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| Archbishop Viganò: Meditation on Good Friday [2024] |
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Posted by: Stone - 03-31-2024, 01:59 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò
TENEBRÆ FACTÆ SUNT
Meditation on Good Friday
Taken from here.
![[Image: miniatura-240329-eng.jpg]](https://exsurgedomine.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/miniatura-240329-eng.jpg)
A sexta autem hora tenebræ factæ sunt super universam terram usque ad horam nonam.
From noon until three in the afternoon it was dark over the whole earth. Mt 27:45
Tenebræ factæ sunt. In the hour of Our Lord’s agony, the whole of nature, the cosmos itself, is clothed in the black clouds of mourning. Darkness. And along with the darkness, cold, biting air, and a silence pregnant with horror and emotion for the impending death of Christ. The sky is leaden and threatening, the earth ready to quiver and tremble with indignation. On the high ground of Golgotha, where sharp stones and thorny bushes dominate Jerusalem, the Cross has been raised, and on the Cross is nailed the Immaculate Lamb, Priest and Victim. We dare not raise our eyes to look, and we remain at the foot of that scaffold, together with the Virgin and Saint John.
This is your hour, it is the empire of darkness (Lk 22:53), the Lord said the night before, after going to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray with the Apostles, who were unable to keep vigil with Him. In that terrible hour, all the sins committed by every human being, from the beginning of the world to the last moment before the Last Judgment, flow before the Savior, striking Him in the soul with greater cruelty than the scourges that will tear His flesh the next day. The immense, unspeakable, unheard-of pain caused by this vision arouses in the Lord such anguish that it causes him to sweat blood. Ego autem sum vermis et non homo; opprobrium hominum et abjectio plebis (Ps 22:7). And loneliness: feeling not only abandoned by His own, but seeing himself as if shunned by the Eternal Father, who sees in Him the scapegoat, the One who took upon Himself the sins of the world, who took them upon Himself, which for those sins committed against the Majesty of God requires the death of a God, and which in order to redeem sinful humanity requires the sacrifice of the firstborn. Cuius una stilla salvum facere totum mundum quit ab omni scelere, according to the words of Aquinas. A single drop of that most precious Blood would have saved the world, but it would not have manifested the infinite Charity of God – in the supreme act of the Sacrifice – ready to die for us, children of wrath, cursed and ungrateful, a thousand times sinners.
Oh, if only we could conceive of the horror the Lord experienced in making Himself an innocent Victim in place of us – we who are guilty of all the most horrifying sins of which man is capable! If we could only imagine the torment of the Virgin Mother when she saw her divine Son burdened with those repugnant sins, especially the sins against purity, so horrifying for the virginal soul of Mary Most Holy and even more so for the Incarnate Word! Sharp swords that pierce the Most Sacred Heart together with the Immaculate Heart and that pierce them, in a pain that man cannot know, except vaguely, in the perfect contrition that only the fire of Charity can move. That fire of divine Love which is inextricably linked to obedience to God’s will: Pater! Si non potest hic calix transire, nisi bibam illum, fiat voluntas tua (Mt 26:42). Silence responds to this cry of the tormented soul, as in the dark night of the mystics, because Heaven must remain mute in the face of that travail precisely in order to make it fruitful. It is in that offering that the priesthood of Christ the High Priest is fulfilled, it is in that holocaust that the Sacrifice of the Redeemer is consummated, and along with it the mystical passion of the Most Sorrowful Coredemptrix.
