| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 175 online users.
» 0 Member(s) | 172 Guest(s)
Applebot, Bing, Google
|
| Latest Threads |
Interview with the Editor...
Forum: The Recusant
Last Post: Stone
5 hours ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 52
|
Purgatory Explained by th...
Forum: Resources Online
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 09:03 AM
» Replies: 37
» Views: 3,327
|
Fr. Ruiz: Renewal of the ...
Forum: Rev. Father Hugo Ruiz Vallejo
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:58 AM
» Replies: 14
» Views: 1,076
|
Last Sunday after Penteco...
Forum: Pentecost
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:57 AM
» Replies: 5
» Views: 11,615
|
Livestream: Twenty-sevent...
Forum: November 2024
Last Post: Stone
11-23-2024, 10:30 PM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 69
|
Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Feas...
Forum: November 2024
Last Post: Stone
11-23-2024, 10:27 PM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 93
|
The Catholic Trumpet: Whe...
Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
Last Post: Stone
11-23-2024, 07:06 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 73
|
Bishop appointed by Commu...
Forum: Socialism & Communism
Last Post: Stone
11-22-2024, 04:57 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 84
|
Dr. Marian Horvat: The Tw...
Forum: General Commentary
Last Post: Stone
11-22-2024, 04:52 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 101
|
German [District] Superio...
Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
Last Post: Stone
11-22-2024, 04:48 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 115
|
|
|
| Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio is attempting to ‘adulterate the deposit of faith’ under false pretense |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-26-2023, 05:12 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
 |
NB: Once again, we see Pope Francis embrace and employ the same tactics that were used at Vatican II to subvert Catholic Teaching, nicely summarized here by Archbishop Viganò.
Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio is attempting to ‘adulterate the deposit of faith’ under false pretenses
Bergoglio’s attacks on the deposit of faith are ‘scandalous and unheard of’ and risk the eternal damnation of souls, Archbishop Viganò writes.
Wed Oct 25, 2023
Editor’s note: The following is a commentary first posted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
(LifeSiteNews (emphasis mine)) — The system of the subverters is always the same: they modify a law by leveraging emotion and not reason, not because they care about the common good, but because they need a (false) pretext with which to legitimize what the law instead condemns. This was also the case for introducing divorce, abortion, and euthanasia.
In the ecclesial sphere, the subverters of doctrine and morality put forward the (false) pretext of understanding the Rites in order to introduce the vernacular language into the Liturgy, or the (false) pretext of ecumenical dialogue to water down Catholic Truths. Bergoglio resorted to the same trick for the death penalty, with the (false) pretext that it is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and today his minions use the (false) pretext of discrimination against adulterers, concubines, and perverts to legitimize adultery, concubinage, and sodomy.
This happens when the vicarious authority of those who govern society or the Church does not limit itself, as it should, to acting in the Name of God, but presumes that it has something to teach even God Himself, Who is said [to] not be able to legislate with justice, and that He imposes precepts that are impossible to observe.
And this is the same accusation with which Satan rebelled against God, and his main argument to convince us to disobey Him. That civil rulers do this is painful and very serious; but that the one who, sitting on the Throne of Peter, dares to make these recriminations his own in order to adulterate the Deposit of Faith and lead souls to eternal damnation is scandalous and unheard of.
|
|
|
| Archbishop Viganò: Priests and bishops who promoted ‘lethal’ COVID jabs must answer to God |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-25-2023, 05:23 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
Archbishop Viganò: Priests and bishops who promoted ‘lethal’ COVID jabs must answer to God
‘Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy,’ Archbishop Viganò writes. ‘And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.’
![[Image: Vigano_foto.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Vigano_foto.jpg)
Mon Oct 23, 2023
Editor’s note: The following is a commentary about the Catholic hierarchy and COVID jabs first posted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
(LifeSiteNews) — Three years ago I was among the first – and certainly the first Bishop – to denounce pandemic and vaccination fraud. Expressed with arguments that today emerge as true and well-founded are the critical issues and immorality of an experimental gene treatment, which aborted fetuses were and are used to produce. I also wrote two open letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which remain unanswered.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
There were those in conservative circles who went so far as to attack me personally and resorted to the unproven and clearly false statements of a doctor who worked with her husband for BigPharma.
I expressed my dismay at the silence of the bishops, priests, and parish pastors, of many religious workers involved in hospitals, and at the servile zeal with which the Catholic Hierarchy conformed to the crazy and criminal health regulations and Bergoglio’s promotion of the serum. I was publicly insulted on television and in the media, while my brother bishops were silent. Faced with a crime against humanity that has continued to take place before our eyes for three years with the approval and encouragement of Bergoglio, I would have thought that many Pastors would have found the courage to raise their voices and join in my denunciation of the plan of world depopulation implemented by the Word Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the UN, while the funds of these criminals were also given to the Vatican, transforming Bergoglio into a vaccine salesman and a supporter of climate fraud, which has now become “magisterium” with Laudate Deum and with the “Amazonian and synodal church.”
READ: New documentary exposes World Health Organization’s vaccine sterilization campaign in Kenya
Nemo propheta in sua patria. But if today some priests surrender to the evidence and ask Catholic journalists to tell the truth about the adverse effects, I wonder with what serenity they have so far silenced their conscience, and if their silence and fearful silence – like that of the doctors, police forces, magistrates, teachers and governors – has not turned into a timid protest today just because they see the showdown approaching and fear for their own reputation more than for the health of the billions of people subjected to the inoculation of a product that was known from the beginning to be dangerous and even lethal.
Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy. And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.
READ: Bill Gates: Life won’t go back to ‘normal’ until population ‘widely vaccinated’
|
|
|
|
| Health Canada confirms cancer-linked Simian Virus 40 DNA sequence found in Pfizer COVID jab |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-24-2023, 07:25 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
- No Replies
|
|
Health Canada confirms cancer-linked Simian Virus 40 DNA sequence found in Pfizer COVID jab
Health Canada noted that '(a)lthough the full DNA sequence of the Pfizer plasmid was provided at the time of initial filing, the sponsor did not specifically identify the SV40 sequence.'
![[Image: Shutterstock_2196481543-1.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Shutterstock_2196481543-1.jpg)
Shutterstock
Mon Oct 23, 2023
OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The presence of Polyomavirus Simian Virus 40 (SV40), which is a monkey-linked DNA sequence known to cause cancer when it was used in old polio vaccines, has been confirmed by Health Canada to be present in the Pfizer COVID shot, a fact that was not disclosed by the vaccine maker to officials.
As first reported by The Epoch Times last week, there is still ongoing debate among scientists regarding the findings, with some reporting SV40 poses a cancer risk and was hidden on purpose while others say it is nothing to worry about.
As per an email that was sent to The Epoch Times, Health Canada said it “expects sponsors to identify any biologically functional DNA sequences within a plasmid (such as an SV40 enhancer) at the time of submission.”
“Although the full DNA sequence of the Pfizer plasmid was provided at the time of initial filing, the sponsor did not specifically identify the SV40 sequence,” Health Canada added.
Health Canada noted that Kevin McKernan, a microbiologist and former researcher and team leader for the MIT Human Genome project, and Dr. Phillip J. Buckhaults, who is a professor of cancer genomics as well as the director of the Cancer Genetics Lab at the University of South Carolina, had raised in a public manner earlier this year how SV40 was present in the jabs.
After this, Health Canada noted, it was “possible for Health Canada to confirm the presence of the enhancer based on the plasmid DNA sequence submitted by Pfizer against the published SV40 enhancer sequence.”
SV40 is used to enhance gene transcription when the shots are made.
According to McKernan, he noted in correspondence to The Epoch Times, that Pfizer did not let it be known of SV40 being in the COVID shots given its cancer link when it was used in polio vaccines decades ago.
McKernan shared his concerns about SV40 but did say there is no straightforward evidence yet if it is a full-blown carcinogenic. He did warn the public that SV40 promoters are still a concern due to the risk of them “integrating into the human genomes near oncogenes, which are genes that have the potential to cause cancer,” as noted by The Epoch Times.
According to Buckhaults, “People have a right to have their concerns taken seriously and addressed by competent, caring scientists, even if their concerns end up being invalidated. We should look for monsters under the bed and report results honestly.”
Health Canada spokesperson Mark Johnson, as noted by The Epoch Times, said the current data available regarding SV40 does not connect it to so-called “turbo cancers” linked with the COVID shot.
Dr. Joseph Mercola in an opinion piece posted to LifeSiteNews in June mentioned a discussion about COVID jab contamination between Dr. Steven E. Greer and McKernan, along with Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi.
According to McKernan’s team, SV40 DNA contamination was found in both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots, with the findings posted on OSF Preprints in early April 2023.
Greer noted, as observed by Mercola, that “governments and drug companies ‘have misled the world to a far greater extent than previously known.’ If these findings are correct, it would also mean that ‘the so-called ‘vaccines’ are actually altering the human genome and causing permanent production of the deadly spike protein,’ and this internal production of spike protein would, in turn, ‘trigger the immune system to attack its own cells.’”
Mercola wrote that as for SV40 showing up in the COVID shots, “it appears to be related to poor quality control during the manufacturing process, although it’s unclear where in the development SV40 might have sneaked in.”
“Quality control deficiencies may also be responsible for the high rate of anaphylactic reactions we’ve been seeing,” Mercola noted.
Last month, Health Canada approved a revised Moderna mRNA-based COVID shot despite research showing that 1 in 35 recipients of the booster have myocardial damage.
There is mounting evidence concerning the adverse effects they cause in many who have taken the COVID shots, including kids.
For example, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.
SV40 was ‘hidden’ from regulators by vaccine makers, doctor says
According to Dr. Janci Lindsay, who works as the director of toxicology and molecular biology for Toxicology Support Services, Pfizer did not disclose the presence of SV40 “promoters” to both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as the European Medicines Agency.
She said, as reported in The Epoch Times, the drug company “hid them.”
“So it’s not just the fact that they’re there, it’s the fact that they were purposefully hidden from the regulators,” she noted.
Lindsay explained that the full SV40 virus is not present in the COVID shots, but a nuclear localization sequence is.
She said that SV40 promoters were integrated into the “human genome — in a process known as insertional mutagenesis — that would then result in gene mutations that could cause cancers.”
Lindsay also said SV40 will “sit down anywhere” as it is a strong promoter.
As for Health Canada, it maintains that when it comes to the COVID shots, it has “concluded that the risk/benefit profile continues to support the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”
“Health Canada does not rely on the conclusions provided by vaccine manufacturers. Health Canada conducts an in-depth, independent review of the required evidence provided by the manufacturer to ensure that our high standards for safety, efficacy and quality are met,” the agency noted.
Buckhaults noted, as per The Epoch Times report, that the SV40 “sequence in the vaccine is NOT the cancer-causing SV40 large T antigen, which would be a very significant cancer risk.
He said that the SV40 enhancer is a “standard bit of molecular biology engineering to achieve high level expression of the Neo resistance marker” that has been used “for decades.”
He did state that the small DNA pieces of SV40 still have a “non-zero future cancer risk, same as all the other DNA sequences.”
“Concern among regulators is appropriate, but panic among the public is not appropriate (and indeed harmful),” he noted.
What is SV40 and why was it in the shots?
SV40 in vaccines has been linked to the spread of turbo cancers in those who have been exposed to the virus via contaminated injections. According to a 2002 study published in the Lancet, there is evidence that links the older polio vaccines, which were filed with SV40 contaminants, to certain forms of cancer.
Polio vaccines from the late 1950s to the early 1960s were all contaminated with SV40, after it was discovered that the virus was present in the monkey kidney cells, which vaccine makers used to grow the shots.
The authors of the 2002 study claim that the SV40-contaminated polio vaccine may have caused up to half of the 55,000 cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosed each year.
SV40, or the simian (monkey) virus as it is also known, according to Dr. Maurice Hilleman, who is a late vaccine developer, was put in the polio vaccine and then put into wide circulation by Merck inadvertently.
It has never been clear, as noted by Mercola, whether SV40 has been completely removed from polio vaccines since, however, it is known that contaminated jabs were in circulation in Italy as late as 1999.
The Lancet book review titled “The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Money Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine and the Millions of Americans Exposed” goes over SV40’s link to cancer in detail.
An expert from the book reads, “By 1960, scientists and vaccine manufacturers knew that monkey kidneys were sewers of simian viruses. Such contamination often spoiled cultures, including those of an NIH researcher named Bernice Eddy, who worked on vaccine safety … Her discovery … threatened one of the USA’s most important public-health programs.”
“Eddy tried to get word out to colleagues but was muzzled and stripped of her vaccine regulatory duties and her laboratory … [Two] Merck researchers, Ben Sweet and Maurice Hilleman, soon identified the rhesus virus later named SV40 – the carcinogenic agent that had eluded Eddy,” the book reads.
By 1963, U.S. health authorities switched to African green monkeys, which do not naturally carry SV40 to make polio shots.
Adverse effects from COVID shots on the rise in Canada
Adverse effects from the first round of COVID shots have resulted in a growing number of Canadians who have filed for financial compensation over alleged injuries from the jabs, via Canada’s Vaccine Injury Program (VISP).
Thus far, some VISP has already paid over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.
Despite the health risks associated with the COVID shots, governments across Canada all enacted strict rules, including workplace jab mandates.
