great voice: It is he that made us. I questioned them with my desires, and they answered by their beauty.—Let the air and the waters and the earth be silent! Let man keep silence in his own soul! Let him pass beyond his own thought; for beyond all language of man or of Angels, he, of whom creatures speak, makes himself heard; where signs and images and figurative visions cease, there Eternal Wisdom reveals herself … Thou didst call and cry so loud that my deaf ears could hear thee; thou didst shine so brightly that my blind eyes could see thee; thy fragrance exhilarated me and it is after thee that I aspire; having tasted thee I hunger and thirst; thou hadst touched me and thrilled me and I burn to be in thy peaceful rest. When I shall be united to thee with my whole being, then will my sorrows and labors cease.”
To the end of his life Augustine never ceased to fight for the truth against all the heresies then invented by the father of lies; in his ever repeated victories, we know not which to admire most: his knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, his powerful logic, or his eloquence. We see too that divine charity which, while inflexibly upholding every iota of God’s rights, is full of ineffable compassion for the unhappy beings who do not understand those rights.
“Let those be hard upon you who do not know what labor it is to reach the truth and turn away from error. Let those be hard upon you, who know not how rare a thing it is, and how much it costs, to overcome the false images of the senses and to dwell in peace of soul. Let those be hard upon you who know not with what difficulty man’s mental eye is healed so as to be able to gaze upon the Sun of justice; who know not through what sighs and groans one attains to some little knowledge of God. Let those finally be hard upon you who have never known seduction like that whereby you are destroyed … As for me, who have been tossed about by the vain imaginations of which my mind was in search, and who have shared your misery and so long deplored it, I could not by any means be harsh to you.”
These touching words were addressed to the disciples of Manes, who were hemmed in on all sides even by the laws of the pagan emperors. How fearful is the misery of our fallen race when the darkness of hell can overpower the loftiest intellects! Augustine, the formidable opponent of heresy, was for nine years previously the convinced disciple and ardent apostle of Manicheism. This heresy was a strange variety of Gnostic dualism, which, to explain the existence of evil, made a god of evil itself; and which owed its prolonged influence to the pleasure taken in it by Satan’s pride.
Augustine sustained also a prolonged though more local struggle against the Donatists, whose teaching was based on a principle as false as the fact from which it professed to originate. This fact, which on the petitions presented by the Donatists themselves was juridically proved to be false, was that Cæcilianus, primate of Africa in 311, had received episcopal consecration from a traditor, i.e. one who had delivered up the sacred Books in time of persecution. No one, argued the Donatists, could communicate with a sinner without himself ceasing to form part of the flock of Christ; therefore, as the bishops of the rest of the world had continued to communicate with Cæcilianus and his successors, the Donatists alone were now the Church. This groundless schism was established among most of the inhabitants of Roman Africa, with its four hundred and ten bishops, and its troops of Circumcellions ever ready to commit murders and violence upon the Catholics on the roads or in isolated houses. The greater part of our Saint’s time was occupied in trying to bring back these lost sheep.
We must not imagine him studying at his ease in the peace of a quiet episcopal city chosen as if for the purpose by Providence, and there writing those precious works whose fruits the whole world has now enjoyed even to our days. There is no fecundity on earth without sufferings and trials, known sometimes to men, sometimes to God alone. When the writings of the saints awaken in us pious thoughts and generous resolutions, we must not be satisfied, as we might in the case of profane books, with admiring the genius of the authors, but think with gratitude of the price they paid for the supernatural good produced in our souls. Before Augustine’s arrival in Hippo, the Donatists were so great a majority of the population that, as he himself informs us, they could even forbid anyone to bake bread for Catholics. When the saint died, things were very different; but the pastor, who had made it his first duty to save, even in spite of themselves, the souls confided to him, had been obliged to spend his days and nights in this great work, and had more than once run the risk of martyrdom. The leaders of the schismatics, fearing the force of his reasoning even more than his eloquence, refused all intercourse with him; they declared that to put Augustine to death would be a praiseworthy action which would merit for the perpetrator the remission of his sins.
“Pray for us,” he said at the beginning of his episcopate, “pray for us who live in so precarious a state, as it were between the teeth of furious wolves. These wandering sheep, obstinate sheep, are offended because we run after them, as if their wandering made them cease to be ours.—Why dost thou call us? they say; why dost thou pursue us? —But the very reason of our cries and our anguish is that they are running to their ruin.—If I am lost, if I die, what is it to thee? what dost thou want with me? —What I want is to call thee back from thy wandering; what I desire is to snatch thee from death.—But what if I will to wander? what if I will to be lost? —Thou willest to wander? thou willest to be lost? How much more earnestly do I wish it not! Yea, I dare to say it, I am importunate; for I hear the Apostle saying: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season. In season, when they are willing; out of season, when they are unwilling. Yes then, I am importunate: thou willest to perish, I will it not. And he wills it not who threatened the shepherds saying: That which was driven away you have not brought again, neither have you sought that which was lost. Am I to fear thee more than him? I fear thee not; the tribunal of Donatus cannot take the place of Christ’s judgment seat, before which we must all appear. Whether thou will it or not, I shall call back the wandering sheep, I shall seek the lost sheep. The thorns may tear me; but however narrow the opening may be it shall not check my pursuit; I will beat every bush, as long as the Lord gives me strength; so only I can get to thee wherever thou strivest to perish.”
