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| Catechsim on the Apostolic Mandate of Pope St. Pius X |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 12:33 PM - Forum: Catechisms
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While, strictly speaking, this is a sermon and not a conference, Fr. Hewko's "A Crash Course on 'Our Apostolic Mandate' of St Pius X" is too important not to receive special attention. It is powerful! This sermon/lesson covers many of the doctrinal and moral issues of our present time, all the while providing guidance and direction in approaching those issues as a Catholic should.
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| Catechism on Auctorem Fidei |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 12:09 PM - Forum: Catechisms
- Replies (1)
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Ambiguity Condemned by Pope Pius VI in 1794
A Short Catechism by Fr. Hewko: Auctorem Fidei - The Author of the Faith
Transcript
I would like to cover briefly with you this great encyclical Auctorem Fidei written by Pope Pius VI. It is a Bull. Why he wrote it was that in 1786 there was in Italy the town of Pistoia there was a Council held by a Bishop, and he introduced novel ideas, he introduced heretical ideas in this Council that he held.
So it was kind of like an advertiser of Vatican II way back in 1786. So Pope Pius VI got wind of it. He tried to appeal to this Bishop to change, to denounce the errors of this Council and the Bishop delayed, delayed, delayed. So Pope Pope Pius VI says I have waited long enough. The wolves are attacking the flock, I must act now. He pulled out the twenty odd six gun and he started shooting at those wolves and the errors that oppose Catholic teaching.
He begins this Bull written in 1794, August 28th just right after the French revolution. Right at the outbreak - in fact during 1974 there were big wars going on in the Vendee, and in Flanders, the Freemason armies are marching in trying to crush the Catholic Church. They've got the clergy, the priests who took the constitution... they say the Latin Mass in all the parish Churches but the Catholic people will not go to those Latin Masses because they know they are said by priests who compromise the faith. And that is a lesson for us, we don't go to Masses - to priests who, in any way accept Vatican II and the new Mass. You cannot go.
So:
Quote:"Pius, Bishop Servant of the servants of God greetings, and my apostolic blessings to all the Christian faithful. The Apostle Paul commands us, who look on Jesus as the author and finisher of the faith, to consider diligently the nature and magnitude of the opposition against Him."
Then he goes on to say that there is a huge conspiracy against the Catholic Church and there always will be a conspiracy to destroy the work of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Pope says a greater zeal is upon me to look after the flock. This is a really great Pope who loves the Church. Loves our Lord Jesus Christ. He's protecting the flock. Not like these Vatican II Popes who allow the wolves to tear up the whole flock of our Lord and drag them to hell by their jaws.
Then he says:
Quote:"In fact, when a leader of God's holy Church under the name of priest turns the very people of Christ away from the path of truth. (He's talking about this bad bishop in Pistoia) toward the peril of erroneous belief and when this occurs in a major city then clearly the distress and anxiety is multiplied."
In other words, the Pope is saying: this Bishop is teaching heresy and holding a council against our will and causing havoc in the Catholic Church. Well his errors must be condemned.
And then he goes on and he says:
Quote:"So, the Pope says a greater zeal is upon me to look after the flock."
He is a really great Pope. And then he goes on and he says 'This bishop - at first he was good. We entrusted him with this diocese and then he turned evil. and he embarked on confusing, destroying and utterly overturning this diocese by introducing troublesome novelties under the guise of a sham reform.'
[...] Remember, novelties in Catholic language - whenever you hear of a novelty it is equivalent to heresy. When you deal with the Catholic faith if anything is new it equals heresy in Catholic language. St. Thomas Aquinas says the same thing. 'Anything that is novel is heretical because in the Catholic church nothing is new, nothing. It's always beautiful. Always the same. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever.'
And so he continues and then the Pope quotes St. Zosimus, a former pope:
Quote:"..those things that of great importance call for a weighty examination."
So now this Pope steps into the boxing ring and he's going to clean house. Here he goes. Listen to this:
Quote:"They knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception."
So, these are artful. This bishop and these catholic clergy are slippery snakes he says:
Quote:"In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error."
This is powerful. This condemns Vatican II. This condemns the doctrinal declaration of April 15th, 2012 signed by a Bishop (Fellay). It condemns double meaning language and fuzzy weasel-words. It condemns that when you talk about the Catholic faith. This also condemns those five Eleison Comments (of Bishop Williamson's) that say the new Mass gives grace. It is the same slippery language that is used to insinuate error.
Listen to this: Pope Pius VI - again this is 1794 condemning Vatican II doctrinal declaration [...]
Quote:"Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it."
See the confusion, there is traditional language, then there's novelty, then there's traditional language again, so people can read it and say well, 'It has a Catholic meaning'. You've got a double tongue here. Scripture says God hates the double tongue. Bishop Fellay admitted that the Doctrinal Declaration can be doubly interpreted. And Bishop Williamson also makes comments defending that the new Mass gives grace and Eucharistic miracles. We have to say it is gravely misleading. It is causing a civil war among many traditional Catholics over a question that shouldn't be an issue. Whether the new Mass gives grace or not is a dead issue. A bad tree gives bad fruit. And then Vatican II - the bishops at Vatican II, with Cardinal Ratzinger among them, they admitted that 'we used ambiguous language deliberately' so that afterwards we can take the phrases, run with the ball - that is implement the errors of Vatican II's heresies.
Pope Pius VI continues:
Quote:"It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity."
Anybody remember the heresy of Nestorius? He said Mary is not the Mother of God. He said Mary is the mother of the MAN of Jesus Christ but not God. This heresy is that there are two Persons in Christ. The truth is that there are two natures in Christ and only one person. The attack was Mary who was the Mother of God. He was condemned by St. Celestine.
Quote:"Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged."
We can take the Eleison Comments and do the same. Camouflaged language to say the new Mass gives grace, has Eucharistic miracles. It is deadly for souls. If the new Mass gives grace what are we doing telling people to stay away from it? It is very misleading. And Bishop Fellay also in the Doctrinal Declaration accepts Vatican II; accepts the new Mass; accepts the new profession of faith that. Archbishop Lefebvre condemned, the new Mass, the new sacraments and rejects the new Mass is legitimate. If you say the new Mass is legitimate, you're saying that it's good for souls. [....] So, don't be surprised if the new Mass is being said in an SSPX chapel. Of course, the priest says he will never say the new Mass. The Campos priests in Brazil in 2003 they also said the same thing. Oh, we're never going to say the new Mass. Now today those same priests are saying the new Mass with altars facing the people. Giving communion in the hand. It can happen, it has happened, and it will happen again in the future.
The Pope quotes:
Quote:"For we, along with Augustine and the Fathers of Milevis, prefer and desire that men who teach perverse things be healed in the Church by pastoral care rather than be cut off from Her without hope of salvation, if necessity does not force one to act."
So this good pope is saying 'Ok, but with this Bishop Nestoria, we tried to be patient, we tried to appeal to him, to condemn this heresy, to revoke his heresies and no nothing came, so now I'm have to act ...and pull out the rifle. It is not a matter of the danger of only one or another diocese. This is very important because people were saying, well its just one diocese the diocese of Nestoria, so just clean up the mess with Nestoria.' But this Pope says,
Quote:“Any novelty at all assails the Universal Church.”
Any novelty at all attacks the Catholic church. Its universal. That's why no bishop or priest can sit back when there is heresy being taught. Archbishop Lefebvre - remember he stood up to defend the Catholic Faith and all the modernist clergy attacked him; tried to tear him to pieces. They attacked the seminary in Écône because the enemies of Christ did not want priests in the line of the traditional popes in the mind of Archbishop Lefebvre. They don't want that. There is such a fierce hatred of OLMC in Kentucky. All we want to do is continue the work of Archbishop Lefebvre and hold his position. Tell the pope to come back to tradition. It's our job. It's very clear. The Virgin Mary sealed this when she prophesied his (Archbishop Lefebvre's) coming 300 years beforehand.
Now for a long time, from every side, the judgment of the supreme Apostolic See has not only been awaited but earnestly demanded by unremitting, repeated petitions. The good priests are begging 'Do something, Holy Father, this is a heresy that is leading souls astray'. God forbid that the voice of Peter ever be silent in that See, where, living and presiding perpetually, he presents the truth of the faith to those in search of it. A lengthier forbearance in such matters (in other words - any delay in condemning these heresies in such matters) is not safe, because it is almost just as much of a crime to close one’s eyes in such cases, as it is to preach such offenses to religion.
In other words, I will be sinning if I close my eyes to this. I think of these five Vatican II popes closing their eyes to the heresies of Vatican II....all the damage...
Quote:"Therefore, (says Pius VI,) such a wound must be cut away, a wound by which not one member is hurt, but the entire body of the church is damaged."
So this is one of the arguments that St. Thomas Aquinas would use ....if you've got a leg that's gangrene, the gangrene is spreading until it kills the whole body. What does the doctor do? He amputates the leg to save the body. So this good pope (Pius VI) is amputating this bad bishop (of Pistoia) to save the whole universal church.
Quote:"And with the aid of divine piety, We must take care that, with the dissensions removed, (that is the fighting removed) the Catholic faith be preserved inviolate, and that those whose faith has been proved may be fortified/strengthened` by our authority once those who defend perverse teachings have been recalled from error."
And then the good Pope adds in this Encyclical saying that:
Quote:"We have resolved to condemn and reprove several propositions, doctrines, and opinions of the acts and decrees of the Council of Nestoria, either those expressly taught or those conveyed through ambiguity, with their own appropriate notes and censures for each of them (as was said above), just as we condemn and reprove them in this our constitution, which will be valid in perpetuity - until the end of the world. They are as follows."
