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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1978 'Reign of Scandal' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:36 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
- Replies (1)
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Sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre - Given on the Feast of Christ the King - October 29,1978
On the Occasion of the Ordination of 28 Deacons
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dear friends and my dear brethren:
As each year, on this Feast of Christ the King, we have the joy of conferring ordination to the diaconate on some of the seminarians, and this year this joy is particularly great because by the grace of God they are numerous, and in addition there are the subdeacons who have come from Bedoin and also those of the Fraternity of the Transfiguration. We are very happy to see to it that the diaconate, which bears so many graces for those who are going to receive it, may always extend itself for the greater good of souls.
My dear friends: In a few moments you are therefore going to receive Spiritum Sanctum ad robur, the Holy Ghost with the gift of fortitude in particular. You are going to receive the Holy Ghost in order to fulfill your office; that is what the bishop is going to say in the middle of the preface by the sacramental formula. A character more profound and still more significant of Holy Orders is going to mark your souls; before God, before the Church, before all of the holy angels, before the entire celestial court you shall be henceforth deacons for eternity! And if one judges according to the monitions which are give by the bishop to the (sub) deacons before conferring upon them the diaconate, one sees that this function is very important.
The function of the deacon, says the monition, is to serve at the altar, to baptise and to preach: Servire ad altare, baptizare et praedicare.
To serve at the altar; but to serve at the altar in a manner which is closely related to that of the priest. Henceforth, the deacon will be able to carry the sacred vessels which contain the Blessed Sacrament. Henceforth, even though it be only in an extraordinary manner, he will be able to distribute the Holy Eucharist. He approaches therefore in a very close manner these holy mysteries, these great mysteries of our holy religion: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist-the great sacrament in the radiance of which the priest must live and in the radiance of which you, my dear friends, must live in an intensified manner.
To serve at the altar, to baptise and to preach. The Church, in the monition which she demands the bishop to pronounce before the ordination, gives you Saint Stephen as an example, an admirable example. This deacon, it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, had been chosen because he was filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost— plenus gratia et Spiritus Sanctus. And a bit further in these same Acts of the Apostles— Plenus gratia et fortitudine. If there is an example which you must follow, an example and a model, it is certainly this Saint Stephen, since he is given to you particularly by the Church. Indeed, Saint Stephen, filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost, preached. The Acts of the Apostles show in a striking manner, in a manifest manner to what point the listeners of his preaching were stupefied—and they saw him as an angel from heaven. He was radiating the splendor of eternity and in spite of this, his judges did not wish to accept his words and they did not wish to receive his preaching. Thus, in terminating his objurgations, Saint Stephen, with force, made them understand that they were no different from the others who had preceded them and who had killed the prophets. "The prophets who announced the coming of the Just, your fathers have killed; and you are similar to them for you have killed the Just Himself." And upon hearing these words of St. Stephen the Acts of the Apostles say that their rage was at its height and that "they gnashed their teeth"— these are the terms of Sacred Scripture itself—and "they rushed upon Saint Stephen in order to stone him."
Thus, my dear friends, I believe this is an admirable example for you today, in particular, on the Feast of Christ the King. You must have this contemplation, this vision in a certain sense, of the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as St. Stephen saw it in heaven. Our Lord present in heaven, the King of Heaven and not only the King of Heaven but, as well, King of the Earth. This is why St. Stephen did not fear to speak with force of the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the duty to obey Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Scribes and the Pharisees, who had Our Lord put to death, refused and this is why they stoned Saint Stephen, indeed you also with the grace of God are going to become priests and exercise in a manner even more complete during your priesthood, your function of deacon. But already before receiving the priesthood you will be able to preach when the occasion presents itself and you must prepare yourself for this.
In this preaching, you will preach the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is not of other things that the priest has to preach.
You will preach this royalty first of all by prayer, through the example of piety, by the love of the altar, and by the love of the Holy Sacrifice to which you will henceforth be attached forever. You will manifest this attachment to the sacrifice of Our Lord by respect for sacred things, in order to encourage the faithful to respect them also, and to understand that these great mysteries are the source of our sanctification. You will pray therefore for it is through prayer and sacrifice that Our Lord saved the world, and you will not save it other than by prayer and your sacrifice. You will preach Our Lord Jesus Christ and His royalty by the example of your virtue, by your priestly dress, by your attitude, by your goodness, by your charity, by your zeal, in your conversations on all the occasions that you will have to approach the faithful and unbelievers; you will preach Our Lord Jesus Christ. And God knows that today the world has need of this preaching! St. Francis of Assisi in taking Brother Leo with him in the streets of Assisi said to him, "Let us go preach Our Lord Jesus Christ," and Brother Leo accompanied him. After having traversed the streets of Assisi, St. Francis, not having pronounced a word, was asked by Brother Leo, "But how have we preached Our Lord Jesus Christ?" "By our example and by our habit we have preached Our Lord Jesus Christ," and the world has need of this example, and the world has need of this preaching.
You will also preach Our Lord Jesus Christ by your words. We must establish His reign for He has commanded that we do so. Our Lord, in sending the seventy-two disciples to preach the Gospel did not speak of other things. Go! Preach the reign of God! The reign of God — Regnum Dei. This reign of God is HIS reign for He is God. He is Our God. We have no other God but Our Lord Jesus Christ! It is therefore the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ which His disciples preached. It is also the reign of God that Our Lord preached during the forty days which followed His Resurrection before His Ascension; it is the Gospel which says so: "He conversed with the Apostles of the reign of God." It is thus the reign of God which preoccupied Our Lord; definitively His own reign. Thus, as Our Lord was preoccupied with this reign we are also, who are His disciples. We must always be preoccupied with the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ: the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for ourselves, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for individuals, for persons, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for families, the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ in societies.
But you will not forget that opposed to the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ there is the reign of Satan. The reign of Satan has never perhaps been more extensive and penetrated everywhere into all domains as it has today. It surrounds us on all sides. What is the reign of Satan? The reign of Satan is the reign of scandal but scandal understood in its true sense understood in the sense of that which leads us to sin and, as a consequence, which leads us to HELL. That is scandal! Scandal is that which leads to sin, that which draws one into sin and indeed the reign of scandal is to be found in this world. Much is scandal around us, much is contrary to the law of God. Henceforth, in society, even the commandments of God are not only ignored but they are publicly and officially attacked. Laws are passed which are contrary to the law of God. All of this is legalized, officialized; the magistrates, the doctors are obliged to do some things which are contrary to the law of God, which are unjust, which are horrible, abominable! All of this in a time when one believes that our civilization has never been as great or as beautiful! On the contrary! This civilization bears the mark of SATAN and it bears the mark of HELL!
You will denounce these scandals in order to prevent them from leading souls to hell. You will not be afraid to denounce all that which drags souk into sin.
In order to have this courage and this force, you will ask these graces particularly of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You know, my dear friends, Mary is our Mediatrix Mother. She is the Mediatrix of all graces. The grace which you are going to receive in just a few moments by the imposition of the hand of the bishop and by the sacramental words which are going to be pronounced over you, this grace of the Holy Ghost is going to be given to you by the intercession of our good mother in heaven. Ask Mary. Ask her—your mother, to give you this grace in abundance that you may truly be deacons according to her heart, that later on you may be priests according to her heart as was her Divine Son. She will aid you to be ape sties of the Kingdom of Our Lord and of the Reign of God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1977 Three Great Gifts of God |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:34 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Archbishop Speaks
Three Great Gifts of God
THE PAPACY
THE BLESSED VIRGIN
THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE
Pronounced at Ecône by His Excellency, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on September 18, 1977
The 30th Anniversary of his Consecration as Bishop
My dear brothers, my dear friends,
It is kind of Providence that this day of return to the Seminary should coincide with the anniversary of my episcopal consecration which took place on September 18, 1947 in my native city. At the request of friends we are celebrating this anniversary in a special way.
In the breviary this morning we read the lesson of Tobias. It was said that the young Tobias, finding himself surrounded by the men of his race, the Jews, adoring a golden calf which had been set up by the King of Israel himself, went faithfully to the temple to offer the sacrifices God had demanded. He was thus faithful to the law of God.
Well, we hope that we too have been faithful to God, faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Later on Tobias was among the prisoners sent to Niniva and there, the Scripture says, while all his compatriots did homage to the pagan cult, he continued to hold to the truth, retinuit omnem veritatem. He held to the whole truth. I believe this is the lesson Holy Scripture has for us and I hope that we, too, remain faithful like Tobias did, both in his youth and in his captivity. Is it not true that we today are in a certain sense in captivity, restraint surrounding us on all sides, imposed on us by those who bow to error both in the world and inside the Church itself? By those who juggle with the truth and who keep truth hidden instead of proclaiming it; We are in a world enslaved by the Devil, enslaved by error.
But it is our wish to hold to truth. We want to continue to proclaim it. What then, is this truth? Do we have a monopoly on it? Are we so presumptuous as to say we have the truth, others do not? No, truth does not belong to us. It does not come from us, it was not invented by us. This truth was transmitted to us, it was given us. It is written. It is living in the Church and in the whole history of the Church. This truth is known. It is in the books, in the catechisms, in all the acts of the councils, in all the acts of the sovereign pontiffs. It is in our Creed, in our Ten Commandments, in the gifts that God has made to us, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments. It is not we who invented this truth. We have only to persevere in it.
Because truth has an eternal character. The truth we profess is God, Our Lord Jesus Christ who is God and God does not change. God remains immutable. It was St. Paul who said, vicissitudinis obumbratio. There is not a shadow of vicissitude in Him, not the shadow of changeability. God is unalterable, semper idem, always the same. Certainly He is the source of everything that changes but He, Himself, is unalterable, unchangeable. And by the fact that we profess God as truth we will enter in some way into eternity through truth. We have no right to change that truth. Indeed it cannot be changed. It will never change.
Men have been put on earth to receive a little of that light of eternity as it descends on them. They become in some way eternal, they too, immortal, according to the extent to which they attached themselves to the things that change, to moving things, they move away from God. And here it is that we feel a need. All men feel this need. They have in them an immortal soul which is already now in eternity, a soul which will be happy or unhappy, but it is a soul that exists. It will not die.
Every man who is born, who has a soul has entered into eternity. That is why we have need of eternal things, of the true eternity which is God. We cannot do without it. It is part of our lives. It is what is most essential to us. That is why men seek the truth, seek the eternal, because they have an essential need of eternity.
And what are the means by which Our Lord has given us eternity, communicated it to us, made eternity enter into our lives even here below? Often when I was going through the African countries on my diocesan visits I chose a them that was dear to me and very simple, too. You have heard it many times but for the simple people I spoke to it summed up the truth. Asking what are the gifts the Good God has given us which make us participants of the divine life, life eternal, I would answer: there are three great gifts which God has made us and they are the Pope, the Blessed Virgin and the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
THE PAPACY
IN reality it is an extraordinary gift that God has made us in giving us the Pope, in giving us the successors of Peter, giving us precisely this perpetuity in truth communicated to us through the successors of Peter, that must be communicated to us through them. And it seems inconceivable that a successor of Peter could fail in any way to transmit the truth that he is obliged to transmit. Indeed, without virtually disappearing from the line of succession he cannot fail to communicate that which the popes have always communicated, the Deposit of Faith which does not belong to him alone.
The Deposit of Faith does not belong to the Pope. It is the treasure of truth which has been taught during twenty centuries. He must transmit it faithfully and exactly to all those under him who are charged in turn to communicate the truth of the Gospel. He is not free.
But should it happen because of mysterious circumstances which we cannot understand, which baffle our imagination, which go beyond our conception, if it should happen that a pope, he who is seated on the throne of Peter, comes to obscure in some way the truth which it is his duty to transmit or if he does not transmit it faithfully or allows error to darken truth or hide it in any way, then we must pray to God with all our hearts, with all our soul, that light continues to be thrown on that which he is charged to transmit.
NEVER CAN THE TRINITY BE CHANGED.
NEVER CAN THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST THROUGH THE CROSS AND THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS BE CHANGED!
THESE THINGS ARE ETERNAL.
THEY BELONG TO GOD.
And we cannot follow error, change truth, just because the one who is charged with transmitting it is weak and allows error to spread around him. We don’t want the darkness to encroach on us. We want to live in the light of truth. We remain faithful to that which has been taught for two thousand years. That what has been taught for 2,000 years and which is part of eternity could change is inconceivable.
Because it is eternity which has been taught to us. It is the eternal God, Jesus Christ eternal God, and everything which is centered on God is centered on eternity. Never can the Trinity be changed. Never can the redemptive work of Christ through the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Mass be changed. These things are eternal. They belong to God. How can someone here below change those things? Who is the priest who feels he has the right to change those things, to modify them? Impossible!
When we possess the past we possess the present and we possess the future. Because it is impossible, I say metaphysically impossible, to separate the past from the present and future. Impossible! Then God would no longer be God! God would no longer be eternal! God would no longer be immutable. And there would be nothing more to believe in. We would be completely in error.