As a result, many Canadians who chose not to get the shots lost their job. However, many of them are fighting back.
Last week, LifeSiteNews reported on how over 700 vaccine-free Canadians negatively affected by federal COVID jab dictates have banded together to file a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
|
|
|
|
| Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology text |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2023, 06:54 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology text
Church historian Roberto de Mattei told LifeSiteNews that this hugely significant event is the 'last act of a process' beginning with Vatican II and culminating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality.
![[Image: synod-catacombs.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/synod-catacombs.jpg)
Synod on Synodality members at the Catacombs, October 12, 2023
Vatican News X/Screenshot
Oct 20, 2023
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– In a hugely significant move, participants of the Synod on Synodality were quietly given the text of a secretive pact – first composed by a group of liberal theologians during Vatican II – which is part of a relativistic and “egalitarian” plan embodied and enacted by Pope Francis to “change the identity of the Catholic Church.”
In an article published October 13, Jesuit-run America Magazine revealed that participants of the Synod on Synodality were given a controversial and secret text during their October 12 trip to the Catacombs of Sts. Sebastian, Callistus and Domitilla. (An archive of the America Magazine report is available here.)
The report stated how the prayer booklet given to Synod participants “included the full text of the Pact of the Catacombs.” Of note is that this was not included in the booklet emailed to journalists of the Vatican press corps.
READ: SPECIAL: Pope Francis’ agenda is the progressive vision of Vatican II
The text and its being given to the Synod members is hugely significant, with Church historian Professor Roberto de Mattei describing it as the “last act of a process” beginning with Vatican II and culminating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality.
Commenting to LifeSiteNews about the event, de Mattei stated:
Quote:The Catacombs Pact distributed to the Synod Fathers last week is not a purely commemorative event, but the last act of a process that began with the Second Vatican Council and has its ultimate expression in the Synodal project encouraged by Pope Francis to change the identity of the Catholic Church, removing any “Constantinian” element and transforming it into an egalitarian and pauperist social agency.
What is the Catacombs Pact?
On November 16, 1965, 42 bishops attending the Second Vatican Council met in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla to compile and sign the “Pact of the Catacombs,” or the Catacombs Pact. The text has remained largely out of the public eye, but is a formulation of 13 key points pertaining to Church life, organization and practice, all based on tenets of the heterodox ideology known as Liberation Theology.
It highlights aspects which strongly resonate with “social justice” activists of today, such as:
- Living in the “ordinary manner of our people,”
- Rejecting “the appearance and reality of riches” including in dress and belongings, seemingly including liturgical objects,
- Handing over the finances to laity in the dioceses,
- Refusing traditional ecclesiastical titles like “Excellency,”
- Avoiding any semblance of hierarchical treatment, including during the liturgy,
- To be more focused on the style of “collegiality,”
- To “be more humanly present, more welcoming,” and to “show ourselves to be open to all, whatever their religion.”
Some accounts suggest the Pact garnered support from as many as 500 bishops at the council.
Who orchestrated it?
In his detailed account of the Second Vatican Council, de Mattei wrote how the pact was proposed by a group of prelates known as the “Church of the Poor,” which he described as one of the three “most important and effective pressure groups of the council.”
The “Church of the Poor” began meeting as early as the first session of the Council, in October 1962.
The late Bishop of Ivrea, Luigi Bettazzi – who until his death in July 2023 was the last remaining signatory of the Pact – stated the text was chiefly written by Archbishop Hélder Câmara, a Brazilian prelate who is described as an “icon” and “father” of liberation theology.
The influence of the author must not be underestimated.
Prof. de Mattei records that Câmara’s collaboration with prominent liberal advocate Cardinal Joseph Suenens at Vatican II was “one of the ‘hidden’ driving forces of the conciliar assembly.”
As de Mattei highlights, Câmara described his friend Suenens as “the key man of the Council, certain of the direct and personal trust of the Holy Father.” Câmara defended Suenens’ description as “the world head of progressivism,” adding “he is my leader at the Council.”
![[Image: Screen-Shot-2023-10-20-at-14.58.11.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-20-at-14.58.11.png)
Cdl. Joseph Suenens during a video interview
Câmara himself advocated for contraception and an acceptance of divorce during the conciliar years, and is acknowledged as “source of inspiration for Pope Francis,” especially as it was under Francis that his canonization process was approved in 2015.
Câmara was also vice-president of CELAM at the time of Vatican II, and so had influence over the six hundred or so Latin American prelates.
Nor is the composition of the signatories to be overlooked.
Bishop Luigi Bettazzi’s signature on the 1965 Pact thus linked the document to the work of other prominent liberal forces at play during those years. Bettazzi, records de Mattei, signed as the representative of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro – the Archbishop of Bologna.
Lercaro was highly influential in compiling the Novus Ordo liturgy alongside Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, and was one of four moderators appointed by Pope Paul VI to oversee daily proceedings of Vatican II, only weeks after Paul VI was elected pope in June 1963.
A certain Father Giuseppe Dossetti served as Cdl. Lercaro’s theological advisor. Dossetti was the leading figure behind the so-called “Bologna School,” which promoted the liberal “spirit” of the Council and portrayed traditionalists as enemies.
De Mattei describes the School of Bologna as “the intellectual laboratory of European ultra-progressivism.”
Thus, the founders and leading lights of extreme liberal forces both in Europe and South America were behind the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs.
To add to this, the Conciliar fathers’ moves were enacted in other parts of the Church. Commenting on the situation to LifeSiteNews, de Mattei noted that in 1965 also, “Father Pedro Arrupe, the author of a project to reform the Church that turned its foundations upside down along the lines of the Pact of the Catacombs, was elected General of the Society of Jesus.”
It was this same liberal Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Arrupe, who was a mentor for the young Fr. Jorge Bergoglio S.J. and raised him to become a district superior aged only 36. Indeed, Francis praised Arrupe even as recently as this summer, when Pope Francis hailed his “courage.”
Catacombs Pact and Pope Francis
To understand Pope Francis and his direction for the Church it is thus vital to come to grips with his relationship with the text signed by the Council fathers in 1965. For Francis has crucial links with those involved with the document, the ideologies of the text itself and its very aims.
De Mattei told LifeSite that Francis has been in possession of a text of the document from at least the start of his time in the Vatican. “On 21 March 2013, a week after his election, Pope Francis received a copy of the Pact of the Catacombs from the hands of Argentine activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporter of Marxist dictators Fidel Castro, Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chaves,” said the historian.
De Mattei added how in July 2014, the Pope’s favored liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, “published an article with the title El pacto de las catacumbas vivido por el Papa Francisco, in which, after transcribing the Catacombs Pact of 1965, he concluded with these words: ‘Aren’t these precisely the ideals presented by Pope Francis?’”
In 2015, Bishop Bettazzi stated that the text he and his fellow signatories worked on was now “bearing fruit.” “The pact of the catacombs today… is Pope Francis,” he said. Incidentally, when Bettazzi died in June, Pope Francis described him as “… a man of dialogue and a point of reference for numerous representatives of Italian public and political life.”
![[Image: cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422.jpeg]](https://www.vaticannews.va/content/dam/vaticannews/multimedia/2022/10/10/bettazzi-con-Papa-Francesco.jpeg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422.jpeg)
Pope Francis and Bishop Bettazzi. Credit: Vatican News
Indeed, with 2015 being the 50th anniversary of the text, there was a renewed interest in the document which had largely remained out of the public consciousness.
The Washington Post wrote how “perhaps nothing has revived and legitimated the Pact of the Catacombs as much as the surprise election, in March 2013, of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio – Pope Francis.”
The heterodox German prelate, Walter Cardinal Kasper, stated to the news outlet that Francis’ “program is to a high degree what the Catacomb Pact was.”
Kasper stated that “now he [Francis] brings it back,” saying that already in 2015 “the Catacomb Pact is everywhere now in discussion.”
Amazon Synod and a new Pact
With Pope Francis being described as the very embodiment of the Pact, it is not surprising that the document has assumed a key role in his pontificate, albeit not quite having the public exposure to be described as having taken center stage.
Perhaps, though, no clearer sign was given of Francis’ commitment and promotion of the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs than during the 2019 Synod on the Amazon.
During that synod – which is perhaps most infamously known for its Pachamama pagan idols being honored in the Vatican – a renewed version of the 1965 Pact was signed. (A copy can be viewed here.)
In the very same Catacombs of St. Domitilla, a group of cardinals, bishops and Synod members celebrated Mass and signed a “Pact of the Catacombs for the Common Home.” They were led by Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, who proudly announced that he was wearing Archbishop Câmara’s stole. Câmara was a man to whom Hummes “was extremely devoted,” observed de Mattei.
Hummes’s leadership of the 2019 Pact is also a sign of Francis’ approval of the endeavor. Hummes was seated next to Cardinal Bergoglio during the 2013 papal conclave, accompanied the new Pope Francis onto the balcony to greet the crowds on March 13, 2013 and remained in Francis’ own words “a good friend.” Hummes also had key responsibility for the Amazon Synod, serving as relator general – the position now held by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich for the Synod on Synodality.
As de Mattei commented to LifeSite about the 2019 Pact, “the socio-political Pact of the 1960s became the fifteen-point socio-cosmic pact entitled: ‘Catacombs Pact for the Common Home. For a Church with an Amazonian face, poor and servant, prophetic and Samaritan.’”
Writing about the 2019 Pact at the time, LifeSite’s Jeanne Smits noted how the new text also featured considerably more explicit arguments in favor of ecological and indigenous talking points.
Quote:The new Pact of the Catacombs not only proclaims preferential attention for the poor, as did the first Pact signed in 1965 – the poor now being represented by the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, but also their right to their traditional (pagan and pantheistic) ‘spirituality’ and their right to participate in all Church decisions in their area.
The pantheistic element is present in the Pact in the affirmation of an ‘integral ecology, in which everything is interconnected, the human race and all creation, for all creatures are daughters and sons of the earth.’
“The 1965 Pact has now simply been updated,” wrote Smits.
Here, as in so many aspects of the details regarding the Catacombs Pact, there is further integration of details. For it was the laicized priest Leonardo Boff, who in 2015 likened Francis’ pontificate to the 1965 Catacombs Pact, who is widely credited with providing the theological groundwork for the 2019 Amazon Synod.
READ: 47-year-old photo shows future Pope Francis with dissident priest who helped engineer Amazon synod
As Dr. Maike Hickson recounted, Boff’s friendship with Francis dates back decades, and has grown more impactful for the Church since Cardinal Bergoglio assumed the papal throne and kept Boff as a close friend and advisor.
Indeed, evidencing Francis’ commitment to the liberation theology ideals of the Catacombs Pact, Boff claimed in a 2016 interview that Pope Francis is “one of us.”
“He has turned Liberation Theology into a common property of the Church. And he has widened it,” said Boff.
With Francis now ensuring that members of his pontificate’s major work, the Synod on Synodality, receive the text of the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs, his agenda for the Church is increasingly clear for those who wish to see it.
“Today,” said de Mattei to LifeSite, “this legacy is taken up by an organism that is called a Synod, even though it is not an authentic Synod (the bishops are only a part of its members), and which expresses a magisterium that is not a magisterium, because it lacks the content and form of authentic Catholic teaching.”
|
|
|
|
| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Twenty-first Week after Pentecost |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2023, 05:58 AM - Forum: Pentecost
- Replies (6)
|
|
When God, at length, sees that we will not respond to benefits, nor threats, nor admonitions, nor amend our lives, He is forced by our own very selves to punish us. God will then chastise us because we ourselves force Him to chastise us.
I.
When God, at length, sees that we will not respond to benefits, nor threats, nor admonitions, nor amend our lives, He is forced by our own very selves to chastise us, but while punishing us, He will place before our eyes the great mercies He has extended to us: Thou thoughtest unjustly that I shall be like to thee; but I will reprove thee, and set before thy face (Ps. xlix. 20). He will then say to the sinner: Think you, O sinner, that I had forgotten, as you had done, the outrages you put upon Me, and the graces I dispensed to you? St. Augustine says that God does not hate but loves us, and that He only hates our sins. He is not wroth with men, says St. Jerome, but with their sins. The Saint says, that by His nature God is inclined to benefit us, and that it is we ourselves who oblige Him to chastise us, and assume the appearance of severity, which He has not of Himself. St. Jerome, reflecting on those words which Jesus Christ on the day of the General Judgment will address to the reprobate: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv. 41), inquires, who has prepared this fire for sinners? God, perhaps? No, because God never created souls for hell, as the impious Luther taught: this fire was kindled for sinners by their own sins. He who sows in sin, shall reap chastisement. He that soweth iniquity shall reap evils (Prov. xxii. 8). When the soul commits sin, it voluntarily obliges itself to pay the penalty thereof, and thus condemns itself to the pains of hell. For you have said; we have entered into a league with death, and we have made a covenant with hell (Is. xxviii. 15). Hence, St. Ambrose well says, that God has not condemned any one, but that each one is the author of his own punishment. And the Holy Ghost says, that the sinner shall be consumed by the hatred which he bears himself: with the rod of his anger he shall be consumed (Prov. xxii. 8). He, says Salvian, who offends God has no more cruel enemy than himself, since he himself has caused the torments which he suffers. God, he continues, does not wish to see us in affliction, but it is we who draw down sufferings upon ourselves, and by our sins enkindle the flames in which we are to burn. God punishes us, because we oblige Him to punish us.