And now follows is a list of 83 condemned heresies and errors [See Denzinger, beginning with #1501]. So this is a Pope acting and doing his duty. Some day there will be a good Pope condemning the heresies and errors of Vatican II. He is going to condemn the whole thing because the whole thing is poison. Archbishop Lefebvre, in his great declaration said, 'Even though not every word and not every sentence of the documents of Vatican II may be heretical or formally heretical the whole thing is poison. It is saturated, marinated in the modern heresies'.
So there is this little brief summary of this great encyclical - this great Bull: Auctorem Fidei.
Archbishop Lefebvre quotes it very often. He says, how do we know Rome will come back to tradition? When the pope professes the teaching of Auctorem Fidei, the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi, and Toleransibus condemning ecumenism, and all the other great encyclicals.
* * *
Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794
“[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith which is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation.
This manner of dissimulation and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstance under which it is used. For very good reason it can never be tolerated in a Synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations of the individual--such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.
It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor Saint Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity.
Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required then the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.”
Adapted from: Source
See also a short description of Auctorem Fidei in the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia.
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| In your kindness, please pray for Mr. Don H. |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 11:49 AM - Forum: Appeals for Prayer
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Dear friends,
In your charity and kindness, please keep Mr. Don H. in your prayers. He is very ill in the hospital. Mr. H. is the father of a dear friend to many of us and also a member of The Catacombs.
In charity, let us offer our fervent prayers and sacrifices in honor of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe, that she may intercede on behalf of Mr. H. and obtain for him the special graces needed for a full recovery. The family is most grateful for all of our prayerful support.
Almighty and Everlasting God, the eternal salvation of those who believe in You, hear us on behalf of Your servants who are sick, for whom we humbly beg the help of your mercy, so that, being restored to health, they may render thanks to you in your Church. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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| Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe - December 12th |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 10:34 AM - Forum: Our Lady
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Our Lady of Guadalupe: She Who Smashes the Serpent
Pope Pius XII gave Our Lady of Guadalupe the title of “Empress of the Americas” in 1945. Since December 12 is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, this is a propitious moment to recall how she reigns over our nation from Heaven, protecting and guiding us with motherly solicitude and tenderness. The constant miracle memorialized on Saint Juan Diego’s tilma and the context of the apparitions remind us that Our Lady is victorious over the serpent, intervenes in history and is eager to intercede for those who seek her intercession in this vale of tears.
How Our Lady Intervened in History
The oldest reliable source of the apparitions of the Mother of God to Saint Juan Diego was written in Náhuatl by Antonio Valeriano. He was a contemporary of Saint Juan Diego and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. Mr. Valeriano’s account was published in 1649 and is known as the Nican Mopohua.
On December 9, 1531, Juan Diego was on his way to attend Mass in what is today Mexico City. It was dawn as he approached Tepeyac Hill, a few miles from his destination. Juan Diego was no ordinary Indian, but the grandson of King Netzahualcoyotl,[1] and the son of King Netzahualpilic and Queen Tlacayehuatzin, who was a descendant of Moctezuma I.
As Juan Diego neared the hill’s summit, something extraordinary happened. Unseen birds began to sing in a supernatural way. The birds would pause while others responded, forming a heavenly duet. He thought he was perhaps dreaming and pondered how unworthy he was to witness something so extraordinary.
The heavenly symphony stopped and a sweet voice called him from the summit, “Juanito. Juan Diegito.” Hearing this, he happily ascended the hill. What he found upon reaching the source of the voice changed his life forever. There, on a rock, stood a beautiful lady. Everything around her was transformed. Her clothing was as radiant as the sun. The rock she stood upon seemed to emit rays of light. She was surrounded with the splendors of the rainbow. Cacti and other plants nearby looked like emeralds. Their spines sparkled like gold and their leaves were like fine turquoise.
Juan Diego bowed before her in ceremonious respect. A tender dialogue between Our Lady and Juan Diego followed, “Listen, xocoyote mio,[2] Juan, where are you going?”
Rejoicing, he happily responded, “My Holy One, my Lady, my Damsel, I am on my way to your house at Mexico-Tlatilulco; I go in pursuit of the holy things that our priests teach us.”
The celestial lady revealed to him that she was indeed the Mother of God, telling him of her desire to have a church built, where she might bestow all her love, mercy, help and protection. She showed overflowing love to Juan Diego, “and to all the other people dear to me who call upon me, who search for me, who confide in me; here I will hear their sorrow, their words, so that I may make perfect and cure their illnesses, their labors and their calamities.”
Then Our Beloved Lady, respecting the authority established by God, sends the noble Juan Diego with this message to the bishop-elect of Mexico. She tells him to accomplish the mission diligently, promising to reward his services. He bows, telling her that he will go straightaway to fulfill her wishes, and departs.
Friar Juan de Zumárraga was one of the first twelve Franciscan missionaries to go to Mexico and the first bishop of that new land. When Juan Diego reached the bishop’s palace, he promptly announced he wished to deliver a message for the bishop. The servants made Juan Diego wait before allowing the audience. Obediently, and with great enthusiasm, he told the bishop what he had seen and heard. Bishop Zumárraga listened attentively, but told Juan Diego to return when they could discuss the matter at greater length. After all, how did he know the story was true?
Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac Hill. As he approached the hill, Our Lady was waiting for him. He drew near and knelt. With sadness, he told Our Lady that he failed in his mission. The marvelous dialogue continues, “My Holy One, most noble of persons, my Lady, my xocoyota, my Damsel….”
Juan Diego explained why he failed, how unworthy he was for such a mission and how the bishop was suspicious. Our Lady listened tenderly and patiently as he suggested she send one of the well-known and respected lords of the land. Then, he thought, her message would be believed.
Our Lady was not persuaded. She wanted him to accomplish the mission, and said, “I pray you, my xocoyote, and advise you with much care, that you go again tomorrow to see the bishop and represent me; give him an understanding of my desire, my will, that he build the church that I ask….”
Juan Diego did not fear the difficulties of the mission, he was only afraid the mission would not be accomplished. However, he told Our Lady he would fulfill her command and return the following evening with the bishop’s reply.
“And now I leave you, my xocoyota, my Damsel, my Lady; meanwhile, you rest.” Juan Diego suggested that Our Lady rest! It is impressive that she not only allowed him to treat her this way, but also loved his candidness.
The next day, he traveled to Mass. Afterward, he went directly to the bishop’s palace, fell on his knees and repeated all that Our Lady had told him. The bishop, in turn, asked questions about the lady. Not entirely convinced, however, the bishop told Juan Diego that he could not affirm that the apparition was Our Lady and asked for a sign of reassurance from Our Lady to build a church.
Juan Diego confidently stated he would ask Our Lady for a sign. The bishop agreed, and sent a few servants to follow Juan Diego and report on everything he did. But they lost him and could not find him. They returned annoyed, speaking poorly of him to the bishop. They even resolved to seize and punish Juan Diego when he appeared again.
Juan Diego should have returned with the sign on Monday, but when he returned home, his uncle Juan Bernadino was seriously ill. His health worsened throughout Monday night, and on early Tuesday morning asked Juan Diego to call a priest. The nephew obediently went, making sure his route did not pass near Tepeyac Hill as he feared Our Lady would see him and persuade him to continue the mission she entrusted to him. So he took a shortcut he thought concealed him from Our Lady.
Stealthily advancing along, he was discovered by Our Lady, who descended the slope and asked, “Xocoyote mio, where are you going? What road is this you are taking?”
Caught red-handed, Juan Diego replied diplomatically, “My daughter, my xocoyota, God keep you, Lady. How did you waken? And is your most pure body well, perchance?” Then he explained his predicament, “My Virgin, my Lady, forgive me, be patient with me until I do my duty, and then tomorrow I will come back to you.” One cannot help but smile while imagining Juan Diego, in his simplicity, asking Our Lady to wait until he returned the next day after helping his dying uncle.
The Mother of God responded affectionately, “Do not be frightened or grieve, or let your heart be dismayed; however great the illness may be that you speak of, am I not here, I who am your mother, and is not my help a refuge?”
She told him his uncle was already cured. Juan Diego rejoiced, and asked her to give him the sign that the bishop wanted. She told him to go to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find. Then, he was to bring them back to her. It was December, and only cacti and a few other sparse plants grew on the hill. However, Juan Diego found Castilian roses in abundance there and delighted in their fragrance. He carefully cut several, wrapping them in his tilma or cloak made of cactus fiber. He returned to Our Lady and she tenderly arranged them inside his tilma with her own hands, and commanded him to go to the bishop and show him the sign he was waiting for. She also told him not to open his tilma for anyone but the bishop.
He made haste to Bishop Zumárraga, confident now that he would accomplish Our Lady’s designs. Along the way, the wonderful fragrance of the roses pleased him. At the bishop’s palace, he was left waiting for a long time. The servants saw him as a nuisance and made him wait until it was very late, and even demanded to see what was in his tilma. Because he refused to show them, they pushed and knocked him about. When he perceived he would not see the bishop unless he showed them something, he let them peek in the tilma. Seeing and smelling the celestial roses, the servants made three attempts to take some. At each attempt, the roses miraculously became part of the tilma as if they were painted. With this, they ushered Our Lady’s ambassador in to see the bishop. Juan Diego knelt down and began to explain all he saw and heard from Our Lady. The bishop listened intently. To prove what he said was true, he untied his tilma and let the roses fall to the ground. Those watching fell to their knees in silent amazement. Miraculously imprinted on the tilma was Our Lady’s perfect image. Recalling their disbelief and mistreatment of the Blessed Mother’s ambassador, the servants were shamed.