Only a mother knows what it means to feel what her child feels: for this reason, precisely in the supreme act of the Priesthood of the New and Eternal Covenant; precisely in the hour of the most mute and profound sorrow, Our Lord gives us the gift of that Divine Motherhood, entrusting us to her and entrusting her to us. Let us be aware, dear brothers and sisters: Our Lord makes us sinners, children of His Immaculate Mother and makes His Mother our Mother, at the same time that He makes Himself the divine Victim pro peccatis suæ gentis, representing sinful humanity before the Divine Majesty by virtue of the Hypostatic Union. This is not a merely dogmatic question – even if the Modernists go so far as to deny the Compassion and Co-redemption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to please heretics – but it is above all a mystical and spiritual reality, which must make us exclaim with St. Paul: O altitudo divitiarum sapientiæ, et scientiæ Dei: quam incomprehensibilia sunt judicia ejus, et investigabiles viæ ejus! O the depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge: how far beyond comprehension are His judgments, and beyond all knowledge are His ways! (Rom 11:33). And again: That you may be enabled to understand with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, and to know this love which surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:18-19). This love that surpasses all things, that impels God to take the form of a servant, and raises the servant to be not only a creature of God, but His son, and a joint heir, even a friend. We repeat it in these blessed days, with the wise pedagogy of Holy Mother Church, which progressively reveals the words of the responsory taken from Saint Paul:
Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis. Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum et dedit illi nomen, quod est super omne nomen (Phil 2:8-9),
and the Apostle continues:
ut in nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur cælestium, terrestrium, et infernorum: et omnis lingua confiteatur, quia Dominus Jesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris (Phil 2:10-11).
For it is only by standing at the foot of the Cross – without even daring to lift our gaze to the One whom we have pierced (Jn 19:37) – that we are able to understand that the only possible, worthy, just, dutiful and salutary response for us men before the Incarnate Divine Charity, the Divine Victim, the Divine Priest and the Divine King is to prostrate ourselves on our knees and profess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.
Let us join our voice to this infinite chorus, in which every tongue sings the praises of God and proclaims Jesus Christ, Lord and Universal King. Yes, Christ is King. King of all: of those who submit to Him with trusting abandonment as well as of those who reject His Lordship; which was decreed and sanctioned once and for all on the wood of the Cross, arbor decora et fulgida, ornata Regis purpura, the Throne of the Lamb, Instrument of Salvation for those who believe, stumbling block for the Jews, foolishness for the Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23-24). For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor 1:25).
Let us impress upon our hearts the words of the Savior, when the gates of Hell seem to overwhelm and overpower us: Ego vici mundum – I have conquered the world (Jn 16:33). These words are not a wish, a mere pious desire, or a false illusion, like everything that comes from Satan: they are the unfailing promise of God.
And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
29 March 2024
Feria VI in Parasceve
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| "Vanquish or Die" Movie on the Catholic Vendée |
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Posted by: Stone - 03-31-2024, 01:50 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Fr. Hewko recently recommended this video. The following is taken from The Remnant website, here:
Vanquish or Die: The True Story of the Vendée Uprising (An Independent Film)
This film tells a story from the French Revolution. The Revolution was a godless New Order born from the Enlightenment, which brutalized the established, Christian way of life with its deeply ironic motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.
It was anything but. These three words bred a hatred and then outright persecution of Catholics, from its very own King and Queen, to the simple peasants in the countryside. The Revolution launched a reign of terror against Christians during which countless priests, nuns, and lay people were slaughtered, and the Revolution’s soldiers, marching through the country in “infernal columns”, scorched the earth where Catholic farmers raised crops, cattle, and families.
But in western France, the Vendée region, the Catholic peasants revolted. They formed their own armies and appointed their own generals. Of these generals, Francoise Charette was the most effective and well-known. He became the Revolution’s obsession, so successful were his tactics.
This film tells his story. It is the story of a man who became a hero not because he was born a saint, but because he was a Catholic. Who found that in fighting for your Catholic Faith, the rest falls into place, and you become capable even of the ultimate victory—martyrdom—because the Revolution failed to corrupt your soul.
Please watch and share this video. Introduce your children to their new favorite hero. Spend an hour reminding your friends and family of the lengths to which men will go to stay Catholic and free.
*This film was released in France in 2023 by Puy du Fou. English subtitles were added by RTV to make the film accessible to the English-speaking world.