II.
You will say the mercies of the Lord are great: no matter how manifold my sins, I have in view a change of life by and by, and God will have mercy upon me. God does not wish you to speak thus. Say not the mercy of the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the multitude of my sins (Ecclus. v. 6). The reason is this, for mercy and wrath quickly come from him (Ibid. 7). Yes, it is true, God has patience, God waits for some sinners; I say some, for there are some whom God does not wait for at all: how many has He not sent to hell immediately after the first transgression? Others He does wait for, but He will not always wait for them; He spares them for a certain time and then punishes. The Lord patiently expecteth, that when the day of judgment shall come, he may punish them in the fulness of their sins (2 Mach. vi. 14). Mark well, when the day of judgment shall come: when the day of vengeance shall arrive, in the fulness of their sins. When the measure of sins which God has determined to pardon is filled up, He will punish. Then the Lord will have no mercy, and will chastise to the full.
The city of Jericho did not fall during the first circuit made by the Ark, it did not fall at the fifth, or at the sixth, but it fell at last at the seventh. And thus it will happen with thee, says St. Augustine, "at the seventh circuit made by the Ark the city of vanity will fall." God has pardoned you your first sin, your tenth, your seventieth, perhaps your thousandth; He has often called you, He now calls you again; tremble lest this should be the last circuit of the ark, that is, the last call, after which, if you do not change your life, it will be over with you. For the earth, says the Apostle, that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it ... and which bringeth forth thorns and briars is reprobate, and very near unto a curse, whose end is to be burned (Heb. vi. 7). That soul, he says, which has often received the waters of Divine light and grace, and instead of bearing fruit produces nought but the thorns of sin, is nigh unto a curse, and its end will be to burn eternally in hell fire. In a word, when the time comes, God punishes.
Spiritual Reading
II. MORTIFICATION OF THE EYES
The Saints were particularly cautious not to look at persons of a different sex. St. Hugh, bishop, when compelled to speak with women, never looked at them in the face. St. Clare would never fix her eyes on the face of a man. She was greatly afflicted because, when raising her eyes at the elevation to see the consecrated Host, she once involuntarily saw the countenance of the priest. St. Aloysius never looked his own mother in the face. It is related of St. Arsenius, that a noble lady went to visit him in the desert, to beg of him to recommend her to God. When the Saint perceived that his visitor was a woman, he turned away from her. She then said to him: "Arsenius, since you will neither see nor hear me, at least remember me in your prayers." "No," replied the Saint, "but I will beg of God to make me forget you, and never more think of you."
From these examples may be seen the folly and temerity of those who, though they have not the sanctity of a St. Clare, still gaze around upon every object that presents itself, even on persons of a different sex. And notwithstanding their unguarded looks, they expect to be free from temptations and from the danger of sin. For having once looked deliberately at a woman, the Abbot Pastor was tormented for forty years by temptations against chastity. St. Gregory states that the temptation, to conquer which St. Benedict rolled himself in thorns, arose from one incautious glance at a woman. St. Jerome, though living in a cave at Bethlehem, in continual prayer and macerations of the flesh, was terribly molested by the remembrance of ladies whom he had long before seen in Rome. Why should not similar molestations be the lot of those who wilfully and without reserve fix their eyes on persons of a different sex?
"It is not," says St. Francis de Sales, "the seeing of objects so much as the fixing of our eyes upon them that proves most pernicious." "If," says St. Augustine, our eyes should by chance fall upon others, let us take care never to fix them upon any one." Father Manareo, when taking leave of St. Ignatius for a distant place, looked steadfastly in his face: for this look he was corrected by the Saint. From the conduct of St. Ignatius on this occasion, we learn that it is not becoming in those who aspire to sanctity, to fix their eyes on the countenance of a person even of the same sex, particularly if the person is young. But I do not see how looks at young persons of a different sex can be excused from the guilt of a venial fault, or even from mortal sin, when there is proximate danger of criminal consent. "It is not lawful," says St. Gregory, "to behold what it is not lawful to covet." The evil thought that proceeds from looks, though it should be rejected, never fails to leave a stain upon the soul. Brother Roger, a Franciscan of singular purity, being once asked why he was so reserved in his intercourse with women, replied, that when men avoid the occasions of sin, God preserves them; but when they expose themselves to danger, they are justly abandoned by the Lord, and easily fall into some grievous transgressions.
Evening Meditation
CONFORMITY TO THE WILL OF GOD
XI. SPECIAL PRACTICES OF THIS VIRTUE.
I.
We may at times have to suffer the loss of persons who, in either a temporal or spiritual point of view, happen to be of service to us. This is a matter in regard to which devout people are often very faulty, through their want of resignation to the Divine dispensations. Our sanctification must come, not from spiritual directors, but from God. It is, indeed, His will that we should avail ourselves of directors as spiritual guides, when He gives them to us; but when He takes them away, He wills that we should rest content, and increase our confidence in His goodness, saying at such times: Lord, it is Thou Who hast given me this assistance; now Thou hast taken it from me; may Thy will be ever done; but I pray Thee now to supply my wants Thyself, and to teach me what I ought to do to serve Thee. And in the same way ought we to receive all other crosses from the hands of God. but so many troubles, you say, are chastisements. But, I ask in reply, are not the chastisements God sends us in this life acts of kindness and benefits? If we have offended Him, we have to satisfy Divine justice in some way or other, either in this life or in the next. Therefore we ought all of us to say with St. Augustine, "Here burn, here cut, here do not spare; that so Thou mayest spare in eternity"; and again, with holy Job: And that this may be my comfort, that, afflicting me with sorrow, he spare not (Job vi. 10). It should, too, be a consolation to one who has deserved hell to see that God is punishing him in this world; because this will give him good hopes that it may be God's will to deliver him from punishment eternal. Let us, then, say when suffering the chastisements of God what was said by Heli the high priest: It is the Lord; let him do what is good in his sight (1 Kings, iii. 18).
II.
We must be conformed to God's will in times of spiritual desolation. When a soul begins to lead a spiritual life, the Lord is accustomed to heap consolations on it in order to wean it from the pleasures of the world; but afterwards, when He sees it more settled in spiritual ways, He holds His hand, in order to try its love, and to see whether it serves and loves Him unrecompensed and deprived of spiritual joys. "While we are living here below," St. Teresa writes, "our gain does not consist in any increase of enjoyment of God, but in the performance of His will." And in another passage: "The love of God does not consist in tenderness, but in serving Him with constancy and humility." And again, elsewhere: "By means of drynesses and temptations the Lord tries the fidelity of those who love Him." Let the soul then thank the Lord when He caresses it with sweetness; but not torment itself by acts of impatience, when it finds itself left in desolation. This is a point which should be well attended to; for some foolish persons, finding themselves in a state of aridity, think that God has abandoned them; or, that the spiritual life was not for them; and so they leave off prayer, and lose all they have gained. There is no time better for exercising resignation to the will of God than the time of dryness. I am not saying that you will not suffer pain at seeing yourself bereft of the sensible presence of God, for it is impossible for a soul not to feel such pain as this. Neither can we refrain from lamentation, when our Redeemer Himself upon His Cross complained: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. xxvii. 46). But, in its sufferings, it should ever resign itself perfectly to the will of its Lord. This spiritual desolation and abandonment is what all the Saints have suffered. "What hardness of heart," said St. Bernard, "do I not experience! I no longer find any delight in reading, no longer any pleasure in meditation or in prayer."
|
|
|
|
| Two Homosexuals Can Receive Blessing "Together", Says Tucho |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-20-2023, 04:08 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- No Replies
|
|
Cardinal Fernández says blessings are for ‘every’ person in ‘every situation’
Cardinal Fernández granted an exclusive interview to LifeSiteNews in which he expanded on his openness to same-sex blessings, despite Catholic teaching prohibiting them on the grounds that sin can never be blessed.
![[Image: fernandez-2.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/fernandez-2.jpg)
Victor Cardinal Fernández speaking to media, September 30, 2023.
Michael Haynes/LifeSiteNews
Oct 19, 2023
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– Speaking to LifeSiteNews, Victor Cardinal Fernández expressed his openness to same-sex blessings, saying that blessings are a sign of “pastoral work” for people “in every situation.”
Speaking in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews on the day he was made a cardinal, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández gave his thoughts on the matter of blessings for same-sex individuals.
LifeSiteNews asked the new prefect of the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) whether it is “always wrong to give a blessing to homosexuality, to homosexual couples or not.”
Since being announced as the new CDF prefect on July 4, Fernández has given a number of interviews, and this question has been repeatedly raised. He has consistently replied with confusing phraseology, notably avoiding a straightforward pronunciation of the Catholic teaching condemning same-sex blessings.
The cardinal at first downplayed the possibility of same-sex blessings, if such an instance would cause confusion with marriage. But he continued by saying that a “blessing is not a sacrament” and should not have the same “conditions” as a sacrament would.
In light of this, Fernández stated that a blessing is a “sign of pastoral work” which could be given to “every people in every situation.”
Fernández’s full response to LifeSiteNews is as follows:
Quote:What the Church said is that the homosexual union is not blessed, because it [the Church] has the clear definition of marriage which is a union between a male and female open to new life.
Only that is called matrimony – marriage, only that reality is called that way.
So the blessing that could confuse and not make clear about this reality is not good for the Church.
But perhaps also [they] need blessings, not only one isolated person, but two persons who are asking for a blessing because they want to be faithful to God, they want to be better, they want to grow in their Christian life.
The blessing is not a sacrament. And we mustn’t ask the same conditions [for] a simple blessing that we ask for a sacrament.
Blessing is a sign of the “opera pastorale” [pastoral work], to every people in every situation, and we [need to] know nothing [about] the people with how is his Christian life, the morals and other things [in order] to give the blessing.
His answer generates confusion, and appears contradictory in many ways. For while he begins by suggesting that a blessing which causes “confusion” with marriage is “not good for the Church,” he then continued by arguing in favor of blessings for “every situation.”
Notably, while the new CDF prefect described a same-sex blessing that could be confused with marriage as “not good for the Church,” he did not in fact rule it out as impossible. Instead, he explicitly defended a universal approach to handing out blessings.
Cdl. Fernández and the era of interview confusion
Since his arrival to the Vatican over the summer, Cardinal Fernández has made waves for his statements on matters of Catholic doctrine. His role as the ghostwriter of Amoris Laetitia has meant that such statements are not without precedent.
READ: Theologians warn Archbishop Fernández pushing ‘heresy’ by promoting Amoris Laetitia
Amoris Laetitia’s now infamous Chapter 8 opened the door to allowing the divorced and “remarried” access to receive Holy Communion, and Francis soon responded to questions by saying there is “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia except the one provided by the bishops of Buenos Aires allowing Communion for the divorced and remarried.
Fernández is believed to have been chiefly responsible for the lines from the apostolic exhortation, and more recently Francis affirmed this argument of Amoris Laetitia’s by signing a document Fernández wrote in response to Cardinal Dominik Duka.
“Amoris laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist when, in a particular case, ‘there are limitations that mitigate responsibility and guilt,’” the Pope and his fellow Argentine wrote.
As regards Fernández’s openness to same-sex blessings, the cardinal has been consistent. In July he argued that “if a blessing is given in such a way that it does not cause that confusion, it will have to be analyzed and confirmed. As you will see, there is a point where we leave a properly theological discussion and move on to a question that is rather prudential or disciplinary.”
This he repeated to the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin in September, arguing that the Church’s understanding of doctrine is developing over time. While Fernández stated that “at this point it is clear that the Church only understands marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman who, in their differences, are naturally open to beget life,” it appeared that he was arguing that this could change in time.
READ: Archbishop Fernández again fails to rule out homosexual ‘blessings’ in latest interview
“In some areas,” said Fernández, “it has taken centuries for the Church to make explicit aspects of doctrine which at other times she did not see so clearly.”
“The Church,” he added later, “will always be tiny in the midst of such an immensity of truth and beauty and will always need to continue to grow in her understanding.”
Catholic teaching on same-sex blessings
However, under the former CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., the Vatican ruled in the negative in March 2021 as to whether the Catholic Church has the “power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.”
The CDF stated that it is “not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”
Cardinal Ladaria added that a blessing to “individual persons with homosexual inclinations” who displayed the “will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching,” was acceptable – thus further ruling out any blessings of couples.
Furthermore, the CDF declared “illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such,” i.e., as unions.
Meanwhile, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s tenure, in 1986 the CDF released its document “On the pastoral care of homosexual persons,” which stated that a “truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
|
|
|
|
| Meat-Giant Tyson Foods Reveals New Insect Plant In 2025 |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:31 AM - Forum: Health
- No Replies
|
|
Meat-Giant Tyson Foods Reveals New Insect Plant In 2025
ZH | OCT 17, 2023
Tyson Foods Inc. is buying a stake in insect-protein company Protix BV. The two companies will collaborate to establish a manufacturing facility in the US to produce bug-based meal and oil, typically used in fish feed and dog food.
