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| Archbishop Viganò: J'Accuse - Statement on the Accusation of Schism |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 10:57 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- Replies (2)
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Holy Mother Church will have much to settle in the future...
J’ACCUSE
STATEMENT
by H.E. Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò,
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, Apostolic Nuncio
on the accusation of schism
“But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you a gospel other than the one that we preached to you,
let that one be accursed.
As we have said before, and now I say again,
if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received,
let him be anathema.”
Gal 1:8-9
“When I think that we are in the palace of the Holy Office, which is the exceptional witness of the Tradition and of the defense of the Catholic Faith, I cannot stop myself from thinking that I am at home, and that it is me, whom you call “the traditionalist,” who should judge you.” So spoke Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1979, when he was summoned to the former Holy Office, in the presence of the Prefect, Cardinal Franjo Šeper, and two other Prelates.
As I stated in my Communiqué of June 20, I do not recognize the authority of the tribunal that claims to judge me, nor of its Prefect, nor of the one who appointed him. This decision of mine, which is certainly painful, is not the result of haste or a spirit of rebellion; but rather is dictated by the moral necessity which, as Bishop and Successor of the Apostles, obliges me in conscience to bear witness to the Truth, that is, to God Himself, to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I face this trial with the determination that comes from knowing that I have no reason to consider myself separate from communion with the Holy Church and with the Papacy, which I have always served with filial devotion and fidelity. I could not conceive of a single moment of my life outside this one Ark of salvation, which Providence has constituted as the Mystical Body of Christ, in submission to its Divine Head and to His Vicar on earth.
The enemies of the Catholic Church fear the power of Grace which works through the Sacraments, and above all the power of the Holy Mass, a terrible katechon which frustrates many of their efforts and wins to God so many souls who would otherwise be damned. And it is precisely this awareness of the power of the supernatural action of the Catholic priesthood in society that lies at the origin of their fierce hostility to Tradition. Satan and his minions know full well what a threat the one true Church poses to their antichristic plan. These subversives – whom the Roman Pontiffs have courageously denounced as enemies of God, the Church, and humanity – are identifiable in the inimica vis, Freemasonry. It has infiltrated the Hierarchy and succeeded in making it lay down the spiritual weapons at its disposal, opening the doors of the Citadel to the enemy in the name of dialogue and universal brotherhood, concepts that are intrinsically Masonic. But the Church, following the example of her Divine Founder, does not dialogue with Satan: She fights him.
THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT CRISIS
As Romano Amerio pointed out in his seminal essay Iota Unum, this cowardly and culpable surrender began with the convocation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and with the underground and highly organized action of clergymen and laity linked to the Masonic sects, aimed at slowly but surely subverting the structure of government and magisterium of the Church in order to demolish Her from within. It is useless to look for other reasons: the documents of the secret sects demonstrate the existence of an infiltration plan conceived in the nineteenth century and carried out a century later, exactly in the terms in which it was conceived. Similar processes of dissolution had previously taken place in the civil sphere, and it is no coincidence that the Popes were able to grasp in the uprisings and wars that bloodied the European nations the disintegrating work of international Freemasonry.
Since the Council, the Church has thus become the bearer of the revolutionary principles of 1789, as some of the proponents of Vatican II have admitted, and as is confirmed by the appreciation on the part of the Lodges for all the Popes of the Council and of the post-conciliar period, precisely because of the implementation of changes that the Freemasons had long called for.
Change – or better still, aggiornamento – has been so much at the center of the conciliar narrative that it has been the hallmark of Vatican II and has posited this assembly as the terminus post quem that sanctions the end of the ancien régime – the regime of the “old religion,” of the “old Mass,” of the “pre-council” – and the beginning of the “conciliar church,” with its “new mass” and the substantial relativization of all dogma. Among the proponents of this revolution appear the names of those who, until the pontificate of John XXIII, had been condemned and removed from teaching because of their heterodoxy. The list is long and also includes Ernesto Buonaiuti, the excommunicated vitandus, a friend of Roncalli, who died unrepentant in heresy, and whom just a few days ago the President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, commemorated with a Mass in the cathedral of Bologna, as reported with ill-concealed emphasis by Il Faro di Roma (here): “Almost eighty years later, a cardinal who is completely in line with the Pope is starting again with a liturgical gesture that has in all respects the flavor of rehabilitation. Or at least a first step in that direction.”
THE CHURCH AND THE ANTICHURCH
I am therefore summoned before the tribunal that has taken the place of the Holy Office to be tried for schism, while the head of the Italian Bishops – identified as being among the papabili and completely in line with the Pope – is illicitly celebrating a Mass of suffrage for one of the worst and most obstinate exponents of Modernism, against whom the Church – the one from which according to them I am separated – had pronounced the most severe sentence of condemnation. In 2022, in the Italian Bishops’ Conference newspaper Avvenire, Professor Luigino Bruni praised Modernism in these terms:
Quote:[…] “a process of necessary renewal for the Catholic Church of its time, which was still impervious to the critical studies on the Bible that had been established for many decades in the Protestant world. For Buonaiuti, accepting scientific and historical studies on the Bible was the main way for the Church’s encounter with modernity. A meeting that did not take place, because the Catholic Church was still dominated by the theorems of neo-scholastic theology and blocked by the Counter-Reformation fear that the Protestant winds might finally invade the Catholic body.”
These words would suffice to make us understand the abyss that separates the Catholic Church from the one that replaced Her, beginning with the Second Vatican Council, when the Protestant winds finally invaded the Catholic body. This very recent episode is only the latest in an endless series of small steps, of silent acquiescence, of complicit winks with which the very leaders of the conciliar hierarchy made possible the transition “from the theorems of neo-scholastic theology” – that is, from the clear and unequivocal formulation of Dogmas – to the present apostasy. We find ourselves in the surreal situation in which a Hierarchy calls itself Catholic and therefore demands obedience from the ecclesial body, while at the same time professing doctrines that before the Council the Church had condemned; and at the same time condemning doctrines as heretical that up until then had been taught by all the Popes.