Driven into their last trenches by such unconquerable charity, the Donatists replied by massacring clerics and faithful, since they could not touch Augustine himself. The bishop implored the imperial judges not to inflict mutilation or death upon the murderers lest the triumph of the martyrs should be sullied by such a vengeance. Such mildness was certainly worthy of the Church; but it was destined to be one day brought forward against her in contrast to certain other facts of her history, by a school of liberalism that can grant rights and even pre-eminence to error. Augustine acknowledges his first idea to have been that constraint should not be used to bring anyone into the unity of Christ; he believed that preaching and free discussion should be the only arms employed for the conversion of heretics. But on the consideration of what was taking place before his eyes, the very logic of his charity brought him over to the opinion of his more ancient colleagues in the episcopate.
“Who,” he says, “could love us more than God does? Nevertheless God makes use of fear in order to save us, although he teaches us with sweetness. When the Father of the family wanted guests for his banquet, did he not send his servants to the highways and hedges, to compel all they met to come in? This banquet is the unity of Christ’s Body. If, then, the divine goodness has willed that, at the fitting time, the faith of Christian kings should recognize this power of the Church, let the heretics brought back from the byways, and schismatics forced into their enclosures, consider not the constraint they suffer, but the banquet of the Lord to which they would not otherwise have attained. Does not the shepherd sometimes use threats and sometimes blows to win back to the master’s fold the sheep that have been enticed out of it? Severity that springs from love is preferable to deceitful gentleness. He who binds the delirious man and waked up the sleeper from his lethargy molests them both, but for their good. If a house were on the point of falling, and our cries could not induce those within to come out, would it not be cruelty not to save them by force in spite of themselves? and that, even if we could snatch only one from death because the rest, seeing it, obstinately hastened their own destruction: as the Donatists do, who in their madness commit suicide to obtain the crown of martyrdom. No one can become good in spite of himself; nevertheless, the rigorous laws, of which they complain, bring deliverance not only to individuals but to the whole cities, by freeing them from the bonds of untruth and causing them to see the truth, which the violence or the deceits of the schismatics had hidden from their eyes. Far from complaining, their gratitude is now boundless and their joy complete; their feasts and their chants are unceasing.”
Meanwhile the justice of heaven was falling upon the queen of nations; Rome, after the triumph of the Cross, had not profited of God’s merciful delay; now she was expiating under the hand of Alaric, the blood of the Saints which she had shed before her idols. Go out from her my people. At this signal the city was evacuated. The roads were all lined with barbarians; and happy was the fugitive who could succeed in reaching the sea, there to entrust to the frailest skiff the honor of his family and the remains of his fortune. Like a bright beacon shining through the storms, Augustine, by his reputation, attracted to the African coast the best of the unfortunates; his varied correspondence shows us the new links then formed by God between the Bishop of Hippo and so many noble exiles. At one time he would send, as far as Nola in Compania, charming messages mingled with learned questions and luminous answers, to greet his “dear lords and venerable brethren, Paulinus and Therasia, his fellow disciples in the school of our Lord Jesus.” Again it was to Carthage or even nearer home that his letters were directed, to console, instruct and fortify Albina, Melania, and Pinianus, but especially Proba and Juliana, the illustrious grandmother and mother of a still more illustrious daughter, the virgin Demetrias, the greatest in the Roman world for nobility and wealth, and Augustine’s dear conquest to the heavenly Spouse. “Oh! who,” he wrote on hearing of her consecration to our Lord, “who could worthily express the glory added this day to the family of the Anicii; for years, it has ennobled the world by the consuls its sons, but now it gives virgins to Christ! Let others imitate Demetrias; whosoever ambitions the glory of this illustrious family, let him take holiness for his portion!” Augustine’s desire was magnificently realized when, less than a century later, the gens Anicia gave to the world Scholastica and Benedict, who were to lead into intimate familiarity and union with God so many sould eager for true nobility.
When Rome fell, the shock was felt throughout the provinces and even beyond. Augustine tells us how he, a descendant of the ancient Numidians, groaned and wept in his almost inconsolable grief; so great, even in her decadence, was the universal esteem and love for the queen city, through the secret action of him who was holdin gout to her new and higher destinies. Meanwhile the terrible crisis furnished the occasion for Augustine’s most important writings. The City of God was an answer to the still numerous partisans of idolatry who attributed the misfortunes of the empire to the suppression of the false gods. In this great work he refutes, in the most complete and masterly way, the theology and also the philosophy of Roman and Grecian paganism; he then proceeds to set forth the origin, the history, and the end of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly, which divide the world between them, and which are founded upon “two opposite loves: the love of self even to the despising of God, and the love of God even to the despising of self.”
But Augustine’s greatest triumph was that which earned for him the title of the Doctor of grace. His favorite prayer: Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis (Give me grace to do what Thou dost command, and command what Thou wilt), offended the pride of a certain British monk, whom the events of the year 410 had led into Africa. This was Pelagius, who taught that nature, all-powerful for good, was quite capable of working out salvation, and that Adam’s sin injured himself alone, and was not passed down to his posterity. We can well understand Augustine, who owed so much to the Divine mercy, feeling so strong an aversion for a system whose authors “seemed to say to God: Thou madest us men, but it is we that justify ourselves.”