Quote:The American meatpacker said Tuesday that it agreed to buy a stake in Dongen, Netherlands-based Protix BV to help fund its expansion. The companies will also form a joint venture to build and operate a US facility that will produce bug-based meal and oil, which are typically used in fish feed and dog food. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. --Bloomberg
"It's a multibillion-dollar industry opportunity that has tremendous growth potential, and we see Protix as being a leader there," Tyson CFO John Tyson said in an interview.
Tyson said, "In the long run, insect-protein inclusion in animal-feed diets can be a real thing that exists and can be one that is good for people, planet and animals."
Protix already supplies insect-based protein to pet food makers Nestle SA and Mars Inc. The company was established in 2009, and the partnership with Tyson will expand operations internationally.
"It is definitely a huge way to establish ourselves into an international context," Protix CEO Kees Aarts said. He added the deal with Tyson is a "tipping point we have been working for."
Aarts said the US plant will not be ready until 2025. He said the new facility will be four times larger than its existing facility in the Netherlands.
Slowly but surely, the World Economic Forum and major corporations appear to be resetting the global food supply chain. WEF has been very vocal about how the masses must give up beef because cow farts are polluting the air and, instead, eat insects.
Also...
Corporate media has been trying to convince the masses...
In Europe, an additive made out of powdered crickets has already made its way into pizza, pasta, and cereals.
Tyson's foray into bug production for animal food is an ominous sign that the meat giant could also be planning edible insects for human consumption.
|
|
|
|
| Fr. Hewko: Bishop Faure told me he was wrong to go along the New Mass Fake Miracles |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:19 AM - Forum: Rev. Father David Hewko
- No Replies
|
|
In his first Sermon at the new Oratory of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary, Fr. Hewko spoke of a conversation he had in the last few months with Bishop Faure.
Fr. Hewko relates that Bishop Faure told him that he (Bp. Faure) had been wrong to go along and accept the New Mass miracles promoted by Bishop Williamson.
Quote:"I did have a good conversation with Bishop Faure about two months ago now, where he encouraged me, "Go forward. We need a seminary of Archbishop Lefebvre in the United States of tradition and of the counter-revolution." But I said, we're going to need a bishop to take care of these boys and ordained them.
And you can certainly test them. You can see their exams, no problem. And his message was, "I'll talk to Bishop Zendejas." Well, I don't know how that's going to go. But at least Bishop Faure is willing to do something. And he told me this, and I say it happily, maybe he's already said it publicly in French and Spanish, which is where he usually speaks because he lives in France. But he did tell me, "I don't agree with the New Mass miracles [as promoted by Bishop Williamson]. I don't agree with the promoting of the New Mass miracles. And I was wrong," he said, "to go along with that. And I was just going along because to go along," but he said, "I was wrong too." And he was. He was wrong to go along with that. So pray for him that... That's a good sign. And then it's also a good sign that there are prelates preaching the truth."
After hearing that Bishop Williamson will not help other traditional clergy unless they accept New Mass [false] miracles as a condition for aid, perhaps this is why so many in the Fake Resistance have 'supported' Bishop Williamson, they were being held hostage so to speak over the Holy Oils?
|
|
|
|
| Pope Francis Interview: 'Progress is necessary and the Church has to incorporate these novelties'' |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-18-2023, 06:15 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis: “War is the great enemy of the universal dialogue that we need”
Telam.com.ar - English version | 16-10-2023
These are busy days at the Vatican, as they usually have been during the last ten years of a papacy that shook lethargic structures to set them in motion at the pace that our current times demand. His answers and initiatives not only consider the complexity of a world moving with or without a compass, but also the necessary actions to overcome a civilizing crisis that will help improve the present and build a different future.
During the Synod taking place these days -an assembly in which the Church listens and reflects about itself-, Pope Francis appeals “to the blessing and welcoming gaze of Jesus that prevents us from falling into some dangerous temptations: of being a rigid church, which arms itself against the world and looks backward; of being a lukewarm church, which surrenders to the fashions of the world; of being a tired church, turned in on itself”.
On this late September afternoon, life offers me once again the chance to interview the most important religious, social and ethical leader of the planet. During our talk in Santa Marta, the Pope unravels alerts, solutions and reflections from his universal, embracing and transforming point of view.
During our talk, Pope Francis says: “I believe dialogue cannot be just nationalist, it must be universal, especially nowadays with the advanced communication systems we have. That is why I speak of universal dialogue, universal harmony, universal encounter. And of course, the enemy of this is war. Since the end of World War II up until today, there have been wars everywhere. That’s what I meant when I said we are living a World War in pieces”.
His words should appeal to the consciousness of our planet, when the violence between Israel and Palestine has escalated dramatically since the morning of October 7th.
On Sunday 8th, at the end of the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis expressed his sorrow over the escalation of a war that plunges the Holy Land into mourning: “I express my closeness to the victims’ families. I pray for them and for everyone that is living hours of terror and anguish. May the attacks and the weaponry cease, please! And let it be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but to the death and suffering of so many innocent people”.
Only 72 hours later, in his weekly Wednesday audience of October 11th, the Pope doubled his call for peace: “Terrorism and extremism do not help reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but fuel hatred, violence, revenge and cause suffering for both sides”.
And during the Angelus on Sunday 15th, the Pope renewed his call for peace and for the respect of Humanitarian Law, “especially in Gaza where there is an urgent need to guarantee humanitarian corridors and to rescue the entire population.”
“Wars are always a defeat”, insisted the pilgrim Pope, whose face lit up with enthusiasm on that late September afternoon, in Santa Marta, at 86 years old, when he mentioned the expected worldwide destinations in the schedule of this tireless pastor, to walk once more together for a future of hope.
- Pope Francis, do you still have important trips to make?
- Well, yes. To Argentina (laughs).
- Of course.
I’d like to go…
When it comes to more distant countries, I still haven’t visited Papua New Guinea. Somebody said that if I go to Argentina, I should stop at Rio Gallegos, then head to the South Pole, land in Melbourne and visit New Zealand. It would be a rather long journey.
- How do you plan your trips? How do you pick the destinations?
- We receive many invitations. There is a lineup of possible trips and some impose themselves. Mongolia, for example. Others require thorough planning, like traveling across Europe, to Hungary for instance. Each case is different. There is always an invitation and then there is an intuition regarding the timing. It is not an automatic decision. Each trip is unique.
- Your trips usually display purpose, important topics to delve into, and closeness to the people, which is coherent with your idea of transformations demanding the commitment from powerful leaders but also from individualities. When we see far-right forces expanding, a feeling of frustration or disappointment toward politics and people expressing that in the ballot box, do you see these crises as momentary or long-lasting? What can be done to overturn them?
- I like the word “crisis” because it contains inner movement. Yet, the only way out from a crisis is upward, there is no easy way out. The way out is upward and never on our own. Those who intend to emerge alone from a crisis, turn the way out into a labyrinth that goes round and round. A crisis is a labyrinth. Also, a crisis makes you grow. Whether it’s a person, a family, a country or a civilization in crisis, if it is solved well, there is growth.
I’m concerned when problems turn to themselves and there seems to be no way out. We must teach young boys and girls to be able to manage a crisis. To solve a crisis. Because that instills maturity. We were all unexperienced young people once, and sometimes young boys and girls hold onto miracles, to a messiah, to things being solved in a messianic way. There is only one Messiah who saved us all. The rest are all clowns of messianism. None of them can promise a solution to conflicts, unless it’s emerging upward from the crisis. And never on our own. Let’s think of any kind of political crisis, in a country that doesn’t know what to do, there are many in Europe. What can be done? Shall we look for a messiah to come save us? No. We must find where the conflict is and solve it. There is wisdom is the management of a crisis. But you can’t move forward without a conflict.
- What is humanity lacking and what is there in excess?
- Humanity is lacking protagonists of humanity, who can display their human prominence. Sometimes I notice that inability to manage a crisis and to make their own culture come to the surface. We should not be afraid to show the true values of a country. A crisis is like a voice telling us where to act. On the contrary, problems that are put away are like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. You hear flute playing, you follow the music and everybody gets drowned. I am very much afraid of Pipers of Hamelin, because they are entrancing. If they were charming snakes, I would let them (laughs), but they are charming people…people who end up drowned, people who believe they can emerge from a crisis dancing to the sound of the flute, with redeemers who appeared out of nowhere. No. A crisis must be accepted and overcome, but always emerging upward.
- Is there an excess of individualism or indifference?
- I am much more afraid of indifference, because it is a kind of cultural apathy. Let this or that happen, while the piper keeps playing the flute and people drown. The great dictatorships were born from flute playing, from an illusion, a momentary charm. And then we say “that’s a shame: we were all drowned”. I insist: I like the image of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
- What is the danger of a single identity, a single mindset?
- It destroys human richness. A single mindset banishes human richness. And human richness must consider three realities, three languages: the language of our mind, our heart and our hands. In such a way that we think what we feel and what we do, feel what we think and what we do, and do what we think and feel. That is human harmony. If a person is lacking one of those three languages, there is an imbalance that leads to a single feeling, a single pragmatism or a single mindset. These are treacheries to humanity.
- Austerity is a common practice in your life. It is a conviction. Is it also a message?
- Well, austerity itself does not exist. There are austere men and women. And what does that mean? A person who lives off of their work, who has a culture and knows how to express it, and who knows how to walk ahead transmitting that austerity. Within the culture of easiness, of bribery, of so many escapisms, it very difficult to talk about austerity. Austerity is taught through work. An austere person doesn’t live without working. What defines an austere person is their work, their commitment, earning their bread by the sweat of their brow, whether it’s physical or intellectual sweat. It’s important to understand work as something inherent to a human being. Laziness is a social sickness. There are even rich lazy people who live off the work of others without thinking of the common good. Sloth and laziness are treacherous because they feed that malice of taking advantage of others, of living on the backs of others. That is why a person who works, no matter what they do, gains dignity.
Another problem is the lack of dignity when the culture of squandering is imposed. The culture of having a good time, of exploitation, of not working. That’s when a person loses their dignity. A person has dignity when they earn their living and they take care of other people.
- You extend the culture of work to other realms. What does work mean today in an unequal world that offers no opportunities for many people?
- I insist: works provides dignity to a person. The greatest treachery to that road to dignity is exploitation. I don’t mean exploiting the soil so it produces more, but exploiting the worker. Exploiting people is one the most serious sins. And to exploit them for one’s own benefit. I have data regarding exploitation of labor in the world and they are huge. And that is very hard. Work provides dignity, and therefore the worker has specific rights. When a worker is hired, they must be provided with social services, which are part of their rights. Work should come with rights, otherwise it is slavery.
- Some people think that labor laws are the main obstacle when trying to create new jobs and increase productivity. Some political leaders in different countries base their electoral promises on putting an end to workers’ acquired rights.
- When workers have no rights or they are hired for very little time to be replaced later and to avoid paying social security contributions, they are turned into slaves and the hiring person becomes an executioner.
An executioner is not just the person who kills others, but also the person who exploits others. We must be aware of that. When I say the things I wrote in the Social Encyclicals, some people say “the Pope is a communist”. I am not. The Pope reads the Gospel and speaks what is in the Gospel. In the Old Testament, Hebrew law required that the widow, the orphan and the foreigner be taken care of. If society takes care of these three situations, things will go well. Because those are extreme circumstances. If society takes care of extreme circumstances, it will do the same with other circumstances.
When workers are hired informally to avoid social security contributions and the workers’ future is negotiated toward slavery, that’s when work becomes a sickness. Instead of providing dignity, work becomes slavery. We must pay close attention to this. And I want to make clear that I am not a communist as some people say (laughs). The Pope follows the Gospel.
- What do you think of this accelerated technological development, such as Artificial Intelligence, and in which way do you think it could be addressed from a more human point of view?
I like the word “accelerated”. When something is accelerated, it worries me, because there is no time for it to settle. When we look back at the industrial revolution up until the 1950s, we see non-accelerated development. There were control and helping mechanisms. When change is accelerated, there is not enough time for assimilation mechanisms, and we end up becoming slaves. It is equally dangerous to be a slave to a person or to a job, as it is to be a slave to a culture.
The key to cultural progress, such as Artificial Intelligence, is the ability of men and women to handle it, assimilate it and control it. That is, men and women are masters of Creation, and we must not give that up. A person’s control over anything. Serious scientific change is progress. We must be open to that.
- Francis, in the face of wars and conflicts, you appeal to a new concept: integral security. What does
that global idea mean?
- A country cannot have partial security unless there is integral security for everybody. It is impossible to speak of social security unless it is a universal security, or in the process of becoming universal. I believe dialogue cannot be just nationalist, it must be universal, especially nowadays with the advanced communication systems we have. That is why I speak of universal dialogue, universal harmony, universal encounter. And of course, the enemy of this is war. Since the end of World War II up until today, there have been wars everywhere. That’s what I meant when I said we are living a World War in pieces. Now we see it because that World War is close.
- What circumstances foster or favor war?
- Exploitation is one of the causes of war. Another cause is geopolitical: territory control. Some wars that seem endless are caused by cultural conflicts but in reality they are about territory control. Myanmar, for instance, has been at war for years and years, and the Rohingya people, who follow Islam, have been persecuted for years and years because of an elitist power who thinks they are superior as human beings.
I also believe that war is fostered by dictatorships. Some dictatorships are declared, we can find many examples in the world, but others are not declared, but they hold power as a dictatorship.