This is why, without worrying about all that is happening around us in these times we ought to close our eyes to the horror of this drama we are living through, close our eyes and affirm our Creed, our Ten Commandments, meditate on the Sermon on the Mount which is also our law. We must attach ourselves to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the Sacraments awaiting the light that will shine around us again. That is all. We must do this without becoming bitter or violent in a spirit that is unfaithful to Our Lord. Let us stay charitable. Let us pray, suffer, accept all the trials, everything that happens, everything that God sends us. Let us do as Tobias did. Abandoned by everyone as they went to adore the golden calf of the gods of the pagans, he remained faithful. Still, he too could have thought that, since only he remained faithful it might be that he was mistaken. But no, he knew that whatever God had taught to his forebears could not change. The truth of God existed and could not change. And so it is with us. We too have to rely upon the truth that is God yesterday, today and tomorrow. Jesus Christus heri, hodie et in secula.
And that is why I say we must retain our confidence in the papacy. We must retain confidence in the successor of Peter in so far as he is the successor of Peter. But if it should happen that he were not perfectly faithful in his duties, then we must remain faithful to those who were the successors of Peter and not to him who is not the successor of Peter. That is all. His duty is to transmit the Deposit of the Faith.
THE BLESSED VIRGIN
The second gift is that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She has never changed. Is it possible to imagine that the Blessed Virgin Mary could change in her attitude to the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, her divine Son, toward the Sacrifice of the Cross, toward the work of redemption? Is it possible to imagine that the Blessed Virgin Mary could change one iota of her faith, that she could have had doubts at some period of her life, that she could have thought herself mistaken? That she could have doubted the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, doubted the Blessed Trinity, she who was filled with the Holy Ghost? Impossible! Inconceivable!
Here below she was already in eternity. The Blessed Virgin Mary, through her faith, an unchangeable, profound faith, could not be disturbed in any way. That is evident. Do not let us be disturbed by the noises around us but keep faithful, faithful like the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I want to add to this subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary something which seems to me to be important for us at this time in which we live. Continuously we are told the Virgin says this or says that. The Virgin has appeared here, the Virgin has communicated this message to that person. Of course, we do not rule out the possibility that a word of the Blessed Virgin could be addressed to persons of her choice. That is evident. But considering the kind of period we are living through we must be suspicious. We must mistrust.
SHE IS PRESENT AT EVERY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.
SHE CANNOT SEPARATE HERSELF FROM THE CROSS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
OUR DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN OUGHT TO BE PROFOUND, PERFECT.
The place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the theology of the Church is, in my estimation, infinitely sufficient to make us love her above everyone after Our Lord Jesus Christ and that we should have toward her a devotion which is profound and continuous day after day. It is not necessary that we have constant recourse to messages about which we cannot be absolutely certain whether they come from the Blessed Virgin or not. I am not speaking of the apparitions which have been recognized by the Church. But we must be very careful when it comes to rumors that circulate everywhere today. All the time I am receiving people or communications which are said to be addressed to me from the Blessed Virgin or from Our Lord ‑ a message to be addressed to me from the Blessed Virgin or from Our Lord ‑ a message received here, another there. Whereas in fact we should hope the Blessed Virgin is with us every day.
And she is. We know that. She is with us. She is present at every Sacrifice of the Mass. She cannot separate herself from the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our devotion to the Blessed Virgin ought to be profound, perfect. But it ought not have to depend on private messages.
THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE
GOD, Jesus Christ, has given us Himself in the Eucharist. What more beautiful thing could He do? I often say to the seminarians: if the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X has a particular spirituality - and I do not really want it to have one although I do not criticize the founders of Orders like St. Ignatius, Sts. Dominic and Vincent de Paul whom I know wanted to give particular characters to their societies, characters without doubt willed by Providence at the moment they were founded ‑ I think that if there is a particular mark to our Society it is devotion to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
How our spirits, our hearts, our bodies are as if captivated by the great mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! And it is in proportion to how we deepen our understanding of the great mystery of the Sacrifice of the Mass that we understand the priesthood, the grandeur of the priesthood. Because it is intimately, I say metaphysically, bound up with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And this is of the greatest importance in these times.
We have need of this, my dear friends. You have need of being captured by this spirituality of the Mass. Not only the priests but also our religious, our brothers, our nuns, and all of the laity, all of you faithful here present. We must have for the Sacrifice of the Mass a devotion greater than ever before because it is the very foundation stone of our faith.
THE SEMINARY REMAINS A CATHOLIC SEMINARY. AND IF GOD GIVES ME LIFE THE SEMINARY WILL NOT CHANGE!
I WOULD DIE RATHER THAN CHANGE ANY PART OF THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE WHICH MUST BE TAUGHT IN THE SEMINARY.
I hardly dare cite for you an example, something that happened in Chile during the three days I spent there. Still, because the idea occurs to me, I will indeed tell you if only to show the point of degradation the concept of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has reached in the minds of some of the highest members of the hierarchy. During my stay in Chile a concelebration was televised. It was presided over by the Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago. I myself did not see the screening but it was described to me by many people who saw it. There were some 15 or 20 priests concelebrating with him. During the ceremony the Auxiliary Bishop explained to the faithful, that is, everyone who was looking at the television, that this was a meal and he saw no reason why one should not smoke during a meal. And he himself smoked during that concelebration!
That is how far things have reached! This is the sad state of degradation, of sacrilege a bishop can attain. It is unheard of, inconceivable! Penance must be done for years in reparation for such offenses, for such unimaginable scandal! It serves to show how far one can go when one no longer believes.
We must be attached to the Sacrifice of the Mass as to the apple of our eye; as we are attached to that which is dearest to us, that which is the most respected, the most holy, the most sacred, the most divine. That is the meaning of this Seminary.
They may criticize the Seminary in any way they like. And they do. The Seminary is this way, that way. They have decided this about it, that about it. But in fact they decide nothing, change nothing. The Seminary stays as it is. It continues to be what it is because that was why it was founded. The Seminary remains a Catholic seminary. And if God gives me life the Seminary will not change. I would die rather than change any part of the Catholic doctrine which must be taught in the Seminary. With the grace of God, come what may, we will not change. So let them say what they will. Let them say that the Seminary has a new direction, the Seminary is this way or that. It is the Devil who says such things in order to destroy the Seminary. Obviously he cannot tolerate Catholic priests who have the faith.
And then, one cannot avoid speaking about it, all around us here and there in every country but particularly in France, there are divisions among those who are trying to hold to the faith, a mixture of calumny, slander, exaggerated words, foolish expressions, unjustified suppositions. Let us ignore it all. Let us instead work well, doing the will of God according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, continuing like our predecessors and our ancestors, doing what the Council of Trent asked of us, bishops, who must continue the formation which has always been given to priests. If we do this we will be certain we are remaining faithful.
That is enough. Let us remain calm. Let us remain faithful. And if it should ever come to be that the faith is not taught here, then leave me. If, my dear seminarians, I do not teach you Catholic truth, then leave! Do not stay here. That is your duty. But if I teach the Catholic Faith ‑ and you have the whole library at your disposal to find out whether or not what was handed to us is being handed down to you ‑ then, be confident. And we will do everything so that the Catholic Faith continues to be taught here, taught in its entirety so that you can, you too, carry on that truth that is so full of grace and life. Truth is the source of life. We have need of that life. The faithful are hungry for it. Why is it we have requests for priests from all sides? Because the faithful are thirsty for truth, thirsty for the grace of God, for the supernatural life, thirsty for that eternity toward which we are heading.
Therefore, have confidence in doing what the Church has always done - not confidence in Msgr. Lefebvre. I am a poor man like the others. I have no pretention to be better than others. On the contrary, I do not know why God has permitted me to have 30 years in the episcopate. I think that if I were to judge things on the human plane I would have preferred to remain a missionary in the jungles of Gabon; in isolation I would not have had all the problems I have had in my 30 years in the episcopate. But God has wanted it this way. He continues to try us. Very well, if that is His will so it must be and we must continue to carry the cross. It is not because He imposes crosses that we may abandon Him. On the contrary, we may not abandon Our Lord. We must follow Him.
And so, my dear friends, be faithful ‑ faithful to the Pope, successor of Peter when he shows himself to be truly the successor of Peter. Because that is what a pope is and it is in this sense we have need of him. We are not the people who want to break with the authority of the Church, with the successor of Peter. But neither are we people who want to break with twenty centuries of tradition in the Church, with twenty centuries of successors of Peter!
We have made our choice. We have chosen to be obedient in the real sense, obedient to what all the Popes have taught for 20 centuries and we cannot imagine that he who sits on Peter’s throne does not want to teach these things. Well, if that is the case then God will judge him. But we cannot go into error because there is a kind of rupture in the chain of the successors of Peter. We want to remain faithful to the successors of Peter who transmitted to us the Deposit of the Faith. It is in this sense that we are faithful to the Catholic Church, that we remain within it and can never go into schism. Since we are attached to twenty centuries of Faith we cannot make a schism. That is what guarantees for us the past, the present and the future. It is impossible to separate the past from the present and the future. Sustaining ourselves with the past we are sure of the present and the future.
So have confidence! Ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us under all circumstances. She is as strong as an army arrayed for battle. She who suffered as Queen of Martyrs at the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And will we not follow Our Blessed Mother and with her be ready to suffer martyrdom so that the work of redemption can continue?
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| Article by Archbishop Lefebvre in II Gionale di Bergamo in 1978 |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:31 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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This article, signed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, appeared in II Gionale di Bergamo on the day of the ordinations at Ecône
29 June 1978
On this Feastday of the holy Saints Peter and Paul we are going to ordain sixteen seminarians of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X and confer the major orders of the subdiaconate on another twenty-one seminarians whose formation we are constantly following at the Seminary of Ecône. The ceremony will not be postponed although we were asked to do so in a letter given us by the Nuncio in Berne in the name of Cardinal Seper.
In conferring Holy Orders we are reminded of the last exhortation of the risen Christ to the Apostles about the Kingdom of God. Peter himself, shortly after Pentecost, was warned by Caiphas not to act in the name of Jesus but he disregarded the ban expressed by the highest religious authority of the time and he told the first three thousand baptized that the Kingdom of God is kept by “persevering in the doctrine, in the fractione panis (the Mass) and in prayer.”
All the activity of the International Seminary of Ecône is contained in these three exhortations. The doctrine is not considered a philosophy resulting from studies which must be perfected, as some would have it nowadays, but a deposit given by Christ to the Church which must be faithfully preserved and whose sense may not be modified by human intelligence. The Holy Mass, the center of all the spirituality of the Ecône seminarians, is the daily renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross in a real way. It is the indispensable means for obtaining the spiritual strength which must be expressed in the apostolate of each priest with the sole aim of preaching and spreading the Kingdom of God for the eternal salvation of souls.
Like the great majority of present day Bishops we have had this very same formation which was decreed by the Popes ever since the Council of Trent. In 1974 the report of the Apostolic Visitors made after they had been to Ecône was very positive. Rome knows that we train priests the way the Church has trained them for over four centuries. It is well know there, too, that the opening of seminaries and the doctrinal formation relating to them is one of the principal duties of bishops, after that of defending faith and truth. Why then, do they wish to suppress Ecône? Why, eight days ago were they asking us to suspend the ordinations - to not make good priests? Is it the Holy Ghost who wishes this or is it the Devil?
Very grave reasons compel us to take the decision to continue our activity and to carry out the ordinations on the 29th of June. First of all, the present situation of the Church. In the face of general apostasy and the destruction of the Church from inside, provoked especially by the post-Conciliar reforms and the “open” spirit which dominated the Council, we think that for the good of the Church and for its very survival the ordination of good priests is absolutely indispensable. We read again with anguish the statement on the "auto-destruction" of the Church made by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI.
Secondly, there is the legal correctness of our situation. In November 1970 we obtained the authorization of the Bishop of Fribourg to form a fraternity in his diocese and to open seminaries according to a statute which was subsequently approved by Cardinal Wright, Prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy. It is difficult to understand how after five years suddenly there was the wish to suppress the seminary when we had changed nothing and done absolutely nothing to deserve the suppression.
Besides, the suppression in 1975 was carried out without any trial or any regular interrogation. We retain in conscience that we are not obliged to accept such an arbitrary decision because behind it we see a hand which is not that of the Church, an attitude and a lack of respect for Canon Law which is not that of the Church. These things force us to believe than an enemy has penetrated the Church and that it is he who orders us to close our seminary and to destroy our Society.
This enemy is Freemasonry. The constant advance of heresies and of apostasies obliges us to think of Masonic influence in the Curia - worse, of a Masonic Lodge inside the Vatican itself. Cardinals and Secretaries hold the offices of their predecessors who were virtuous, often saintly men, but they do not teach anymore the faith of their predecessors, preferring to support the spread of ideas contrary to Catholic doctrine and to preach ecumenism.
A decade of silence on the anathemata of the Council of Trent and of Pius VI against the Council of Pistoia; silence on the documents of the Church's social teaching – the Syllabus of Pius IX, Libertas and Immortalis Dei of Leo XIII, Pascendi Dorminici Gregis and the condemnation of the Sillon made by Saint Pius X, Quas Primas and Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI – to quote a few of the documents which treat of the authority of the Popes, this silence increases the suspicion that the Church is occupied by a “counter-Church” of protestant origin and committed to spreading all the errors which the Popes have condemned for more than four centuries.