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| Archbishop Viganò: Homily on Holy Thursday at the Chrism Mass |
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Posted by: Stone - 03-30-2024, 06:28 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò
JANUIS CLAUSIS
Homily on Holy Thursday at the Chrism Mass
[Emphasis mine]
Et ego dispono vobis sicut disposuit mihi Pater meus regnum.
I am preparing for you a kingdom, as the Father has prepared it for me. Lk 22: 29
The solemn Liturgy of Holy Thursday introduces us into the heart of the Easter Mysteries and constitutes a sort of parenthesis between the long Lenten itinerary – culminating in the last two Sundays – and the celebration of the Passion and Death of the Lord, which will take place tomorrow. There are two great moments that bring us together around the altar today: the first, the Chrism Mass; the second, the Mass in Cena Domini. In both, the Church draws our attention to Holy Orders, so that we can rightly consider Holy Thursday as a feast in honor of Christ the High Priest and consequently of all His sacred Ministers, who draw their own Ministry from the One Priesthood of Christ.
In the Chrism Mass the Bishop – who possesses the plenitudo Sacerdotii – gathers his own Presbytery around him to consecrate the Holy Oils, necessary for the administration of the Sacraments: Consecrare tu dignare, Rex perennis patriæ, hoc olivum, signum vivum, iura contra dæmonum (Hymn. O Redemptor). In the Mass in Cena Domini we celebrate the institution of the Holy Sacrifice, of the Most Holy Eucharist, and of the Priesthood itself, whose Sacred Anointing recalls Christ, the Anointed of the Lord. The composed solemnity of these rites – which a compulsive succession of Bugninian reforms, carried out between the 1950s and the 1970s by the supporters of the Novus Ordo, has largely distorted and disfigured – takes us back to the Cenacle and to those words that the Redeemer addresses to His Disciples, in a moment of great oppression and fear. These are the hours in which that sense of siege and imminent danger looms over the Twelve that we too experience today; the hours in which the repeated attempts of the Jews to capture and kill the Lord – thus far unsuccessful – are about to succeed, due to the betrayal of Judas; the hours in which the triumph of the wicked seems inevitable, having managed to corrupt an Apostle in order to imprison the Son of God, put Him on trial, and condemn Him to death, He who a few days earlier had been welcomed into Jerusalem by the cheering crowd as King of Israel. The children’s Hosannas are silent, the crowd has disappeared, no one seems to remember the miracles performed by the Master in the last three years, and the palm branches lie abandoned on the sides of the road that leads to the Temple.
It is not difficult, in this crucial phase of the history of humanity and of the Church, to identify with the Apostles, oppressed by that feeling of the inevitability of Evil which tries to tear hope from hearts and instills despondency and disappointment, after the joy and the enthusiasm of entering the Holy City. Even the Mystical Body of Christ, which over the centuries retraces the stages of the Public Ministry of its Divine Head, has experienced those enthusiasms of the Disciples for the preaching and the miracles performed, today almost eclipsed in the abandonment of the crowds, in the conspiracy of the ready Sanhedrin to send their guards, in the betrayal of new Judas. This is your hour, it is the empire of darkness (Lk 22:53), Our Lord will say in a few hours to the high priests and temple guards who have come to capture Him.
But just as the empire of darkness looms – which the Apostles foolishly but humanely believe to be victorious – the Lord has the Cenacle prepared in a large, sumptuously decorated room to celebrate the Passover. A place in which, after the Crucifixion of the Master, we will see the Disciples gather again together with the Virgin Mother, with the doors bolted and the shutters closed for fear of the Jews. And on which fifty days later, ianuis clausis, the Holy Spirit will descend, accomplishing what had been prefigured in the consecration of the temple by King Solomon (2 Kgs 7:1).