- Do you believe that uniting our consciousness, beyond our religious or political differences, is a way to
begin the construction of peace and common good?
- Yes, absolutely yes, but with one condition: being aware of one’s own identity. You cannot dialogue with others if you are not aware of where you come from. When two aware identities get together, they can have a conversation and take steps toward an agreement, toward progress, walk together. But if one is not aware of one’s own identity, one assumes things as one’s own and betrays one’s people, country or family. Being aware of one’s identity is very important for dialogue. If I, as a Catholic, have to talk to someone from other religion, I must be fully aware of being a Catholic and that the other person has the right to their religion. But if I’m not aware of my own identity, I can’t have a conversation, I’m going to laugh at everything, I’m going to sell everything, to fake everything. I wouldn’t be truly consistent.
- The Synod 2023 is taking place, within a context that you defined, fundamentally, as the end of an era. In which way does the Church adapt to this reality? What kind of Church is needed these days?
- Since the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII had a very clear perception: the Church has to change. Paul VI agreed, just like the succeeding Popes. It’s not just changing ways, it’s about a change of growth, in favor of the dignity of people. That’s theological progression, of moral theology and all the ecclesiastical sciences, even in the interpretation of Scriptures that have progressed according to the feelings of the Church. Always in harmony. Rupture is not good. We either progress through development or things don’t turn out right. Rupture leaves you out of the sap of development. I like the image of a tree and its roots. The roots receive the humidity of the soil and take it upward, through the trunk. When you separate yourself from that, you end up dry, without traditions. Tradition in the good sense of the word. We all have traditions, a family, we were all born within the culture of a country, a political culture. We all have a tradition for which to take responsibility.
- You speak of tradition and progress as complements.
- Progress is necessary and the Church has to incorporate these novelties with a serious conversation from a human point of view. The Greek thinker Publius Terentius Afer says “Nothing human is alien to me”. The Church holds what’s human in its hand. God became a man, not a philosophical theory. Humanity is something consecrated by God. That is, everything human must be assumed and progress must be human, in harmony with humanity.
In the 1960s, Dutch people came up with the word “rapidity”, which is much more than acceleration. Well, in the context of the rapidity of scientific knowledge, the Church has to pay close attention and have its thinkers be ready to dialogue. And I emphasize this: we must dialogue with scientific knowledge. The Church must dialogue with everybody, but being aware of its identity. Not from a borrowed identity.
- How can the tension between changing and not losing its essence be solved?
- The Church, through dialogue and taking up new challenges, has changed in many ways. Even regarding cultural matters. A theologist from the 4th Century said that changes in the Church must comply to three conditions to be real: consolidating, growing and ennoble themselves along the years. It is a very inspiring definition by Vincent of Lérins. The Church has to change. Let’s think of the ways it has changed since the Council until now and the way it must continue changing its ways, in the way to propose an unchanging truth. That is, the revelation of Jesus Christ does not change, the dogmas of the Church do not change, they grow and ennoble themselves like the sap of a tree. The person who does not follow this path, follows a path that takes steps backward, a path that closes on itself. Changes in the Church take place within this identity flow of the Church. And it has to keep changing along the way, as challenges are met. That is why the core of change is fundamentally pastoral, without recanting the essence of the Church.
- Is it hard being the representative of God on Earth, and at this time?
- I’m going to do a heresy. We are all representatives of God. Every person who believes must testify to what they believe and, in this sense, we are all representatives of God. It is true that the Pope is a privileged representative of God (laughs), and I must testify to an inner coherence, to the truth of the Church and the pastorality of the Church. That is, a Church that keeps its doors open for everybody.
- Francis, what’s your relationship with God?
- Ask Him (looks up and smiles). I believe it’s an image, but there’s truth in it: I maintain the piety I had as a child. My grandmother taught me how to pray and I maintain that simple piety of praying, as we say in Argentina “the faith of a coal miner”. I’m not complicated when I pray. One might even say I have an old-fashioned spirituality. Maybe. In this sense, there is a unifying thread from my childhood to this day. My religious consciousness has grown a lot, that’s different, it has matured, but the way I express myself to God has always been simple. Being complicated is not in me. Sometimes I say (looks up) “you fix this, because I can’t”. And I ask the Virgen and the Saints to intercede, to help me. And when I have to make a decision, I always pray…to the light above. But the Lord is a good friend, He has been good to me. He takes care of me, as He takes care of all. We must pay attention to the way He takes care of each of us, He has a different style with each of us. That is beautiful.
- Can one ever be angry at God?
- No, I get angry with other people. I might complain now and then, but I know He is waiting for me, always. When I make a mistake or when I was unjustly angry with someone. Yet, He never reproaches me. In my dialogue with the Lord, a reproach is always a caress. Today, I was reading Hosea Chapter 11, where he speaks of that caress, that love of God to each of us as if we were the image of that lamb he carries on his shoulders. The three qualities of God, the most forceful ones, are closeness, mercy and tenderness. God is close. God is merciful, He forgives everything and has impressive patience with us. And He is tender. That delicate touch of God, even in our trials. That’s the way I experience Him.
- You smile, you laugh, you show a great sense of humor. What kind of things amuse you?
- A sense of humor is a certificate of good health (laughs).
For over 40 years, every day I have prayed St Thomas More’s prayer for a sense of humor. He was great. I included that prayer in the 101 note of “Gaudete et exsultate” (Editor’s note: exhortation “on the call to holiness in our present world”, from March 2018), in case somebody would like to see it. The prayer asks the Lord for the ability to laugh, to see the funny side of things, to see life with a smile, always. The prayer begins in a beautiful way: “Give me, Lord, a good digestion and, naturally, give me something to digest.” (Laughs) He begins with a sense of humor from the start. And I like that, because a sense of humor humanizes. People who don’t have a sense of humor are boring.
- Very boring.
- Even boring to themselves. In my sacerdotal work, I sometimes would advise people to look at themselves in the mirror and laugh at themselves. It’s horribly difficult for some people, because they lack a sense of humor. Well, those things are not very dogmatic. That is a bit of life wisdom I was taught and I try to use it to help others.
- Fears are inherent to the human being. However, you as Pontiff, usually convey a sense of embracing peace. Are you ever afraid?
- Yes, because I know that if I make a mistake, a lot of people might be hurt by my mistake. That is why I let some decisions rest, so time makes them ripe. Other decisions, I bring them to a synod so the whole Church can express itself about the matter.
- Did you ever think we would have an Argentine Pope?
- Back in the day, the name of Pironio was often mentioned (Editor’s note: Eduardo Francisco Pironio, Catholic Cardinal-Bishop). I remember that a sector of the Argentine episcopate that was close-minded and traditionalist, portrayed him as disagreeable. They thought his appointment could really hurt the Church. He helped created the World Youth Day, which has been so good for the Church. And his name was mentioned as a possible Pope. So, the idea of an Argentine Pope was born with Pironio. Then, that didn’t happen because he died of cancer. And now we are about to receive the study about a miracle he did and, God willing, he will be beatified by the end of the year.
- As a prophet of hope, what can you tell us to nourish it?
Hope is the humble virtue, the everyday virtue, the one we think least important. We always talk about faith, charity and love. And hope is in the kitchen, but that’s precisely why it’s our everyday virtue. We must not only keep our hope, but also nourish it. We must have a hopeful heart, a heart with hope. Hope is so fecund! A poet used to call it the humble virtue. We cannot live without hope. If we erased our little daily hopes, we would lose our identity. We don’t realize that we live by hope. And theological hope is very humble but it seasons our daily condiments. It’s not escapism to think tomorrow might be better. It’s different.
- I really liked some words about you that I read recently in Argentina: “Pope Francis, the prophet of human dignity”. Thank you, as always.
- Pray for me, please. But pray in my favor, not against me (laughs).
|
|
|
|
| Bishop Williamson now promotes Archbishop Thuc? |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-17-2023, 08:58 AM - Forum: True vs. False Resistance
- Replies (1)
|
|
It is hard to imagine any SSPX priest or bishop giving credence to the 'apostolate' of Archbishop Thuc, particularly after the 1960's. He gave great scandal in his dubious 'consecrations' to some men who were not even Catholic. Archbishop Lefebvre warned against trusting the Thuc line, as did the traditional SSPX. And yet, we see this scandalous prelate being promoted by Bishop Williamson as a kind of savior.
His Excellency chooses to quote from an anonymous nun who sees visions, who claims Our Lord praises Archbishop Thuc (and of course, Bishop Williamson).
ELEISON COMMENTS DCCCXLVII
HEAVEN’S MESSAGE – II
7 October, 2023
[Taken from here - slightly adapted, emphasis mine].]
None of what follows is dogma of the Church, nor official nor infallible, it is merely opinion of the author of these “Comments”, speculating on the nature of the Catholic Church and its present distress. Two weeks ago these “Comments” (845, Sept. 23) quoted a message supposedly from Heaven, in which an unknown Sister in France re-assured a Traditional priest that he was still serving Our Lord, even if he was apparently disobeying Church Authority above him in order to do so. Before commenting on the message it may be necessary to quote it again, as it appeared two weeks ago, but with some numbers for reference.
Quote:1. “The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is presently passing through a deep and hurtful crisis in its representatives, and you, Father, are one of its victims.
2. Mgr. Thuc understood the breakdown inside the Church, and as bishop he took a personal stand which was not according to the rules, because he ordained priests and bishops without incardination, thus putting them all in an irregular situation, even if they are fervent and wish to exercise a ministry in accordance with the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Mgr Williamson, having been put in a similar situation by his dismissal from the Society of St Pius X by its Superior at that time without valid reason, should be able to understand your situation because he too has consecrated bishops and ordained priests. Like yourself, for now, these too are lacking incardination.
4. The present situation within the Holy Catholic Church is so bad that the Lord is happy with all His ministers working faithfully for Him, with or without incardination.
5. This is the Lord’s answer to your question. As soon as Holy Church has recovered within itself the strength of the Truth, priests still seemingly adrift will be able to rejoin it officially, while unofficially never having left it. The Lord blesses you, be at peace, and be faithful.”
1. The message starts out from the Church’s present “deep and hurtful crisis”, to deny which is to grasp nothing of Church events today. The message shows real sympathy for a priest suffering in the crisis.
2. Some readers may be scandalised by the message beginning with mention of Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc (1897-1984), because his long career in service of the Church did not finish in glory. In principle he understood the gravity of the Church crisis in the 1960’s and the need for emergency measures, but in practice he finished by consecrating bishops and ordaining priests with a wild abandon. However, in this context the message is using his case to show that the principles of the crisis go way back to the 1960’s.
That Mgr Thuc exaggerated in practice is not strictly relevant to the underlying principles still in play today. The message goes on to recognise both the normal need of a priest for structural incorporation in a diocese or Congregation (Authority), and the good will of priests doing their best to serve God (Truth). The message is throughout balancing Truth and Authority.
3. Similarly with the movement in the Church going today by the name of “Resistance”, or “Fidelity”. On the one hand that movement has relied on abnormal or emergency measures for its bishops and new priests, as did Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 (“Truth”). On the other hand these bishops and priests have no normal incorporation, or “incardination”, in the official structure of the Church – “Authority”.
4. However – and here is the “punchline” of the entire message – as long as such bishops and priests are working faithfully for Our Lord, then lack of incardination is not so important, because “the present situation in the Church is so bad”. In other words, Faith before structure, Truth before Authority.
5. And here is the basic principle of common sense which solves the above priest’s original problem. Church Authority only exists to serve Church Truth and therewith the salvation of souls. And as soon as Truth recovers its rightful top place in the Church, as it will do, then Authority will likewise recover its secondary place, and everything truly rightful will recover its temporarily lost official rightfulness.
Deo Gratias!
Kyrie eleison.
Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the world o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
- Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, end.
✠ ✠ ✠
One hardly knows where to begin there are so many issues in this one EC. And as with many of the Eleison Comments, there is error mixed with truth, so that souls default to believing these words and swallowing them whole rather than parsing them out.
Just a few of the many serious concerns raised after reading the above EC:
- Bishop Williamson cites as an authority the 'visions' of an anonymous nun in France. He give no context to these visions, no dates, etc. We are given no idea whether this is a traditional nun or Novus Ordo, etc. She is merely put forward as an authority, as one whose words deserve mention. We are asked to trust her based solely on her promotion by Bishop Williamson. This is not at all the habit of the Church, to accept visions without a thorough investigation and without the facts and circumstances surrounding those visions being well known.
- Archbishop Thuc has performed many doubtful ordinations and consecrations over the years, the most infamous being the Palmar de Troya connection in Spain, who have elected their own pope decades ago. To promote him and his scandalous consecrations as being praised by Heaven, is unforgiveable from Bishop Williamson. To lie and say the Thuc consecrations were 'exaggerated' is inexplicable. To say that his career in the Church 'did not end in glory' but still imply he is somehow someone to be admired is unfathomable.