What faith do they ask us to profess? That of all time with all the graces deriving from the Mass and from the Sacraments and with the devotion to Jesus Christ, to the Blessed Virgin and to the Saints? Or rather the faith of ecumenism which has produced the Catholic-Protestant Mass and the proliferation of every sort of unworthy cult, which denies the divinity of Jesus Christ and puts all religions on the same level?
They talk to us of obedience. We wish to and we try to obey more and more every day the Church of all time founded by Jesus Christ, Son of God and Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity but we refuse to obey Masonry with its promotion of liturgical reform resulting in the “naturalization of the Incarnation.” The effects of the liturgical reforms are every day more clear and obvious to all. The ecumenical Mass leads logically to apostasy. One cannot serve two masters. One cannot nourish oneself indifferently with truth and error because error with its evil tendencies will triumph over the more austere and demanding truth.
Another consequence one is apt to forget is the destruction of Catholic States. This is being done with the active collaboration of the Vatican. The Mass no longer represents the source of political unity based on the unity of the Catholic Faith. Thus, the Catholic State becomes an ecumenical and pluralistic State, then it soon becomes a neutral if not atheistic State in accordance with the Conciliar document on Religious Freedom.
Ecumenical liturgy, ecumenical Bibles, ecumenical catechisms are indeed a device of the Devil because they cover error with a certain amount of truth.
Ecône is an obstacle to those who wish to destroy the Mass and the Catholic priesthood. We are convinced insofar as we ordain priests whose spiritual life is modeled on that of Our Lord Jesus Christ that we are serving the Church and acting for the glory of God. We remind those that maintain that we are distancing ourselves from the Church that each of the faithful has the duty of not obeying orders contrary to the Faith. The obedience to ecclesiastical superiors finds a limit, in fact, when something harmful or clearly damaging is proposed or ordered in the name of obedience. He who remains faithful to the Catholic dispositions and institutions tested by centuries renders himself supremely worthy of the Church.
The accusation of separation and of schism made against us because we refuse to participate in the protestantization of the Church is ridiculous! It is, however, deserved by those who foment that same protestantization. Among them are those who have for a long time fallen away from the Catholic Faith and yet, in common with all the heretics of history, work to try to make the Church become like them and conform to their ideas. We cannot understand how intelligent people can state that they “prefer to err with the Pope rather than to be with truth against the Pope.”
If one day they shall excommunicate us because we remain faithful to these theses we shall consider ourselves excommunicated by Freemasonry. Our consolation will be that we remain in the company of God and of all the martyrs who have given their lives to keep the Faith.
The priests we ordain today and all their brothers of the Society of Saint Pius X are at the disposal of the Pope and of the Church at any moment to collaborate in the work of restoring omnia in Christo, that is, of bringing back Christ to the center of family and social life, of education and every juridical order.
In the meantime we shall continue in our attachment to the Mass of all time which is the expression of the Ten Commandments. What are the Ten Commandments except the love for God and for our fellow men? What renders better this love than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? God is glorified by Our Lord Jesus Christ through His sacrifice. There can be no greater act of charity for men than the sacrifice of Jesus who continues to offer His life for us.
This is our Faith. In this we believe and for this we pray. We trust in the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin that she may illuminate and strengthen Catholics of all the world and that the preaching of Christ crucified and of his social kingdom may increase.
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| Testimony concerning Archbishop Lefebvre by his private theologian at Vatican II |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:21 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Testimony of Fr. Victor-Alain Berto, the private theologian of Archbishop Lefebvre at the Second Vatican Council:
Quote:I say this in the presence of God: I had the very great and undeserved honor of being his theologian. Sworn confidentiality prevents me from speaking about the work that I did under him, but I betray no secret by telling you that Archbishop Lefebvre is a theologian, and by far superior to his own theologian, and God grant that all the [Council] Fathers might be theologians to the same degree as he is! He has a perfectly sure and refined theological habitus, to which his very great devotion to the Holy See adds that connaturality that allows him, even before discursive thinking intervenes, to discern intuitively what is and what is not compatible with the prerogatives of the Rock of the Church.
He in no way resembles those [Council] Fathers who, as one of them had the gall to boast publicly, used to take from the hands of a peritus [expert], in the car that was bringing them to St. Peter’s, the ‘ready-made’ text of their intervention in aula [in the Council Hall]. Not once did I submit to him a memorandum, a note, or an outline, without him reviewing, recasting, rethinking and sometimes rewriting them from start to finish, by his own personal, diligent work. I did not ‘collaborate’ with him; if the word were English I would say that I really ‘sublaborated' with him [i.e., worked under his supervision], in keeping with my status as a private theologian and his honor and dignity as a Father of an Ecumenical Council, a Judge and Doctor of the Faith together with the Roman Pontiff.” (January 3, 1964) Source
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As a complement to what Fr. Berto speaks of [above] in reference to the extensive knowledge of theology of Archbishop Lefebvre, it is interesting to note that the Archbishop held two doctorate degrees:
Quote:"Le 21 septembre 1929, Marcel Lefebvre est ordonné prêtre par Mgr Liénart en la chapelle Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur à Lille. Il revient ensuite à Rome pour préparer son doctorat en théologie, tout en faisant office de grand cérémoniaire au séminaire.Déjà titulaire d'un doctorat en philosophie, il obtient le doctorat de théologie le 2 juillet 1930."
"On September 21, 1929, Marcel Lefebvre was ordained a priest by Mgr. Liénart in the chapel of Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur in Lille. He then returned to Rome to prepare his doctorate in theology, while serving as master of ceremonies at the seminary. Already holding a doctorate in philosophy, he obtained his doctorate in theology on July 2, 1930."
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Archbishop Lefebvre had:
- a pre-Vatican II Catholic formation
- two doctorate degrees – one in philosophy and one in theology
- an anti-modernist, anti-liberal, anti-revolutionary formation by the great Fr. Le Floch*
He truly is the best guide and source to go to in this crisis in the Church!
*About Fr. Le Floch:
“Fr. Henri Le Floch was a teacher under whom one would give his eye-teeth to be formed. Thoroughly Catholic, thoroughly committed to the scholasticism of St. Thomas, thoroughly anti-liberal and anti-Modernist, thoroughly imbued with the Roman school of theology, and with the competence to convey these truths so they be central to one's life, Fr. Le Floch trained his men. Archbishop Lefebvre readily admitted that were it not for the solid formation he received from Fr. Le Floch, he too might have succumbed to the creeping liberalism of the age.” (John Vennari, article in The Angelus called,“Marcel Lefebvre, The Biography,” August 2005)
Archbishop Lefebvre in his own words:
- “He [Fr. Le Floch] was the one who taught us what the popes were to the world and the Church, what they had taught for a century and a half - against liberalism, modernism and Communism, and the whole doctrine of the Church on these topics. He really made us understand and share in this battle of the popes to preserve the world and the Church from these scourges which plague us today. That was a revelation to me.” (Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, The Biography p. 36)
- “Fr. Le Floch made us enter into and live the history of the Church, this fight that the perverse powers take to our Lord. We were mobilized against this dreadful liberalism, against the Revolution and the forces of evil which were trying to overcome the Church, the reign of our Lord, the Catholic States, and the whole of Christianity.” (Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, pp. 36-37)
- "I will never thank God enough for allowing me to know that truly extraordinary man." (Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, p. 35)
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1986 Conference 'Times of St. Athanasius' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-06-2020, 06:19 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Mesdames, Messieurs,
I thank Father Finnegan for having prepared on the occasion of my stop‑over this conference and the ceremony which is going to follow. Indeed I did not actually have any intention to give a special conference here on my way back from the trip which I did with Father Black. But it comes out to be a very propitious occasion.
This will allow me to give you, during the few moments of this conference, some more precise information on the present situation of the Church. Because it is my impression that many Catholics do not understand, cannot understand the real situation of the Church today. Now, in order to take the decision to continue faithfully the Catholic Church, to maintain our Catholic Faith, we must realize that the Catholic Faith is in danger. Unless we reflect carefully on the present situation, we may be led little by little to the complete loss of the Catholic Faith! This is unfortunately the case of many Catholics who are losing the Faith nowadays. And so I hope the short moments of this conference will be helpful to you and that you may draw out of it some personal fruits.
IN YOUR PARISH
Remember your reactions after the Council, and even during the Council, when you saw that your priests had a sudden change of attitude, even of exterior aspect. You saw your priests suddenly giving up their priestly garments. You heard them saying: “after all, we are men like everyone else, we need not to distinguish ourselves from other Catholics.” Then they had more familiar attitudes with you, with the population of their parishes; they were seen in cafes (or bars), in cinemas, without any sign of their priesthood, and you were surprised; you said, “But why? What is happening? Why do our priests change their attitude in such a way?”
And it is not only the priest’s attitude which surprised you, but when you went into your parish church, you noticed that the priest had no longer the soutane, he was putting the alb upon his civil garment, or he did not put on sacred vestments; that the priest no longer did any genuflections before our Blessed Lord. And suddenly you noticed that the tabernacle disappeared from the high altar; you knew no longer where the Blessed Sacrament was; then a table replaced the altar, the statues of the saints were disappearing. And you wondered “What on earth is happening? Why all these changes? We did not ask for all this! What is happening to these priests, for they are changing out most holy religion?” And you were right to be puzzled; all these rapid changes at the end of the Council and in the few years after were truly astonishing and bewildering. And you wondered: “But how all this could have happened?”
And then you saw little by little lay people taking practically the place of the priest; men and even women reading the Epistle, the Gospel and even distributing the Holy Communion. And the priest was sitting while lay persons were giving Communion, and were giving the Most Blessed Sacrament in the hands! Maybe you knelt down to receive your Lord, and the priest gave you a sign to stand up, that now you should receive Communion in the hands. And you wondered: “but does the priest still believe in the real presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist?”
And even worse, one day you noticed that your priest was…gone! He had left the parish and got married! And you learned that there were not only one, not only two, but thousands of priests who were gone and had married! Recently a meeting took place near Castel Gandolfo, about three months ago, a meeting of representatives of married priests. At this meeting they claimed they were 70,000! Seventy thousand married priests! That is one priest out of five who had married, abandoned his priesthood. And you even learned that this one or that married a nun! You learned that thousands of nuns were leaving their convents and getting married. “What is happening in the Church?”
YOUR BISHOP
And so you decided to write to your bishops. You told them: “We cannot continue like that, it is not lawful, these changes are not normal, not Catholic.” You decided to write to your bishop to ask for some explanations, to ask: “how can it happen that our priests are forsaking their priesthood? How can it happen that our priests do not believe any longer in their priesthood and are replaced by laymen?” And you did well.
But you were surprised by the reaction of your bishop. Your bishop answered you: “But now one must follow the spirit of the Council. There has been the Second Vatican Council, you must not forget this, so you must not wonder if there are now some changes in the Church.” Moreover, you learned that the one who presided at the marriage of this or that priest in the diocese was the bishop himself! The bishop himself marrying his priests in his private chapel! And he was explaining to his faithful that from now on this priest had found “another way” to realize his Christian life, and thus he did not find any difficulty to be present at this marriage.
And then you learned that the little seminary was sold. They had sold the little seminary because “now there was no need for a little seminary; seminarians must go in colleges like any other child, no need for a little seminary.” And even one day you learned that there was no longer a major seminary of the diocese! The major seminary was sold; the government or the town had bought it to make of it a house for students. “But where are our seminarians? Shall we still have some priests?” “Well, now, our seminarians, they live in flats and they follow the courses at the university because they must keep in touch with the world. Priests ought to be in contact with the world. So in flats, they can invite other young men, young girls, they can have contacts, live as the other men. There is no need to make distinctions between clerics and faithful.” And then you learned that there were almost no seminarians, that the bishop was ordaining only one or two priests per year in the diocese while in the past it was usual to have fifteen, twenty or thirty priests ordained.
And so you were even more bewildered and said: “So it is not only my parish, it is now the diocese, the diocese is now contaminated!” And one day you decided to pay a visit to your bishop and you found him in civil clothes, no more sign of his episcopate, no pectoral cross, no episcopal ring, nothing, like a manager, a businessman.
And not only this, but one day you learned through your children that the catechism in schools was changed, that the Old Catechism was no longer taught, that the bishop had now decided that the catechism had to be changed. And so you took your children’s catechism, you looked into it and exclaimed: “but what is this? In this catechism they do not speak of purgatory, they do not speak of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they do not speak of angels, they do not speak of original sin! But the Faith, is the Faith changed? Shall our children learn the Faith as we were taught it? What is this? Why?”
ROME
So you decided to write to Rome. And many did write to Rome to complain about their bishops. They said: “Do our bishops have the right to change the Catechism? And in a little while we shall have no more priests, because there is no longer any seminary! What shall the Catholic Church become? Our children do not want to enter the seminary any more, do not want to become priests, because why become a priest if these priests marry and say they are men like others. So vocations have disappeared.” So you wrote to Rome and you did well.