In this new campaign no injuries were spared to the former convert; but they were his joy and his hope. He had already said, with regard to similar arguments adduced by other adversaries: “Catholics, my beloeved brethren, one flock of the one Shepherd, I care not how the enemy may insult the watchdog of the fold; it is not for my own defense, but for yours, that I must bark. Yet I must needs tell this enemy that, as to my former wanderings and errors, I condemn them, as everyone else does; I can but see therein the glory of him who has delivered me from myself. When I hear my former life brought forward, no matter with what intention it is done, I am not so ungrateful as to be afflicted thereat; for the more they show up my misery, the more I praise my physician.”
While he made so little account of himself, his reputation was spreading throughout the world, by reason of the victory he had won for grace. “Honor to you,” wrote the aged Saint Jerome from Bethlehem; “honor to the man whom the raging winds have not been able to overthrow! … Continue to be of good courage. The whole world celebrates your praises; the Catholics venerate and admire you as the restorer of the ancient faith. But what is a mark of still greater glory, all the heretics hate you. They honor me too, with their hatred. Not being able to strike us with the sword, they kill us in desire.”
These lines reveal the intrepid combatant with whom we shall make acquaintance in September and who, soon after writing them, was laid to rest in the sacred Cave near which he had taken refuge. Augustine had yet some years to continue the good fight, to complete the exposition of Catholic doctrine in contradiction to some even holy persons, who were inclined to think that at least the beginning of salvation, the desire of faith, did not require the special assistance of God. This was semi-pelagianism. A century later (529) the second Council of Orange, approved by Rome and hailed by the whole Church, closed the struggle, taking its definitions from the writings of the bishop of Hippo. Augustine himself, however, thus concluded his last work: “Let those who read these things give thanks to God, if they understand them; if not, let them pray to the teacher of our souls, to him whose shining produces knowledge and understanding. Do they think that I err? Let them reflect again and again, lest perhaps they themselves be mistaken. As for me, when the readers of my works instruct and correct me, I see therein the goodness of God; yes, I ask it as a favor, especially of the learned ones in the Church, if by chance this book should fall into their hands, and they deign to take notice of what I write.”
But let us return to the privileged people of Hippo, won over by Augustine’s devotedness, even more than by his admirable discourses. His door was open to every comer; and he was ever ready to listen to the requests, the sorrows, and the disputes of his children. Sometimes, at the instance of other churches, and even of councils, requiring of Augustine a more active pursuit of works of general interest, an agreement was made between the flock and the pastor, that on certain days of the week no one should interrupt him. Whoever wished could claim the attention of this loving and humble shepherd, beside whom the little ones especially knew well that they would never meet with a refusal. As an instance of this we may mention the fortunate child who, wishing to enter into correspondence with the bishop but not daring to take the initiative, received from him the touching letter which may be seen in his works.
Besides all his other glories, our saint was the institutor of monastic life in Roman Africa, by the monasteries he founded, and in which he lived before he became bishop. He was a legislator by his letter to the virgins of Hippo, which became the Rule whereon so many servants and handmaids of our Lord have formed their religious life. Lastly, together with the clerics of his church who lived with him a common life of absolute poverty, he was the example and the head of the great family of Regular Canons. But we must close these already lengthy pages, which will be completed by the narrative of the holy Liturgy.
Let us, then, read this authentic account. Independently of the present feast, the Church, in her martyrology makes special mention of Augustine’s conversion on the fifth of May.
Quote:Augustine was born at Tagaste in Africa of noble parents. As a child he was so apt in learning that in a short time he far surpassed in knowledge all those of his own age. When he was a young man he went to Carthage where he fell into the Manichæan heresy. Later on he journeyed to Rome, and was sent thence to Milan to teach rhetoric. Having frequently listened to the teaching of Ambrose the bishop, he was through his influence inflamed with a desire of the Catholic faith and was baptized by him at the age of thirty-three. On his return to Africa, as his holy life was in keeping with his religion, Valerius the bishop, who was then renowned for his sanctity, ordained him priest. It was at this time that he founded a religious community with whom he lived, sharing their food, and dress, and training them with the utmost care in the rules of the apostolic life and teaching. The Manichæan heresy was then growing very strong: he opposed it with great vigor and refuted one of its leaders named Fortunatus.
Valerius perceiving Augustine’s great piety made him his coadjutor in the bishopric. He was always most humble and most temperate. His clothing and his bed were of the simplest kind; he kept a frugal table which was always seasoned by reading or holy conversation. Such was his loving kindness to the poor, that when he had no other resource, he broke up the sacred vessels, for their relief. He avoided all intercourse and conversation with women, even with his sister and his niece for he used to say that though such near relations could not give rise to any suspicion, yet might the women who came to visit them. Never, except when seriously ill, did he omit preaching the word of God. He pursued heretics unremittingly both in public disputations and in his writings, never allowing them to take foothold anywhere; and by these means he almost entirely freed Africa from the Manichees, Donatists, and other heretics.