This happens when the absolute is removed from the Truth and relativized by adapting it to the spirit of the world. How would the Pontiffs of recent centuries have acted today? Would they judge me guilty of schism, or would they rather condemn the one who claims to be their Successor? Together with me, the modernist Sanhedrin judges and condemns all Catholic Popes, because the Faith that they defended is mine; and the errors that Bergoglio defends are those that they, without exception, condemned. The words of the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion in response to the verdict finding him guilty of treason in 1581 apply to the present Vatican no less than they did then to the Defender of the Faith: “In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors.”
HERMENEUTIC OF RUPTURE
I ask myself, then: what continuity can be given between two realities that oppose and contradict each other? between Bergoglio’s conciliar and synodal church and the one “blocked by counter-reformation fear” from which he ostentatiously distances himself? And from what “church” would I be in a state of schism, if the one that claims to be Catholic differs from the true Church precisely in its preaching of what She condemned and in its condemnation of what She preached?
The adepts of the “conciliar church” will reply that this is due to the evolution of the ecclesial body in a “necessary renewal;” while the Catholic Magisterium teaches us that the Truth is immutable and that the doctrine of the evolution of dogmas is heretical. Two churches, certainly: each with its own doctrines and liturgies and saints; but whereas for the Catholic believer the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, for Bergoglio the Church is conciliar, ecumenical, synodal, inclusive, immigrationist, eco-sustainable, and gay-friendly.
The Self-Removal of the Conciliar Hierarchy
Is it possible then that the Church has begun to teach error? Can we believe that the one Ark of salvation is at the same time also an instrument of perdition for souls? That the Mystical Body separates itself from its Divine Head, Jesus Christ, making the Savior’s promise fail? This cannot, of course, be admissible, and those who support such an idea fall into heresy and schism. The Church cannot teach error, nor can her Head, the Roman Pontiff, be at the same time heretical and orthodox, Peter and Judas, in communion with all his predecessors and at the same time in schism with them. The only theologically possible answer is that the Conciliar Hierarchy, which proclaims itself Catholic but embraces a faith different from that constantly taught for two thousand years by the Catholic Church, belongs to another entity and therefore does not represent the true Church of Christ.
To those who remind me that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre never went so far as to question the legitimacy of the Roman Pontiff, while acknowledging the heresy and even the apostasy of the conciliar Popes – as when he exclaimed: “Rome has lost the Faith! Rome is in apostasy!” – I remind them that in the last fifty years the situation has dramatically worsened and that in all probability this great Pastor today would act with equal firmness, publicly repeating what he said then only to his clerics: “In this pastoral council, the spirit of error and lies has been able to work at ease, planting time-bombs everywhere that will blow up institutions in due course” (Principes et directives, 1977). And again: “He who is seated on the Throne of Peter participates in the worship of false gods. What conclusion should we draw, perhaps in a few months’ time, in the face of these repeated acts of communication with false cults? I don’t know. I wonder. But it is possible that we will find ourselves forced to believe that the Pope is not Pope. Because at first sight it seems to me – I do not yet want to say it in a solemn and public way – that it is impossible for someone who is a heretic to be publicly and formally Pope” (March 30, 1986).
What makes us understand that the “synodal church” and its head Bergoglio do not profess the Catholic Faith? It is the total and unconditional adherence of all its members to a multiplicity of errors and heresies already condemned by the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church and from the ostentatious rejection of any doctrine, moral precept, act of worship, and religious practice that is not sanctioned by “their” council. Neither of them can in conscience subscribe to the Tridentine Profession of Faith and the Anti-Modernist Oath, because what they both express is the exact opposite of what Vatican II and the so-called “conciliar magisterium” insinuate and teach.
Since it is not theologically tenable that the Church and the Papacy are instruments of perdition rather than of salvation, we must necessarily conclude that the heterodox teachings conveyed by the so-called “conciliar church” and the “popes of the Council” from Paul VI onwards constitute an anomaly that seriously calls into question the legitimacy of their magisterial and governing authority.
THE SUBVERSIVE USE OF AUTHORITY
That is, we must understand that the subversive use of authority in the Church aimed at Her destruction (or at Her transformation into a church other than the one willed and founded by Christ) constitutes in itself a sufficient element to render null and void the authority of this new subject which has maliciously superimposed itself onto the Church of Christ, usurping power. That is why I do not recognize the legitimacy of the Dicastery that is putting me on trial.
The manner in which the hostile action against the Catholic Church was carried out confirms that it was planned and intended, because otherwise those who denounced it would have been listened to and those who cooperated in it would have immediately stopped. Certainly, with the eyes of that time and the traditional formation of most of the Cardinals, Bishops, and Clergy, the “scandal” of a Hierarchy that contradicted itself appeared as such an enormity as to induce many prelates and clerics not to believe that it was possible that revolutionary and Masonic principles could find acceptance and promotion in the Church. But this was precisely the masterstroke of Satan – as Archbishop Lefebvre called it – who knew how to make use of the natural respect and filial love of Catholics for the sacred authority of the Pastors to induce them to put obedience before the Truth, perhaps hoping that a future Pope could in some way heal the disaster that had been accomplished and whose explosive results could already be guessed. This did not happen, despite the fact that some had courageously sounded the alarm. And I also count myself among those who, in that troubled phase, did not dare to oppose errors and deviations that had not yet fully shown themselves in their destructive value. I do not mean to say that I did not have an inkling of what was happening, but that I did not find – because of the intense work and the all-encompassing tasks of a bureaucratic and administrative nature at the service of the Holy See – the right conditions that would have allowed me to grasp the unprecedented gravity of what was taking place before our eyes.