You wrote to Rome. Very often you do not receive any answer at all. So many letters of complaints, of despair, reach Rome that they are not answered. Or if they are answered, it is a very short answer: “You must have confidence in your bishop; you must have confidence in the episcopal conference of your country . You must know from now on that there has been the Second Vatican Council and so you must adapt to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.”
And then you learn that in Rome also there are unbelievable ceremonies. One day charismatic groups were received in St. Peter’s basilica, and thus in St. Peter’s truly scandalous manifestations happened: all these charismatics lifting their arms in the air, shouting, screaming, falling down, embracing each other in a shameful way, scandalous way, in St. Peter’s basilica itself! And even recently in St. Mary Major’s basilica, the great and beautiful church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in Rome, we were told that the same charismatics sang their songs as usual and did the same scandalous exterior corporal manifestations.
And if you tried to go during the week at Mass at St. Peter’s, you could see that in St. Peter’s also the Cardinal in charge of the Vatican basilica says Mass on a table, a marble table but still a table; it is no longer the beautiful Altar of the Blessed Sacrament or the beautiful Papal Altar or the beautiful Altar of the Four Doctors of the Church in the back of the sanctuary of St. Peter’s basilica, no, it is on a table facing the people, without consecrated stone for the Sacrifice, with little respect for the Blessed Sacrament.
And one must say it, it was in the newspapers, I do not invent it. We have all learned that the Pope went for a ceremony, participated in a ceremony with the Lutherans in Rome, in the Lutheran temple of Rome! And we recently learned that the Pope had sent some delegates for the laying down of the first stone of the Mosque in Rome!
And we learned recently that with the change of concordate in Italy, Rome was no longer a holy city. Up until now, Rome was considered as a sacred city, a holy city by the Italian government. From now on, Rome is not a holy city; therefore, anything can be done in it, the most scandalous things from the government, from the mayor of Rome, the Pope can no longer say anything while before he could intervene in order, for example, to forbid precisely the building of a mosque or the building of a temple; he could forbid this because Rome was considered as the Holy City of Catholicism.
And we understand that, in his travels, the Pope accepts practically all that he is asked to do. Some ceremonies have truly no longer the Catholic character: the way Holy Communion is sometimes distributed is painful; the Blessed Sacrament is put into plastic bags and those who distribute the Holy Eucharist take them under their arms, as it happened in Paris, as it happened in Canada, they put the plastic bags under their arms and then distribute the Sacred Hosts as one distributes ordinary pieces of bread or any kind of food! So these kinds of things are truly unheard of and we ask ourselves, “But what on earth happened to Holy Mother Church? Because we can see considerable changes even in the highest places, even in Rome.”
THE PERSECUTION
So if you know someone in Rome, as I personally know some cardinals who are traditional, who have the traditional spirit, you go and see them; Cardinal Pallazini, for instance, Cardinal Oddi. What do these cardinals say about the situation of Rome? What do these cardinals say about the situation of the whole world, of the whole Catholic world? They also are frightened, in desolation. “But what can we do?” and they say: “If we speak, if we raise our voices we shall be eliminated, we shall be expelled from our places!” Indeed, there is a persecution of the Traditionalists, a persecution of all those who want to keep the Tradition, from the cardinals even to the bishops, to the priests, to the faithful. ALL those who are traditionalist are persecuted. The poor Cardinal Ottaviani passed years after the Council in true sorrow, feeling that he was despised, he who was a man of such wonderful rectitude, of such a wonderful firmity in the Doctrine; even during the Council he was despised in a shameful way. And all the other traditional cardinals have been eliminated. And progressive, modernist cardinals were put in their stead; they are for the changes, for the novelties in the Church. Thus now in Rome you have these cardinals: Cardinal Casaroli, Cardinal Baggio and Cardinal Polletti, the Cardinal Vicar, and you have as Secretary to the Congregatio to the Divine Worship Virgilio Noe, people who are entirely against Tradition; they do not want to see it at all, they are against, absolutely against. As soon as someone is attached to the Tradition, he must be eliminated, he must be pushed outside of the services of the Church.
Thus many traditional bishops gave their resignations. I know many bishops; I would take the example of Bishop MacQuett, Archbishop of Dublin who felt despised after the Council because he was attached to Tradition. He gave his resignation and six weeks later he died. I am sure he died out of sorrow, sorrow for what was happening in the Church, sorrow to feel that he, a man so dedicated to the Pope, dedicated to the Church for all his life, was despised in such a way by Rome itself. This had bewildered him and practically killed him. Also here (in California) I think of Cardinal McIntyre, who was also very attached to the Tradition. He also was put aside. Cardinal Siri, who is still the Cardinal of Genoa, was president of the episcopal conference in Italy before the arrival of Pope Paul VI. When Pope Paul VI arrived, he took him off the presidency of the Italian Episcopal Conference because he was attached to the Tradition. One could quote similar cases everywhere, in every country. Priests - and you certainly know some priests and you have some of them here among the older priests, you know some of them - were persecuted by their bishops because they were keeping the Tradition.
And if I, myself, am persecuted, and I have been and still am persecuted in my seminaries, in my Society, if I am persecuted it is because I am attached to Tradition, and they hate me because I keep Tradition in my seminaries. And all the lay faithful have a similar case: lay people attached to Tradition are thrown out of their parishes. You have there, my dear brethren, a very tragic situation in the Church.
As I see that the time now is getting long, I will conclude the conference. I feel it necessary to say that all of these changes which we have considered this morning have been the result not of hazard or just pure accident, but they are the result of the application of a doctrine, the doctrines of modernism and of liberalism which have been introduced into the Church. And Pope Saint Pius X had predicted it. Pope Saint Pius X said: “Now the enemy is within the Church, the enemy is in the seminaries.” He said that himself. So from these seminaries came forth some priests; from these priests came forth bishops and even a Pope, with these liberal ideas, with the modernist ideas.
WHAT IS MODERNISM
If one tries to give a definition, or at least a clear idea of these modernist and liberal ideas, of what do they consist? “The Church is no longer the only true religion.” Here you have one of the truths denied by all these modernists and liberals now. “The Church is no longer the only way of salvation.” This is very grievous, because for twenty centuries the Church has affirmed this: “I am the only way of salvation.” The Church was saying: “Our Lord Jesus Christ gave me all means of salvation; He did not give them to any other group. He gave His Sacrifice of the Mass, His Sacraments, His teaching and all the care of the salvation of souls to His Apostles, to the Church, and to no other group. Therefore, one cannot be saved outside the Church, at least through Baptism of Desire; one must be baptized, baptized by water or at least by desire; this is necessary to go to Heaven.” This is what the Church has always preached. Why did She send missionaries throughout the world? To preach: “you must be converted to our Lord Jesus Christ, you must become Christian, you must be baptized and become Catholic if you want to be baptized!” Many missionaries have been killed, slaughtered, all the Apostles have been martyred because they have preached this Gospel, because they have preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. But now they say: “No! All religions are ways of salvation.” My dear brethren, this is false, absolutely false! And it is precisely this which changes everything inside the Church. This influence comes from Protestantism and from Freemasonry; one must say it, these are Masonic ideas that the Church must not claim to be the only way of salvation. If the Church wants to be friend with Protestants and Freemasons, She must give up saying that She is the only way of salvation. She must accept to say that all religions are ways of salvation. But this is contrary to what our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said! Our Lord said: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; he who shall believe shall be saved, he who shall not believe shall be condemned.” No other choice!
Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. Now if there is an example which is given to us today and which contradicts the errors which are spreading in the Church, it is in this feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. St. Peter said at the very beginning of his apostolate: “there is no other name given to men on earth by which men ought to be saved than the Name of Jesus.” Thus there is no other name by which we can go to Heaven than the Name of Jesus! And the Church is the Mystical spouse of our Lord. There is only ONE Mystical Spouse of our Lord; it is through Her that we may be saved. This is what has always been the Catholic Faith.
So now we are in a very grievous situation in the Church, because everywhere within the Church is spread the idea that all religions are ways of salvation and that the Holy Ghost is working in all of them. Now I do not know how the Good Lord will solve Himself this grievous problem, but for us the conclusion which we ought to draw from all the facts which I quoted, from the present situation, is that we must remain Catholics, we must believe in the Catholic Church. We say it in our Creed: “Unam Sanctam Catholicam Apostolicam Ecclesiam." Unam: One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. ONE, there are not two, but ONE! We must believe this, and absolutely refuse to follow these false ideas which are spreading everywhere in the Church, that one may be saved in any religion; this would be to ruin the Church. The Church would no longer have Her “raison d’ê‑tre”, reason for being. If one may be saved in any religion, why the Church? Why? She has no longer any reason for being. This was the very “raison d’être” of the Church - to be the Way of Salvation and to work with all Her strength to convert souls so that they may become Catholic in order to go to Heaven, to be saved.
So in this feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, let all of us here present take the resolution to keep the Faith as the Tradition kept it, the traditional Faith as the Church has always given it to us, to keep Her teaching, to keep Her Catechism of the Council of Trent in which are summed up all the truths of our Faith, to keep the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to keep the Sacraments as before for you, for your children, and above all, gather yourselves around priests who are keeping the Faith. Do not hesitate, do not listen to criticism neither from modernist bishops nor from modernist priests in your parishes. Do not listen; follow the Catholic priests, those who are keeping the Catechism, those who are keeping the Faith. These are in the Truth, these shall save your souls. Do not be afraid, otherwise you will do as, for instance, the Catholics in England did when they passed to Anglicanism. They followed their priests, they followed their bishops, and they became Anglicans, they became heretics, they went out of the Catholic Church. If you also follow your progressive priests, if you follow your progressive bishops, you shall become progressive and that is no longer Catholic. This is a new error, a new heresy. Let us remain Catholic! In order to know what is Catholic, let us look at what the Church has done for twenty centuries, had taught; let us keep what the Church has done for twenty centuries. It is not possible that the Church would have been wrong for twenty centuries. So let us attach ourselves to twenty centuries of Tradition and we continue to do the same.
I ask you to pray during this ceremony asking for the grace of remaining Catholic and that we may continue our work in our seminaries for our priests, to make Catholic priests, to continue the work and encourage religious Monks and Nuns to remain true Monks, true Nuns. Here in America you have the priory at Campbell with your priests, you have the Seminary at Ridgefield; some seminarians from around here are in Ridgefield. You have the Carmel recently opened at Philadelphia with American Sisters, you have the College of St. Mary’s in Kansas, where a group of priests and nuns are keeping the Tradition. The College is wonderful and is working very well; I wish that you support it. And there will soon be at Armada, Michigan, near Detroit, a novitiate of the Sisters who are now at St. Mary’s; they will have a Novitiate for the Sisters of the Society. This is encouraging news, this shows that there are still vocations, there are good vocations, but they must be led according to Tradition.
So let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the end, let us ask her to help us to remain Catholic, to love her Divine Son. She is not ecumenical; the Virgin Mary believes that there is only one Savior, her Son Jesus, Whose Mother she is. She knows that it is by Him that every soul may be saved. If one asks the Blessed Virgin Mary whether there is another name by which one may be saved than the Name of her Divine Son, she would answer: “No! This is impossible!” Every time she came on earth, that she appeared, she appeared either with her Divine Son, or she encouraged souls to come to her Divine Son in order to be saved. So we ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to make the Church remain Catholic and during this Mass I promise you to pray for you, for your families, for all those who are in hesitation that they may come to the Truth, that they may return to the Truth, that they remain attached to the Tradition.
My dear brethren, I thank you for your attention..
Someone asked that I give in a few words what is my situation, the situation in which I find myself in the Church, in which you find yourselves also. Well, I think that the shortest answer, the simplest answer, is this: we are in the situation in which St. Athanasius found himself. I am not St. Athanasius, I am not a saint, but he found himself in the same situation. All the Church had passed to Arianism; the great majority of bishops, the Pope himself was favorable to a certain kind of “semi‑Arianism.” Well, St. Athanasius was excommunicated by the Pope! And Athanasius became a saint. He was visiting everywhere, he was going everywhere. He was saying Mass in chapels everywhere in order to maintain the Catholic Faith against Arianism. We are in a situation fairly similar. It is not Arianism but modernism; modernism which is, as Pope Pius X himself said, the synthesis collecting all heresies. Now this modernism is underneath everywhere, is spreading everywhere in the Church, even in Rome. Well, we defend our Faith, we defend the Catholic Faith. As St. Athanasius was saying to those who attacked him, “you have kept the churches, you have kept the monuments, we have kept the Faith! Faith is more important than monuments!” Well, we are in the same situation. So let us pray to St. Athanasius that he may give us the courage to follow him so that one day Holy Mother Church may find again Her good Tradition.
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| December 6th - St. Nicholas |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-06-2020, 01:12 AM - Forum: December
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Saint Nicholas
Archbishop of Myra in Lycia
(† 342)
Saint Nicholas, the patron Saint of Russia, has won the warmest of praises from other Saints such as Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Peter Damian, who called him the glory of young men, the honor of the elderly, the splendor of priests and the light of Pontiffs. All the world was filled with his praises, Saint Peter added. The universal Church, in the Collect of his office, claims that God made known his nobility by an infinite number of miracles.