His numerous works are full of piety, deep wisdom and eloquence, and throw the greatest light on Christian doctrine, so that he is the great master and guide of all those who later on reduced theological teaching to method. While the Vandals were devastating Africa, and Hippo had been besieged by them for three months, Augustine was seized with a fever. When he perceived that his death was at hand, he had the Penitential Psalms of David placed before him and used to read them with an abundance of tears. He was accustomed to say that no one, even though not conscious to himself of any sin, ought to be presumptuous enough to die without repentance. He was in full possession of his faculties and intent on prayer to the end. After exhorting his brethren who were around him, to charity, piety and the practice of every virtue, he passed to heaven, having lived seventy-six years, and thirty-six as bishop. His body was first of all taken to Sardinia, afterwards Luitprand, king of the Lombards, translated it to Pavia, where it was honorably entombed.
What a death was thine, O Augustine, receiving on thy humble couch nought but news of disasters and ruin! Thy Africa was perishing at the hands of the barbarians, in punishment of those nameless crimes of the ancient world, in which she had so large a share. Together with Genseric, Arius triumphed over that land, which nevertheless, thanks to thee, was to produce, for yet a hundred years, admirable martyrs for the Consubstantiality of the Word. When Balisarius restored her to the Roman world, God seemed to be offering her, for the martyr’s sake, an opportunity of returning to her former prosperity; but the inexperienced Byzantines, preoccupied with their theological quarrels and political intrigues, knew not how to raise her up, nor to protect her against an invasion more terrible than the first; and the torrent of Mussulman infidelity soon swept all before it.
At length, after twelve centuries, the Cross reappeared in those places where the very names of so many flourishing churches had perished. May the nation on which thy country is now dependent, show that it is proud of this honor, and understand its consequent obligations!
During all that long night which overhung thy native land, thy influence did not cease. Throughout the entire world, thy immortal works were enlightening the minds of men and arousing their love. In the basilicas served by thy sons and imitators, the splendor of divine worship, the pomp of the ceremonies, the perfection of the sacred melodies, kept up in the hearts of the people the same supernatural enthusiasm which took possession of thine own, when, for the first time in our West, St. Ambrose instituted the alternate chanting of the Psalms and sacred Hymns. Throughout all ages the perfect life, in its many different ways of exercising the double precept of charity, draws from the waters of thy fountains. Continue to illumine the Church with thine incomparable light. Bless the numerous religious families which claim thine illustrious patronage. Assist us all by obtaining for us the spirit of love and of penance, of confidence and of humility, which befits the redeemed soul. Give us to know the weakness of our nature and its unworthiness since the Fall, and at the same time the boundless goodness of our God, the superabundance of his Redemption, the all-powerfulness of his grace. May we all, like thee, not only recognize the truth, but be able loyally and practically to say to God: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is ill at ease till it rest in thee.”
According to the most ancient monuments of the Roman Church, another Saint has always been honored on this same day, viz: Hermes, a Roman magistrate, who bore witness to Christ under Trajan. The crypt constructed, less than half a century after the death of the Apostles, to receive this martyr’s relics, is remarkable for its majestic and ample proportions not usually found in the subterranean cemeteries. It was his sister Theodora, who received from Balbina, daughter of the tribune Quirinus, the venerable chains of St. Peter.
Deus, qui beatum Hermetem, Martyrem tuum, virtute constantiæ in passione roborasti: ex ejus nobis imitatione tribue, pro amore tuo prospera mundi despicere, et nulla ejus adversa formidare. Per Dominum.
O God, who didst strengthen blessed Hermes, thy martyr, with the virtue of constancy in suffering; grant us in imitation of him to despise worldly prosperity for the love of thee, and not to fear any of its adversity. Through our Lord, etc.
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| August 27th – St. Joseph Calasanctius, Confessor |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-28-2021, 06:44 AM - Forum: August
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August 27 – St. Joseph Calasanctius, Confessor
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger (1841-1875)
![[Image: saint-joseph-de-calasanz-calasanctius-jo...=369&ssl=1]](https://i2.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/saint-joseph-de-calasanz-calasanctius-josep-de-calassanc1.jpg?w=369&ssl=1)
To thee is the poor man left: thou wilt be a helper to the orphan. Proud Venice has already seen these words realized in her noble son Jerome Æmilian: today they indicate the sanctity of another illustrious person, descended from the first princes of Navarre, but of still higher rank in the kingdom of charity.
God, who waters the trees of the field as well as the cedars of Libanus, because it is he that planted them all, takes care also of the little birds that do not gather into barns: will he then forget the child, who is of much more value than the birds of the air? Or will he give him corporal nourishment, and neglect the soul hungering for the bread of the knowledge of salvation, which strengthens the heart of man? In the 16th century one might have been tempted to think our heavenly Father’s granaries were empty. True, the Holy Spirit soon raised up new Saints; but the reviving charity was insufficient for the number of destitute; how many poor children, especially, were without schools, deprived of the most elementary education which is indispensable to the fulfillment of their obligations and to their nobility as children of God: and there was no one to break to them the bread of knowledge!