Bishop Zumárraga tearfully took the tilma from Juan Diego, placed it in his private chapel, and entreated Juan Diego to stay with him for the night in the palace. The next day, with a crowd following behind them, the two went to the site where Our Lady wanted her church built. Juan Diego gave a detailed account of the apparitions. Then they went to see Juan Bernadino and check on the state of his health.
She Who Smashes the Serpent
Juan Bernadino was surprised to see his nephew accompanied by the bishop and a crowd of admirers. Naturally, he asked what was happening. The miracle was told again and Juan Bernadino acknowledged that he was cured. Our Lady appeared to him and cured him. She told him of her desire to be called Santa María de Guadalupe. Guadalupe in Spanish corresponds phonetically to Coatlaxopeuh in Náhuatl, which means “I smashed the serpent with the foot.”
The bishop then displayed the tilma in the Cathedral of Mexico for public veneration, and called on all to help in the construction of the new church, which was completed on December 26, 1531. On that day, a great procession was made from the cathedral to the new church. Spaniards and Indians, ecclesiastical and imperial officials alike, accompanied Our Lady of Guadalupe to her new shrine. The Indians performed war dances in her honor, and covered the whole path to Tepeyac Hill with flowers.
Amid the festive rejoicing, an overzealous Indian fired an arrow, mortally piercing the throat of another Indian. There were cries and sobs over the dead Indian. Then, inspired by grace, all began to ask that his lifeless body be placed in front of the tilma. As everyone began to invoke Our Lady of Guadalupe’s help, the dead Indian came back to life, his throat instantly healed. Everyone cheered as he rose to his feet. Strengthened by the miracle, the procession resumed and the image was placed in the new shrine.
Miracles That Defy Science
Since the tilma is made of cactus fiber, it should have disintegrated after 20 years. However, it has survived from 1531 until the present day without cracking or fading. Scientists cannot explain how this is possible. In the 18th century, Dr. José Ignácio Bartolache had two copies of the image made and placed where the original was. After several years, the two copies deteriorated.
Over time, the faithful have tried to “embellish” the tilma. A crown was painted on Our Lady’s head and angels in the clouds. However, unlike the tilma, these additions have worn away and are no longer visible. The rays of the sun, for example, were coated with gold and the moon plated with silver. These embellishments also faded away. In fact, the silver-plated moon turned black.
Scientists are baffled how the image was imprinted on the tilma. There are no brush strokes or sketch marks on it. Richard Kuhn, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, ascertained that Our Lady of Guadalupe’s image does not contain natural, animal or mineral pigments. The tilma defies natural explanation.
At the Guadalupe shrine in Mexico City, a stone sail ship monument is visible near the chapel on the hill. The landmark commemorates a miracle that took place in 1565 when General Miguel López de Legazpi was returning from the Philippines and his ship was engulfed by a tempest. On the verge of sinking, the crew in desperation made a vow to Our Lady of Guadalupe; if she saved them, they would carry their last remaining sail to her on pilgrimage. The storm abated and they fulfilled their promise.
The greatest miracle was that eight million Indians converted in only seven years following the apparitions. The early Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were busy night and day baptizing and administering the Sacraments. On average, over three thousand Indians a day were baptized throughout the seven years.
Symbolism of the Tilma
The miraculous tilma is like a catechism class for the Mexican Indians. Our Lady, as she appears, eclipses the sun, showing her superiority over the Aztec sun god. She stands on the moon, trampling the Aztec moon god under foot. She is surrounded by clouds and attended by an angel, showing that she is not of this earth. Yet her hands are folded in supplication and her head is tilted in a position of humility, thus showing that while she tramples the pagan gods, she is not God. Around her neck, she wears a brooch with a cross, leading mankind to the Supreme Being, the God of the Christians.
May the goodness and tenderness Our Lady showed to Saint Juan Diego encourage our readers to have more devotion to her. Like every good mother, she is also the implacable foe of those who inflict harm on her children. Therefore, she is our special aid in the struggle against evil today. Let our battle cry be “¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!” (“Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe!”)
Adapted from here.
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| Hillaire Belloc: The New Paganism |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 10:24 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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The New Paganism
by Hillaire Belloc
Our civilization developed as a Catholic civilization. It developed and matured as a Catholic thing. With the loss of the Faith, it will slip back not only into Paganism, but into barbarism with the accompaniments of Paganism, and especially the institution of slavery. It will find gods to worship, but they will be evil gods as were those of the older savage Paganism before it began its advance towards Catholicism. The road downhill is the same as the road up the hill. It is the same road, but to go down back into the marshes again is a very different thing from coming up from the marshes into pure air. All things return to their origin. A living organic being, whether a human body or a whole state of society, turns at last into its original elements if life be not maintained in it. But in that process of return there is a phase of corruption which is very unpleasant. That phase the modern world outside the Catholic Church has arrived at.
We call Paganism an absence of the Christian revelation. That is why we distinguish between Paganism and the different heresies; that is why we give the name of Christian to imperfect and distorted Christians, who only possess a part of Catholic truth and usually add to it doctrines which are contradictory of Catholic truth. Moreover, the word "Christian" though so vague as to be dangerous, has this much reality about it, that there is something different between the general atmosphere or savor of any society or person or literature which can be called Christian at all and those which are wholly lacking in any part of Christian doctrine. For a Christian man our society is one that has some part of Catholicism left in him. But when every shred of Catholicism is lost, we call that state of things "Unchristian."
Now, it must be evident to everybody by this time that, with the attack on Faith and the Church at the Reformation, the successful rebellion of so many and their secession from United Christendom, there began a process which could only end in the complete loss of all Catholic doctrine and morals by the deserters. That consummation we are today reaching. It took a long time to come about but come about it has. We have but to look around us to see that there are, spreading over what used to be the Christian world, larger and larger areas over which the Christian spirit has wholly failed; is absent. I mean by "larger areas" both larger moral and larger physical areas, but especially larger moral areas. There are now whole groups of books, whole bodies of men, which are definitely Pagan, and these are beginning to join up into larger groups. It is like the freezing over of a pond, which begins in patches of ice; the patches unite to form wide sheets, till at last the whole is one solid surface. There are considerable masses of literature in the modern world, of philosophy and history [and especially of fiction], which are Pagan and they are coalescing-----to form a corpus of anti-Christian influence. It is not so much that they deny the Incarnation and the Resurrection, not even that they ignore doctrine. It is rather that they contradict and oppose the old inherited Christian system of morals to which people used to adhere long after they had given up definite doctrine.
This New Paganism is already a world of its own. It bulks large, and it is certainly going to spread and occupy more and more of modern life. It is exceedingly important that we should judge rightly and in good time of what its effects will probably be, for we are going to come under the influence of those effects to some extent, and our children will come very strongly under their influence. Those effects are already impressing themselves profoundly upon the Press, conversation, laws, building, and intimate habits of our time.
There are two ways in which this is happening; according to whether the New Paganism is at work in a Catholic or a non-Catholic country. It is happening in Catholic countries by the separation of a Pagan set from the rest of the citizens. In those countries the full body of Christian doctrine, that is, Catholicism, puts up a permanent and successful resistance. Its consequences in morals are accepted by masses of people who do not practice the Catholic religion or who are indifferent to its doctrines, and this resistance shows no sign of weakening; not everywhere are the governments of Catholic countries in sympathy with Catholic tradition, however vague, but in these countries the laws defending morals and the general habits of people outside the Pagan set may properly be called anti-Pagan.
But though the way in which the New Paganism is establishing itself differs according to whether the society in which it takes root was originally Catholic or Protestant, it is everywhere of much the same tone, and its effects are very similar, whether you find them in Italy or in Berlin, in an English novel or a French one; and the marks peculiar to Paganism are very clearly apparent in all.
Of these marks the two most prominent are, first, the postulate that man is sufficient to himself, that is, the omission of the idea of Grace; the second [a consequence of this], despair.
The New Paganism is the resultant of two forces which have converged to produce it: appetite and the sense of doom. Of the forces which impelled it into being, the appeal of the senses to be released from restriction through the denial of the Faith is so obvious that none will contest it, the only controversy being upon whether this removal of restriction upon sensual enjoyment, declining every form of reticence and exercising the fullest license for what is called "self-expression," is of good or of evil effect upon the individual and upon society. The Christian scheme is still close enough even to the most Pagan of the New Pagans to be familiar, and the social atmosphere which it created still endures as a memory, or as a rejected experience, in their lives. That social atmosphere insisted on a number of restrictions. Of course, no society could exist in which there were not a great number of restrictions, but the restrictions imposed by Christian morals were severe and numerous, and most of them are meaningless to those who have abandoned Christian doctrine, because morals are the fruit of doctrine.
It is not only in sexual matters [the first that will be cited in this connection], but in canons of taste, in social conduct, traditional canons of beauty in verse, prose, or the plastic arts that there is outbreak. The restriction and, therefore, the effort necessary for lucidity in prose, for scansion in poetry and, according to our tradition, for rhyme in most poetry-----the restrictions imposed by reverence for age, for certain relationships such as those between parent and child, for the respect of property as a right, and all the rest of it are broken through. A license in act and a necessarily more extended license in speech are therefore the mark of the New Paganism.
But to this negative force must be added a positive one to explain what is happening, and that positive one is a philosophy which may be called Monist, or Fatalist, or Determinist, or by one of any number of names all signifying either the absence of conscious Will from the universe or the presence of only one such Will therein.