He was born during the third century, nephew of the Archbishop of Myra. He had lost his parents while still very young, and he desired not to conserve his rich heritage. Gradually he gave away everything of which he could dispose, establishing dowries for poor maidens and seeking out the needy wherever they could be found. The Archbishop, his uncle, already aware of his vocation to sanctity, ordained Saint Nicholas priest and appointed him Abbot of the monastery of Holy Sion near Myra. He undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, resurrecting a sailor who fell from a mast during the voyage; he prayed for the frightened passengers in a near-fatal tempest and calmed it. He visited Saint Anthony of the Desert and healed many sick persons in Alexandria during a stopover in Egypt.
On the death of the Archbishop of Myra, he was elected to the vacant see. Immediately after the pontifical Mass, he resurrected an infant who had fallen into a fire.
A persecution broke out under the emperor Licinius; Saint Nicholas was banished and kept in chains. He suffered from severe mistreatment but returned to his church when Constantine the Great defeated Licinius, and in 313 then put a definitive end to the persecutions. Saint Nicholas labored in his domains to stop the worship of false gods, still practiced there as elsewhere. With his own hands he cut down a huge tree, site of a sacrilegious cult of the goddess Diana. During a famine his prayers multiplied the provisions of wheat which he had ordered for the port of Myra, to such an extent that what would have sufficed for his people for only a few days, was found to be sufficient for more than two years. He rescued from death, just before they were hanged, three innocents condemned by a judge who had been corrupted by money, reprehended the latter for his crime and sent these liberated ones home, entirely exonerated.
Throughout his life he retained the bright and simple manners of his early years; no one could converse with him without finding himself spiritually renewed. Saint Nicholas was the special protector of the innocent and the wronged. He is usually represented at the side of a container in which a cruel butcher had concealed the bodies of three young persons, whom he had killed and was intending to use in his commerce, but who were restored to life by the Saint. This miracle was reported by Saint Bonaventure in a sermon.
Saint Nicholas rejoiced when God made known to him that the end of his pilgrimage was near. He retired to his Monastery of Holy Sion, and after a short but intense episode of fever, died in the year 342. He is the patron of schoolchildren, sailors, travelers and pilgrims, prisoners and many others. His relics were translated in 1087 to Bari, Italy, where a church was built in their honor. And there, after fifteen centuries, the manna of Saint Nicholas still flows from his bones and heals all kinds of illnesses.
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| December 5th - St. Sabas |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-05-2020, 12:32 AM - Forum: December
- Replies (2)
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Saint Sabas
Patriarchal Abbot in Palestine
(439-531)
Saint Sabas, one of the most renowned patriarchs of the monks of Palestine, was born in the year 439, near Caesarea. At the age of fifteen, in the absence of his parents, he suffered under the conduct of an uncle, and weary of the world's problems decided to forsake the world and enter a monastery not far from his family home. After he had spent ten years in religious life, his two uncles and his parents attempted to persuade him to leave the monastery to which he had migrated in Palestine. He replied: Do you want me to be a deserter, leaving God after placing myself in His service? If those who abandon the militia of earthly kings are severely punished, what chastisement would I not deserve if I abandoned that of the King of heaven?
When he was thirty years old, desiring greater solitude, he began to live an angelic life so far above nature that he seemed no longer to have a body. The young sage, as he was called by Saint Euthymius, Abbot of a nearby monastery, dwelt in a cavern on a mountain near Jerusalem, where he prayed, sang Psalms and wove baskets of palm branches. He was forty-five years old when he began to direct those who came to live as hermits, as he did, and he gave each of them a place to build a cell; soon this was the largest monastery of Palestine. He left the region when certain agitators complained of him, for he considered himself incapable of maintaining good discipline. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sallustus, did not easily credit the complaints, and instead ordained Sabas a priest, that he might say Mass for his disciples — for they had been displeased by his lack of desire for that honor. He was at that time fifty-three years old. The Patriarch presented him to them as their father, whom they should obey and honor, and made him Superior of all the Palestine monasteries. But several monks remained obstinate, and Saint Sabas again went elsewhere, to a cavern near Scythopolis.
As the years passed, he was in charge of seven monasteries; but his influence was not limited to Palestine. The heresies afflicting religion were being sustained by the emperor of Constantinople, who had exiled the Catholic Patriarch of that city, Elias. Saint Sabas converted the one who had replaced Elias, and wrote to the emperor that he should cease to persecute the Church of Jerusalem, and to impose taxes on the cities of Palestine which they were unable to pay. In effect, the people were reduced to extreme misery. The emperor died soon afterwards, and the pious Justin replaced him. Justin restored the true faith by an edict and recalled the exiles, re-establishing the exiled prelates in their sees.
When Saint Sabas was ninety-one years old, he made the long journey to Constantinople to ask Justinian, successor to Justin, not to act with severity against the province of Palestine, where a revolt had occurred by the non-submission of a group of Samaritans. The emperor honored him highly and wished to endow his monasteries with wealth, but the holy Patriarch asked him to use the riches he was offering to build a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem, to decorate the unfinished Church of the Blessed Virgin, to build a fortress where the monks could take refuge when barbarians invaded the land, and finally, to re-establish preaching of the true Faith, by edicts proscribing the various errors being propagated. The holy Abbot lived to be ninety-two years old, and died in 531, in the arms of the monks of his first monastery.
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| Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:41 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’
‘I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking,’ the Pope said.
VATICAN CITY, December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The leader of the Catholic Church quoted today in a tweet words that are central to Joe Biden’s plan to remake America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To help our society to ‘build back better’, inclusion of the vulnerable must also entail efforts to promote their active participation,” tweeted the Pope on Dec. 3, linking to a message he gave for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual observance instituted by the United Nations several decades ago.
In his Dec. 3 message, Pope Francis said he finds the expression “building back better” quite striking, noting that the theme for this year’s celebration is “Building Back Better: Toward a Disability-inclusive, Accessible and Sustainable post-COVID-19 World.”
“I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking. It makes me think of the Gospel parable of the house built on rock or sand (cf. Mt 7:24-27; Lk 6:46-49),” said the Pope.
While the theme of the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities” is “Building Back Better,” the Pope’s tweet of the theme dropped the gerund on “building,” making the quote in the tweet identical to the slogan of Biden’s campaign platform.
Last week, Biden launched his BuildBackBetter.gov website hosted on a U.S. government server. Previously, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) had formally notified Biden that he would now be receiving transition funds. Part of the package includes receiving a government domain for a transition website. Biden pointed his followers to it with a simple tweet on Nov. 23.
“The website lists Biden’s priorities as curbing COVID-19 (including urging state and local authorities to force mask-wearing in their jurisdictions), economic recovery (with little in the way of specifics), racial equality (including the creation of a “national police oversight commission”), and climate change (primarily via a dramatic increase in government spending),” LifeSite’s Calvin Freiburger reported.
LifeSite’s Patrick Delaney has noted in a Nov. 2 report how Biden’s campaign plans align with a radical international socialist plan called “The Great Reset.” Globalist elites have characterized the “Great Reset” as a plan to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate [in the Great Reset], and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a June 3, 2020 article published on WEF’s website.
Such a “reset means a revolution: a deep transformation of all that is done, thought, or believed — making a clean break with the past,” wrote LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits.
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute recently observed that Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan “comes straight from the Great Reset’s playbook,” and will even use the same terminology.
“It can’t be a coincidence that Biden is now using that exact language while calling for nearly identical policies. Biden is clearly taking his cues from the World Economic Forum and other supporters of the Great Reset,” he wrote in a July 23 article published on Fox Business.
LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen noted that Pope Francis’s opinion piece published in the New York Times on Thanksgiving Day “echoed the sentiments of Joe Biden and other pushers of the so-called Great Reset, calling for the world to ‘build a better, different, human future.’”
The Pope’s piece “reads like a page from Biden’s Build Back Better campaign,” commented Westen. He pointed out that the name of “Jesus” or “Christ” never appears in the piece, and “God” is mentioned only once, assisting in the push for the new agenda.
Earlier this month, Biden related how he and the Pope had talked on the phone after the presidential election and how the Holy Father had extended “blessings and congratulations.”
In a short press statement released on the Biden-Harris transition website, Biden “thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness’ leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.”
In his address to persons with disabilities today, the Pope reaffirmed the “right of persons with disabilities to receive the sacraments” but failed to mention the right of such persons to be born. In Iceland, every baby diagnosed with the disability of Down syndrome is aborted, and the majority of unborn babies with Down syndrome are targeted for abortion in various other parts of the world.
“Iceland is not alone in its aspirations to create a “Down syndrome-free” world,” wrote Lauren Bell in a 2017 report. “The holocaust of Down syndrome babies is a global epidemic, taking the lives of human beings created in the image of God on the basis of a prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome,” she added.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:41 AM - Forum: Great Reset
- No Replies
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Pope takes up Biden’s campaign slogan, tweets society must ‘build back better’
‘I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking,’ the Pope said.
VATICAN CITY, December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The leader of the Catholic Church quoted today in a tweet words that are central to Joe Biden’s plan to remake America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To help our society to ‘build back better’, inclusion of the vulnerable must also entail efforts to promote their active participation,” tweeted the Pope on Dec. 3, linking to a message he gave for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual observance instituted by the United Nations several decades ago.
In his Dec. 3 message, Pope Francis said he finds the expression “building back better” quite striking, noting that the theme for this year’s celebration is “Building Back Better: Toward a Disability-inclusive, Accessible and Sustainable post-COVID-19 World.”
“I find the expression ‘building back better’ quite striking. It makes me think of the Gospel parable of the house built on rock or sand (cf. Mt 7:24-27; Lk 6:46-49),” said the Pope.
While the theme of the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities” is “Building Back Better,” the Pope’s tweet of the theme dropped the gerund on “building,” making the quote in the tweet identical to the slogan of Biden’s campaign platform.
Last week, Biden launched his BuildBackBetter.gov website hosted on a U.S. government server. Previously, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) had formally notified Biden that he would now be receiving transition funds. Part of the package includes receiving a government domain for a transition website. Biden pointed his followers to it with a simple tweet on Nov. 23.
“The website lists Biden’s priorities as curbing COVID-19 (including urging state and local authorities to force mask-wearing in their jurisdictions), economic recovery (with little in the way of specifics), racial equality (including the creation of a “national police oversight commission”), and climate change (primarily via a dramatic increase in government spending),” LifeSite’s Calvin Freiburger reported.
LifeSite’s Patrick Delaney has noted in a Nov. 2 report how Biden’s campaign plans align with a radical international socialist plan called “The Great Reset.” Globalist elites have characterized the “Great Reset” as a plan to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate [in the Great Reset], and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a June 3, 2020 article published on WEF’s website.
Such a “reset means a revolution: a deep transformation of all that is done, thought, or believed — making a clean break with the past,” wrote LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits.
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute recently observed that Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan “comes straight from the Great Reset’s playbook,” and will even use the same terminology.
“It can’t be a coincidence that Biden is now using that exact language while calling for nearly identical policies. Biden is clearly taking his cues from the World Economic Forum and other supporters of the Great Reset,” he wrote in a July 23 article published on Fox Business.
LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen noted that Pope Francis’s opinion piece published in the New York Times on Thanksgiving Day “echoed the sentiments of Joe Biden and other pushers of the so-called Great Reset, calling for the world to ‘build a better, different, human future.’”
The Pope’s piece “reads like a page from Biden’s Build Back Better campaign,” commented Westen. He pointed out that the name of “Jesus” or “Christ” never appears in the piece, and “God” is mentioned only once, assisting in the push for the new agenda.
Earlier this month, Biden related how he and the Pope had talked on the phone after the presidential election and how the Holy Father had extended “blessings and congratulations.”
In a short press statement released on the Biden-Harris transition website, Biden “thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness’ leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.”
In his address to persons with disabilities today, the Pope reaffirmed the “right of persons with disabilities to receive the sacraments” but failed to mention the right of such persons to be born. In Iceland, every baby diagnosed with the disability of Down syndrome is aborted, and the majority of unborn babies with Down syndrome are targeted for abortion in various other parts of the world.
“Iceland is not alone in its aspirations to create a “Down syndrome-free” world,” wrote Lauren Bell in a 2017 report. “The holocaust of Down syndrome babies is a global epidemic, taking the lives of human beings created in the image of God on the basis of a prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome,” she added.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| US govt to issue wallet-sized COVID-19 proof of vaccination cards |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 07:03 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
- No Replies
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US govt to issue wallet-sized COVID-19 proof of vaccination cards
Releasing the image on the Department of Defense (DOD) website, the description says that they 'will be sent out as part of vaccination kits from Operation Warp Speed.'
WASHINGTON D.C., December 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – As COVID-19 vaccines prepare to be rolled out, the Department of Defense has released an image of a wallet-sized vaccination record card, which will be given to everyone who receives a COVID-19 vaccine.
Releasing the image on the Department of Defense (DOD) website, the description says that they “will be sent out as part of vaccination kits from Operation Warp Speed.”
The kit will further include “a card, a needle and syringe, alcohol wipes and a mask.”
Reporting on the news of the card, Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition which is involved in distributing the vaccine, said “Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due. Let’s do the simple, easy thing first. Everyone’s going to get that.”