THE CLASH
The occasion that led me to clash with my ecclesiastical superiors began when I was Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, then as Secretary General of the Governorate, and finally as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. My war against moral and financial corruption unleashed the fury of the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, when – in accordance with my responsibilities as Delegate for the Papal Representations – I denounced the corruption of Cardinal McCarrick and opposed his promoting corrupt and unworthy candidates for the Episcopate presented by the Secretary of State, who had me transferred to the Governorate because “I prevented him from making the bishops he wanted.” It was always Bertone, with the complicity of Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who hindered my work aimed at combating widespread corruption in the Governorate, where I had already obtained important results beyond all expectations. It was also Bertone and Lajolo who convinced Pope Benedict to expel me from the Vatican and send me to the United States. There I found myself having to confront the vile events of Cardinal McCarrick, including his dangerous relationships with political representatives of the Obama-Biden Administration and also on an international level, which I did not hesitate to report to Secretary of State Parolin, who took no account of it.
This led me to consider many events I had witnessed during my diplomatic and pastoral career in a different light, and to grasp their coherence with a single project that by its nature could be neither exclusively political nor exclusively religious, since it included a global attack on traditional society based on the doctrinal, moral, and liturgical teaching aspects of the Church.
CORRUPTION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF BLACKMAIL
This is why from once having been an esteemed Apostolic Nuncio – for which few days ago Cardinal Parolin himself recognized me for my exemplary loyalty, honesty, correctness, and efficiency – I have now become an inconvenient Archbishop, not only because I have asked for justice in the canonical processes undertaken against corrupt prelates, but also and above all for having provided an interpretive key that shows how corruption within the Hierarchy was a necessary premise to control, manipulate, and coerce it with blackmail to act against God, against the Church, and against souls. And this modus operandi – which Freemasonry had described in detail before infiltrating the ecclesial body – mirrors that adopted in civil institutions, where the representatives of the people, especially at the highest levels, are largely blackmailable because they are corrupt and perverted. Their obedience to the delusions of the globalist elite leads peoples to ruin, destruction, disease, and death – death not only of the body, but also of the soul. Because the true project of the New World Order – to which Bergoglio is enslaved and from which he draws his own legitimacy from the powerful of the world – is an essentially Satanic project, in which the work of the Creation of the Father, the Redemption of the Son, and the Sanctification of the Holy Spirit is hated, erased, and counterfeited by the simia Dei and his servants.
IF YOU DO NOT SPEAK, THE VERY STONES WILL CRY OUT
Witnessing the total subversion of the divine order and the propagation of infernal chaos with the zealous collaboration of the leaders of the Vatican and the Episcopate makes us understand how terrible are the words of the Virgin Mary at La Salette – Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist – and what a hateful betrayal is constituted by the apostasy of the Pastors, and by the even more unheard-of betrayal of the one who sits on the Throne of the Most Blessed Peter.
If I were to remain silent in the face of this betrayal – which is consummated with the fearful complicity of many, too many Prelates who are reluctant to recognize in the Second Vatican Council the principal cause of the present revolution and the adulteration of the Catholic Mass as the origin of the spiritual and moral dissolution of the faithful – I would break the oath taken on the day of my Ordination and renewed on the occasion of my episcopal Consecration. As the Successor of the Apostles, I cannot and will not accept to witness the systematic demolition of Holy Church and the damnation of so many souls without trying by every means to oppose all this. Nor can I consider a cowardly silence for the sake of a quiet life preferable to giving witness to the Gospel and defending Catholic Truth.
A schismatic sect accuses me of schism: this should be enough to demonstrate the subversion taking place. Imagine what impartiality of judgment a judge will be able to exercise when he depends on the one whom I accuse of being a usurper. But precisely because this event is emblematic, I want the faithful – who are not required to be familiar with the functioning of the ecclesiastical tribunals – to understand that the crime of schism is not committed when there are well-founded reasons to consider the election of the Pope dubious, due both to the vitium consensus as well as to the irregularities or violations of the norms which govern the conclave (cf. Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum, Rome, Pont. Univ. Greg., 1937, vol. VII, p. 439).
The Bull Cum ex apostolatus officio of Paul IV established in perpetuity the nullity of the nomination or election of any Prelate – including the Pope – who had fallen into heresy before his promotion to Cardinal or elevation to Roman Pontiff. It defines the promotion or elevation as nulla, irrita et inanis – void, invalid, and without any value – “even if it took place with the agreement and unanimous consent of all the Cardinals; nor can it be said that it is validated by the receipt of the office, consecration, or possession […], or by the putative enthronement […] of the Roman Pontiff himself or by the obedience given to him by all and by the course of any duration of time in the said exercise of his office.” Paul IV adds that all the acts performed by this person are to be considered equally null, and that his subjects, both clerics and lay people, are freed from obedience with regard to him, “without prejudice, however, on the part of these same subjected people, to the obligation of fidelity and obedience to be given to future Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals, and Roman Pontiffs who are canonically installed.” Paul IV concludes: “And to the greater confusion of those thus promoted and elevated, where they claim to continue their administration, it is permissible to request the help of the secular arm; nor for this reason are those who withdraw from loyalty and obedience towards those who have been promoted and elevated in the way already mentioned, to be subject to any of those censures and punishments imposed on those who would like to tear the tunic of the Lord.”
For this reason, with serenity of conscience, I maintain that the errors and heresies to which Bergoglio adhered before, during, and after his election, along with the intention he held in his apparent acceptance of the Papacy, render his elevation to the throne null and void.