The serenity and dignity with which the Savior faces the last hours before the Passion disorients the Apostles, who not only do not understand what is being prepared, but they are so confused so to ask themselves which of them should be considered the greatest (Lk 22: 24), while Peter says he is ready to face prison and death (Lk 22:33), unaware of the triple denial that he would soon make: Non cantabit hodie gallus, donec ter abneges nosse me, we heard yesterday, on Spy Wednesday, in the Passio.
You therefore, enclosed like the Apostles in this chapel around your Bishop to celebrate the Passover, feel besieged and in danger, wanted as disciples of the same Jesus the Nazarene whom the guards are about to arrest. And perhaps you too are amazed, dearest brothers, by the serenity with which I exhort you to face events with the same spirit of humble and obedient abandonment to the will of God. Ecce Satanas expetivit vos ut cribraret sicut triticum: Satan has asked to sift you as wheat is sifted (Lk 22:31). The test is approaching, because without engaging in the competition it is not possible to achieve the feat – the prize of victory – and without going through the ignominy of the Cross there can be no glory of the Resurrection. And it is perhaps a less bloody trial than the one the Apostles had to go through, but before which one needs the same state of mind that the Lord orders them to have: Vigilate et orate, ut non intretis in temptationem (Lk 22:46). Stay awake and pray.
In a world hostile to Christ – yesterday as today – the humility of the priest is the only safeguard for not giving in to temptation: the humility of recognizing oneself as fragile and incapable of facing adverse events, if not thanks to the help of God, which we can achieve only with vigilance and prayer. Our Lord tells us: Let the greatest among you be like the least, and the one who governs like the one who serves (Lk 22:26). You call me Master and Lord, and you are right, because I am. If therefore I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. In fact, I have given you an example, so that you may do as I have done (Jn 13:13-15).
The Liturgy of Holy Thursday involves the repetition of that ancient and solemn gesture, in the awareness of both our human frailty and the immeasurable dignity of the Priesthood conferred on us by Christ. Nos autem Gloriari oportet in cruce Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, we will sing this evening in the Introit of the Mass in Cena Domini, and in the dazzling light of the Priesthood of Christ we will sing the Gloria in excelsis accompanied by the ringing of the bells, after the Lenten silence, which will remain silent until the Easter Vigil. These are small glimpses of sky that manage to bring us back to the presence of the Divine Majesty and make us contemplate the things of the world sub specie æternitatis, and therefore to see them in their transitory dimension.
Today’s two Masses remind us, each with its very ancient rites, of the importance and indispensability of the Priesthood, which we could consider as a sort of καθῆκον (2 Thess 2:6), which holds back and prevents the Antichrist from manifesting himself. Throughout history it was identified with the Church, with the Papacy, and with the Holy Roman Empire. But if Saint Paul tells us that the mystery of iniquity is already underway, but it is necessary that those who are holding it back must be removed (2 Thess 2:7), we can understand why the Catholic Priesthood is made the object of Satan’s fury: without priests there is no Mass, and without Mass there is no Holy Sacrifice. On the other hand, it is the prophet Daniel himself who explains to us how, under the infernal reign of the Antichrist, the perennial sacrifice will fall silent. Therefore, if the Priesthood does not constitute the καθῆκον, the Holy Mass certainly is, which is intrinsically linked to the Priesthood.
Saint Augustine explains: The first persecution (that of the Caesars) was violent: to force Christians to sacrifice to idols, they proscribed them, tormented them, slaughtered them. The second, the current one, is insidious and hypocritical: heretics and disloyal brothers are its authors. Later another one will happen, more disastrous than the previous ones; because it will add seduction to violence, and this will be the persecution of the Antichrist. Over the centuries, the faithful of the Lord have suffered the persecution of the pagans, then that of the heretics and modernists, and finally the subtle and seductive one of apostasy: first the cult of false gods, then that of a God whose religion has become adulterated in its essence, and finally that of Satan. And what is inflicted on the baptized will be made to be suffered even more so on priests, through the seduction of the Antichrist: fascinating in appearance and speech, socially affirmed, capable of inducing one to follow his power and prestige to the point of accepting his blasphemies and his horrendous crimes. And the Beast opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and the inhabitants of heaven (Rev 13:6). And this in the silence of the authority: All the nations agreed to obey (1 Mac 1:44). Three and a half years of hell on earth: a time that will seem to never end, but which will certainly be limited and during which we will have to face – if we are not already doing so – that same feeling of oppression and siege that was felt by the Apostles in the three days of the Passion, and which after the descent of the Paraclete changed into heroic testimony, leading them to face the torments of Martyrdom.