More fortunate than so many other countries overrun with heresy, Spain was at her apogee, enjoying the hundredfold promised to those who seek first the kingdom of God. She seemed to have become our Lord’s inexhaustible resource. A little while ago she had given Ignatius Loyola to the world; she had just enriched heaven by the precious death of Teresa of Avila, when the Holy Ghost drew once more from her abundance to add to the riches of the capital of the Christian world, and to supply the wants of the little ones in God’s Church.
The descendant of the Calassanz of Petralta de la Sal was already the admired Apostle of Aragon, Catalonia and Castile, when he heard a mysterious voice speaking to his soul: “Go to Rome; go forth from the land of thy birth; soon shall appear to thee, in her heavenly beauty, the companion destined for thee, holy poverty, who now calls thee to taste of her austere delights; go, without knowing whither I am leading thee; I will make thee the father of an immense family; I will show thee all that thou must suffer for my name’s sake.”
Forty years of blind fidelity, in unconscious sanctity had prepared the elect of heaven for his sublime vocation. “What can be greater,” asks St. John Chrysostom, “than to direct the souls and form the characters of children? Indeed I consider him greater than any painter or sculptor, who knows how to fashion the souls of the young.” Joseph understood the dignity of his mission: during the remaining fifty-two years of his life, he, according to the recommendations of the holy Doctor, considered nothing mean or despicable in the service of the little ones; nothing cost him dear if only it enabled him, by the teaching of letters, to infuse into the innumerable children who came to him, the fear of the Lord. From St. Pantaleon, his residence, the Pious Schools soon covered the whole of Italy, spread into Sicily and Spain, and were eagerly sought by kings and people in Moravia, Bohemia, Poland, and the northern countries.
Eternal Wisdom associated Calasanctius to her own work of salvation on earth. She rewarded him for his labors as she generally does her privileged ones, by giving him a strong conflict, that he might overcome, and know that wisdom is mightier than all. It is a conflict like that of Jacob at the ford of Jaboc which represents the last obstacle to the entrance into the promised land, when all the pleasures and goods of the world have been sent on before by absolute renouncement; it is a conflict by night, wherein nature fails and becomes lame; but it is followed by the rising of the sun, and sets the combatant at the entrance of eternal day; it is a conflict with God hand to hand, under the appearance, it is true, of a man or of an angel; but it matters little under what form God chooses to hide himself, provided it takes nothing from his sovereign dominion. Why dost thou ask my name? said the wrestler to Jacob; thine shall be henceforth Israel, strong against God.
Our readers may consult the historians of St. Joseph Calasanctius for the details of the trials which made him a prodigy of fortitude, as the church calls him. Through the calumnies of false brethren the saint was deposed, and the Order reduced to the condition of a secular congregation. It was not until after his death that it was re-established, first by Alexander VII and then by Clement IX as a Regular Order with solemn vows. In his great work on the Canonization of Saints, Benedict XIV speaks at length on this subject, delighting in the part he had taken in the process of the servant of God, first as consistorial advocate, then as promoter of the faith, and lastly as Cardinal giving his vote in favor of the cause. We shall see in the lessons that it was he also that beatified him.
Let us now read the life of the founder of the Poor Regular Clerks of the Pious Schools of the Mother of God.
Quote:Joseph Calasanctius of the Mother of God was born of a noble family at Petralta in Aragon, and from his earliest years gave signs of his future love for children and their education. For, when still a little child, he would gather other children round him and would teach them the mysteries of faith and holy prayer. After having received a good education in the liberal arts and divinity, he went through his theological studies at Valencia. Here he courageously overcame the seductions of a noble and powerful lady, and by a remakable victory preserved unspotted his virginity which he had already vowed to God. He became a priest in fulfillment of a vow; and several bishops of New Castile, Aragon and Catalonia availed themselves of his assistance. He surpassed all their expectations, corrected evil living throughout the kingdom, restored ecclesiastical discipline, and was marvelously successful in putting an end to enmities and bloody factions. But urged by a heavenly vision, and after having been several times called by God, he went to Rome.
Here he led a life of great austerity; fasting and watching, spending whole days and nights in heavenly contemplation, and visiting the seven basilicas of the City almost every night. This last custom he observed for many years. He enrolled himself in pious associations, and with wonderful charity devoted himself to aiding and consoling the poor with alms and other works of mercy, especially those who were sick or imprisoned. When the plague was raging in Rome, he joined St. Camillus, and not content in his ardent zeal, with bestowing lavish care upon the sick poor, he even carried the dead to the grave on his own shoulders. But having been divinely admonished that he was called to educate children, especially those of the poor, in piety and learning, he founded the Order of the Poor Regular Clerks of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, who are specially destined to devote themselves to the instruction of youth. This Order was highly approved by Clement VIII, Paul V, and others of the Roman Pontiffs, and in a wonderfully short space of time it spread through many of the kingdoms of Europe. But in this undertaking Joseph had to undergo many sufferings and labors, and he endured them all with so much constancy, that every one proclaimed him a miracle of patience and another Job.