The true origin of this attitude of mind in modern times is the powerful genius of Calvin, though those who most suffer his influence would most strenuously deny their subjection to it, partly because they have never read him, much more because they do not see it in their daily papers, and most of all because Calvin is vaguely mixed up in their minds with an interest in theology, which science is thought to have exploded-----there is also perhaps some little distaste for Calvin because he was a Frenchman, but as that deplorable fact is never emphasized it cannot count for much. Calvin, then, is at the fountainhead of this new sense of Doom. But behind Calvin the fatalist attitude is an attitude as old, of course, as the hills. It is a temptation to which the human intellect has yielded on important occasions from as far back as we can trace its recorded experience and definitions. To the mind in that mood all things are part of an unchangeable process following from cause to effect immutably.
What else may have produced this positive force of fatalism, itself a main factor in the new Paganism, I will not here discuss; I have said more about it in my essay on "Science as the Enemy of Truth." I am here only concerned with observing its presence; but I will say this much: that one very powerful agent in producing this mood is the desire to be rid of responsibility.
A direct consequence of this philosophy, though again it is a consequence furiously denied by its victims, is the elimination of right and wrong. Our actions do not depend upon our own wills; those who think that they proceed from an act of the will suffer an illusion; human action, from what used to be called the noblest self-sacrifice to the basest commercial swindling, is the inevitable result of forces over which the perpetrator has no control-----or, as Dean Swift has admirably put it in that great masterpiece, The Tale of a Tub, "It was ordained some three days before the Creation that my nose should come against this lamp post."
It is true that the professors of this creed are illogical; for no one gives louder vent to moral indignation than themselves, especially when they are denouncing the cruelties or ineptitudes of believers in moral responsibility, but then, as the denial of the human reason is also part of their creed, or, at any rate, the denial of its value as the instrument for the discovery of truth, they will not be seriously disturbed by the incongruity of their outbursts; for what is incongruous or illogical is not to them blameworthy or ridiculous-----rather in their mouths does the word "logical" connote something absurd and empty.
Now, it is with this element of Monism that there enters a highly practical consideration in our survey of the New Paganism. It is this: the New Paganism is in process of building up a society of its own, wherein will be apparent two features novel in what used to be Christendom. Those two features have already appeared and will spread each in its own sphere, the one in the sphere of law-that is, of coercive enactment-the other in the sphere of status, that is, in the organization of society.
In the first sphere, that of positive law, the New Paganism has already begun to produce and cannot but produce more and more a mass of restrictive legislation. It is a paradox, of course, that such restrictive legislation should be bred from a mood which proceeded originally from rebellion against restriction, but the fact is undoubted, it is before all our eyes. With the denial of the will there necessarily appears the questioning of any content to the word "freedom." In a Christian society you were free to do a number of acts, for some of which you could be punished under Christian laws, for others of which no state or other authority could punish you, but which were opposed to the social atmosphere in which you lived. But the New Paganism will tend, not to punish, but to restrain with fetters; to prevent action, to impose coercive bonds. It will be at issue more and more with human dignity. It has already, in certain provinces [the Calvinist canton of Vaud in Switzerland is an example], enacted what is called "the sterilization of the unfit" as a positive law. It has not yet enacted, though it has already proposed and will certainly in time enact, legislation for the restriction of births. Not only in these, but in many other departments of life, one after another, will this mechanical network spread and bind those subject to it under a compulsion which cannot be escaped.
In the sphere of social texture, the New Paganism must also inevitably and of its nature, wherever it gives its tone to society, reintroduce that status of slavery from which our civilization sprang and which only very gradually disappeared under the influence of the Christian ethic.
This revival of slavery must not be confused with the spread of mechanical restriction applicable to all. They are cousins, but they are not identical. Slavery is the compulsion of one man or set of men to work for the benefit of others. It is a compulsion to work, backed by the arms of the State. The way has been prepared for it by that already half-Pagan thing-----industrial capitalism, of which I write on a later page; and the steps whereby the New Paganism will achieve slavery develop naturally from industrial capitalism. It is a thesis I have developed at greater length in my book, The Servile State; I here only touch on it as a main social result to which the New Paganism will give birth. That this novel status will bear the name "slavery" I doubt; for it is in the nature of mankind, when they are proceeding to call that good which once, they called evil, to avoid the old evil name. In the same way fornication is not called fornication but "companionate marriage."
Probably slavery, when it comes, will be called "permanent employment"; and a century hence, a rich man will say to his friends, talking of his new gardener: "He's a permanent. Paid for him at the Bureau only last Thursday."
In the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.
As yet, during the transition, there is an illogical, and therefore an ephemeral mixture of the old and the new. The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast.
The New Paganism will then, I say, give us, in those societies over which it shall obtain the control of the mind, increasing restriction against general freedom and increasing restriction against the particular freedom which left some equality between the man who worked and the man who exploited him under a contract-----it will replace that idea of contract by the older idea of status. In saying this, my object is to point out that the discussion of the New Paganism is not a mere academic discussion, but, as I have called it, one of immediate practical importance. If we adopt it, we must be prepared for its consequences; if we abhor those consequences, it is our business to fight the New Paganism vigorously.
And here I have, as on so many other points, a quarrel with those moderns who will make of religion an individual thing [and no Catholic can evade the corporate quality of religion], telling us that its object being personal holiness and the salvation of the individual soul, it can have no concern with politics. On the contrary, the concern of religion with politics is inevitable. Not that the Christian doctrine and ethic rejects anyone of the three classical forms of government democracy, aristocracy or monarchy, or any mixture of them but that it does reject certain features in society which are opposed to the Christian social products and are opposed to them because they spring from a denial of free will.
The battle for right doctrine in theology is always also a battle for the preservation of definite social things [institutions, habits] following from right doctrine; nor is there anything more contemptible intellectually than the attitude of those who imagine that because doctrine must be stated in abstract terms it therefore has no practical application nor any real fruit in the real world of real men. Contrariwise, difference in doctrine is at the root of all political and social differences; therefore, is the struggle for or against true doctrine the most vital of struggles.
But apart from these aspects of the New Paganism there is another which I confess I happen to feel myself closely concerned with. It is the connection between the New Paganism and that lure of the antique world, which is of such power over all generous minds, and especially upon those who are in love with beauty.
It is in my judgment an argument which has certainly been of powerful effect in the immediate past, and will continue for some time longer, even in our declining culture, to be of powerful effect, that Paganism is to be sought, respected and achieved because our race, before the advent of the Catholic Church, wrote what it did, built what it did, chiseled what it did, and everywhere created the loveliness to which we Christians are the heirs. Yet this attraction of the antique world I conceive to be a dangerous decoy, leading us on to things very different from and very much worse than that classic Paganism from which we all descend.
I know that to affirm the connection between the New Paganism and a wistfulness for the Old will sound in most modern ears fantastic, because most modern people who fall into the New Paganism know nothing about the Paganism of antiquity; there never was a time when educated men had a larger proportion among them ignorant of Latin and Greek, since first Greek was taught in the universities of Western Europe; and there was certainly never a time during the last two thousand years when the mass of people, the workers, were given less knowledge of the past and were less in sympathy with tradition.
Nonetheless, it is true that the idea of Pagan antiquity as a model runs through the whole new movement. With a few scholars it is at first-hand, with most people at second, third, fourth or fifth; but it is there with everyone. There is a general knowledge that men were once free from the burden of Christian duty, and a widespread belief that when men were free from it, life was better because it was more rational and directed to things which they could all be sure of and test for themselves, such as the health of the body and physical comforts and pleasant surroundings, and the rest. To direct life again to these objects, making man once more sufficient to himself and treating temporal good as the supreme good, is the note of the New Paganism.
Now what seems to me by far the most important thing to point out in this connection is that the underlying assumption in all this is false. The New Paganism differs, and must differ radically, from the Old; its consequences in human life will be quite different; presumably much worse, and increasingly worse.
The reason of this is that you cannot undo an experience. You cannot cut off a man or a society from their past, and the world of Christendom has had the experience of the Faith. When it moves away from the Faith to return to Paganism again it is not doing the same thing, not producing the same emotions, not passing through the same process, not suffering the same reactions, as the old Paganism did, which was moving towards the Faith. It is one thing to go south from the Arctic towards the civilized parts of Europe; it is quite another thing to go north from the civilized parts of Europe to the Arctic. You are not merely returning to a place from which you started, you are going through a contrary series of emotions the whole time.
The New Paganism, should it ever become universal, or over whatever districts or societies it may become general, will never be what the Old Paganism was. It will be another because it will be a corruption. The Old Paganism was profoundly traditional, indeed, it had no roots except in tradition. Deep reverence for its own past and for the wisdom of its ancestry and pride therein were the very soul of the Old Paganism; that is why it formed so solid a foundation on which to build the Catholic Church, though that is also why it offered so long and determined a resistance to the growth of the Catholic Church. But the New Paganism has for its very essence contempt for tradition and contempt of ancestry. It respects perhaps nothing, but least of all does it respect the spirit of "Our fathers have told us."
The Old Paganism worshipped human things, but the noblest human things, particularly reason and the sense of beauty. In these it rose to heights greater than have since been reached, perhaps, and certainly to heights as great as were ever reached by mere reason or in the mere production of beauty during the Christian centuries.
But the New Paganism despises reason and boasts that it is attacking beauty. It presents with pride music that is discordant, building that is repellent, pictures that are a mere chaos, and it ridicules the logical process, so that, as I have said, it has made of the very word "logical" a sort of sneer.