If all the acts of governance and teaching of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in content and form, prove to be extraneous and even in conflict with what constitutes the action of any of the popes; if even a simple believers and non-Catholics understand the anomaly of the role that Bergoglio is playing in the globalist and anti-Christian project carried out by the World Economic Forum, the UN Agencies, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the World Bank, and by all the other sprawling branches of the globalist elite, this does not demonstrate even slightly that I desire schism by highlighting and denouncing this anomaly. Yet I am attacked and prosecuted because there are those who delude themselves that by condemning and excommunicating me my denunciation of the coup d’état will somehow lose its coherence and consistency. This attempt to silence everyone solves nothing; indeed it makes those who try to conceal or minimize the metastasis that is destroying the ecclesial body all the more culpable and complicit.
THE “DEMINUTIO” OF THE SYNODAL PAPACY
To all this we may add the Study Document The Bishop of Rome (here) which the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity recently published and the downgrading of the Papacy which is theorized in it, in application of John Paul II’s Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, which in turn refers to the Constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II. It appears entirely legitimate – and dutiful, in the name of the primacy of Catholic Truth sanctioned in the infallible documents of the Papal Magisterium – to ask whether Bergoglio’s deliberate choice to abolish the apostolic title of Vicar of Christ and choose to define himself simpliciter as Bishop of Rome does not constitute in some way a deminutio of the Papacy itself, an attack against the divine constitution of the Church, and a betrayal of the Munus petrinum. And upon closer inspection, the previous step was taken by Benedict XVI, who invented – along with the “hermeneutic” of an impossible “continuity” between two totally foreign entities – the monstrum of a “collegial Papacy” exercised by the Jesuit and the Emeritus simultaneously.
It is no coincidence that the Study Document cites a phrase from Paul VI: “The Pope […] is undoubtedly the most serious obstacle on the path of ecumenism” (Speech to the Secretary for the Promotion of Christian Unity, 28 April 1967). Montini had began to prepare the ground four years earlier when he dramatically laid aside the Tiara. If this is the premise of a text that is intended to serve to make the Roman Papacy “compatible” with the denial of the Primacy of Peter that the heretics and schismatics reject; and if Bergoglio himself presents himself as merely primus inter pares amidst the assembly of Christian sects and denominations not in communion with the Apostolic See, failing to proclaim the Catholic doctrine on the Papacy defined solemnly and infallibly by the First Vatican Council, how can one fail to think that the exercise of the Papacy and indeed the very intention to accept it has been affected by a defect of consent (here and here), such as to render the legitimacy of “Pope Francis” null or at least highly doubtful? Which “church” could I separate myself from, which “pope” would I refuse to recognize, if the former defines itself as the “conciliar and synodal church” in antithesis to the “pre-conciliar church” – i.e. the Church of Christ – and the latter demonstrates that he considers the Papacy as his own personal prerogative to be disposed of by modifying and altering it at will, always in coherence with the doctrinal errors implied by Vatican II and the post-conciliar “magisterium”?
If the Roman Papacy – the Papacy, to be clear, of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII – is considered to be an obstacle to ecumenical dialogue, and ecumenical dialogue is pursued as the absolute priority of the “synodal church,” represented by Bergoglio, what better way could this dialogue be implemented than by removing those elements that make the Papacy incompatible with it, and therefore tampering with it in a completely illegitimate and invalid way?
THE CONFLICT OF SO MANY BROTHER BISHOPS AND FAITHFUL
I am convinced that among the Bishops and priests there are many who have experienced and still experience today the excruciating internal conflict of finding themselves divided between what Christ the Pontiff asks of them – and they know it well – and what the one who presents himself as Bishop of Rome imposes with force, with blackmail, and with threats.
Today it is more necessary than ever for us Pastors to wake up from our torpor: Hora est iam nos de somno surgere (Rom 13:11). Our responsibility before God, the Church, and souls requires us to unequivocally denounce all the errors and deviations that we have tolerated for too long, because we will not be judged either by Bergoglio or by the world, but by Our Lord Jesus Christ. We will give an account to Him of every soul lost through our negligence, of every sin committed by each soul because of us, of every scandal before which we have remained silent out of false prudence, through a desire for quiet living, through complicity.
On the day on which I was supposed to present myself to defend myself before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, I have decided to make public this declaration of mine, to which I add a denunciation of my accusers, their “council,” and their “pope.” I ask the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, who consecrated the soil of the Alma Urbe with their own blood, to intercede before the throne of the Divine Majesty, so that they may obtain for the Holy Church that She may finally be freed from the siege that eclipses Her and from the usurpers who humiliate Her, making the Domina gentium the servant of the antichristic plan of the New World Order.
IN DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH
My defense is therefore not a personal one, but rather a defense of the Holy Church of Christ, in which I have been constituted a Bishop and Successor of the Apostles, with the precise mandate of safeguarding the Deposit of Faith and preaching the Word, insisting opportune importune – in season and out of season – rebuking, reproving , exhorting with all patience and doctrine (2 Tim 4:2).
I strongly reject the accusation of having torn the seamless garment of the Savior and of having departed from being under the Supreme Authority of the Vicar of Christ: in order to separate myself from ecclesial communion with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I would have to have first been in communion with him, which is not possible since Bergoglio himself cannot be considered a member of the Church, due to his multiple heresies and his manifest alienness and incompatibility with the role he invalidly and illicitly holds.
MY ACCUSATIONS AGAINST JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO
Before my Brothers in the Episcopate and the entire ecclesial body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years. This in no way contradicts the adage Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur, because it is evident that, since a heretic is unable to assume the Papacy, he is not above the Prelates who judge him.