Moore also stated that people would be widely asked to volunteer their cell number, in order to “get a text message telling them when and where their next dose is scheduled to be administered.”
CNN added that “Vaccination clinics will also be reporting to their state immunization registries what vaccine was given, so that, for example, an entity could run a query if it didn't know where a patient got a first dose.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services, in an updated instruction on their website, includes mention of the vaccine record card. Providers of the vaccine “must provide a completed COVID-19 vaccination record card to every COVID-19 Vaccine recipient.” The card will be included in the vaccine shipment.
Similar information regarding the use of the vaccine record card is contained on the Department of Health for Minnesota’s website.
A document detailing the vaccination program, compiled by the CDC, consistently refers to the vaccination card. “Provide a completed COVID-19 vaccination record card to every vaccine recipient/parent/legal representative,” the document states, when listing the duties of a vaccine provider.
In an October article Dr. Michael Yeadon,who “spent over 30 years leading new [allergy and respiratory] medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies,” and retired from the COVID-19 vaccine developer, Pfizer, with “the most senior research position in this field,” dismissed the need for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Yeadon stated: “There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.”
The technology involved in administering the vaccine, as used by Pfizer and Moderna, is so novel that it has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, as admitted by Pfizer itself.
It also avails of “messenger RNA,” which directly affects a person’s cells, and is “a vaccine technology that’s so new, no mRNA vaccines have ever been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”
Doctors from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), advising the CDC, warned that patients needed to be informed about the side-effects of COVID-19 vaccines. According to a report from CNBC, Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association stressed, “We really need to make patients aware that this is not going to be a walk in the park,” she said. “They are going to know they had a vaccine. They are probably not going to feel wonderful. But they’ve got to come back for that second dose.”
Some of the immediate results from some of the vaccine trials have included “severe” complications, involving headaches, fever, body aches and symptoms similar to a “severe hangover.
Contact
To register complaints and concerns about the vaccination card, visit the U.S Department of Health and Human Services page or the Centers for Disease Control here and here.
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| ‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 06:44 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
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‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’
The exiled archbishop had harsh words for the 'Great Reset' and those seeking to implement it
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December 3, 2020 (Inside the Vatican) — “O God, you are awesome from your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives strength and power to his people.” —Psalm 68:35
On November 19, 2020, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, declared that “Covid is an opportunity for a global reset.”
In reality, Schwab was slavishly repeating what Jacques Attali said in the French weekly L’Express on May 3, 2009 [so, 11 years ago]: “History teaches us that humanity evolves significantly only when it is really afraid: then it initially develops defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes useless (distractions); sometimes effective (therapies, which, if necessary, may depart from all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis is over, fear transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and inscribe them as policies of a healthy democracy.”
Back then it was the swine flu which, according to the media, was expected to cause millions of deaths and for which nations bought millions of doses of vaccines never used, because they proved useless, from “Big Pharma.” Useless for all — except for those who sold them, making huge profits.
One might wonder why a flu virus that according to recent WHO data has a mortality (0.13%) slightly higher than that of a normal seasonal flu syndrome (0.10%) could have led to the declaration of the pandemic and to a series of practically identical countermeasures in almost all European nations and the American continent.
One might also wonder why Covid-19 treatments are generally discredited, minimized or prohibited, while the vaccine is considered the most effective solution.
And it needs to be explained how it is possible to create a vaccine, since — according to the statements of the US CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — the virus has not yet been isolated.
What antigen may be used, if the virus SARS-CoV-2 cannot be isolated and replicated?
And what reliability can the virus tests have, since the tests are calibrated to detect only on the generic “Coronavirus” in general? And if on October 19 the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome announced the develop of a test that distinguishes between normal flu and Covid-19, may we know what so far have patients who undergo the new test been found positive for?
Perhaps this lack of clarity is why some members of the Moderna and Pfizer boards of directors have sold part of their company shares. So let’s go back to the questions that many posed to themselves months ago, and to the never-contradicted contents of my two Open Letters to President Trump: a world plan appears in its disconcerting reality. The architects of the plan, creating an unjustified social alarm about an alleged pandemic — that today we see is no more serious than a normal flu, as confirmed by official data from all over the world — has been used to create a tremendous global social and economic crisis and so to legitimize the drastic reduction of the basic rights of the population. It is what its authors themselves call the Great Reset: the global reset of the economy, of society and of masses of people.
In this project, the Covid virus plays a fundamental role, as an alibi that justifies — in the face of the “totem” of a science that has prostituted itself to the interests of an elite after having abdicated its mission to save human lives — the deprivation of freedom, the interference of governments in the private life of its citizens, the establishment of a pseudo-health regime in which, against all objective scientific evidence, the number of diners, the distance between people, the possibility of buying, selling, breathing and even praying, is decided from above.
Someone, in the deafening silence of the Catholic Hierarchy, has imposed the closure of churches or the limitation of religious celebrations, considering the House of God as a cinema or a museum, but at the same time declaring abortion clinics “essential services.”
These are the paradoxes of a misguided power, managed by people corrupt in the soul and sold out to Satan, a power which, after obsessively repeating the mantras of “democracy” and “power belongs to the people” is now forced to impose a dictatorship on the people themselves, in the name of the achievement of objectives aimed at protecting the political and financial interests of the elite.
The rich are getting richer and richer, while the middle classes that constitute the social fabric and the very soul of nations is being cut down.
The French Revolution wiped out the Western aristocracy.
The Industrial Revolution obliterated the peasants and spread the proletarianization which led to the disaster of Socialism and Communism.
The Revolution of ’68 demolished the family and the school.
This Great Reset, desired by the globalist elite, represents the final revolution with which to create a shapeless and anonymous mass of slaves connected to the internet, confined to the house, threatened by an endless series of pandemics designed by those who already have the miraculous vaccine ready.
Precisely in these days, with the harmony of a plan that seems orchestrated in every detail under a single leadership, the imposition of a vaccine is being theorized by many parties, even before the vaccine’s actual effectiveness is fully known, and even before the vaccine’s possible side-effects may be fully ascertained.
This obligation to receive a vaccine is projected by many to occur alongside the issuance by a “health passport,” so that those who have such a passport may move without limitations, while those who refuse a vaccine would not be able to use means of transport, attend restaurants and visit public places, schools and offices.
That this represents an intolerable violation of the individual’s freedoms does not seem to be a problem: law-makers do not hesitate to sack parliaments to impose their tyrannical norms, knowing that their power exists as long as they obey the Great Reset agenda, endorsed by the international institutions such as the European Union and the UN.
Faced with such a massive and coordinated deployment of forces we remain astonished, bewildered by the impudence of those who are telling us, in essence, that we must silently accept the dictatorship of a faceless power group, because that is how the group has decided.
We are disconcerted by the enslavement of the world Left — and of the Democrats in the United States — to this agenda, which knows no limits, no restraints on its execution, to the point of organizing an electoral coup of such magnitude and gravity as to be horrified.
The manual fraud of duplicate ballots, the votes of deceased people, citizens who discover they have voted a thousand times and employees who tamper with the results by obscuring the windows of the polling stations with cardboard panels, is accompanied by the use of a vote-counting apparatus which is proving not only to be open to fraudulent use, but even to have been designed at the software level to allow the shifting of votes from one candidate to another, based on a complex algorithm.
We discover that the people behind this macroscopic fraud are always the same, always of the same political party, always subservient to the same ideology. People corrupt in intellect and will, because they made themselves the slaves of a ruthless tyrant, after refusing to obey a good, just and merciful Lord.
Thus, as these have accepted the slavery of sin and rebellion against God, today they would like to drag the whole of humanity into an abyss of death and despair: it is the miserable revenge of Satan, who, not being able to defeat the One who cast him into hell, tries to drag with him as many souls as possible, in an attempt to frustrate the work of Redemption.
We, believers in Christ Our Only Lord, have no reason to fear, even against all human reason: we know that, reborn in Baptism, we are no longer servants but children of God, and that by preserving the friendship of our Lord with Grace we can trust in Him, in His provident help, in His powerful protection.
Ultimately, this is true freedom: the freedom of the children of God, who obey His law not out of fear but out of love, not out of compulsion but because in adhering to the divine will they will find their own perfect fulfillment and their complete realization. For every soul is created for the greater glory of God, for eternal bliss as a reward of fidelity to the Savior.
Don’t let our hearts be troubled!
The maneuvers of those who work in darkness are coming to light, showing themselves in all their horror and revealing their perverse and infernal matrix. Lies, deceptions, violence, death: this is the harsh reality of evil before which people of good will can only be horrified. If Our Lord deigns to listen to the prayers of His children, this castle of lies and fraud will collapse miserably, and its architects will have to go back into hiding to escape the rigors of justice and the execration of peoples.
These are decisive hours: we continue to pray, to recite the Holy Rosary, to nourish ourselves with the Most Holy Eucharist, to do penance. The choral voice that rises up to the throne of the divine Majesty will not remain unheard.
Let us not be discouraged, because it is in the moment of trial that the Lord gives us the opportunity to show our trust in Him and to see the greatness of His mercy. “Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14, 13). Our Lord told us clearly: anything.
We therefore ask the Father, in the name of the Son our Lord and Redeemer, through the intercession of His most holy Mother our powerful mediator, to show His glory, to grant the exaltation of Holy Church, peace and prosperity to the Christian peoples, the conversion of sinners, the defeat of His enemies.
“God arises, and his enemies will be scattered, and those who hate him will flee before him” (Psalm 68:1).
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
25 November 2020
St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr
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| ‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-04-2020, 06:44 AM - Forum: Great Reset
- No Replies
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‘Sold out to Satan’: Viganò unloads on coronavirus ‘pseudo-health regime’
The exiled archbishop had harsh words for the 'Great Reset' and those seeking to implement it
.
December 3, 2020 (Inside the Vatican) — “O God, you are awesome from your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives strength and power to his people.” —Psalm 68:35
On November 19, 2020, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, declared that “Covid is an opportunity for a global reset.”
In reality, Schwab was slavishly repeating what Jacques Attali said in the French weekly L’Express on May 3, 2009 [so, 11 years ago]: “History teaches us that humanity evolves significantly only when it is really afraid: then it initially develops defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes useless (distractions); sometimes effective (therapies, which, if necessary, may depart from all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis is over, fear transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and inscribe them as policies of a healthy democracy.”
Back then it was the swine flu which, according to the media, was expected to cause millions of deaths and for which nations bought millions of doses of vaccines never used, because they proved useless, from “Big Pharma.” Useless for all — except for those who sold them, making huge profits.
One might wonder why a flu virus that according to recent WHO data has a mortality (0.13%) slightly higher than that of a normal seasonal flu syndrome (0.10%) could have led to the declaration of the pandemic and to a series of practically identical countermeasures in almost all European nations and the American continent.
One might also wonder why Covid-19 treatments are generally discredited, minimized or prohibited, while the vaccine is considered the most effective solution.
And it needs to be explained how it is possible to create a vaccine, since — according to the statements of the US CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — the virus has not yet been isolated.
What antigen may be used, if the virus SARS-CoV-2 cannot be isolated and replicated?
And what reliability can the virus tests have, since the tests are calibrated to detect only on the generic “Coronavirus” in general? And if on October 19 the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome announced the develop of a test that distinguishes between normal flu and Covid-19, may we know what so far have patients who undergo the new test been found positive for?
Perhaps this lack of clarity is why some members of the Moderna and Pfizer boards of directors have sold part of their company shares. So let’s go back to the questions that many posed to themselves months ago, and to the never-contradicted contents of my two Open Letters to President Trump: a world plan appears in its disconcerting reality. The architects of the plan, creating an unjustified social alarm about an alleged pandemic — that today we see is no more serious than a normal flu, as confirmed by official data from all over the world — has been used to create a tremendous global social and economic crisis and so to legitimize the drastic reduction of the basic rights of the population. It is what its authors themselves call the Great Reset: the global reset of the economy, of society and of masses of people.
In this project, the Covid virus plays a fundamental role, as an alibi that justifies — in the face of the “totem” of a science that has prostituted itself to the interests of an elite after having abdicated its mission to save human lives — the deprivation of freedom, the interference of governments in the private life of its citizens, the establishment of a pseudo-health regime in which, against all objective scientific evidence, the number of diners, the distance between people, the possibility of buying, selling, breathing and even praying, is decided from above.
Someone, in the deafening silence of the Catholic Hierarchy, has imposed the closure of churches or the limitation of religious celebrations, considering the House of God as a cinema or a museum, but at the same time declaring abortion clinics “essential services.”
These are the paradoxes of a misguided power, managed by people corrupt in the soul and sold out to Satan, a power which, after obsessively repeating the mantras of “democracy” and “power belongs to the people” is now forced to impose a dictatorship on the people themselves, in the name of the achievement of objectives aimed at protecting the political and financial interests of the elite.
The rich are getting richer and richer, while the middle classes that constitute the social fabric and the very soul of nations is being cut down.
The French Revolution wiped out the Western aristocracy.
The Industrial Revolution obliterated the peasants and spread the proletarianization which led to the disaster of Socialism and Communism.
The Revolution of ’68 demolished the family and the school.