For example, here is an excerpt from The Angelus, 1982, A Journey with the Archbishop [Lefebvre]:
Quote:“...The Archbishop also was adamant in his complete and total condemnation of the recent consecrations of so-called "bishops" by the Vietnamese bishop, Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc. The Archbishop's condemnation included the supposed ordination of an American priest by those "consecrated" by the Vietnamese bishop. His Grace urged all Catholics to totally reject these individuals and to have nothing whatever to do with them. He looks at the act as being an act of schism which, if carried to its logical conclusion, will lead to heresy. This is based on the fact that several of the "bishops" and a number of the priests with whom they have met have openly declared that their intention is to select a "pope" from among their group. The Archbishop predicted that these individuals would attempt to lure unsuspecting traditionalists into their schismatic schemes. He also said that eventually the movement will be a discredit to traditional Catholicism and would be used by the enemies of the Church as a means of trying to discredit traditional Catholicism. To emphasize his condemnation of these individuals, Archbishop Lefebvre specified that none of the chapels of the Society are to be made available to either these individuals or to those who support them...”
It would appear that Bishop Williamson has forgotten how vehemently Archbishop Lefebvre used to condemn the same prelate he is now promoting vis-à-vis the visions of this anonymous nun.
After insisting on New Mass [fake] miracles, promoting attendance at the New Mass, at Feeneyite chapels, etc. and even making allowances for the Anglicans, this appears to be yet another promotion of falsity by Bishop Williamson. Where is the concern for souls? Where is the attempt to truly lead them, as Archbishop Lefebvre did in the one brief admonition above?
|
|
|
|
| Transcript of the First Sermon at the Oratory of the Most Sorrowful Heart of Mary |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-17-2023, 06:32 AM - Forum: Rev. Father David Hewko
- Replies (1)
|
|
The following transcript is taken from Fr. Hewko's First Sermon at the newly acquired Oratory of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary
October 15, 2023
Fr. David Hewko:
Welcome to The Oratory of The Sorrowful Heart of Mary. This is our first Mass public, solemn, higher Mass. I've said three Masses already here during this week, and today after the Mass, we will have the blessing of the whole Oratory and the incensations, including the barn, and ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to take this as Her home. This statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Blessed Mother of Sorrows, She was the first to land at the house when we made the move. She was the first to land here and claim it as Her own. It's all Hers, and She can do with it what she wants, and She can use whoever She wants, and this is Her place. So I want to claim it as Her territory, the Sorrowful Heart of Mary, who stood at the foot of the cross, which is where traditional Catholics belong today.
We don't belong in the palaces, in the luxurious Babylonian, pagan dances in Rome that are going on. Poor, poor Rome, darkened. We belong with Mary at the foot of the Cross. That's our place in this crisis of the Church. How well Archbishop Lefebvre understood this. And he chose, he chose, he often even spoke that we have to stand with the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross at this time of Calvary, at the crucifixion of our Holy Catholic Church. Where else would we want to be? Where else would we want to be? In the despair of Judas? No. In the denials of St. Peter? No. In the connivings of the Holy Temple, like modernist Rome always conniving the next move to dismantle the Catholic Church, destroy it, and get rid of the old traditional Mass, get rid of the Catholic theology, get rid of the ancient and great encyclicals of the Popes condemning liberalism, modernism, socialism, communism, and all the modern errors, evolution included? And all these errors condemned by the encyclicals we adhere to, down to Pope Pius XII.
So where is our place? Where do we belong in this chaos, in this hurricane? It's with the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross, the Virgin Mary at Calvary. So this is Her home, and I welcome you to her Home. And let's look at the Epistle of today's Mass, the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, which is taken from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians chapter five. "Brethren: See to it that you walk with care: not as unwise but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not become foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, for in that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ."
The Holy Gospel taken from St. John, Chapter Four. "At that time, there was a certain royal official whose son was lying sick at Capharnaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and besought Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus therefore said to him, 'Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe.' The royal official said to Him, 'Sir, come down before my child dies.' Jesus said to him, 'Go your way, your son liveth.' The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and departed. But even as he was now going down, his servants met him and brought word saying that his son liveth. He asked of them therefore the hour in which he had got better. And they told him, yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. The father knew then that it was at that very hour in which Jesus had said to him, 'Your son liveth.' And he himself believed, and his whole household." Those are the words of the Holy Gospel.
And by way of announcement, all of you are aware, I'm sure, by now of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais holding a Mass and Confirmations at a Novus Ordo functioning parish. It's not as if it was no longer used. And [as if] it's a beautiful old church with the Tridentine altar and still the statues are there, and they're thinking of selling it. It's not that situation. It's a full blast Novus Ordo parish. The morning before Bishop Tissier's Mass and Father Vernoy, who's really responsible, the new SSPX prior down there in Sanford, Florida, he is the one that arranged this who had to be on very good terms with the local diocesan bishop and had to be on very good terms with the local pastor. I mean, maybe golfing together terms, meals, wine and cheese together terms with Novus Ordo priests.
Now it's true, in the old days, we would invite Novus Ordo priests to our priory to come and talk about the traditional faith and bring them to tradition and the Novus Ordo abandoned the Vatican II church. That was always the goal. Now it's dialogue. Now it's friendly association with the diocesan bishops and priests, which Archbishop Lefebvre warned, he said, "This is extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous to put ourselves first under these modernist bishops because they will use their authority to silence the preaching of the truth." And that's what's happened. May I ask? I didn't hear the sermon. I did not hear Bishop Tissier's sermon yet. I hope it will be available.
But I really wonder, did he condemn the Novus Ordo at a Novus Ordo parish? Did he condemn the Novus Ordo Mass when there was a Novus Ordo Mass that morning and then following his Mass there was another Novus Ordo Mass? Do you think he condemned the scandals of that diocesan bishop of Sanford, Florida? Do you think he condemned Vatican II in all its errors like he used to? I highly doubt it because the pressure is there. Once you have all these favors from modernist Rome, and apparently Pope Francis approved this, you feel indebted to gratitude, and you don't want to bite the hand that fed you. So they're going to start being more and more silent about what we're bound to preach against, as priests, as bishops, and the Pope himself, we're bound to preach against everything that attacks Jesus Christ the King everything that attacks His doctrine, His Sacred Church, the Catholic church of all time. And that will lead souls to hell.
If we are silent shepherds, we're salt that has lost its flavor, worth[y] to be thrown out to the street, to be stepped on. And that's what's become of the modernist bishops and clergy, and with great sadness, we see this even with the Pope himself. He's reduced himself to a cooperator with the globalists to push their environmental nonsense and program of genocide and death in the name of green awareness and green peace. It's very lamentable, extremely lamentable that the Pope has reduced himself, his authority to a joke. And that's his plan. He's working right with them in the Freemasons. They got the man they want. They've had the last five popes they wanted. So dear faithful, I don't... Again, to give Bishop Tissier the benefit of the doubt, maybe he didn't realize because he's just flying in from outside. Maybe he didn't realize where it was going to be, but I find that surprising.
But I would say a lot of the blame goes on the leaders of the SSPX and on Father Vernoy, the prior down there. And very dangerous for the Faith and very dangerous for the Faithful. What does that tell the Faithful, that they have a Mass at the Novus Ordo Parish? What does that tell the faithful? 'Well, it must not be so bad.' The children think, "Well, the pews are far more comfortable, the air conditioning is better, and the Novus Ordo..." Well, what's so bad about it if they're having Mass at it in Confirmations? It's a very bad message, and that's not where we want to be. And if Archbishop Lefebvre was alive, that would never have happened. And if it did, Father Vernoy would be sent back to the seminary to scrub toilets and Bishop Tissier would be corrected and told never to hold a service like that again on Confirmations and Mass at a Novus Ordo parish.
But if they've fallen this far, it's because, in doctrine, they have compromised very far as well by accepting the New Mass as legitimately promulgated. That's signed and declared by Bishop Fellay and all the superiors of the SSPX. "We accept the new mass as valid without question and as legitimately promulgated." Let me put it in a different light so you see how bad that really is. Imagine a priest or a bishop saying abortion, Planned Parenthood is a valid existence. They should be able to have their buildings in your city, and it's legitimately promulgated. Can you imagine Planned Parenthood being called legitimate when it's just open murder? So it's the same application with the murder of souls. In fact, it's far more serious, the New Mass murders souls. And to declare that it's legitimately promulgated is a very serious crime against our Lord, against the Faith. It is not just, as I always hear from my fellow priests in the new SSPX, they often say it's not a matter of Faith, it's a matter of prudence. Bishop Fellay was being prudent, the superiors were being prudent.
But no, when you take all the virtues, what's higher than prudence is still the Faith. The Faith is the highest. So it is a matter of Faith whether you accept the New Mass and the New Sacraments, which they openly and publicly do. Let alone the compromise with the errors of Vatican II, which is declared in the Doctrinal Declaration, never to be abrogated in the last 11 years. And the acceptance of the new Code of Canon Law, which allows Communion to Protestants, which encourages active participation in the Mass and the Liturgy and the Sacraments with all the faithful and the attack on the sacredness of marriage and the ends of marriage. This is just a few of the errors of the new Code of Canon Law. And they signed on it with no distinctions, which is extremely dangerous and deadly. So this is what brings us here. This is what brings us to a place way up in New Hampshire.
People are saying, "Why in the world, Father, did you choose a place out in the middle of nowhere?" And quite honestly, it might've been easier to be more centrally located in the US. It might've been more accessible for people. And if I wanted to have a big, huge parish just to take care of all the flock and they could come in this time of survival, come to Mass at driving distance, that would be helpful. And it probably would've been better if I was starting just a normal parish. But this is to be a place to train priests and brothers and maybe down the road, hopefully nuns. And to form young men, Archbishop Lefebvre, he found a diamond of a place called Écône, Switzerland. It is out in the middle of nowhere, it is in the mountains. And those seminarians had to work, they had to work with the land, they had to help with the vineyards, harvesting the grapes because it was all surrounded by vineyards and for recreation.
Many of those seminarians would hike the Swiss peaks all around there, the mountains all around there. And Father Tim Pfeiffer used to tell me of some of the dangerous episodes they almost had, how he almost slipped off one of the mountains and had to grab a branch that saved his life. So these young men had a lot of challenges and good things to be active with. So in the midst of their studies, they're not in the city. They can focus, they can have the fresh air of God's countryside and some challenging mountain hikes, which is very healthy and farm work which this place will have with animals. I hope to get pigs, and chickens, and some cattle, eventually. And the brothers will have a full life using all their gifts and talents for the glory of God.
And the priests' formation, it's healthy for priests to shovel manure. It's healthy for priests to have calloused hands. It's healthy for priests to get dirty and shovel dirt and mud and cow manure. It's very healthy for priests. And Archbishop Lefebvre himself, he didn't grow up on a farm, but as a missionary priest in Africa, I'm sure he was fixing the electricity. He was digging trenches to help some of these natives. He traveled far and he ran a couple of seminaries down in Gabon, and it was very primitive. I mean, we're kind of spoiled here. We have actually a house, a farmhouse that's pretty well-built and pretty well held together. Thank God. And there's no huge major renovations, but I'm sure in Africa, Archbishop Lefebvre, they probably didn't have a wall, or a floor, or a roof in some of their houses. So it's very good for priests in their formation, young men to be formed in some of the rigors of life that all our Faithful go through.
The men who wake up early to go to work, the men who are tired at the end of the week, priests can get dangerously soft. And this is what's always been the plague for the Catholic Church is when priests get soft and they no longer take care of souls and sweat and self-sacrifice to labor for souls, but they get complacent in their rectories. And of course, the generosity and charity of the faithful has always been outstanding in the history of the church. We just have to look at our own country in the United States. Just here in New Hampshire, some beautiful churches, stunning churches built before Vatican II. The Polish churches, the Italian churches, the Ukrainian Catholic churches too, incredible edifices for the glory of God, but who paid for it? It wasn't Rome and it wasn't the diocesan bishop because most of them were struggling too, to keep the schools going and to support the nuns and the hospitals.
But who built those churches was the labor and sweat of the average working man, the father of a family. There's no doubt. Many of them had simpler meals with beans and hot dogs instead of a good steak that they sacrificed for building the church and the place for the priests and monks and nuns. So priests of old, this is what the Archbishop was himself. He was a missionary priest himself and a missionary bishop. And that's why he had the common sense to realize we're in a terrible crisis. The Pope is going modernist, we have to survive. And he looked after all the faithful throughout the whole world who called on him, come and bring us confirmation because the new confirmations are doubtful and probably invalid because they changed the oils.
"Please come and send us priests. Send us priests that you ordained in Écône. Send us priests." And the Archbishop understood this, and this is partly why people were very upset in England. They were hoping that Broadstairs was going to be the place for formation of priests and a rescue place for priests leaving the society, leaving the new liberal direction that they would find a home with a bishop in Broadstairs in England. But when the faithful found out it wasn't going to be that and priests were turned away and it was not meant to be a fortress for the Catholic resistance, but who knows what it's become. But it's certainly not a fortress of resistance, that's for sure. It's a fortress of confusion now and compromise. And one of the most recent confusing letters coming from Broadstairs you need to be aware of is the approval of the Thuc line, the Archbishop Thuc.
Bishop out of Broadstairs comes a stamp of approval. You can go to the Thuc line now. That means with Father Pfeiffer and Neil Webster and all these groups from the Thuc line. Now, "Who's Thuc?" Thuc was one of the archbishops that was at the Second Vatican Council. He was with the liberal wing. He supported feminism in the Church. He was all for the changes in the Church. Archbishop Lefebvre was not. He was with the traditional side of bishops. So he probably saw Bishop Thuc on the liberal side, sitting with them. And that's where he stood at Vatican II. And then his brother, who was a Catholic president in Vietnam, I think it was North Vietnam, I could be corrected. It may be the South Vietnam, but he was shot by the communists. So his brother died a holy and noble death, really a martyr's death.