Watch and pray, dear brothers. Be vigilant, remaining firm in the faith and pray to the Lord asking that He will not allow you to be seduced by the charm of the wicked and malicious man, of the lion that wanders looking for prey to tear to pieces. Draw your strength from Christ and His eternal Priesthood, of which yours is a perpetuation: Tu es sacerdos in æternum (Ps 109:4). It is Christ the High Priest who celebrates the celestial liturgy, and who from the altar of the Cross intones the antiphon that begins the rite: Deus, Deus meus: quare me dereliquisti? They are the same words that we read in the Office of these blessed days, which echo with Jeremiah the pain and discouragement of the Eternal Father towards unfaithful Jerusalem, and with Ezekiel His anger at the betrayal of His ministers: Son of man, do you see what they do? Behold the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here to remove me from my sanctuary! You will see others even worse (Ez 8: 6). In this terrible vision of Ezekiel the priests of the Lord adore Baal, the demon to whom children are offered as sacrifices: it is difficult not to see in the horrors of today’s world the same abomination, the same betrayals, the same apostasy, the same offenses against the Majesty of God, and the same wrath of the Most High.
When we look at the state of the Church, of our seminaries, of the convents, of the religious communities, and the consequences of the infidelities of the Hierarchy, we cannot ignore the terrible words of the indignant Lord: Desecrate even the temple, fill the courtyards with corpses (Ez 9:7). It is God himself, in his holy wrath, who orders His enemies to carry out His vengeance on the unfaithful members of the Church, who in the secret chambers of the temple worship the idols of the world. Fill the courtyards with corpses: the cloisters of the monasteries, the naves of the churches are strewn with the corpses of lost vocations, of failed religious, of faithful who have fled.
What remains is the pusillus grex, the καθῆκον of the Catholic Priesthood, which no earthly or infernal power will ever be able to erase from the face of the earth. You guard within yourselves, in your very flesh, the pignus, the treasure given as a pledge to the Church by Christ the High Priest: as long as you have the strength to hold a host and a chalice in your hands and to pronounce the words of the Consecration, you will have the power to renew the Sacrifice of Christ which has destroyed Satan’s tyranny over souls forever. As long as you can raise your hand to bless, to sanctify, and to absolve, the work of the devil may appear victorious, but it will never be able to prevail.
We know that the Antichrist – and all his precursors with him – are masters of seduction. But seduction is also corruption, the ability to attract us by buying us, just as the Iscariot was bought. Have you seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel do in the darkness, each in the secret room of his own idol? They go saying: “The Lord does not see us; the Lord has abandoned the land” (Ez 8, 12). But the Lord sees their faults and does not abandon the Church, because the Church is His Mystical Body, a part of Him, His living and holy members. Everything that falls, everything that appears behind the wall to have collapsed in its corruption and betrayals will not prevent the final victory, and indeed it will be an incentive to all of us to remain faithful to our God and Lord even when the temple seems empty and the altar seems deserted.