I also accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of having caused – due to the prestige and authority of the Apostolic See which he usurps – serious adverse effects, sterility, and death in the millions of faithful who followed his insistent invitation to undergo the inoculation of an experimental gene serum produced with aborted fetuses, even to the point of issuing a formal “Note” declaring that using the vaccine is morally permissible (here and here). He will have to answer before the Tribunal of God for this crime against humanity.
Finally, I denounce the secret agreement between the Holy See and the Chinese communist dictatorship, by which the Church has been humiliated and forced to accept the government appointment of Bishops, the control of liturgical celebrations, and limitations on its freedom of preaching, while Catholics loyal to the Apostolic See are persecuted with impunity by the Beijing government with the complicit silence of the Roman Sanhedrin.
THE REJECTION OF THE ERRORS OF VATICAN II
I consider it an honor to be “accused” of rejecting the errors and deviations implied by the so-called Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which I consider to be completely devoid of magisterial authority due to its heterogeneity compared to all the true Councils of the Church, which I fully recognize and accept, just as I fully recognize and accept all the magisterial acts of the Roman Pontiffs.
I convictedly reject the heterodox doctrines contained in the documents of Vatican II and which have been condemned by the Popes up to Pius XII, or which contradict the Catholic Magisterium in any way. I find it disconcerting to say the least that those who are trying me for schism are those who embrace the heterodox doctrine according to which there exists a bond of union “with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter” (LG 15). I wonder how readily one can challenge a Bishop for the lack of communion which is also claimed to exist with heretics and schismatics.
I equally condemn, reject, and refuse the heterodox doctrines expressed in the so-called “post-conciliar magisterium” that originated with Vatican II, as well as the recent heresies relating to the “synodal church,” the reformulation of the Papacy in an ecumenical key, the admission of concubinaries to the Sacraments, and the promotion of sodomy and “gender” ideology. I also condemn Bergoglio’s adherence to climate fraud, a mad neo-Malthusian superstition engendered by those who, hating the Creator, cannot help but also detest Creation, and man along with it, who is made in the image and likeness of God.
CONCLUSION
To the Catholic faithful, who today are scandalized and disoriented by the winds of novelty and the false doctrines that are promoted and imposed by a Hierarchy rebellious against the Divine Master, I ask you to pray and offer your sacrifices and fasts pro libertate et exaltatione Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, so that Holy Mother Church may find Her freedom and triumph with Christ, after this time of passion. May those who have had the Grace of being incorporated into Her in Baptism not abandon their Mother who is today lying prostrate and suffering: tempora bona veniant, pax Christi veniat, regnum Christi veniat.
Given in Viterbo, on the 28th day of the month of June, in the Year of Our Lord 2024, the Vigil of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
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| World’s first carbon tax on livestock will cost farmers $100 per cow |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 07:11 AM - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
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World’s first carbon tax on livestock will cost farmers $100 per cow
![[Image: f_webp]](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-1234589468.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_653,w_1160,c_fill/f_webp)
A herd of cows near Allerup, Denmark, in August 2021. Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/Getty Images
CNN [slightly adapted]| Thu June 27, 2024
Dairy farmers in Denmark face having to pay an annual tax of 672 krone ($96) per cow for the planet-heating emissions they generate.
The country’s coalition government agreed this week to introduce the world’s first carbon emissions tax on agriculture. It will mean new levies on livestock starting in 2030.
Denmark is a major dairy and pork exporter, and agriculture is the country’s biggest source of emissions. The coalition agreement — which also entails investing 40 billion krone ($3.7 billion) in measures such as reforestation and establishing wetlands — is aimed at helping the country meet its climate goals.
“With today’s agreement, we are investing billions in the biggest transformation of the Danish landscape in recent times,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement Tuesday. “At the same time, we will be the first country in the world with a (carbon) tax on agriculture.”
The Danish dairy industry broadly welcomed the agreement and its goals, but it has angered some farmers.
The move comes just months after farmers held protests across Europe, blocking roads with tractors and pelting the European Parliament with eggs over a long list of complaints, including gripes about environmental regulation and excessive red tape.
The global food system is a huge contributor to the climate crisis, producing around a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
Livestock farming has a particularly big impact, accounting for around 12% of global emissions in 2015, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. A share of this pollution comes from methane, a potent planet-warming gas produced by cows and some other animals through their burps and manure.
Reducing livestock emissions
The tax, expected to be approved by Denmark’s parliament later this year, will amount to 300 krone ($43) per tonne (1.1 ton) of CO2-equivalent emissions from livestock from 2030, rising to 750 krone ($107) in 2035.
A 60% tax break will apply, meaning that farmers will effectively be charged 120 krone ($17) per tonne of livestock emissions per year from 2030, rising to 300 krone ($43) in 2035.
On average, Danish dairy cows, which account for much of the cattle population, emit 5.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, according to Concito, a green think tank in Denmark. Using the lower tax rate of 120 krone results in a charge of 672 krone per cow, or $96.
With the tax break in place, that levy will rise to 1,680 krone per cow in 2035 ($241).
In the first two years, the proceeds from the tax will be used to support the agricultural industry’s green transition and then reassessed.
“The whole purpose of the tax is to get the sector to look for solutions to reduce emissions,” Concito’s chief economist Torsten Hasforth told CNN. For example, farmers could change the feed they use.
But Danish farmers’ group Bæredygtigt Landbrug said the measures amounted to a “scary experiment.”
“We believe that the agreement is pure bureaucracy,” chairman Peter Kiær said in a statement. “We recognize that there is a climate problem… But we do not believe that this agreement will solve the problems, because it will put a spoke in the wheel of agriculture’s green investments.”
Peder Tuborgh, the CEO of Arla Foods, Europe’s largest dairy group, said the agreement was “positive” but that farmers who “genuinely do everything they can to reduce emissions” should not be subjected to a tax.
“It is essential that the tax base for a (carbon) tax is solely based on emissions for which there are means to eliminate (them),” he added in statement.