The Old Paganism was of a sort that would be open, when due time came, to the authority of the Catholic Church. It had ears which at least would hear and eyes which at least would see; but the New Paganism not only has closed its senses, but is atrophying them, so that it aims at a state in which there shall be no ears to hear and no eyes to see.
The one was growing keener in its sight and its hearing; the other is declining towards a condition where the society it informs will be blind and deaf, even to the main natural pleasures of life and to temporal truths. It will be incapable of understanding what they are all about.
The Old Paganism had a strong sense of the supernatural. This sense was often turned to the wrong objects and always to insufficient objects, but it was keen and unfailing; all the poetry of the Old Paganism, even where it despairs, has this sense. And you may read in those of its writers who actively opposed religion, such as Lucretius, a fine religious sense of dignity and order. The New Paganism delights in superficiality and conceives that it is rid of the evil as well as the good in what it believes to have been superstitions and illusions.
There it is quite wrong, and upon that note I will end. Men do not live long without gods; but when the gods of the New Paganism come, they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil. One might put it in a sentence, and say that the New Paganism, foolishly expecting satisfaction, will fall, before it knows where it is, into Satanism.
Taken from ESSAYS OF A CATHOLIC, TAN Books, originally published in 1931.
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| Vatican Unveils Hideous Nativity Scene in Saint Peter’s Square |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 08:16 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- Replies (1)
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Vatican Unveils Hideous Nativity Scene in Saint Peter’s Square
Breitbart - secular source | 11 Dec 20200
ROME — The Vatican uncovered its 2020 manger scene in Saint Peter’s Square Friday, leaving onlookers scattered, scandalized, and scornful.
Observers shoveled abuse upon the unfortunate spectacle, rivaling each other to come up with the most appropriate epithets to describe the appalling scene.
“Mummified Mary,” “Weeble Jesus” (after the ovate children’s toys launched by Hasbro in the 1970s), “Martians,” “toilet paper rolls,” and “astronauts” were some of the comparisons made to the cylindrical figures meant to represent the Holy Family, the Magi, and the shepherds at Bethlehem.
As one irate Italian wrote on social media of the Vatican manger scene, “Ugliness is the first thing you notice, followed by a lack of familial warmth and the distancing guaranteed by the cylindrical figures. If you wish to judge harshly, the cylinders call to mind the sacred poles of Satanic cults condemned in the Bible.”
Traditionally, a manger scene is intended to evoke feelings of piety and devotion — not pity and revulsion — over the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and thus this particularly regrettable work offends not only aesthetic sensibilities, but also the religious reverence of the faithful.
The Vatican said the Nativity scene exhibited in St. Peter’s Square was created by the students and faculty of the FA Grue Art Institute, a state-run high school for design, which in the decade of 1965-1975 devoted its scholastic activity to the theme of Christmas.
“We believe that this year’s experience of a Nativity scene donated by an Artistic High School is really a powerful summons for everyone to invest more in the training of the new generations both at the level of middle and high schools and for the university world,” said Bishop Lorenzo Leuzzi in a statement guaranteed to garner broad consensus.
Nativity scene from Saint Peter’s Square
Elizabeth Lev, an American art historian living and teaching in Rome, told Breitbart News she thinks the choice was a poor one.
“The Nativity celebrates the Incarnation, God who comes into the world as flesh, not in a totemic form,” Dr. Lev declared. “At the end of this extremely difficult year people are looking for beauty, for something to elevate, inspire, and unite them, and the scene offered in Saint Peter’s Square gives them something else altogether.”
“The misshapen figures in the Nativity scene lack all the grace, proportion, vulnerability, and luminosity that one looks for in the manger scene,” she said. “The entire point of this holiday is the second person of the Holy Trinity taking human form, born as a baby of flesh and blood, and there is nothing particularly human about the forms we see before us.”
“Context is also important and these works are surrounded by Bernini’s majestic colonnade, capped with the monumental figures of the saints, with Saint Peter’s Basilica in the background containing a thousand years of beautiful statuary,” Lev continued.
“It has been a dark year and many have had their faith challenged. Perhaps it would have been better to give them a symbol to rally round rather than an object of mockery,” she said. “This scene leads people to heap derision upon an icon representing the Holy Family. It is unfortunate we couldn’t find something to inspire at least tenderness if not full-on reverence.”
Moreover, Lev concluded, “In the context of last year’s polemics over the Pachamama statue, it seems ill considered to use images that will confuse people and further a sense of division.”
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| The One True Church - A Short Refutation of Protestantism |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-12-2020, 07:58 AM - Forum: Church Doctrine & Teaching
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The One True Church
Nihil Obstat: T.L. Kinkead, Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur: Michael Augustine, Archbishop of New York
About this Document and its Author
Father Arnold Damen was born in the province of North Brabant, Holland, on March 20, 1815. He was admitted to the Society of Jesus, November 21, 1837, and was one of the band of young novices brought over to this country by Father DeSmet, renowned Jesuit missionary to the American Indians.
In his illustrious career, which spanned some fifty years of apostolic work before his death on January 1, 1890, Father Damen and his companions conducted missions in nearly every principal city of the United States. He is said to have been more widely known in this country, and at one time to have exercised personally a greater influence than any bishop or priest in the Catholic Church. Little wonder, for by his majestic presence and force of eloquence, Father Damen as a missionary rose to a success that surpassed anything ever before --- or since --- known in America.
The fiery apostolic zeal of this beloved and pious priest can only scarcely be measured by the twelve thousand conversions to Catholicism for which he was responsible, often receiving as many as sixty or seventy souls into the Church in one day. For it must be noted, too, that in the midst of all this remarkable labor, he also managed to found and to organize the great Jesuit institutions of Chicago.
What explains the inspiring achievement of Father Damen? As one writer expressed it, “He cared nothing for applause or criticism. He was working to save souls.” In other words, his noble accomplishments were the fruits of immense charity. That is, charity in the truest sense: He loved God and his fellow man so much that he would spare no energy or effort that was necessary to wrest a soul from the spiritual error and darkness which would bring about its eternal loss. And to this saintly Jesuit, such was the certain fate always and everywhere present outside the one true Church.
Father Damen preached in an age quite recent to our own, when Catholics not only still universally believed but lived by the infallibly declared, immutably constant dogma of the Faith, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.“ This was, in fact, his whole creed and teaching, by which he effectively converted so many.
We are pleased to reprint Father Damen’s compelling sermon, “The One True Church,” unedited, exactly as it was first published shortly after his death in 1890. In so doing, we have two purposes: One is to recall to our fellow Catholics of whatever rank or dignity within the Church that the unequivocal belief in the doctrine on salvation is not only essential to the recovery of the Faith from the grave errors which now corrupt it, but it is the inseparable mark of the true Church Militant. The second and all important purpose, of course, is to encourage Catholics to place this imperative message in the hands of non-Catholics. By so doing, all of you who help in such apostolic labors will be continuing the blessed work of the venerable priest, Arnold Damen.
I.
MY DEARLY BELOVED CHRISTIANS: --- From these words of our Divine Saviour, it has already been proved to you, that faith is necessary for salvation, and without faith there is no salvation; without faith there is eternal damnation. Read your own Protestant Bible, 16th verse of St. Mark, and you will find it stronger there than in the Catholic Bible.
Now, then, what kind of faith must a man have to be saved? Will any faith do? Why, if any faith will do, the devil himself will be saved, for the Bible says that devils believe and tremble.
It is, therefore, not a matter of indifference what religion a man professes; he must profess the right and true religion, and without that there is no hope of salvation, for it stands to reason, my dear people, that if God reveals a thing or teaches a thing, He wants to be believed. Not to believe is to insult God. Doubting His word, or believing even with doubt and hesitation, is an insult to God, because it is doubting His Sacred Word. We must, therefore, believe without doubting, without hesitating.
I have said, out of the Catholic Church there is no divine faith --- can be no divine faith out of that Church. Some of the Protestant friends will be shocked at this, to hear me say that out of the Catholic Church there is no divine faith, and that without faith there is no salvation, but damnation. I will prove all I have said.
I have said that out of the Catholic Church there can be no divine faith. What is divine faith? When we believe a thing upon the authority of God, and believe it without doubt, without hesitating. Now, all our separated brethren outside of the Catholic Church take the private interpretation of the Bible for their guide; but the private interpretation of the Bible can never give them divine faith.
Let me, for instance, suppose for a moment, here is a Presbyterian; he reads his Bible; from the reading of his Bible he comes to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God. Now, you know this is the most essential of all Christian doctrines --- the foundation of all Christianity. From the reading of his Bible he comes to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God; and he is a sensible man, and intelligent man, and not a presumptuous man. And he says: “Here is my Unitarian neighbor, who is just as reasonable and intelligent as I am, as honest, as learned and as prayerful as I am, and, from the reading of the Bible, he comes to the conclusion that Christ is not God at all.” “Now,” says he, “to the best of my opinion and judgment, I am right, and my Unitarian neighbor is wrong; but, after all,” says he, “I may be mistaken! Perhaps I have not the right meaning of the text, and if I am wrong, perhaps he is right, after all; but, to the best of my opinion and judgment, I am right and he is wrong.”
On what does he believe? On what authority? On his own opinion and judgment. And what is that? A human opinion --- human testimony, and, therefore, a human faith. He cannot say positively, “I am sure, positively sure, as sure as there is a God in heaven, that this is the meaning of the text.” Therefore, he has no other authority but his own opinion and judgment, and what his preacher tells him. But the preacher is a smart man. There are many smart Unitarian preachers also, but that proves nothing; it is only human authority, and nothing else, and therefore, only human faith. What is human faith? Believing a thing upon the testimony of man. Divine faith is believing a thing on the testimony of God.