While the traitors and the wicked try to hide from the gaze of God in the recesses of their conventicles, the Disciples take refuge in the Cenacle to escape the Jews. The former trust in creatures and in the world, of which Satan is the prince; the latter in the Creator and in the Redeemer, the Conqueror of the world. Let us therefore remain in this mystical Cenacle, in fraternal harmony, keeping vigil and praying together with the Most Holy Virgin, Mother of the Church and Mother of the Priesthood, while the exterminating Angel passes by. The hour of darkness will pass. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
28 March 2024
Feria V in Cœna Domini
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| Bishop Huonder is Dying - Prayers |
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Posted by: TheRecusant.com - 03-30-2024, 05:08 AM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
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Bishop Vitus Huonder was to have consecrated the holy oils at Zaitskofen this year, but was taken into hospital shortly beforehand.
He has now been given the last rites in hospital. The SSPX in Germany are now requesting prayers for him:
Quote:Gebetsanliegen für Bischof Huonder
Bischof Vitus Huonder hat gestern um 19.15 Uhr die Sterbesakramente empfangen. Es sieht menschlich so aus, als ob es bald mit ihm zu Ende geht und er leidet sehr. Darum bitte ich Sie sehr um das Gebet für ihn.
Ihr Pater Trutt
(From the Munich priory.)
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| Pope Francis washes feet of 12 women, continuing 2016 ‘innovation’ in Holy Thursday liturgy |
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Posted by: Stone - 03-30-2024, 04:54 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Pope Francis washes feet of 12 women, continuing 2016 ‘innovation’ in Holy Thursday liturgy
Pope Francis again washed and kissed the feet of women in the Holy Thursday liturgy,
though this year is believed to be the first time that the 12 people in the ceremony were all women.
![[Image: Screen-Shot-2024-03-28-at-15.21.35.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-28-at-15.21.35.png)
Pope Francis washes a woman's foot, Maundy Thursday, 2024.
Vatican News/YouTube
Mar 28, 2024
ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis today washed the feet of 12 women during the Maundy Thursday Mandatum ceremony, continuing the break with Tradition and only men’s feet being washed, which he cemented with a decree in 2016.
In a ceremony held in Rome’s Rebibbia women’s prison, Pope Francis performed the Mandatum, or washing of feet, for Maundy Thursday, but it is believed that it is the first time the 12 people were all women.
Seated in his wheelchair, the pope was wheeled along the line of 12 of the inmates in the Rebibbia prison, washing, drying, and kissing feet the length of the line.
Francis said in his homily that the washing of feet was done in imitation of Christ and demonstrated the “vocation of service.”
The washing of women’s feet during the Maundy Thursday liturgy – while a favorite of the Vatican’s media division due to the emotional reactions of recipients of the pope’s gesture – is a contentious one liturgically.
The symbolic washing of the feet by the celebrant of the Mass is to commemorate Christ’s washing the feet of His 12 Apostles at the establishment of the priesthood. As Dom Prosper Gueranger notes in his liturgical commentary: “He would teach us, by what He is now doing, how great is the purity wherewith we should approach the holy table. He that is washed, says He, needeth not but to wash his feet.”
But in the first weeks of his pontificate, Pope Francis made waves through the Church by washing women’s feet at the Holy Thursday Mass, becoming the first pope to do so. Among the women whose feet he washed was a Muslim.
In January 2016, after establishing the practice, he officially altered the Church’s liturgy to allow for washing women’s feet at the Holy Thursday. Via a letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah (then-prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship) and a subsequent decree, Francis opened up to women a liturgical action that had previously always been officially reserved to men.
While local practice beforehand had illegally included the washing of women’s feet during the Maundy Thursday Mandatum, the pope’s 2016 decree formally instituted the custom. Francis wrote to Cardinal Sarah, saying the formal change was made with “the intention of improving the manner in which it is carried out, so that it fully expresses the meaning of the gesture performed by Jesus in the Upper Room, his giving of himself ‘to the end’ for the salvation of the world, his charity without boundaries.”