Kristian Hundeboll, the CEO of DLG Group, one of Europe’s biggest agricultural businesses and a cooperative owned by 25,000 Danish farmers, said it was “crucial for competitiveness” for the tax to be “anchored” in European Union legislation. “Neither the climate, agriculture nor the ancillary industries benefit from Denmark acting unilaterally,” he said.
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| Finland To Start Bird Flu Vaccinations For Humans |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-28-2024, 07:07 AM - Forum: Health
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Finland To Start Bird Flu Vaccinations For Humans
JUN 28, 2024
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Finland plans to offer avian influenza vaccinations as soon as the week of June 30 to some workers with exposure to animals, health authorities said on June 25. That would make it the first country in the world to do so.
The Nordic country has bought vaccines for 10,000 people, each consisting of two injections, as part of a joint European procurement of up to 40 million doses for 15 nations from manufacturer CSL Seqirus.
“The vaccine will be offered to those aged 18 or over who are at increased risk of contracting avian influenza due to their work or other circumstances,” the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said in a statement.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, has circulated for decades in birds but has recently jumped to other species, including cattle in the United States.
Three humans in the United States have had confirmed infections this year, while Finland has none.
However, Finnish authorities are rolling out the vaccine to try to curb the transmission of the virus.
“The conditions in Finland are very different in that we have fur farms where the animals can end up in contact with wildlife,” Dr. Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, said.
The mostly open-air fur farms saw widespread outbreaks of bird flu among mink and foxes, leading to the culling of about 485,000 animals in 2023 to cut down on transmission risk.
Vaccinations are likely to start as early as next week, according to a spokesperson for the institute. People deemed at risk, including workers at the fur farms and lab technicians who handle bird flu samples, are eligible for the shots.
If any human infections are confirmed, people in close contact with the patients would also be offered the vaccine.
US Orders Vaccines
The U.S. government has ordered nearly 5 million doses of the influenza vaccine made by CSL, and manufacturing is slated to be completed by the end of the summer.
However, the U.S. government has no concrete plans yet to start vaccinating farm workers or others.
Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), said in May that government officials were “looking closely” at moving forward with vaccinations. Still, the government has made no formal announcements on the front since then.
Robert Johnson, director of ASPR’s medical countermeasures program, was asked during a call with reporters on June 25 about Finland’s choice to start vaccinating some people. He said that ASPR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in agreement that H5N1 is currently a low public health risk.
“Further sort of deliberations or decisions around vaccine really will require further conversations around the U.S. government,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC official, told reporters.
In a strategy document released on June 25 aimed at a pandemic caused by influenza, U.S. officials said that vaccines “could be deployed before an outbreak begins and provide immune responses to a broad range of influenza viruses [and] could enable the population to have some level of protection against H5Nx viruses prior to a pandemic.”
Officials are backing the testing of multiple experimental vaccines against influenza, including two self-amplifying RNA vaccines targeting H5N1.
Pfizer and Moderna are also in talks with U.S. officials about messenger RNA vaccines against H5N1, after developing two widely used COVID-19 vaccines.
Although three farm workers in the United States have tested positive for H5N1 recently, officials have stressed that the illnesses are believed to have come from cows and that there are no signs as of yet of person-to-person transmission.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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| New Vatican document reveals Francis’ plan for a grotesque parody of the papacy |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 09:10 PM - Forum: Pope Francis
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New Vatican document reveals Francis’ plan for a grotesque parody of the papacy
A new Vatican document reveals the roadmap by which Francis intends to establish a new 'synodal papacy,' intended to replace the papacy permanently established by Christ.
![[Image: GettyImages-1242114339.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GettyImages-1242114339.jpg)
EDMONTON, AB - JULY 25: Pope Francis gives a blessing at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples
on July 25, 2022 in Edmonton, Canada.
The pope is meeting with Indigenous communities and community leaders in Canada. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
Jun 27, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — A new Vatican document reveals the roadmap by which Francis intends to establish a new “synodal papacy,” which will preside over a new “synodal church.”
This new “synodal papacy,” which is intended to replace the papacy permanently established by Christ, would lead a global ecumenical church without doctrine or discipline.
The new “working document,” called “The Bishop of Rome,” outlines a number of objections to Catholic doctrine and presents suggestions of how the exercise of the papal office can be transformed.
These objections and suggestions have been drawn from submissions sent to the Vatican by non-Catholic denominations in response to John Paul II’s 1995 document Ut Unum Sint.
That the Vatican is revisiting these submissions 29 years after Ut Unum Sint was first issued should be a cause of alarm to everyone who is aware of the methods deployed by the Vatican under Francis.
Presenting heterodox ideas in non-authoritative documents, and then later attempting to make them “official” teachings, is a strategy that has been used many times during the last decade.
We have seen it used, for example, to pursue Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried and “blessings” for same-sex “couples.”
For this reason, this 150-page compilation of theological errors and radical suggestions for reform deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.
If we approach the document with the known methodology of the Vatican in mind, we come to a startling conclusion: that they intend to abolish the papacy – at least in the eyes of the world – and replace it with a new institution, which will serve as the head of an institution that the documents call “an authentic conciliar/synodal Church.” (No. 112)1
This article sets out what would occur if the objections to Catholic doctrine and the suggestions for reform made in this non-authoritative document were to be accepted and implemented – in the same way as Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, and same-sex “blessings” have been before them.
Stage I. The Redefinition of the Catholic understanding of the Papacy
The first stage would be to undermine the scriptural and theological foundations of the papacy, and to replace Catholic doctrine with “a renewed understanding and exercise of the Petrine ministry” based on “synodality” to fulfil Francis’s vision of a “synodal Church.” (No. 5). This reform of the papacy would flow from the “commitment” of Francis to “build a synodal Church at all levels.” (No.5)
The document indicates they will carry this reinterpretation out as follows:
- They will re-interpret Sacred Scripture so that it supports a “synodal” understanding of the papacy in which the pope is just a figurehead with no real authority (see Nos. 35 -39).