This Great Reset, desired by the globalist elite, represents the final revolution with which to create a shapeless and anonymous mass of slaves connected to the internet, confined to the house, threatened by an endless series of pandemics designed by those who already have the miraculous vaccine ready.
Precisely in these days, with the harmony of a plan that seems orchestrated in every detail under a single leadership, the imposition of a vaccine is being theorized by many parties, even before the vaccine’s actual effectiveness is fully known, and even before the vaccine’s possible side-effects may be fully ascertained.
This obligation to receive a vaccine is projected by many to occur alongside the issuance by a “health passport,” so that those who have such a passport may move without limitations, while those who refuse a vaccine would not be able to use means of transport, attend restaurants and visit public places, schools and offices.
That this represents an intolerable violation of the individual’s freedoms does not seem to be a problem: law-makers do not hesitate to sack parliaments to impose their tyrannical norms, knowing that their power exists as long as they obey the Great Reset agenda, endorsed by the international institutions such as the European Union and the UN.
Faced with such a massive and coordinated deployment of forces we remain astonished, bewildered by the impudence of those who are telling us, in essence, that we must silently accept the dictatorship of a faceless power group, because that is how the group has decided.
We are disconcerted by the enslavement of the world Left — and of the Democrats in the United States — to this agenda, which knows no limits, no restraints on its execution, to the point of organizing an electoral coup of such magnitude and gravity as to be horrified.
The manual fraud of duplicate ballots, the votes of deceased people, citizens who discover they have voted a thousand times and employees who tamper with the results by obscuring the windows of the polling stations with cardboard panels, is accompanied by the use of a vote-counting apparatus which is proving not only to be open to fraudulent use, but even to have been designed at the software level to allow the shifting of votes from one candidate to another, based on a complex algorithm.
We discover that the people behind this macroscopic fraud are always the same, always of the same political party, always subservient to the same ideology. People corrupt in intellect and will, because they made themselves the slaves of a ruthless tyrant, after refusing to obey a good, just and merciful Lord.
Thus, as these have accepted the slavery of sin and rebellion against God, today they would like to drag the whole of humanity into an abyss of death and despair: it is the miserable revenge of Satan, who, not being able to defeat the One who cast him into hell, tries to drag with him as many souls as possible, in an attempt to frustrate the work of Redemption.
We, believers in Christ Our Only Lord, have no reason to fear, even against all human reason: we know that, reborn in Baptism, we are no longer servants but children of God, and that by preserving the friendship of our Lord with Grace we can trust in Him, in His provident help, in His powerful protection.
Ultimately, this is true freedom: the freedom of the children of God, who obey His law not out of fear but out of love, not out of compulsion but because in adhering to the divine will they will find their own perfect fulfillment and their complete realization. For every soul is created for the greater glory of God, for eternal bliss as a reward of fidelity to the Savior.
Don’t let our hearts be troubled!
The maneuvers of those who work in darkness are coming to light, showing themselves in all their horror and revealing their perverse and infernal matrix. Lies, deceptions, violence, death: this is the harsh reality of evil before which people of good will can only be horrified. If Our Lord deigns to listen to the prayers of His children, this castle of lies and fraud will collapse miserably, and its architects will have to go back into hiding to escape the rigors of justice and the execration of peoples.
These are decisive hours: we continue to pray, to recite the Holy Rosary, to nourish ourselves with the Most Holy Eucharist, to do penance. The choral voice that rises up to the throne of the divine Majesty will not remain unheard.
Let us not be discouraged, because it is in the moment of trial that the Lord gives us the opportunity to show our trust in Him and to see the greatness of His mercy. “Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14, 13). Our Lord told us clearly: anything.
We therefore ask the Father, in the name of the Son our Lord and Redeemer, through the intercession of His most holy Mother our powerful mediator, to show His glory, to grant the exaltation of Holy Church, peace and prosperity to the Christian peoples, the conversion of sinners, the defeat of His enemies.
“God arises, and his enemies will be scattered, and those who hate him will flee before him” (Psalm 68:1).
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
25 November 2020
St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1976 - Sermon given before an association of Catholic familes |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-03-2020, 02:54 PM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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A Sermon delivered by His Grace, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on Sunday, May 2,1976
before an association of Catholic families in Southern France
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dear brethren:
You have just heard the Gospel of the Second Sunday after Easter, which is the Gospel of the Good Shepherd. And indeed, if there is a problem which torments us today, it is in asking ourselves if we really still have good shepherds. For what, in fact, is a good shepherd, if not he who walks before his sheep, before his lambs, and who leads them there where they can find good food? Now Our Lord says that He is the Good Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd because it is He Who gives true nourishment to our intellects, to our wills, to our hearts: the nourishment of truth, the nourishment of charity, the nourishment of the desire to sanctify ourselves. This is the nourishment that Our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring us.
He Himself told us that He is the Way. the Truth, and the Life. He is the Way: He walks on the way to draw us after Him, like the Good Shepherd. He is the Truth: He enlightens our intellects to show us where we are going and what God promises us if we follow Him. And finally, He is the Life: for He truly gives us the food of life, in giving us Himself, particularly in the Holy Eucharist. This is what the Good Shepherd is.
Now Our Lord Himself warned us ... He took the trouble to warn us: There are also mercenaries. What, then, are these mercenaries? These mercenaries are those who assume power over the flock so as to lead it to death. Because at the least danger, these mercenaries flee and leave the flock abandoned. And the wolf comes and disperses the flock. Our Lord thus warned us that there would be times when the flock would be abandoned.. . abandoned because those who were supposed to lead it lost their bearings or at least did not want to fulfill the role of the true shepherd, and considering themselves as mere mercenaries, abandoned the flock.
Do we not have the impression today that the flock which is the Church, which is nothing other than the Church, is somewhat abandoned? Confusion reigns everywhere—anguish, anxiety, danger. It seems to us, in fact, that the flock could be attacked from any side by those who wish its destruction. And is it not he who, here below, should be the Shepherd after Our Lord Jesus Christ, the first among shepherds, our Holy Father the Pope, who himself has spoken of auto-demolition, of auto-destruction, of the smoke of Satan inside the flock, inside the Church? It is indeed nothing else. He too announced in a way that the Church would be invaded, besieged by satanic forces which would destroy her.
SO in the face of this danger which hems us in, more or less, and which threatens us every day, what should we do? What does the man do who has the instinct of preserving his life? He defends himself against the powers that want to destroy in him above all supernatural life, the life of God in him, the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why you are, I should say, as a remnant of this flock which is attacked, which is abandoned, which is dispersed; why you have found a priest who is a shepherd, who wants to give you the truth that Our Lord Jesus Christ has always taught us, that the Church has always taught; who really wants to give you the grace of Our Lord, which is desired for us and transmitted to us by Our Lord, by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by the Sacraments, by devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin. So you group yourselves around him. And that is what thousands upon thousands of Catholics are doing throughout the world. They group themselves around a shepherd whom they feel to be a true shepherd.
And this is very important because we have need of the supernatural life which God came to give us. God did not come to make us the sheep of His flock so that He could abandon us later. This is not possible. No doubt He foresaw extraordinary times, times in which the Church would seem eclipsed—the time of the great apostasy. Could we not be in a period of preparation for this great apostasy, when no one will believe in God any longer, when no one will believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ any longer, or in His divinity ; when men will look only to one another.
Now that is indeed what is happening today. They would like in a way to separate us from God, to separate us from Our Lord Jesus Christ; to sever us from our roots, from the sources of life, from the sources of life which are given by Our Lord: Our Lord instituted them Himself. We ourselves do not have the right to choose the sources of our life. These sources Our Lord has given to us.
The principal one is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He gave Himself, He gave His Blood, to sanctify the earth. His Blood was poured forth on this earth to sanctify it. He did not only want to do it a single time; He wanted it to continue on our altars, and that is why He made priests. Priests have no other role. It is their principal role, their fundamental role, their essential role to ascend to the altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice of Our Lord and to give you life—to you, the faithful, to you the sheep, the lambs of the flock—to give Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is our Sanctifier, Who is our Saviour, Who is our Salvation.
And let us firmly believe that there is no other flock. They would like to make us believe today that all religions save, that there are thus several shepherds ant that there would then be several flocks. No. There are not several shepherds; there are not several flocks. There is only one—one shepherd and one flock. It is this that Our Lord tells us in the Holy Gospel. Not only is there but one flock and one shepherd, but all others must come, Our Lord says, to join this flock. Thus it is necessary that they convert and that they separate themselves from those shepherds who are not at all such, from those shepherds who lead them to poisoned pastures which will bring them only death.
OUR Lord wants there to be only one flock and one shepherd. And that the world does not want. The world does not accept the royalty of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The world does not accept that we have only one Saviour; that there is only one way of salvation, which is the Cross—the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ; that there is only one Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the way of our salvation; that there are only the seven Sacraments designated by Our Lord Himself, instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, which are the way to our salvation. The world wants none of this.
The world wants liberty. The world wants to save itself as it pleases. The world wants to give itself up to all ideologies, to all its desires; it wants no more neither of the Law of Our Lord Jesus Christ nor of His truth. And then we are to believe that people who refuse Our Lord Jesus Christ can be saved! Our Lord Jesus Christ said Himself: "No one can be saved if he does not pass by Me. To go to the Father, I am the Way." There is no other way. And Saint Peter said after the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ: There is no salvation outside of the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ-no salvation. There is no salvation outside of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we must keep the faith: faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is very important and this is why we must follow our Shepherd, who is Our Lord Jesus Christ. And if it should happen that those who are intermediaries between the Shepherd, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and ourselves want to turn us away from Our Lord Jesus Christ, then we must say no. We shall not accept it. We want to follow Our Lord. We do not want to become protestants, of those who doubt the divinity of Our Lord. We do not want to be of those who doubt the Resurrection of Our Lord. We do not want to be of those who doubt the Real Presence of Our Lord with His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity in the Holy Eucharist. We do not want this!
"But now theological research, but now the discoveries of science give us to understand that those things are things of the past." No! We shall never accept such things! We want to be faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ! We want to follow Him wherever He may lead us and we want to keep His teachings. This is what we must take as our resolution, no matter who may seek to contradict us.
For this much is certain: If we remain faithful to our Creed; if we remain faithful to our catechism— to our old catechism of the past, which flowed from the Catechism of the Council of Trent, that Council which made such a magnificent catechism, the summary of the whole Catholic Faith—if we remain faithful to this catechism; if we remain faithful to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the Church has always celebrated it, so as to be sure that Our Lord Jesus Christ is present on our holy altars and that in the Holy Eucharist we are receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ; if we remain faithful to the Sacraments and to devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin, then we are sure of being in the right. We are sure of following the true shepherd, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if any shepherd—whoever he may be, whatever may be his authority on this earth—wants to turn us away from these truths, we must say no! Impossible! We cannot turn away from Our Lord Jesus Christ. And this should be for us an absolute resolution. Because that is not possible; we cannot be wrong.
We should likewise be mistrustful sometimes of those persons, or of those shepherds extraordinary, I should call them, or of those other extraordinary messengers, men and women, who come to tell us, Heaven says, Heaven wants, Heaven has spoken to them, Heaven has given them particular revelations. No doubt all this is possible—Our Lord can manifest Himself to souls, as He did to Saint Francis of Assisi when Saint Francis received the stigmata of Our Lord. He did so to Saint Catherine of Siena who also received the stigmata of Our Lord. The Most Blessed Virgin has appeared numerous times in the course of the history of the Church to encourage the faithful, and especially those who do not believe return to the faith.
But today we must be very prudent. The devil is powerful; the devil seems unchained today. It seems that God has given him all power to do as he wishes on earth. And thus we risk finding ourselves in touch with persons who believe that they are in communication with Heaven and who, in fact, are being deceived by the devil himself.
THERE are things in which we cannot go wrong. So why not adhere to those things which Our Lord gave us for all time? Those will be sure until the end of time. But if we really believe, in all sincerity, after having carefully examined things as well as we can in our conscience, and after having asked the advice of priests who are capable of giving us sound information on the visions, on the messages, on the revelations being made these days . . . perhaps if we really feel that we are converted, that all that is doing us good, that these contacts are doing us good, that these prayers encourage us, fine.
But we must be very prudent. Because I could cite you actual cases of persons who believed for a long time that they were in communication with God and who were simply in communication with the devil. So we must be very careful. Are we not in those times of which Our Lord said: "A day shall come when men will say to you, 'Christ is here, Christ is there, Christ is in the country, Christ is in the mountains.' "? "Do not go," Our Lord said, "Do not go." Are we not in these latter times when the devil employs every means to disperse us, to tear us apart, to divide us, so as to reduce the flock to nothing?
In these critical moments, we must remain with that which is surest. We must avoid doubtful things.
We must make our stand on things that are certain, absolutely certain, without a thousandth per cent of doubt: our Creed, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin. We cannot go wrong there. If we are firmly attached to these things we can work out our salvation. Our Lord willed these things for our salvation. So let us adhere to these things with all our heart.
Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Let us have respect for Our Lord, our God, Our Saviour, our Creator: for Him Who is everything for us. How should we dare to present ourselves standing before Him Who will be our Judge at the end of time? Let us kneel before Our Lord with profound devotion. Let us receive Him in our hearts as the greatest treasure that we can have here below. Let us thank God for coming into our poor bodies, into our poor souls, sinners that we are. May God deign to reside in us for some time in His Body and in His Blood—this is the most beautiful, the grandest thing that God could do. And along with this respect for Our Lord Jesus Christ, let us love Him with our whole heart. Let us serve Him. Let us consider Him truly as our Shepherd.
Let us ask this of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary— of the Most Blessed Virgin who had only one name on her lips, only one name in her heart, that of her son, Jesus. Let it be for us as it was for her. Let us have one love only here below, one genuine love, in which we love all other creatures—but all other creatures should bring us to this love and not remove us from it. Let us love Our Lord Jesus Christ with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole strength.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1975 Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Priesthood |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-03-2020, 02:51 PM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Discourse pronounced by His Grace, the Most Reverend Marcel Lefebvre
on September 8, 1975, in Austria,
after having been forbidden to celebrate Holy Mass, to the great scandal of the numerous pilgrims present.
My dear brethren:
I regret that I am unable to speak to you in your own language, but you have an interpreter in the person of this seminarian who is with me and who is accustomed to translating for me.
I wish to thank Dr. Steinhart, who was so kind as to organize this pilgrimage, and I should like to thank as well the Reverend Fathers who have been so kind as to receive me. We should indeed have been happy to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with you, but God has asked this small sacrifice of us so that we may adore Him in His Blessed Sacrament. We shall ask of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary that we may adore Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength - for if there is today a sentiment in danger of disappearing from the hearts of men, it is indeed that of adoration. Adore Our Lord Jesus Christ - that is what we shall do during this hour of prayer, during this hour of adoration.
For what shall we especially pray? We shall pray to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in this place of pilgrimage [Mariazell, the Austrian national shrine] which you love and which is the heart of Austria, in this place of pilgrimage where the eminent Cardinal Mindszenty was recently buried, he who for us is an image of the Faith opposed to all the enemies of the Church and to those who want to tear from our hearts this Faith which is for us the promise of eternal life and without which a Catholic Christian cannot live. Thus, we shall also ask of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, through the intercession of Cardinal Mindszenty, that she increase our Faith today in our hearts and in our souls, that we may truly be among those who are attached to the Creed of the Catholic Church and to the Catholic Priesthood.
THE MOST BLESSED VIRGIN MARY is first and above all the Mother of the Eternal Priest.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was essentially Priest for eternity, Priest according to the Order of Melchisedech. The whole life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His whole raison d'etre, was to offer the Sacrifice of the Cross, to offer Himself on the Cross. This was the goal of the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. All His life Our Lord Jesus Christ was haunted by this desire to ascend the Cross. How many times Our Lord said, "My hour is not yet come." "My hour is coming." "My hour is come." Why? Because the hour of Our Lord Jesus Christ was the hour of His Sacrifice. When He ascended the Cross and offered His Sacrifice, He Himself said, "All is consummated - Consummatum est. " I have done My work. I have realized My desire; I have accomplished that for which I came on earth - to offer My sacrifice to God for the redemption of the sins of the world. This is why Our Lord came, and this is what the Most Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us. For the Virgin Mary is nothing other than the mirror of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In her heart there is no other name written, than the name of Jesus and of Jesus Crucified. The Most Blessed Virgin Mary accompanied Him everywhere, even to the Sacrifice of the Cross. She was present there as if to teach us that she had no dearer desire than to be with Our Lord on Calvary at the Sacrifice of the Cross.
This then is what she teaches us today, as always, in a special manner: to love the Sacrifice of the Cross; to see in Our Lord Jesus Christ Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified. And consequently, we, too, should have this desire to participate in the Sacrifice of Our Lord, to unite ourselves to the Sacrifice of the Cross, that we may truly be Christians who offer themselves with Our Lord, who unite themselves to Him in His Sacrifice as victims with Him. Such is the true Christian; such is the Catholic.
It seems to me that the Virgin Mary, whom we find close to the Cross, Our Lady of Compassion, Our Lady Co-Redemptrix, invites each one of us, each human creature born into this world - she takes us by the hand, after a fashion, to lead us to Calvary, to give us to participate in the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But how does she give us to participate in the merits of her Divine Son for the redemption of our sins? Through priests. Our Lord wished that we participate in the Sacrifice of the Cross, that we receive His merits, that our souls be washed of their sins through His Sacrifice continued by His priests. When He said to them at the Last Supper, "Do -Do this in memory of Me – Hoc facite in meam commemorationem" - Our Lord did not say, Repeat the account of My Supper, recall My sacrifice. He said "Facite" - perform this Sacrifice. Reproduce this Sacrifice; continue My sacrifice. "Hoc facite in meam commemorationem. "
And this is the whole difference between the Catholic doctrine, which has always been taught, and the Protestant doctrine. The Protestants forget - they do not want to know that Our Lord said, "Hoc facite" - Do this in memory of Me. They say only, "in meam commemorationem." Remember Me. This they say who do not continue the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us, with the Apostles, with Our Lord, that we must go to the altar with the priest to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and that by the mouth of the priest Our Lord truly returns on the altar as Victim present in the Holy Eucharist. It is to the Apostles that He said, "Hoc facite. " Thus we must ask of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary that we may have a profound faith in the Holy Sacrifice of the altar.
THE CHURCH cannot do without the Sacrifice of the Altar. Look at the beautiful churches, which have been constructed. A little while ago - the Reverend Father Abbot was telling me that this church, or at least the original church, dates back to the beginning of the ninth century. How many generations have come to this Church of Mariazell to pray and to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered by priests! The altar is the life of the Church, the altar of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
We should then have a profound faith in the action, which takes place on the altar by the mouth of the priest. When the priest pronounces the words of the Consecration, Our Lord, as on the Cross, returns on the altar to offer His Sacrifice, which is continued for the remission of our sins. This is the heart of the Mass; this is what the Most Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us, this is what the Apostles teach us.
You learned in your catechism that the sacrifice of the altar is a true sacrifice and that it differs from the sacrifice of the Cross only because the sacrifice of the Cross was bloody and the sacrifice of the Mass is unbloody. This is the only difference between the sacrifice of the Cross and the sacrifice of the altar. That is why we venerate the sacrifice of the altar. In Catholic doctrine, all is there. All is gathered together in this small and this immense reality of the Sacrifice of the Mass. For if there is a sacrifice, the victim must be present. There is no sacrifice if there is no victim present. Thus, Our Lord must be present because He offers Himself in sacrifice. Let us not say, then, that the Sacrifice of the Mass is simply a commemorative meal, a simple remembrance of what Our Lord did at the Last Supper. All that is a blasphemy against the doctrine of the Church, against that which Our Lord Jesus Christ did and which He wanted to do.
All that ruins the priesthood. The priest is not the president of a commemorative meal; he is not the one who presides at a meal table. The priest is he who performs the sacrifice. The priest is he who causes to descend upon the altar the victim who is present, really present on the altar. Thus you see the grandeur of the priest, who has need of a character to offer the sacrifice, who needs to be marked in his soul for all time - for all eternity - to offer this sacrifice. You see that he must keep his virginity, observe celibacy, because for him it is an extraordinary thing - to cause God to come from heaven to earth, to cause Our Lord Jesus Christ to come in the Holy Eucharist, by his words, by his lips. Thus one can understand why the priest is a virgin, why the priest does not marry, why he is a virgin like the Virgin Mary. This is why the priest is a celibate, and not because he is too busy with the concerns of his apostolate.
THE WHOLE GRANDEUR of the Sacrifice of the Mass comes precisely from the fact that it is a real sacrifice, like the sacrifice of Calvary. This is what our ancestors always believed; this is what the Church has always believed. We cannot vary from this faith by one iota. If we vary, if we change the expressions, if we now say: we are offering a Eucharist, we are having a eucharistic meal, we are having a supper...then we are becoming Protestants. And we are losing the whole reality of the Catholic Church, which reposes on this truth. There is no more Catholic Church if there is no more Sacrifice of the Mass. There is no more Catholic Church if there is no more priest who has a character so that he may offer the Holy Sacrifice.
This is why these beautiful churches were constructed. It was not for a eucharistic meal. It is the Faith of the Catholic people, which caused these magnificent basilicas to be constructed throughout the world for the Sacrifice of Our Lord, which must be continued on the altar, and for the presence of the Divine Victim in which we participate in Holy Communion and with Whom we offer ourselves. This is the reality of the Sacrifice of the Mass. This is the reality of the priesthood.
This is also why the Faithful owe it to themselves to have an immense respect for the altar of God where the sacrifice is offered. And they should have this respect for the Eucharist where the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ are truly, really and substantially present. We shall never be respectful enough; we shall never adore the Holy Eucharist with a heart sufficiently respectful.
That is why it has been the custom of the Church for countless centuries to kneel down to receive the Holy Eucharist. It is prostrate on the ground that we ought to receive the Holy Eucharist, and not standing up. Are we the equals of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is it not He who will come on the clouds of heaven to judge us? When we see Our Lord Jesus Christ, shall we not do like the Apostles of Thabor, who prostrated themselves on the ground from fear and admiration before the grandeur, the splendor of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is it not the great shame of our age that we lack respect towards Our Lord Jesus Christ? Let us guard in our hearts and in our souls this spirit of adoration, this spirit of profound respect for Him Who created us, for Him Who redeemed us, for Him Who died on the Cross for our sins.
WHAT DO WE OBSERVE in the ten years since the end of the Council? We are obliged to observe, we cannot close our eyes, we must not close our eyes to the sad realities of our age, when priests themselves lose their faith in the priesthood, and no longer know what the Sacrifice of the Mass is. When priests even abandon their priesthood. The seminaries are empty. Why? Why are there no more vocations? Because men no longer know what the Sacrifice of the Mass is. Consequently, they can no longer define the priest. When the Sacrifice of the Mass is well defined, when it is known, when it is accepted as the Church has always taught, then vocations are numerous.
I have the evidence in my own seminary. I do nothing other than reaffirm the truths, which the Church has always affirmed. So these young men are attracted by the altar, by the Sacrifice of the Mass. What an extraordinary grace for a young man to ascend to the altar as the minister of Our Lord, to be another Christ, to offer the same sacrifice that Our Lord offered! There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more grand here below. Then it is worth the trouble to ascend to the altar, to abandon one's family, to leave the world to ascend to the altar. But if all that no longer exists, there is no more reason for vocations. And that is why the seminaries are empty. Let there be a return to the true notions of the Faith and there will be vocations; but if men abandon these notions of the Faith, if they continue in the same line as the Church in the last ten years, soon all the seminaries will be up for sale and all the religious congregations will disappear.
For what is the grandeur and the beauty of the religious, man or woman? It is to offer himself or herself as a victim at the altar with Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the life of the religious. If they no longer have this intention - "I offer myself publicly in the Church as victim with Our Lord; my whole life is offered with Our Lord" - then the religious life has no more sense. And that is why there are not more religious vocations. Let there be a return to this spirit of victim, of sacrifice and of union with Our Lord Jesus Christ at the altar, and then the vocations will flourish once again and will become numerous. There are vocations, the young desire to devote themselves - and they are as numerous in our age as they have been in every other. But let them be given true things, real things, that which the Church has always given, and then vocations will flourish once again.
Ah, how much I should like you to understand my dear brethren, why our seminary at Econe is filled with vocations, why these young men come to us - to continue the Catholic Church and for no other motive. And not to become Protestants! We refuse to become Protestants, to be modernists, to be progressives in the degree that these things are contrary to our Catholic truth, in the degree that these things have been condemned by the Popes for centuries and centuries. We refuse them! We want to remain Catholic. We want Catholic seminaries and Catholic priests - nothing else! Now, they want to forbid us to form Catholic priests, to have Catholic seminaries. These young men, if I send them to other seminaries, risk losing their Faith, and not only the Faith, but their morals as well. So I maintain a deep faith in Divine Providence. God cannot abandon His Church.
Our Lord wants Catholic priests as He Himself made them. The Pope cannot not want Catholic priests. The Church cannot not want Catholic priests. That is why I am persuaded that we remain profoundly united to our Holy Father the Pope and to the Church. That which the Church has desired for twenty centuries the Pope cannot not desire. It is impossible. Thus it is altogether false to say that we risk becoming a sect or falling into schism. Far from it. None are more united than we to our Holy Father and to the Catholic Church.
WE ASK THE MOST BLESSED VIRGIN MARY then, to guard the Catholic priesthood and to grant that it may continue. We shall ask that numerous graces of vocations and of attachment to the Church be given to those young men who desire to become priests. We shall pray in the course of this Rosary for the Church, for our Holy Father the Pope; that the seminaries may once again become true houses of formation of Catholic priests; that men and women religious may find once again the way of the truth; and that religious congregations may flourish anew and return to the Faith of Tradition, the Faith which has been taught for twenty centuries.
That is what we shall ask of the Most Blessed Virgin during the course of this prayer, for you need priests, many priests, holy priests. This is certainly what you desire, and what we shall pray for today, gathered around Our Lady of Mariazell. May God grant us the grace ever to have priests, holy priests.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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