Commenting on the pope’s “innovation” – as it was described in the CDW decree implementing the pope’s wishes – Bishop Athanasius Schneider roundly criticized the development. Noting the intimate link of the Mandatum and the male-only priesthood, Bishop Schneider stated:
Quote:This Holy Mass celebrates the commemoration of the institution of the sacraments of the Eucharist and the Priesthood. Therefore, the foot washing of women along with the men not only distracts from the main focus on Eucharist and on Priesthood, but generates confusion regarding the historical symbolism of the “twelve” and of the apostles being of male sex. The universal tradition of the Church never allowed the foot washing during the Holy Mass, but instead outside of Mass, in a special ceremony.
By the way: the public washing and usually also kissing of the feet of women on the part of a man, in our case, of a priest or a bishop, is considered by every person of common sense in all cultures as being improper and even indecent. Thanks be to God no priest or bishop is obliged to wash publicly the feet of women on Holy Thursday, for there is no binding norm for it, and the foot washing itself is only facultative.
Cardinal Arthur Roche – while still Archbishop Roche and serving as CDW secretary – suggested in 2016 that priests were obliged to choose women for the foot washing following the pope’s decree. However, he was overruled by his superior and CDW prefect, Cardinal Sarah, who stated that “pastors may select a small group of the faithful to represent the variety and the unity of each part of the people of God.” This selection, noted Sarah, was such that the “small groups can be made up of men and women.”
In recent years, Francis has formally opened up male-only aspects of the Church’s liturgy to women, such as instituting female lectors and acolytes.
![[Image: DSC05754-scaled.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DSC05754-scaled.jpeg)
Pope Francis institutes a woman as lector, January 21, 2024.
While the practice of women lectors and acolytes had been widespread, the formal institution of women as lectors and acolytes is a modern novelty resulting from Pope Francis’ 2021 changes to the Church’s canon law, as outlined in his motu proprio Spiritus Domini. A subsequent motu proprio later that same year, Antiquum ministerium, provided for the formal institution of women as catechists, resulting in the first institution of women in the roles in 2022.
Writing in 2021 to then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Francis said that Spiritus Domini was following the lines of thought of Vatican II along with the controversial 2019 Synod on the Amazon: “in the horizon of renewal outlined by the Second Vatican Council, one feels ever greater today the urgency to rediscover the co-responsibility of all the baptized in the Church, and particularly the mission of the laity.”
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| ‘Servant of Freemasonry’: Viganò rebukes bishop who approved pagan ritual before Mass |
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Posted by: Stone - 03-28-2024, 06:36 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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‘Servant of Freemasonry’: Viganò rebukes bishop who approved pagan ritual before Mass at cathedral
The archbishop said a ''shamanic ceremony' 'desecrate(d) the Cathedral of the Diocese of Superior (WI)
on the very day on which the Holy Chrism is consecrated.'
![[Image: Superior-chrism.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Superior-chrism.png)
X
Mar 27, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò issued a stinging rebuke of an American bishop who allowed a pagan ritual to be performed inside his cathedral earlier this month.
In a X post published last Friday, Viganò condemned the ceremony as a “sacrilegious act.” He referred to the prelate who permitted it as a “squalid official of the ecumenical religion.”
“The shamanic ceremony … constitutes a sacrilegious act that desecrates the Cathedral of the Diocese of Superior (WI) on the very day on which the Holy Chrism is consecrated,” His Excellency declared.
“This makes Bishop (John) Powers, present at the rite, responsible for a very serious sacrilege and for the scandal caused to those present. This is not a Successor of the Apostles, but a servant of Freemasonry.”
Viganò is the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. His courageous and sharply worded commentaries on Vatican and international affairs have won him many admirers in recent years, even non-Catholics. He recently opened a house of formation in Italy for aspirants to the priesthood so they would not be “subjected to the blackmail of having to accept the errors of Vatican II or the deviations of Bergoglio in order to exercise their ministry.”
In his X post, Viganò did not hold back in his criticism of Powers, who was tapped to lead the diocese, located in northwest Michigan, by Pope Francis in 2015.