- They will give new meanings to the concepts of “authority” and “service” so that the real authority of the papacy will be destroyed (see Nos. 40-42).
- They will seek out ambiguous passages in the Church Fathers which could be deployed to provide a basis for a new understanding of the papacy (see Nos. 44-47).
- They will reinterpret the infallible teaching of Vatican I on the divine institution of the papacy by means of a new “hermeneutic,” which will bring Catholic doctrine into line with the views of the Orthodox and the Protestants (see Nos. 48-56).
- The same “hermeneutical approach” will be used to solve the “obstacle” of Vatican I’s infallible definitions of papal jurisdiction and papal infallibility. See (No. 57–73).
- They will reinterpret Vatican I in light of (i) Vatican II (see Nos. 61, 66, 72), (ii) a reconstruction of the real “intentions” of the Council Fathers at Vatican I (see No. 62-63) and (iii) a “distinction between the text and its interpretation” which will allow them to interpret the text in a way that suits their agenda (see Nos. 64-66).
- They will rehabilitate the previously condemned error that the exercise of infallibility requires the consent of the Church (see Nos. 72, 106).
Stage 2 – The Establishment of the Synodal Papacy
Once the orthodox idea of the papacy has been discredited, the path will be open to establish the new “synodal papacy,” which will preside over a new inclusive church void of doctrine or discipline. All the baptized will be invited into this synodal church, without having to abandon their doctrinal errors.
The synodal papacy will have these characteristics:
- It will have “a primacy of honor” only, with no real authority over Orthodox and Protestant believers who will be invited to come under its banner (see No. 76-80, 94-98).
- It will preside over a church which is synodal “at every level” and will therefore no longer be subject to authority, or possess the unity of faith, worship and government which are essential marks of the Catholic Church (see Nos 81-83).
- It will preside not by divine right, but simply because there is a “pragmatic argument” for “the need for a ministry of unity at the universal level” (see No. 62-68).
- It will be based on the papacy of the “first millennium,” which will be considered the “decisive” model. Later definitions and developments of doctrine regarding the papacy will be ignored. (See Nos. 89-91, 99-100, 104-107).
- It will shun the exercise of “juridical” authority (See Nos. 92-93).
- It will replace the immediate and ordinary jurisdiction of the papacy with a mere right to appeal to the Roman See (see Nos. 101-103).
- It will exercise its primacy over a new “authentic conciliar/synodal Church” (see No. 112).
The seven steps and seven characteristics outlined above are reasonable inferences from the content of the document.
There will of course be those who reject such an interpretation as an exaggeration or a misinterpretation of the text. These are likely the same people who said there was no danger of Francis ever allowing Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, or ever permitting same-sex ‘blessings”.
But those who understand the true nature of the Francis regime, ought to regard the publication of “The Bishop of Rome” as a warning of what may be to come.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1987 Ordination Sermon 'Bishops to Save the Church' |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 07:30 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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'Bishops to Save the Church'
Archbishop Lefebvre's Sermon at the Priestly ordinations in Ecône, June 29, 1987
Taken from here.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Dear Brethren,
Let us give thanks to God who allows us once more to meet together again in Ecône to take part in the magnificent ceremony of priestly ordinations, ceremony which is the reason for our seminaries' existence and their crowning glory. Seminaries without ordinations would no longer be seminaries of the Church. nor Catholic seminaries. For this reason, having the joy of imposing hands on the new priests, we give thanks to God for letting our seminaries continue to live and even to expand, since Ecône has had to split in two to enable a larger number of young men desiring the true Catholic priesthood, to find at Ecône and Flavigny the training and graces needed for them to become true and holy priests.
MASS AND THE PRIEST
Dear Ordinands, I shall begin by addressing to you a few words of edification and encouragement. You are going to be ordained within the celebration of the Catholic Mass, not a neo-protestant Mass, and this Catholic Mass has been, is now, and will always be the great programme of the priestly life, the great programme of Christian life. To change this Mass is to change the ideal of the priest and Christian, the Catholic ideal. For above all else, Holy Mass is the Cross of Jesus, the continuation of the Cross of Jesus. The veil of the Temple was rent because Jesus died on the Cross, the Old Testament was giving way to the New - was everything changed? Yes and no. Undoubtedly the whole ritual of the old law and a certain concept of God's law was changed, but the essence of the Old Testament law was being transformed into a living vision of the law of love.
MASS AND THE LAW OF LOVE
What do the Ten Commandments say, other than to love God and to love one's neighbour? Our Lord Jesus Christ himself has told us so. And this law of love is henceforth inscribed not only on stone tablets, it is inscribed in Our Lord Jesus Christ's sacrifice, He is the law of love and He shows it upon His Cross. What more beautiful manifestation of the law of love and charity could Our Lord give us than to die upon the Cross for the glory of His Father and the salvation of our souls? Hence it is the law of love which Jesus preaches to us upon the Cross, and which He preaches to us every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - the same law of love which was deposited in your hearts. my dear friends, and in your souls, through the grace of Baptism.
Indeed the grace of Baptism transformed you and united you deeply to Our Lord Jesus Christ for the realisation of His law of love. His law of charity. And the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated - as I hope God will give you the grace to do - every day of your life, will maintain that baptismal grace. For just as your god-fathers and god-mothers said on your behalf at your baptism that they were cleaving to Our Lord Jesus Christ and shunning all the temptations of this world. so you too, every day you celebrate Mass, will say: "My God, O Jesus. I cleave to you forever, I wish to be your priest, one who preaches the law of love by example and by word. Keep me free of this world and all its temptations, shield me from all influences of this world which are in the service of Satan and of disobedience to God."