II.
The Catholic has divine faith, and why? Because the Catholic says: “I believe in such and such a thing.” Why? “Because the Church teaches me so.” And why do you believe the Church? “Because God has commanded me to believe the teaching of the Church; and God has threatened me with damnation if I do not believe the Church, and we are taught by St. Peter, in his epistle, that there is no private prophecy or interpretation of the Scriptures, for the unlearned and unstable wrest the very Scriptures, the Bible, to their own damnation.”
That is strong language, my dear people, but that is the language of St. Peter, the head of the Apostles. The unlearned and unstable wrest the Bible to their own damnation! And yet, after all, the Bible is the book of God, the language of inspiration; at least, when we have a true Bible, as we Catholics have, and you Protestants have not.
But, my dearly beloved Protestant friends, do not be offended at me for saying that. Your own most learned preachers and bishops tell you that, and some have written whole volumes in order to prove that the English translation, which you have, is a very faulty and false translation.
Now, therefore, I say that the true Bible is as the Catholics have it, the Latin Vulgate; and the most learned among the Protestants themselves have agreed that the Latin Vulgate Bible, which the Catholic Church always makes use of, is the best in existence; and, therefore, it is, as you may have perceived, that when I preach I give the text in Latin, because the Latin text of the Vulgate is the best extant.
III.
Now, they may say that Catholics acknowledge the Word of God; that it is the language of inspiration; and that, therefore, we are sure that we have the Word of God; but, my dear people, the very best thing may be abused, the very best thing; and, therefore, our Divine Saviour has given us a living teacher, that is to give us the true meaning of the Bible.
And He has provided a teacher with infallibility; and this was absolutely necessary, for without this --- without infallibility we could never be sure of our faith. There must be an infallibility; and we see that in every well-ordered government, in every government --- in England, in the United States, and in every country, empire and republic, there is a Constitution and a supreme law.
But you are not at liberty to explain that Constitution and supreme law as you think proper, for then there would be no more law if every man were allowed to explain the law and Constitution as he should think proper.
Therefore, in all governments there is a supreme judge and supreme court, and to the supreme judge is referred all different understandings of the law and the Constitution. By the decisions of the supreme judge all have to abide, and if they did not abide by that decision why, my dear people, there would be no law any more, but anarchy, disorder and confusion.
Again, suppose for a moment that the Blessed Saviour has been less wise than human governments, and that He had not provided for the understanding of His Constitution, and of His Law of the Church of God. If He had not, my dear people, it would never have stood as it has stood for the last eighteen hundred and fifty-four years. He has then established a Supreme Court, a Supreme Judge in the Church of the Living God.
IV.
It is admitted on all sides, by Protestants and Catholics alike acknowledged, that Christ has established a Church; and, strange to say, all our Protestant friends acknowledge, too, that He has established but one Church --- but one Church --- for, whenever Christ speaks of His Church, it is always in the singular. Bible readers, remember that; my Protestant friends, pay attention. He says: “Hear the Church,” --- not hear the churches --- “I have built My Church upon a rock” --- not My churches.
Whenever He speaks, whether in figures or parables of His Church, He always conveys to the mind a oneness, a union, a unity.
He speaks of His Church as a sheepfold, in which there is but one shepherd --- that is the head of all, and the sheep are made to follow his voice; “other sheep I have who are not of this fold.” One fold, you see. He speaks of His Church as of a kingdom, in which there is but one king to rule all; speaks of His Church as a family in which there is but one father at the head; speaks of His Church as a tree, and all the branches of that tree are connected with the trunk, and the trunk with the roots; and Christ is the root, and the trunk is Peter and the Popes, and the large branches are the bishops, and the smaller branches the priests, and the fruit upon that tree are the faithful throughout the world; and the branch, says He, that is cut off from that tree shall wither away, produce no fruit, and is only fit to be cast into the fire --- that is, damnation.
This is plain speaking, me dear people; but there is no use in covering the truth. I want to speak the truth to you, as the Apostles preached it in their time --- no salvation out of the Church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
V.
Now, which is that Church? There are now three hundred and fifty different Protestant churches in existence, and almost every year one or two more are added; and besides this number there is the Catholic Church.
Now, which of all these varied churches is the one Church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? All claim to be the Church of Jesus.
But, my dear beloved people, it is evident no church can be the Church of Jesus except the one that was established by Jesus. And when did Jesus establish His Church? When? When He was here upon earth. And how long ago is it that Christ was upon earth? You know our Christian era dates from Him. He was born many centuries ago. That is an historical fact admitted by all. He lived on earth thirty-three years. That was about nineteen centuries before our time. That is the time Christ established His Church on earth. Any Church, then, that has not existed thus long, is not the Church of Jesus Christ, but is the institution or invention of some man or other; not of God, not of Christ, but of man.
Now, where is the Church, and which is the Church that has existed thus long? All history informs you that is the Catholic Church; she, and she only among all Christian denominations on the face of the earth, has existed so long. All history, I say, bears testimony to this; not only Catholic history, but Pagan history, Jewish history and Protestant history, indirectly.
The history, then, of all nations, of all people, bears testimony that the Catholic Church is the oldest, the first; is the one established by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
If there be any Protestant preacher who can prove that the Catholic Church has come into existence since that time, let him come to see me, and I will give him a thousand dollars. My dear preachers, here is a chance of making money --- a thousand dollars for you.
Not only all history, but all the monuments of antiquity bear testimony to this, and all the nations of the earth proclaim it. Call on one of your preachers and ask him which was the first church --- the first Christian Church. Was it the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Church of England, the Methodist, the Universalist or the Unitarian? And they will answer you it was the Catholic Church.
But, my dear friend, if you admit that the Catholic Church is the first and the oldest --- the Church established by Christ --- why are you not a Catholic? To this they answer that the Catholic Church has become corrupted; has fallen into error, and that, therefore, it was necessary to establish a new church. A new church, a new religion.
And to this we answer: that if the Catholic Church had been once the true church, then she is true yet, and shall be the true Church of God to the end of time, or Jesus Christ has deceived us.
Hear me, Jesus, hear what I say! I say that if the Catholic Church now, in the nineteenth century, is not the true Church of God as she was 1854 years ago, then I say, Jesus, Thou has deceived us, and Thou art an imposter! And if I do not speak the truth, Jesus, strike me dead in the pulpit --- let me fall dead in the pulpit, for I do not want to be a preacher of a false religion!
VI.
I will prove what I have said. If the Catholic Church has been once the true Church of God, as is admitted by all, then she is the true Church yet, and shall be the true Church of God until the end of time, for Christ has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. He says that He has built it upon a rock, and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.
Now, my dear people, if the Catholic Church has fallen into error, then the gates of hell have prevailed against her; and if the gates of hell have prevailed against her, then Christ has not kept His promise, then He has deceived us, and if He has deceived us, then He is an imposter! If He be an imposter, then He is not God, and if He be not God, then all Christianity is a cheat and an imposition.
Again, in St. Matthew, 28th chapter and verses XIX and XX, our Divine Saviour says to His Apostles: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you.” “Lo,” says He, “I, Jesus, the Son of the Living God, I, the Infinite Wisdom, the Eternal Truth, am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”
Christ, then, solemnly swears that He shall be with His Church all days to the end of time, to the consummation of the world. But Christ cannot remain with the Church that teaches error, or falsehood, or corruption. If, therefore, the Catholic Church has fallen into error and corruption, as our Protestant friends say she has, then Christ must have abandoned her; if so, He has broken His oath; if He has broken His oath He is a perjurer, and there is no Christianity at all. Again, our Divine Saviour (St. John, 14th chapter) has promised that He would send to His Church the Spirit of Truth, to abide with her forever. If, then, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, teaches the Church all truth, and teaches her all truth forever, then there never has been, and never can be, one single error in the Church of God, for where there is all truth there is no error whatsoever.
Christ has solemnly promised that He will send to the Church the Spirit of Truth, who shall teach all truth forever; therefore, there has never been a single error in the Church of God, or Christ has failed in His promises if there has.
Again, Christ commands us to hear and believe the teachings of the Church in all things; at all times and in all places. He does not say hear the Church for a thousand years or for fifteen hundred years, but hear the Church, without any limitation, without any reservation, or any restriction of time whatever. That is, at all times; in all things until the end of time, and he that does not hear the Church let him be unto thee, says Christ, as a heathen and as a publican. Therefore, Christ says that those who refuse to hear the Church must be looked upon as heathens; and what is a heathen? One that does not worship the true God; and a publican is a public sinner. This is strong language. Could Christ command me to believe the Church if the Church could have led me astray --- could lead me into error? If the teaching of the Church be corrupt, could He, the God of truth, command me without any restriction or limitation to hear and believe the teachings of the Church which He has established?
Again: Our Divine Saviour commands me to hear and believe the teaching of the Church in the same manner as if He Himself were to speak to us. “He that heareth you,” says He, in His charge to the Apostles, “heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me.” So then, when I believe what the Church teaches I believe what God teaches. If I refuse what the Church teaches I refuse what God teaches.
So that Christ has made the Church the organ by which He speaks to man, and tells us positively that we must believe the teaching of the Church as if He himself were to speak to us.
Therefore, says St. Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy, “the Church is the ground” --- that is, the strong foundation --- “and the pillar of the truth.” Take the ground or foundation of this edifice away, and it crumbles down; so with regard to these pillars upon which the roof rests; take them away and the roof will fall in; so St. Paul says, “the Church is the ground and the pillar of truth,” and the moment you take away the authority of the Church of God you induce all kinds of errors and blasphemous doctrines. Do we not see it?