Though burdened with the government of the whole Order, he nevertheless devoted himself to saving souls, and moreover never gave over teaching children, especially those of the poorer class. He would sweet their schools and take them to their homes himself. For fifty-two years he persevered in this work, though it called upo nhim to practice the greatest patience and humility, and although he suffered from weak health. God rewarded him by honoring him with many miracles in the presence of his disciples; and the Blessed Virgin appeared to him with the Infant Jesus, who blessed his children while they were praying. He refused the highest dignities, but he was made illustrious by the gifts of prophecy, of reading the secrets of hearts, and of knowing what was going on in his absence. He was favored with frequent apparitions of the citizens of heaven, particularly of the Virgin Mother of God, whom he had loved and honored most especially from his infancy, and whose cultus he had most strongly recommended to his disciples. He foretold the day of his death and the restoration and propagation of his Order, which was then almost destroyed; and in his ninety-second year he fell asleep in our Lord at Rome, on the 8th of the Calends of September, in the year 1648. A century later, his heart and tongue were found whole and incorrupt. God honored him by many miracles after his death. Benedict XIV granted him the honors of the Blessed, and Clement XIII solemnly enrolled him among the saints.
The Lord hath heard the desire of the poor, by making thee the depositary of his love, and putting on thy lips the words he himself was the first to utter: Suffer the little children to come unto me. How many owe and will yet owe, their eternal happiness to thee, O Joseph, because thou and thy sons have preserved in them the divine likeness received in baptism, man’s only title to heaven! Be thou blessed for having justified the confidence Jesus placed in thee by entrusting to thy care those frail little beings, who are the objects of his divine predilection. Be thou blessed for having still further corresponded to that confidence of our Lord, when he suffered thee, like Job, to be persecuted by Satan, and with yet more cruel surprises than those of the just Idumæan. Must not God be able to count unfailingly upon those who are his? Is it not fitting that, amidst the defections of this miserable world, he should be able to show his Angels what grace can do in our poor nature, and how far his adorable will can be carried out in his Saints?
The reward of thy sufferings, which thy unwavering confidence expected from the Mother of God, came at the divinely appointed hour. O Joseph, now that the Pious Schools have been long ago re-established, bless the disciples whom even our age continues to give thee; obtain for them and for the countless scholars they train to Christian science, the blessing of the Infant Jesus. Give thy spirit and thy courage to all who devote their labors and their life to the education of the young; raise us all to the level of the teaching conveyed by thy heroic life.
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| Job boards for workplaces that specifically don't require COVID-19 vaccinations are popping up |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-27-2021, 01:44 PM - Forum: General Commentary
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Job boards for workplaces that specifically don't require COVID-19 vaccinations are popping up as more employers have started requiring the shot
Business Insider | August 27, 2021
Job boards for sharing open roles at companies that do not require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 have been popping up online as vaccine mandates are becoming more common.
One board is hosted on Gab, the social media platform that has been embraced by some conservatives and members of the far-right. In an email sent to users on Wednesday, Gab CEO Andrew Torba announced the "No Vax Mandate Job Board."
"This job board is for sharing job openings that do not require employees to inject themselves with an experimental substance or violate their bodily autonomy and religious beliefs in order to retain employment," he wrote, adding that job seekers are welcome to post their resumes in the group.
The group, which had nearly 30,000 members after just two days, was filled with messages from people looking for work that won't require them to be vaccinated.
"Blue state SR Talent Acquisition (Corp recruiter) in large Healthcare company. Have worked remote for several years but mandatory jab required. I won't comply," one post said. "I'm professional and have always received excellent reviews. Anyone need a great recruiter?"
Torba said Gab created the group in light of President Joe Biden urging businesses to implement vaccine mandates after Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Monday.
"I'm calling on more companies in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people," Biden said during remarks at the White House.
Some businesses have done so, with more and more announcing plans to mandate vaccines for employees. Chevron, CVS Health, and Disney World all announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates after the FDA approval.
Some local governments have also instituted mandates for employees, including Chicago and Los Angeles, while more may follow. The mandates typically allow for health and religious exemptions.
Another site marketing itself to job seekers who are looking to avoid vaccine mandates, NoVaxMandate.org, says it believes "no right is more sacred than the right of every individual to the control of their own person, free from all restraint or interference of others."
The openings listed on the site range from a Pizza Hut delivery driver in Texas to a Hairstylist at a "patriot run small business" in Arizona. There are multiple openings for nurses at rural nursing homes in Wisconsin and Minnesota, with listings that read: "No Jab required. We are awake and serve God."
Other listings included openings in healthcare settings in Texas, New York, and Michigan.
A third site, RedBalloon, touts itself as "the nation's first and only free speech job site." It said it would be "taking a stand against forced vaccinations," announcing in a blog post it would be "ramping up" its operations to connect employers who are looking for employees "regardless of their vaccination status."
Public health officials continue to encourage Americans to get vaccinated as the US confronts a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the more transmissible Delta variant. A CDC study released Tuesday found unvaccinated people were 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated.
As of Thursday, 51.9% of Americans were fully vaccinated, while 61.1% had received at least one dose, according to the CDC. Officials have expressed hope that the full FDA approval granted this week would result in more people getting the shot.