“The way he celebrates Mass reveals his total alienation from the Divine Mysteries,” His Excellency remarked. “What is ‘comforting’ — so to speak — is to see that the participants in the profanations of the Bergoglian sect are almost all of advanced age (especially the shamans, who are truly pathetic). The generation of Vatican II, sterile and senescent, is heading towards the sunset.”
Powers previously served as diocesan administrator under Bishop Peter Christensen, who had been overseeing the diocese since 2007 until he was reassigned to Boise, Idaho. In 2020, Christensen banned priests from offering Mass facing the tabernacle. He also outlawed communion rails.
In December 2023, Powers, who is 70, issued a statement in full support of Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s document calling for blessings of homosexual couples. “The blessing is simply an encouragement to those involved that they may be open to God’s love and find joy in their call to holiness,” he misleadingly claimed.
During the ceremony, four women dressed in Native American attire stood around the altar and simultaneously turned to the north, east, south, and west while a person at the pulpit implored help from “the creator” to grant them “strength and courage… to perceive the sacredness of life, of mother earth, and all creation.”
LifeSite reached out to the Superior diocese for clarity on the event. LifeSite wanted to know who the women were, what their religious beliefs are, and what they were saying.
LifeSite also sought an explanation as to how the ritual didn’t violate the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which holds that an altar “must be reserved for divine worship alone, to the absolute exclusion of any profane use.” It also teaches that “sacred places are violated by gravely injurious actions done in them with scandal to the faithful.”
LifeSite was informed by Dan Blank, the director of administrative services, on Monday that diocesan offices had a “snow day” due to bad weather. He said he would confer with those who were copied on the email in order to “determine a reply, if any.” LifeSite included Bishop Powers, Fr. Adam Laski, who serves as parochial administrator/adjutant judicial vicar, and several other employees of the diocese on the email. LifeSite has not received a response from the diocese as of the publication of this story.
Hundreds of Catholics attended the liturgy, officially known as the Chrism Mass where holy oils are anointed by the bishop for priests to use for the sacraments. The Mass was held on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph. Video evidence suggests most every priest in the diocese was present. Members of the Knights of Columbus and many young people attended as well. It is not readily known if the women who performed the ritual conduct it every year, were invited this year alone, or are a regular fixture at other churches in the diocese.
Catholic Family News managing editor Matt Gapers expressed outrage about the ceremony in an X post. “Bp. James Powers invited those present to ‘repent from your sins and to dispose yourselves’ to receive the Apostolic Blessing — after allowing a non-Christian ritual in the sanctuary,” he said.
[...] A priest who resides in the diocese and offers the Latin Mass exclusively spoke to LifeSite on condition of anonymity. He said the ritual was “tragic” in that it was an “abomination of desolation” that effectively makes Powers a “minister of Satan.”
“They invoked foreign deities with strange emblems, dancing, and incantations to consecrate the altar to Pachamama and the forces of darkness. Thís is an act of spiritual fornication carried out by the representatives of the Mystical Body of Christ, making it a grievous sin,” the priest said.
“The bishop defiled his soul and this diocese by forcing his priests, who stood by in silence, to approve of it. They have collectively reconsecrated this diocese to Satan by an act of apostasy of unanimous consent that now permits demons to come and go as they please wherever they please, even in churches. They have deceived their sheep, presenting evil as good, and defiled the altar and the Cathedral itself, which now requires an exorcism.”
The priest further remarked that “the oils that were ‘made holy’ at this un-worthy liturgy were approved by an entire group of clergy in the state of mortal sin. These very oils will be used in all sacraments for the next year, defiling all who receive them. Never has anyone heard of such an indescribable sin as what took place, and because the Vatican has been encouraging this all over the world, people think it’s just an ecumenical gesture of mercy. The truth is, there is nothing on earth so unmerciful as to condemn to eternal fire your whole body of clergy, and all of your sheep. This makes them the ministers of Satan, and like him, murderers of souls.”
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