But ever since that happened, and then some say maybe it if so affected him that his mind lost its clarity, he started consecrating anything that asked for Consecration and Ordination. He basically ordained anything that walked and had a cassock, and it was extremely dangerous. He actually went and consecrated Jean Laborie, who was not even a Catholic and made him a bishop, which is a sacrilege and illegitimate probably and most likely invalid and incurs a huge punishment from the Church. And then he consecrated other bishops at Palmar de Troya in Spain, [a group] who elected their own popes, their own series of popes. And they had 15-year-old boys walking around in cardinals' robes with cardinal titles and bishop titles, just wacky as ever.
And Archbishop Lefebvre in the sermon of the Consecration of the Four Bishops in June 30th, 1988, I was there to hear it. He said, "Well, what I'm doing is public. Everyone knows, it's televised. There's the radio and there's the rotten media right there in their cage. And tomorrow," Archbishop Lefebvre said, "they're going to be smearing all over the papers, schism, excommunication." And he says, "Had I gone through with the agreements with Rome, tradition would've been destroyed, tradition would've come to nothing. So that's why I am bound before Jesus Christ the King to do something as a bishop and ensure the survival of the sacraments and the faith. I can't give the four bishops jurisdiction," he said, "only the Pope can give that, but I give them the power of orders." And that's what Archbishop Lefebvre did. And he mentioned in that sermon, this has nothing to do with a parallel church like Palmar de Troya in Spain, the Thuc line bishops. It has nothing to do with that. "I am not setting up a parallel church," he said, "with its own fake Pope and hierarchy and a fake jurisdiction."
"No," he says, "I'm a Catholic bishop, but it's operation survival. It's survival of the church. And I stay faithful to the Catholic church of all time." So out of Broadstairs, when you have the approval of the Thuc line, that just adds terrible confusion, absolute confusion. Broadstairs has become the masterpiece of confusion, allowing and permitting and approving the New Mass nourishes your faith, New Mass miracles being constantly pushed, the Feeneyite approval by having confirmations in a Feeneyite church some years ago, and the confusion of private revelations that are not approved by the church and some of them with very doubtful sources.
And in our family, Garabandal helped our family in some way, the message. But when I realized, how did the first apparition happen in Garabandal? It was when the children stole apples from their neighbor's yard, and then apparently St. Michael appeared to them. In the act of stealing. So it all began with the sin. And it's quite interesting that it began with stealing an apple and eating it. Isn't that how the human race was plunged into darkness? So Garabandal, the local bishop condemned it. So these things need to be taken into account and we shouldn't just blindly follow any apparitions, especially Medjugorje. So all these things have been promoted out of Broadstairs, and it is a scandal, a terrible scandal and nothing what Archbishop Lefebvre stood for are approved.
So dear flock, this is what brings us here. It's Operation Survival at the 10th power. We're really just struggling to survive. And we put all this in Our Lady's hands that She provide and send the young man she wants to be formed and that God will give us good bishops to ordain and give them the tonsure and minor orders in ordinations, in God's time and in his will.
I did have a good conversation with Bishop Faure about two months ago now, where he encouraged me, "Go forward. We need a seminary of Archbishop Lefebvre in the United States of tradition and of the counter-revolution." But I said, we're going to need a bishop to take care of these boys and ordained them.
And you can certainly test them. You can see their exams, no problem. And his message was, "I'll talk to Bishop Zendejas." Well, I don't know how that's going to go. But at least Bishop Faure is willing to do something. And he told me this, and I say it happily, maybe he's already said it publicly in French and Spanish, which is where he usually speaks because he lives in France. But he did tell me, "I don't agree with the New Mass miracles [as promoted by Bishop Williamson]. I don't agree with the promoting of the New Mass miracles. And I was wrong," he said, "to go along with that. And I was just going along because to go along," but he said, "I was wrong too." And he was. He was wrong to go along with that. So pray for him that... That's a good sign. And then it's also a good sign that there are prelates preaching the truth.
And Archbishop Viganò is one of them. And some of these Novus Ordo bishops, they're getting persecuted by Pope Francis. But we also have to be careful. Cardinal Müller is coming out against the Synod, which is good. Bishop Schneider, Bishop Strickland of Texas. But we have to be careful. They are Novus Ordo modernists. They say the New Mass. They accept Vatican II. So we rejoice when they say Truth because Truth belongs to the Catholic church and Our Lord. But we must be careful not to fall into that conservative camp, that dangerous conservative camp of, "Well, they're great, they're another Archbishop Lefebvre," which they're not far from it. So Bishop Viganò should be reconsecrated as a bishop because he was done in the Novus Ordo, he should be done in the traditional right. And I'm sure he knows that. And maybe he's done it already in secret, I don't know. But he needs to do that.
And then with Bishop Strickland and bishop... All these ones with the Novus Ordo ordinations and Novus Ordo consecrations, they need to be conditionally redone because there's a huge objective doubt on these Novus Ordo ordinations and consecrations as Archbishop Lefebvre himself said. So this brings us to the survival of the Catholic Faith, which is we all have to do what we can. And this is why this Oratory of The Sorrowful Heart of Mary exists. It's for Her to form good priests and brothers and down the road, sisters, to continue the work of Catholic tradition to sanctify souls.
And it will be the pre-'55 liturgy because I want nothing to do with Bugnini's paws. We know that Archbishop Bugnini came out after Archbishop Lefebvre died. His book was published of his autobiography. And in his autobiography, he says that all the changes, not just '65, '67, but all of them from '55 on were merely steps, '62, '65, '67, '69, all were stages towards the new mass.
He admits it and he rejoices over it. And that's why we're going to just stay on solid ground, which is the pre-'55 liturgy of Saint Pius X and of all the Popes, and it's beautiful. As a priest coming back to the pre-55, being formed in the '62 liturgy and the '62 Holy week and doing it all my priesthood, just about. And now going towards the pre-'55, you can see so clearly the poisonous seeds and time bombs planted by Bugnini, even in Holy Week. For just a small example, when the priest carries the Blessed Sacrament on Good Friday from the altar reservation to the main Altar, the altar boys incense the Blessed Sacrament. That doesn't exist in the post-'55. In the pre-'55, there's incense because you're escorting His Divine Majesty, Christ the King. And then what is the schola singing at that time?
The hymn to Christ the King, Vexilla Regis, a magnificent, beautiful hymn that I always have sung on the boys' camps. The hymn to Christ the King, Vexilla Regis. The King goes forth carrying His standard, His Banner, which is the Cross. And He who is life itself, Christ, the Life who gave all life, created all life, having been put to death, gives us life. Life having been put to death, gives us life. Life of the soul. That's the first stanza. And that is all sung at the procession to the altar on Good Friday. Then you might say, "Well, what's the big deal with that?" Well, it's a huge, huge point that's made in the traditional liturgy, the pre-'55, that Christ is God, He is King, and on Good Friday was His victory over sin and death and Satan. And it's publicly sung and proclaimed by the Catholic church, at least before the '55 liturgy all over the world.
And the hymn was also changed by Bugnini. He changed it to Adoramus te Christe, which is still beautiful, but it's not the same emphasis. And remember as Archbishop Lefebvre said, the fight between Écône, the fight between the tradition and modernist Rome is all centered on the Kingship of Jesus Christ. They don't want Him to reign... Well, we want Christ to reign, and we want priests formed to preach the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. And even to stand up to politicians, kings, governments, supreme courts, if they dare to trample on the rights of Christ the King. Now they're all silent. They will not speak against these rotten politicians and even the rotten clergy in Rome. They're silent now, the new SSPX, they are silent. And that's silence is a crime.
It is a crime. It's like the police force seeing criminals taking off ladies to rape them, busting into people's homes and stealing their stuff and stealing stuff from the stores and sitting back and watching it happen and being silent and inactive when the police are funded precisely to protect the common good. And you expect that from your police force. That's why here in the US, we support our police force as long as they do what's right and punish the real criminals and not to punish the good. So it is with the clergy. And Our Lady of Quito warned that the prelates, the bishops, will be silent, and many souls will be lost because of it. So I ask your prayers and we invite of course, vocations to come. It's open now, we have a place for young men to try to be brothers in, sanctify their soul and young men to begin their studies for the priesthood. And let it be clear, if you belong to the sodomite parades, stay away. Don't come. Don't even think of coming.
If you're hooked on drugs and you can't get out of it, just don't even come. You need a rehabilitation. Don't come. Because hooked on drugs, that's all we need is priests, hooked on drugs. And if you're married, obviously you can't come. Many married men would probably love to come to be brothers. And perhaps if their wives are dead, maybe so, maybe so. And then there's a whole list of impediments to the priesthood. I won't give them all here, but those are some of them. And then if people have huge debts, if you've got huge college debts, you got to pay them off first and we could talk about what can be done, but huge debts, that's also forms an impediment to the seminary. They should be paid off or at least mostly paid off before coming. So anyway, just a few ideas there. So I ask your prayers, you're faithful, you especially, and many all throughout the United States and in England and in Australia have been so generous.
There's no way, four years ago, I couldn't even look for a house or a place because we didn't have any money to find anything. And I don't know how this happened, but miraculously, we have enough money now to buy a decent place to begin. And I thank you faithful, and if the live-stream is still working, I do extend the gratitude to all the everyone who has contributed in any way. And some people give $5, some give $500, but they all give. And especially your prayers, this is what we really need now is a lot of prayers for the good priests and good brothers. And so, I thank you and ask the Virgin Mary to look after this place and that She brings the men she wants to be formed. And I ask your prayers, and of course this is where we're going to a Mass. And I still will of course be doing the missions if I can get a priest once in a while to fill in here for me.
And if it's a small group at first, we can still manage something. And the idea is, I'm not abandoning the missions, far from it, but they might not have Mass as often, and we have to trust in the good God that hopefully he will send priests and maybe by a miracle some of the new SSPX priests. Where's Father Ken Novak? He should be here. Where's Father Stanich? He should be here. Father Mike McMahon and Father Soos and Father... Well, Father Cooper, God bless and rest his soul. He's a good priest. He died, but maybe he would wake up too. A lot of these priests should know better than going along with compromise. And they should be helping the real Catholic Resistance, the real position of Archbishop Lefebvre. So maybe by a miracle, one of these priests will wake up and come and realize they were wrong to go along with compromise and just come back to the fight of Catholic Tradition as Archbishop Lefebvre spearheaded it.
Let's go now to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass here in The Oratory of The Sorrowful Heart of Mary. Let us kneel at Calvary. That's where we belong today. At the foot of the Cross, that's where we belong. And stand with Our Lady, kneel with Her, adore Her Son and beg to become saints. And as the world seems to be sliding more into lies, more and more into economic instability and all this, we must be also ready for persecution. We must be ready for whatever tribulations come upon us and God will not abandon us. Today is the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila. Let me just close with one of a couple of her sayings.
Prize losing... I have to read my writing. Prize being able to help God carry the cross and don't be clinging to delights for it is the trade of mercenary soldiers to want their daily pay at once. Serve without charge as the grandes do their king. The King of Heaven will be with you. And she would say to her nuns, "Courage, courage, my daughters, remember that God does not give anyone more trials than can be suffered. And that His Majesty is with the afflicted. For this is certain, there is no reason to fear but to hope in His Mercy. He will reveal the whole truth in some machinations, which the devil kept hidden so as to create a disturbance will be made known."
And then lastly, "God knows how to draw good from evil. And the good is all the greater in the measure that we diligently strive that he not be offended in anything." So for those who love God, everything works together for good. So all through the trials of these days, God wants to draw good from it, that he wants us to become saints, he wants us to get to heaven and get many souls there with him. Pray that this place be one of the oasis and training camps for such priests and brothers. Oh Mary, conceived without sin.
Audience:
Pray for us who have recourse to Thee.
Fr. David Hewko:
Oh, Mary conceived without sin.
Audience:
Pray for us who have recourse to Thee.
Fr. David Hewko:
Oh, Mary conceived without sin.
Audience:
Pray for us who have recourse to Thee.
Fr. David Hewko:
And for those who do not ever close to thee, especially all communists and Freemasons and other enemies of Holy Mother Church. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
|
|
|
|
| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Twentieth Week after Pentecost |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-15-2023, 05:39 AM - Forum: Pentecost
- Replies (6)
|
|
Death is an object of the greatest terror to souls attached to this world. Those who love God especially desire it. St. Teresa in thinking of the danger she ran as long as life lasted, of offending God and losing Him, used to say that a single day, even a single hour was too long to have to live. "Alas! Lord, as long as we remain in this miserable life, life eternal is in jeopardy."
I.
If the worldly-minded have a fear of losing their goods, fleeting and miserable as they are, much greater is the fear the Saints have of losing God, Who is a Good infinite and eternal, and Who promises to bestow Himself in Heaven as a recompense upon him who has loved Him on earth, admitting him to the enjoyment of His beauty and of His own happiness. Hence as their whole fear during life has been simply the fear of sinning, and thus losing the friendship of that Lord Whom they have loved so well, so their whole desire has been to die in the grace of God, and by death to gain the assurance of loving and possessing Him forever.