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| Regional COVID-19 quarantine facility to be built near Wellcamp Airport in Queensland |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-26-2021, 11:08 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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Regional COVID-19 quarantine facility to be built near Wellcamp Airport in Queensland
abc.net.au | August 26, 2021
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the facility would have 1,000 beds by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
The Queensland government is pushing ahead with its own regional dedicated COVID-19 quarantine facility.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Thursday that Cabinet has approved the project on vacant land owned by Wagner Corporation, just outside Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.
The announcement came as the state recorded two new cases of COVID-19, both in hotel quarantine.
Quote:Queensland COVID-19 snapshot:
Confirmed cases so far: 1,972
Deaths: 7
Tests conducted: 3,956,048
Active cases: 35
Latest information from Queensland Health.
Construction started at the site near Wellcamp Airport on Thursday, with 500 beds to be available by the end of the year and a total capacity of 1,000 by March next year.
Construction firm Wagners first submitted the plan to use its Wellcamp Airport as the landing point for some of the Australians stranded overseas in January.
The financial arrangement between the state government and the Wagner family will be commercial-in-confidence, but the state government has signed a one-year lease, with the option of extending to two or three years.
"Our hotels were not built for the Delta strain of this virus," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"This is going to be a great boost for our defence against the Delta virus in this country, and in fact I believe we need regional facilities, right across the country.
"I have been advocating for this for a long, long time. It is a no-brainer."
Construction vehicles on site the Wellcamp Business Park, where a COVID-19 quarantine facility has been proposed
Work has started at the Wellcamp Business Park site. (ABC News: David Chen)
Deputy Premier Steven Miles said he hoped the facility would prevent future lockdowns sparked by the virus leaking out of hotel quarantine.
"When you consider that the last lockdown alone cost more than a billion dollars in economic impact, and compensation, you can see just what fantastic value it will be," he said.
'Much safer than non-purpose-built hotel quarantine'
The federal government has made it clear that it would not pay for a quarantine facility at Wellcamp.
In June, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the site did not meet the criteria for a Commonwealth-funded quarantine compound because it was not within easy access of a passenger airport terminal or tertiary hospital.
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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and businessman John Wagner at the site of the Wellcamp quarantine facility.(ABC News: David Chen)
He knocked back the plan and instead proposed a facility at the Damascus Barracks, about 5 minutes' drive from Brisbane Airport.
A feasibility study by consultancy group AECOM found the Pinkenba facility could be up and running for the first 500 travellers by March 31, although some challenges posed a "significant risk" to this timeframe – including modifying accommodation to mitigate aircraft noise.
On Thursday, Mr Morrison said despite the Wellcamp facility not meeting national guidelines, Ms Palaszczuk has "been at liberty" to build the site "for months".
The state government has signed a one-year lease with the Wagner family for use of its Wellcamp airport. (ABC News: David Chen)
"We've made it very clear that that facility did not seek to meet the national guidelines and that's why we're going together, forward together, at Pinkenba," he said.
"They've made that decision and they could have done that months ago if that's what they wish to do, but it's good for them and I wish them every success."
Ms Palaszczuk has previously said the federal government-funded Damascus facility as well as one at Wellcamp could eliminate the need for quarantine hotels.
Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said had the Wellcamp facility been built earlier, the Queensland government may not have had to pause arrivals from interstate hotspots for the next fortnight.
"If this had been built months ago when we first asked the Commonwealth to partner with us and the Wagners, we potentially may not have had to make the very difficult decision that we made [on Wednesday]," Ms D'Ath said.
Travellers could arrive for quarantine by bus
Mr Miles said once the Wellcamp facility was operational, travellers would be taken by bus to the site from Brisbane Airport, if the Commonwealth government decided not to allow flights to land at Wellcamp Airport.
"We currently bus arriving travellers from Brisbane to hotel quarantine accommodation on the Gold and Sunshine Coast, and so that would remain an option to get people here safely," he said.
The design is being modelled on the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory.
Mr Miles said there would be a mix of single, double and family-sized rooms in the design of cabins and all rooms will have balconies.
"Importantly no hallways adjoining rooms, which we have seen as vectors in hotel quarantine for the virus," Mr Miles said.
Travellers who test positive for the virus and require hospitalisation will be transported to one of five hospitals in Queensland with COVID wards.
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A sign outside Wellcamp Airport
The Queensland government had been pushing to create a quarantine facility at Wellcamp Airport.(David Chen)
Millionaire businessman John Wagner said the facility would create local jobs.
"Just by the fact that we have to produce 3,000 meals a day, [the region] will really benefit from this," he said.
"As the landlord of this facility to the Queensland government, we are working through the final design criteria to make sure that we have the best fit-for-purpose regional accommodation facility for return travellers that there is in the country or in fact the world."
Sewage testing detects virus on Palm Island
Health authorities have detected COVID-19 in wastewater on Palm Island for a second time this week.
Coronavirus was initially picked up in the island's sewerage system on Wednesday, but late Thursday afternoon a second test came back positive.
Ms D'Ath said precautionary testing was being done on Palm Island in north Queensland after sewage test results showed fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19.
"That could be just someone who is shedding, who has had the virus previously, but we're not aware of anyone on the island who is a former positive case," Ms D'Ath said.
"What we have set up, starting [Thursday] morning, is extra capacity to ask every person on Palm Island, who has any symptoms whatsoever, to come forward and get tested, so we can rule out that there are any positive cases there."