VII.
In the sixteenth century Protestantism did away with the authority of the Church and constituted every man his own judge of the Bible, and what was the consequence? Religion upon religion, church upon church, sprang into existence, and has never stopped springing up new churches to this day. When I gave my Mission in Flint, Michigan, I invited, as I have done here, my Protestant friends to come and see me. A good and intelligent man came to me and said:
“I will avail myself of this opportunity to converse with you.”
“What Church do you belong to, my friend,” said I.
“To the Church of the Twelve Apostles,” said he.
“Ha! ha!” said I, “I belong to that Church too. But, tell me, my friend, where was your Church started?”
“In Terre Haute, Indiana,” said he.
“Who started the Church, and who were the Twelve Apostles, my friend?” said I.
“They were twelve farmers,” said he; “we all belonged to the same Church --- the Presbyterian --- but we quarreled with our preacher, separated from him, and started a Church of our own.”
“And that,” said I, “is the Twelve Apostles you belonged to --- twelve farmers of Indiana! The Church came into existence about thirty years ago.”
A few years ago, when I was in Terre Haute, I asked to be shown the Church of the Twelve Apostles. I was taken to a window and it was pointed out to me, “but it is not in existence any more,” said my informant, “it is used as a wagonmaker’s shop now.”
Again, St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Galatians, says: “Though we Apostles, or even an angel from heaven were to come an preach to you a different Gospel from what we have preached, let him be anathema.” That is the language of St. Paul, because, my dearly beloved people, religion must come from God, not from man. No man has a right to establish a religion; no man has a right to dictate to his fellow-man what he shall believe and what he shall do to save his soul. Religion must come from God, and any religion that is not established by God is a false religion, a human institution, and not an institution of God; and therefore did St. Paul say in his Epistles to the Galatians, “Though we Apostles or even an angel from heaven were to come and preach to you a new Gospel, a new religion, let them be anathema.”
VIII.
You see, then, my dearly beloved people, from the text of the Scripture I have quoted that, if the Catholic Church has been once the true Church, then she is yet the true Church.
You have also seen from what I have said that the Catholic Church is the institution of God, and not of man, and this is a fact --- a fact of history, and no fact of history so well supported, so well proved, as that the Catholic Church is the first, the Church established by Jesus Christ.
So, in like manner, it is an historical fact that all the Protestant churches are the institutions of man --- every one of them. And I will give you their dates, and the names of their founders or institutors.
In the year 1520 --- 368 years ago --- the first Protestant came into the world. Before that one there was not a Protestant in the world, not one on the face of the whole earth; and that one, as all history tells us, was Martin Luther, who was a Catholic priest, who fell away from the Church through pride, and married a nun. He was excommunicated from the Church, cut off, banished, and made a new religion of his own.
Before Martin Luther there was not a Protestant in the world; he was the first to raise the standard of rebellion and revolt against the Church of God. He said to his disciples that they should take the Bible for their guide, and they did so. But they soon quarreled with him; Zuinglius, and a number of others, and every one of them started a new religion of his own.
After the disciples of Martin Luther came John Calvin, who in Geneva established the Presbyterian religion, and hence, almost all of those religions go by the name of their founder.
I ask the Protestant, “Why are you a Lutheran, my friend?”
“Well,” says he, “because I believe in the doctrine of good Martin Luther.”
Hence, not of Christ, but of man --- Martin Luther. And what kind of man was he? A man who had broken the solemn oath he had made at the altar of God, at his ordination, ever to lead a pure, single, and virginal life. He broke that solemn oath, and married a Sister Catherine, who had also taken the same oath of chastity and virtue. And this is the first founder of Protestantism in the world. The very name by which they are known tells you they came from Martin Luther.
So the Presbyterians are sometimes called Calvinists because they come from, or profess to believe in, John Calvin.
IX.
After them came Henry VIII. He was a Catholic, and defended the Catholic religion; he wrote a book against Martin Luther in defense of the Catholic doctrine. That book I have myself seen in the library of the Vatican at Rome a few years ago. Henry VIII defended the religion, and for doing so was titled by the Pope “Defender of the Faith.” It came down with his successors, and Queen Victoria inherits it to-day. He was married to Catherine of Aragon; but there was at his court a maid of honor to the Queen, named Ann Boleyn, who was a beautiful woman, and captivating in appearance. Henry was determined to have her. But he was a married man. He put in a petition to the Pope to be allowed to marry her --- and a foolish petition it was, for the Pope had no power to grant the prayer of it. The Pope and all the bishops in the world cannot go against the will of God. Christ says: “If a man putteth away his wife and marrieth another, he committeth adultery, and he that marrieth her who is put away committeth adultery also.”
As the Pope would not grant the prayer of Henry’s petition he took Ann Boleyn anyhow, and was excommunicated from the Church.
After a while there was another maid of honor, prettier than the first, more beautiful and charming in the eyes of Henry, and he said he must have her, too. He took the third wife, and a fourth, fifth and sixth followed. Now this is the founder of the Anglican Church, the Church of England; and, therefore, it is that it goes by the name of the Church of England.
Our Episcopalian friends are making great efforts nowadays to call themselves Catholic, but they shall never come to it. They own that the name Catholic is a glorious one, and they would like to possess it. The Apostles said: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church” --- they never said, in the Anglican Church. The Anglicans deny their religion, for they say they believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church. Ask them are they Catholics, and they say, “Yes, but not Roman Catholics; we are English Catholics.” What is the meaning of the word Catholic? I comes from the Greek word “Catholicus” --- universal --- spread all over the earth, and everywhere the same. Now, first of all, the Anglican Church is not spread all over the earth; it only exists in a few countries, and chiefly only where the English language is spoken. Secondly, they are not the same all over the earth, for there are now four different Anglican churches: The Low Church, the High Church, the Ritualist Church and the Puseyite Church. “Catholicus” means more than this, not only spread all over the earth and everywhere the same, but it means, moreover, at all times the same, from Christ up to the present day. Now, then, they have not been in existence from the time of Christ. There never was an Episcopalian Church or an Anglican Church before Henry VIII. The Catholic Church had already existed fifteen hundred years before the Episcopal came into the world.
After Episcopalianism different other churches sprang up. Next came the Methodist, about one hundred and fifty years ago. It was started by John Wesley, who was at first a member of the Episcopalian Church; subsequently he joined the Moravian Brethren, but not liking them, he made a religion of his own --- the Methodist Church.
After John Wesley several others sprang up; and finally came the Campbellites, about sixty years ago. This Church was established by Alexander Campbell, a Scotchman.
X.
Well, now, my dear beloved people, you may think that the act of the twelve apostles of Indiana was a ridiculous one, but they had as much right to establish a church as had Henry VIII, or Martin Luther, or John Calvin. They had no right at all, and neither had Henry VIII, or the rest of them any right whatsoever.
Christ had established His Church and given His solemn oath that His Church should stand to the end of time; promised that He had built it upon rock, and that the gates of hell should never prevail against it --- hence, me dear people, all those different denominations of religion are the invention of man; and I ask you can man save the soul of his fellow-man by any institution he can make? Must not religion come from God?
And, therefore, my dearly beloved separated brethren, think over it seriously. You have a soul to be saved, and that soul must be saved or damned; either one or the other, it will dwell with God in heaven or with the devil in hell; therefore, seriously meditate upon it.
When I gave my Mission in Brooklyn several Protestants became Catholics. Among them there was a very highly educated and intelligent Virginian. He was a Presbyterian. After he had listened to my lecture he went to see his minister, and he asked him to be kind enough to explain a text of the Bible. The minister gave him the meaning.
“Well, now,” said the gentleman, “are you positive and sure that is the meaning of the text, for several other Protestants explain it differently?” “Why, my dear young man,” says the preacher, “we never can be certain of our faith.” “Well, then,” says the young man, “good-bye to you: If I cannot be sure of my faith in the Protestant Church, I will go where I can,” and he became a Catholic.
We are sure of our faith in the Catholic Church, and if our faith is not true, Christ has deceived us. I would, therefore, beg you, my separated brethren, to procure yourselves Catholic books. You have read a great deal against the Catholic Church, now read something in favor of it. You can never pass an impartial sentence if you do not hear both sides of the question.
What would you think of a judge before whom a policeman would bring a poor offender, and who on the charge of the policeman, without hearing the prisoner, would order him to be hung? “Give me a hearing,” says the poor man, “and I will prove my innocence. I am not guilty,” says he. The policeman says he is guilty. “Well, hang him anyhow,” says the judge. What would you say of that judge? Criminal judge! unfair man; you are guilty of the blood of the innocent! Would not you say that? Of course you would.
Well now, my dearly beloved Protestant friends, that is what you have been doing all along; you have been hearing one side of the question and condemning us Catholics as a superstitious lot of people, poor ignorant people, idolatrous people, nonsensical people, going and telling their sins to the priest; and what, after all, is the priest more than any other man? My dear friends, have you examined the other side of the question?
No, you do not think it worth your while; but this is the way the Jews dealt with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and this is the way the Pagans and Jews dealt with the Apostles, the ministers of the Church, and with the primitive Christians.
Allow me to tell you, my friends, that you have been treating us precisely in the same way the Jews and Pagans treated Jesus Christ and His Apostles. I have said this evening hard things, but if St. Paul were here tonight, in this pulpit, he would have said harder things still. I have said them, however, not through a spirit of unkindness, but through a spirit of love, and a spirit of charity, in the hope of opening your eyes that your souls may be saved. It is love for your salvation, my dearly beloved Protestant brethren --- for which I would gladly give my heart’s blood --- my love for your salvation that has made me preach to you as I have done.