Death, then -- that object of the greatest terror to souls attached to this world -- is what those that love God especially desire: for, says St. Bernard, it is for these happy souls both the termination of their labours and the gate of life. Hence we see that among the Saints, one would call this life a prison and pray the Lord to deliver him out of it: Deliver my soul from this prison (Ps. cxli. 8). Another, like St. Paul, would call it a real death: Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom. vii. 24).
But how are we to express the grief and the extreme anguish that our Saint experienced through her desire for death, more especially after the time when the Lord called her to His perfect love? She protests, in her Life, written in obedience to her confessor, that the desire that she had of dying, in order to see God, was so great, that it did not even afford her the leisure to think of her sins. This humble spouse of Jesus crucified spoke in this manner because she was continually bewailing those imperfections in her love of her Spouse into which she had formerly fallen -- imperfections she pronounced to be monstrous and deserving of hell, but in reality, as her biographers declare, her failings never amounted to a mortal sin.
The Saint, in thinking, moreover, of the danger she was in, as long as life should last, of offending God and losing Him, used to say that a single day, and even a single hour, seemed to her too long to have to live. Hence she would exclaim: "Alas! Lord, as long as we remain in this miserable life, life eternal is ever in jeopardy. O life! enemy of my welfare, who will be able to bring thee to an end? I endure thee, because God endures thee. I preserve thee, because thou dost appertain to Him; may I never prove treacherous or ungrateful. Oh! when will that day of benediction arrive on which I shall behold thee, O life, swallowed up in the boundless ocean of the sovereign truth, when thou wilt no longer possess the liberty to sin?"
O beautiful fatherland! O blessed fatherland of God-loving souls! where they love Him without fear of losing Him; without tepidity, and for ever! I greet thee from afar, from this valley of tears, and I sigh for thee, because I hope that in thee I shall love my God with all my powers for evermore.
II.
To our Saint's fear of the possibility of offending God in this life was joined the great desire that this loving soul entertained of seeing face to face the only object of her love, that she might thus gain the power of loving Him more perfectly, and of altogether uniting herself to Him. For this reason she could not endure to see herself at such a distance from the country of the Blessed; with abundance of tears, she would thus utter her complaint before her Spouse: "Alas! alas! Lord, this banishment is long indeed! What shall a soul confined in this prison do? Oh! Jesus, the life of man is long indeed! It is short, when considered as a means of gaining the life that is the true one; but it is long for that soul that desires to behold herself in the presence of her God." At other times, blending with her loving pains her distrust in her own merits and her hope in God, she would occupy herself in the composition of the following beautiful harmony of ejaculations so pleasing to her Beloved: "O life!" she would say, "O life! how canst thou keep thyself apart from thy Life? O death! O death! I know not who can fear thee, because in thee is life! Yet who shall not fear thee after having spent a part of this life without the love of his God? O my soul! serve thy God, and hope that in His mercy He will heal thy miseries."
But in order to understand the extent of the burning desire our Saint had for death, it is necessary that we should have a knowledge of the pain she experienced in continuing in life. She related to her confessor that this was such that it seemed already to destroy and bring her life to an end. Under its influence, too, she would even fall into an ecstasy. To give vent to her affections, she drew up on this subject those burning words of which that celebrated hymn of hers is composed, which thus begins:
"I live, from myself am far away:
And hope to reach a life so high,
That I'm for ever dying because I do not die!"
Elsewhere she says: "When will it be, O my God, that I shall at last see my whole soul perfectly united to Thee, so that all its faculties may have complete fruition of Thee?"
In a word, the only relief and consolation she found in this life was in thinking of her death. So she used to comfort herself, while on earth, with words like these: "Then, then, O my soul, you will have entered into your rest, when you shall be holding converse with that sovereign Good and shall know what He knows; when you shall love what He loves, and enjoy all that constitutes His blessedness; for then you will be rid of your own wretched will." Thus, it may be said, that the life of our Saint was sustained by the hope of that life eternal, for which she had sacrificed all the goods of this world; "I had rather live and die," she tells us, "hoping for the life eternal, than have all the goods of the earth in my possession. Do not Thou abandon me, O Lord, for I hope in Thee. If only I may serve Thee without intermission, do with me whatsoever Thou pleasest."
O my holy advocate, Teresa, I rejoice with thee that thou hast reached the haven, the termination of thy sighs! Now Thou dost no longer believe, thou beholdest the beauty of God! Thou no longer hopest, thou art possessed of the Sovereign Good! Thou art now rejoicing in the clear vision of that God Whom thou hast so long desired and loved! Thy love is now satiated! There is nothing for thy loving heart to long for more! O my Saint, have compassion on me who am still in the midst of the storm. Pray for me that I may obtain salvation and go to join thee in loving that God Whom thou so greatly desirest to see loved.
Spiritual Reading
"PARADISE! PARADISE!"
When the dignity of Cardinal was offered to St. Philip Neri, he cast his biretta into the air, and, looking up to Heaven, replied: "Paradise! Paradise!" The Blessed Giles would fall into an ecstasy, when the children, out of frolic, said to him: "Brother Giles, Paradise! Paradise!"
It is an opinion among theologians, that in Purgatory there is a peculiar pain called the pain of languor, which is inflicted upon those who had but little desire for Paradise during life on earth, and reasonably so, for we have but little love for God if we desire but little to enjoy His infinite beauty unveiled before our eyes, and the more so as it is impossible for us here in life not to be continually offending Him, at least in venial matters. Even if we do love Him here below, our love is, nevertheless, so imperfect, that we scarcely know that we love Him at all.
Let us, then, yearn for Paradise, where we shall offend God no more, and where we shall ever love Him with all our powers. When the troubles of this life press heavily upon us, let us animate ourselves by the hope of Paradise in order to bear them with tranquillity. When the world or the devil presents for our acceptance fruits that are forbidden, let us with good courage turn our back upon them, and lift up our eyes to Paradise. If the dread of God's judgments alarms us, let us nerve ourselves by hoping in the goodness of our God, Who to make us understand how ardently He desires to give Paradise to us, has commanded us, under pain of damnation, to hope for it through His mercy. He even willed to purchase it at the cost of His Blood, and His Death, that so He might obtain that great blessedness for us; and to assure us of it the more, He has been pleased to give us a pledge of it in the gift of Himself to us in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar.
If our weakness terrifies us, let us fortify our hope by the same goodness of our Lord, Who, after having given us His merits to entitle us to Paradise, will likewise give us the strength to persevere in His grace even to our life's end, if we have recourse to His mercy, and pray to Him for that strength and perseverance.
The holy Mother Teresa used to say:
"Let your desire be to see God; your fear, to lose Him; your joy, whatever can bring you to Him."
Burning with the desire of seeing God, the Saint composed her famous "Canticle," "I die because I cannot die!" and on this text she wrote many beautiful stanzas, of which the following are two:
Ah, Lord, my Light, and living Breath!
Take me, Oh, take me from this death,
And burst the bars that sever me
From my true Life above:
Think how I die, Thy face to see,
And cannot live away from Thee,
O my eternal Love!
And ever, ever weep and sigh,
Dying because I cannot die.I weary of this endless strife;
I weary of this dying life--
This living death -- this heavy chain;
This torment of delay,
In which her sins my soul detain;
Ah, when shall it be mine? Ah, when,
With my last breath to say--
"No more I weep -- no more I sigh!
I'm dying of desire to die."
HYMN IN HONOUR OF ST. TERESA
Ye angels most inflamed
With fires of heavenly love,
Bright Seraphim, descend
From your high thrones above;
To this most chosen soul
Your loving succor bring --
To her, the spouse belov'd
Of Christ your God and King.Jesus, your Love, your Life,
Who loves the pure of heart,
Has pierced Teresa's soul
With love's own flaming dart;
And lo! she pines away,
She languishes, she sighs;
For Him Who gave the wound,
Of very love she dies.
To see her loving Spouse
So fierce is her desire
That evermore she burns,
Consuming in its fire,
That sweet and longing wish
Into His arms to fly,
Is but a living death,
Because she cannot die.No angels come to aid;
Come Thou, Who in this breast
Hast kindled flames so dear,
Come Thou, and give her rest;
Sick is her soul with love,
And wounded is her heart;
Thou didst inflict the wound,
Then, Jesus, cure its smart.Thy spouse was ever true,
To please Thy Heart Divine,
All earth could give she left,
All she could give is Thine;
And now, she loves Thee well,
And sighs to come to Thee;
She longs to take her flight,
Ah! set her spirit free.
- ST. ALPHONSUS
Evening Meditation
CONFORMITY TO THE WILL OF GOD
VI. GOD WISHES ONLY OUR GOOD.
I.
Oh, how great indeed is the folly of those who resist the Divine Will! They will have to endure sufferings, for no one can ever prevent the accomplishment of the Divine decrees. Who resisteth his will? (Rom. ix. 19). And, besides, they will have to bear the burden of their sorrows without deriving benefit from them; nay, they will draw down upon themselves even greater chastisements in the next life, as well as greater disquietude in this: Who hath resisted him, and hath had peace? (Job ix. 4). Let the sick man make as great an outcry as he will about his pains; let him who is in poverty murmur and rage and blaspheme against God as much as he pleases -- what will he gain by it all, but the doubling of his afflictions? "What are you in search of, O foolish man," says St. Augustine, "when seeking good things? Seek that one Good in Whom are all things that are good." What are you going in search of, poor foolish man, outside your God? Find God, unite yourself to His holy will, bind yourself up with it; and you will be ever happy, both in this life and in the next.
In short, what does God will but our good? Whom can we ever find to love us more than He? It is His will, not merely that no one should perish, but that all should save and sanctify their souls: Not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance (2 Peter iii. 9). This is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thess. iv. 3). It is in our good that God has placed His own glory, being, as St. Leo says, of His own nature, goodness infinite. And as it is of the nature of goodness to desire to spread itself abroad, God has a supreme desire to make the souls of men partakers of His own bliss and glory. And if, in this life, He sends us tribulations, they are all for our own good: All things work together unto good (Rom. viii. 28). Even chastisements, as was observed by the holy Judith, do not come to us from God for our destruction, but in order to secure our amendment and salvation: Let us believe that they have happened for our amendment, and not for our destruction (Judith, viii. 27).
II.
In order to save us from evils that are eternal, the Lord throws the shield of His good will around us: O Lord, thou hast crowned us as with a shield of thy good will (Ps. v. 13). He not only desires, but is eager for our salvation: The Lord is careful for me (Ps. xxxix. 18). -- For what is there that God will ever refuse us, says St. Paul, after having given us His own Son? He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also with him given us all things? (Rom. viii. 32). This, then, is the confidence in which we ought to abandon ourselves to the Divine dispensations, all of which have our good for their object. Let us therefore repeat, whatever circumstances may happen to befall us: In peace, in the self-same, I will sleep and I will rest; for thou, O Lord, singularly hast settled me in hope (Ps. iv. 10). Let us also place ourselves entirely in God's hands, for He will certainly take care of us: Casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you (1 Peter v. 7). Then, let our thoughts be fixed on God, and on the fulfilment of His will, that He may think of us and of our good. "Daughter," said the Lord to St. Catharine of Sienna, "do thou think of Me, and I will ever think of thee." Let us frequently repeat with the sacred spouse, My Beloved to me, and I to him (Cant. ii. 16). The thoughts of my Beloved are for my welfare; I will think of nothing but of pleasing Him, and bringing myself into perfect conformity with His holy will. The holy Abbot Nilus used to say that we ought never to pray to God to make our will succeed, but to accomplish His will in us. And whenever things befall us that are not according to our wishes, let us accept them all, as from God's hands, not merely with patience, but with joy, as did the Apostles when they went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus (Acts, v. 41).
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: gtlv3zqf0gtpiob7sbba0sqk99kbz1vs4qr82he....54&webp=on]](https://seedus9492.gloria.tv/1z94gyaCTBei3D8MsGrYwjE6j/gtlv3zqf0gtpiob7sbba0sqk99kbz1vs4qr82he.webp?secure=rvlKsktbEKG6yWfx3ntTjA&expires=1698447354&webp=on)
![[Image: c9jpsrr069g18htqc1a9te7m8ypy02y9mmq50wj....24&webp=on]](https://seedus1869.gloria.tv/1z94gyaCTBei3D8MsGrYwjE6j/c9jpsrr069g18htqc1a9te7m8ypy02y9mmq50wj.webp?crop=1720.1063&secure=vnFqqzcTG2jJzM4el02cCw&expires=1698433756&scale=1024&webp=on)
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinim...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fed%2Fce%2F8d%2Fedce8dec7cc3afa0d8b22e6e916f3c0a.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
![[Image: bugs1a.png?itok=k1W9oNpr]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/bugs1a.png?itok=k1W9oNpr)
![[Image: own%20nothing.PNG?itok=drEtALdT]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/own%20nothing.PNG?itok=drEtALdT)
![[Image: IMG_0319-1024x580.jpg?itok=3_aM28dp]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/IMG_0319-1024x580.jpg?itok=3_aM28dp)
![[Image: 23.jpg]](https://sensusfidelium.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/23.jpg)