About 100 residents were tested Thursday.
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| August 26th – St Zephyrinus, Pope & Martyr |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-26-2021, 09:07 AM - Forum: August
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August 26 – St Zephyrinus, Pope & Martyr
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger (1841-1875)
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Zephyrinus was the first Pontiff to be buried in the celebrated crypt where the Popes of the third century came after their combat to sleep their last sleep. The catacomb which thus succeeded the Vatican cemetery in the honor of sheltering the Vicars of Christ had been opened thirty years before by the virgin martyr Cæcelia. As when at the point of death she had consecrated her palace into a church, so now from her tomb she caused her family burial-place to pass into the hands of the Church. This gift of the Cæcilii was the inauguration, in the very face of the pagan government, of common Church property officially recognized by the State. Zephyrinus entrusted the administration of the new cemetery to the person who ranked next to himself in the Roman Church, viz: the archdeacon Callixtus. The holy Pontiff witnessed the growth of heresy concerning the Unity of God and the Trinity of the Divine Persons; without the help of the special vocabulary, which was later on to fix even the very terms of theological teaching, he knew how to silence both the Sabellians to whom the Trinity was but a name, and the precursors of Arius, who revenged themselves by reviling him.
Quote:Zephyrinus, a Roman by birth, was chosen to govern the Church during the reign of the Emperor Severus. He ordained that, according to custom, Holy Orders should be conferred on candidates at a fitting time and in presence of many both clergy and laity; and also that learned and worthy men should be chosen for that dignity. Moreover he decreed that when the bishop was offering the Holy Sacrifice, he should be assisted by all the priests. He also ordained that neither patriarch, primate nor metropolitan might condemn a bishop without the authority of the Apostolic See. His pontificate lasted eighteen years and eighteen days. In four ordinations which he held in the month of December, he ordained thirteen priests, seven deacons and thirteen bishops for divers places. He was crowned by martyrdom under the Emperor Antoninus, and was buried on the Appian Way, near the cemetery of Callixtus, on the seventh of the Calends of September.
Victor I was the Pontiff of the Pasch; and thou also, his successor, wast devoured by the zeal of God’s house, to maintain and increase the regularity, the dignity, and the splendor of the divine worship on earth. In heaven the court of the Conqueror of death gained, during thy pontificate, many noble members, such as Irenæus, Perpetua, and the countless martyrs who triumphed in the persecution of Septimus Severus. In the midst of dangerous snares, thou wast the divinely assisted guardian of the truth, whom our Lord had promised to his Church. Thy fidelity was rewarded by the increasing advancement of the Bride of Jesus, and by the definitive establishment of her foothold upon the world which she is to gain over wholly to her Spouse. We shall meet thee again in October, in company with Callixtus, who is now thy deacon, but will then, in his turn, be Vicar of the Man-God. Today give us thy paternal blessing; and make us ever true sons of St. Peter.
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| STUDY: Fully Vaccinated Carry 251 Times The Normal Viral Load Of COVID-19, May Be Super Spreaders |
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Posted by: Stone - 08-26-2021, 07:59 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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STUDY: Fully Vaccinated Carry 251 Times The Normal Viral Load Of COVID-19, May Be Super Spreaders
Fully vaccinated people carry 251 times the viral load of COVID-19, according to a new study.
National File | August 25, 2021
A new study has revealed that people who are “fully vaccinated” carry a staggering 251 times the normal viral load of COVID-19. Experts are concerned that this may pose a risk to those who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine, and it also seems likely these increased viral loads could result in more so-called “breakthrough” cases of those who have been vaccinated contracting COVID-19.
A study by the Oxford University Clinical Research Group published on August 10th in The Lancet found that fully vaccinated people carry 251 times the viral load of coronavirus as compared to those who have not received one of the controversial vaccines. “Viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with old strains detected between March-April 2020,” reads the study.
The vaccines seem to allow vaccinated individuals to carry unusually high viral loads without becoming sick, transforming them into super spreaders who experience symptoms later on, as reported by Daily Veracity:
Quote:The study focused on healthcare workers who were unable to leave the hospital for two weeks. The study showed that fully vaccinated workers, about two months after injection, carried and transmitted the virus to their vaccinated colleagues after infection.
They also passed the virus to unvaccinated people, including their patients. The vaccine used in the study was the Oxford/AstraZeneca (AZD1222) vaccine.
In reaction to the study, Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ), tweeted “as we have said—side effects and efficacy are measured in years. Not weeks and months. Another study that should cause all reasonable people to pause.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday granted full approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, opening the door for vaccine mandates across the US. This comes just days after the Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Rochelle Walensky admitted that COVID-19 “vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 is waning,” adding that those who were “vaccinated early” are at an “increased risk of severe disease.”
SEC filings have shown that Moderna has made $12 billion as the government and major institutions push for forced vaccinations, as was previously reported by National File. Stéphane Bancel, the Chief Executive Officer of Moderna said they are “looking forward towards our vision of a single dose annual booster that provides protection against COVID-19, flu and RSV for adults. I look forward to the start of our Phase 3 trial for CMV this year and to clinical proof of concept data in the coming quarters from our therapeutics pipeline. We believe this is just the beginning.”
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