XI.
“Well,” say my Protestant friends, “if a man thinks he is right would not he be right?” Let us suppose now a man in Ottawa, who wants to go to Chicago, but takes a car for New York; the conductor asks for his ticket; and he at once says: “You are in the wrong car; you ticket is for Chicago, but you are going to New York.” “Well, what of that?” says the passenger. “I mean well.” “Your meaning will not go well with you in the end,” says the conductor, “for you will come out at New York instead of Chicago.”
You say you mean well, my dear friends; your meaning will not take you to heaven; you must do well also. “He that doeth the will of My Father,” says Jesus, “he alone shall be saved.” There are millions in hell who meant well.
You must do well, and be sure you are doing well, to be saved. I thank my separated brethren for their kindness in coming to these controversial lectures. I hope I have said nothing to offend them. Of course, it would be nonsense for me not to preach Catholic doctrines.
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| December 12th - Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Finian and St. Valery |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-12-2020, 12:33 AM - Forum: December
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Our Lady of Guadalupe
Patroness of Latin America
(1531)
One of the most beautiful series of apparitions of the Queen of Heaven occurred on the American continent on a December day of 1531, only ten years after the Spanish conquest. A fervent Christian Indian in his fifties, Juan Diego, a widower, was on his way to Mass in Mexico City from his home eight miles distant, a practice he and his wife had followed since their conversion, in honor of Our Lady on Her day, Saturday. He had to pass near the hill of Tepeyac, and was struck there by the joyous song of birds, rising up in the most melodious of concerts; he stopped to listen. Looking up to the hilltop, he perceived a brilliant cloud, surrounded by a light brighter than a fiery sun, and a gentle voice called him by name, saying, Juan, come. His first fear was transformed into a sweet happiness by this voice, and he mounted the slope. There he beheld the One he had intended to honor by hearing Her Mass. She was surrounded by a radiance so brilliant it sent out rays that seemed to transform the very rocks into scintillating jewels.
Where are you going, My child? She asked him. To Saint James to hear the Mass sung by the minister of the Most High in honor of the Mother of the Saviour. That is good, My son; your devotion is agreeable to Me, as is also the humility of your heart. Know then that I am that Virgin Mother of God, Author of Life and Protector of the weak. I desire that a temple be built here, where I will show Myself to be your tender Mother, the Mother of your fellow citizens and of all who invoke My name with confidence. Go to the bishop and tell him faithfully all you have seen and heard.
Juan continued on his way, and the bishop, Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan of great piety and enlightened prudence, heard him kindly and asked questions, but sent him home without any promises. Juan was disappointed, but on his way past the hill, he once again found the Lady, who seemed to be waiting for him as though to console him. He excused himself for the failure of his mission, but She only repeated Her desire to have a temple built at this site, and told him to return again to the bishop. This he did on the following day, begging the bishop to accomplish the desires of the Virgin. Monsignor said to him: If it is the Most Holy Virgin who sends you, She must prove it; if She wants a church, She must give me a sign of Her will. On his way home, Juan Diego found Her again, waiting, and She said to him, Come back tomorrow and I will give you a certain mark of the truthfulness of your words.
The next day Juan was desolate to find his uncle, with whom he lived, fallen grievously sick; the old gentleman was clearly on the brink of death. Juan had to go and find a priest in the city. As he was passing the hill, Our Lady again appeared to him, saying, Do not be anxious, Diego, because of your uncle's illness. Don't you know that I am your Mother and that you are under My protection? At this moment your uncle is cured. Then please give me the sign you told me of, replied Juan. Mary told him to come up to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find there, place them under his cloak, and bring them to Her. I will tell you then what to do next. Juan found the most beautiful of roses and lilies, and chose the most fragrant ones for Mary. She made a bouquet of them and placed it in a fold of his cloak or tilma — a large square of coarse cloth resembling burlap. Take these lilies and roses on My behalf to the bishop, She said. This is the certain sign of My will. Let there be no delay in raising here a temple in My honor. With joy Juan continued on to the city and the bishop's residence, where he had to wait nearly all day in the antechamber. Other visitors noted the fragrance of his flowers, and went so far as to open his mantle to see what he was carefully holding in it, but found only flowers pictured on the cloth. When finally he was admitted to the presence of the prelate, he opened his cloak and the fresh flowers fell on the floor. That was not the only sign; on his cloak there was imprinted a beautiful image of the Virgin. It remains today still visible in the Cathedral of Mexico City, conserved under glass and in its original state, having undergone no degeneration in 470 years.
Juan found his uncle entirely cured that evening; he heard him relate that Our Lady had cured him, and had said to him also: May a sanctuary be raised for Me under the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The bishop lost no time in having a small church built at the hill of Tepeyac, and Juan Diego himself dwelt near there to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who came in great numbers. In effect, nearly all of the land became Catholic in a few years' time, having learned to love the gentle Lady who like God their Father showed Herself to be the ever-watchful friend of the poor. In 1737 the pestilence ceased immediately in Mexico city after the inhabitants made a vow to proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal Patroness of New Spain. In 1910 She was proclaimed by Saint Pius X Celestial Patroness of all Latin America. Recent studies of the image of Our Lady on the tilma have discovered in one of Her eyes the portrait of Juan Diego, the son She chose to favor by this triduum of heavenly apparitions and conversations
Saint Finnian or Finan
Bishop in Ireland
(† 552)
Also known as Finian, Finan, Fionán, Fionnán or Cluain Eraird in Irish and as Vennianus and Vinniaus in its Latinised form
Among the primitive teachers of the Irish church the name of Saint Finnian is one of the most famous, after that of Saint Patrick. He was a native of Leinster and was instructed in the elements of Christian virtue by the disciples of Saint Patrick. Having an ardent desire to make greater progress, he went over into Wales, where he met and conversed with Saint David, Saint Gildas and Saint Cathmael, three eminent British Saints. After remaining thirty years in Britain, he returned to Ireland in about the year 520, excellently qualified by his sanctity and sacred learning to restore the spirit of religion among his countrymen. Like a loud trumpet sounding from heaven, he roused the insensibility and inactivity of the lukewarm, and softened the most hardened hearts, long immersed in worldly business and pleasures.
To propagate the work of God, Saint Finnian established several monasteries and schools, chief among which was the monastery of Clonard, which he built and which was his ordinary residence. From this school came several of the principal Saints and Doctors of Ireland: Kiaran the Younger, Columkille, Columba son of Crimthain, the two Brendans, Laserian, Canicus or Kenny, Ruadan, and others. The great monastery of Clonard was a famous seminary of sacred learning.
Saint Finnian was chosen and consecrated Bishop of Clonard. Out of love for his flock and by his zeal for their salvation, he became infirm with the infirm and wept with those that wept. He healed souls as well as the physical infirmities of those who came to him for assistance. His food was bread and herbs, his drink, water, and his bed, the ground, with a stone for his pillow. He departed to Our Lord on the 12th of December in 552.
Saint Valery
Abbot in Picardy
(† 619)
Saint Valery was born at Auvergne in the sixth century, where in his childhood he kept his father's sheep. He desired to study and begged a teacher in a nearby school to trace the letters and teach them to him, which the schoolmaster was happy to do. He soon knew how to read and write, and the first use he made of his knowledge was to transcribe the Psalter; he then learned it by heart. He began to frequent the church, and love of his religion soon burnt strongly in his heart.
He was still young when he took the monastic habit in the neighboring monastery of Saint Anthony. No persuasion could convince him to return home when his father came to attempt that move, and the Abbot, recognizing that his firmness was of divine origin, said to the monks, Let us not reject the gift of God. His father eventually was present when he received the tonsure, and shed tears of joy, having accepted his son's determination.
It was soon visible to all that God destined him for some high role in the Church. He left for a more distant monastery in Auxerre, and there he seemed to live a life more angelic than human. A rich lord of the region, after talking with him one day, disposed of his entire fortune without even returning home, to embrace religious poverty.
At that time Saint Columban was preaching in Gaul; Valery with some fellow monks desired to hear him and went to Luxeuil, where they were not disappointed. They asked to be received into that monastery in 594 and were accepted. A corner of the garden which Valery was assigned to cultivate was entirely spared when insects devastated the rest. The holy Abbot Columban allowed him to make his religious profession, and he remained at Luxeuil for some fifteen years. He was a witness when the local king drove away Saint Columban from his foundation, as a foreigner in the land. Soon afterward the monastery was invaded by strangers, but finally Saint Valery and the new Abbot, Saint Eustasius, succeeded in recovering it.
Some time afterwards Saint Valery with another monk left to carry the faith elsewhere, and decided with the permission of King Clotaire to remain as hermits in the region of Amiens. He raised to life a poor condemned man after he had been hanged, and the word of the sanctity of this monk soon spread. The wilderness of Leuconaus was transformed into a community, where from the numerous monastic cells and church the praises of the Lord rose up night and day. In 613, three years after his arrival, this locality became a monastery where the religious lived in common.
A man who had become unable to walk was cured by Saint Valery and replaced him later as Abbot of this monastery; he is today Saint Blitmond. Many more miracles illustrated his life of prayer and sacrifice. Saint Valery died in 619, and his tomb became celebrated by numerous miracles. A basilica was raised there in his honor, at the site where one of his disciples had felled a tree, object of pagan superstitions, at a word from the Saint.
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