MASS, THE PROGRAMME OF THE PRIEST
In this way your souls will take strength in the presence of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of His Body and Blood which you will have in front of you on the altar, and which you yourselves will draw down from heaven by pronouncing the words of consecration. What a sublime mystery! God obeying men so as to continue offering His sacrifice! Here will be the programme of your priestly life: to penetrate the souls coming to you, to penetrate the souls attending your Holy Sacrifice of Mass, with the sentiments of love of God and love of neighbour, even to the sacrifice of self - and God knows if Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the example of that! -even to the sacrifice of self, even to death if need be, even to the shedding of one's blood, in order to remain united to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let that be your programme! And that is why you must cleave in life, in death, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that you are going to celebrate with me today. Do not let yourselves be seduced by the attractions and appeal of the world into transforming the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a purely human assembly. And it is my dearest wish that you remain in these sentiments all the days of your life, all the days of your priestly life, and that you be apostles like those who have gone before you, wherever they have been sent, like the dear priests surrounding us here today who are happy to impose hands on you -priests of Our Lord Jesus Christ, priests of crucified love, priests of Jesus crucified, and not priests of the world, nor priests for the world!
TWO SIGNS OF PROVIDENCE
My dear brethren, allow me also to make use of this occasion to bring you up-to-date with the situation in which we find ourselves today, as indeed is our custom on the occasion of this ceremony of priestly ordinations. Well, I must tell you, I cannot pass it over in silence and I cannot hide it: -this year has been serious, very serious, for the Catholic Church, for us Catholics, for Catholic priests. You are aware that in various writings appearing here and there I have had occasion to say that, yes, I was waiting for signs from Providence to carry out acts seeming to me necessary for the continuation of the Catholic Church. Well, I have to admit that I am convinced that the signs have come. What are they? There are two of them: -the ecumenical meeting held in Assisi last October, and the reply Rome has made to the objections we had sent them concerning religious liberty.
And I state further that this reply made to us after Assisi -since Assisi took place on October 27, whereas the reply reached us this January - I state that Rome's reply to the objections we made to the errors of Vatican II on religious liberty, is graver than Assisi. Assisi is a historical fact, an action; the reply to our objections on religious liberty is a stand taken on principles, a statement of principles, and hence graver! It is one thing to commit a grave and scandalous action; it is quite another to state false and erroneous principles which work out in practice in utterly disastrous conclusions!
JESUS UNCROWNED
Hence it is providential that by a particular set of circumstances we wrote the book that appeared just a few days ago, entitled: "They Uncrowned Him." Who? Who did the uncrowning and who was uncrowned? Who was uncrowned? Our Lord Jesus Christ. Who uncrowned him? The authorities in Rome today. And the uncrowning shows in a very clear way in the Assisi ceremony. Jesus Christ is uncrowned. He is no longer King. Universal King, the King we proclaim in our liturgy from Christmas through to His Ascension. All the Liturgical feasts proclaim the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From end to end of the Liturgical year we chant:
"King of Kings, Lord of Lords," Our Lord Jesus Christ. But now instead of extolling the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, here they are instituting a pantheon of all religions. And just as it was the Roman authorities, or pagan emperors, who built the pagan Pantheon then, so too the pagan pantheon of today, the meeting-place of all religions, is being constructed by the church authorities of Rome! What an immense scandal for souls, for Catholics who already question the universal kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
LIBERALISM
This is exactly what is meant by liberalism. Liberalism means establishing the freedom of man from God; hence the man who believes in, hopes in, and professes any religion whatsoever is just as worthy of respect as the man who says he professes the true religion. According to Liberalism, the State, or civil society. is no longer capable of knowing which is the true religion. That much is stated in the document given us by Rome: the State is incompetent in matters of religion, and so cannot decide which is the true or false religion, and by that very fact is bound to allow within the "autonomous social area -as they call it, autonomous social area meaning practically the entire life of the State - is bound to allow all religious errors to spread, whatever they be, because man is free to have his own religion. Well, we say no, no, no!
And Holy Mass proves it to us: there is one law, a law of love, and Our Lord Jesus Christ proclaims to us on the Cross this law of love. He preaches it to us. He tells us. "You must obey the law of love. Whosoever does not obey the law of love is not worthy of eternal life." Hence it is a binding law. We are not free. Our holy religion is not a matter of free choice, it is the only one, the one which Our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed from His Cross.
And liberalism has become the idol of modern times, an idol now adored in most countries of the world, even the Catholic countries -this liberty of man from God, which defies God, which seeks to make its own religion, liberalism, with its own commandments, the rights of man, with its secular states, secular education, empty of God, godless - there is liberalism for you.
DARKNESS IN ROME
And how is it possible for the authorities in Rome to be encouraging liberalism and professing such liberalism in the Decree on Religious Liberty? That is what is so very serious, as I see it. Rome is in darkness, in the darkness of error. There is no denying it. Impossible to deny it. How can we as Catholics, and all the more as priests, bear to look on the spectacle placed before our eyes in Assisi, in St. Peter's Church given over for the practice of their pagan worship to the Buddhists who put their idol on the tabernacle of Jesus Christ, King of Kings, and performed their pagan ceremony in front of this tabernacle, empty no doubt, but capped with a Buddha, their idol. Is it conceivable? In a Catholic Church, a church of Our Lord Jesus Christ? These are facts which speak by themselves. We cannot conceive of an error more grave.
How is it possible? Let us leave the good Lord to answer. He guides all things, He is the master of events, Our Lord Jesus Christ, He knows what will come of this triumph of error over Rome and over the highest authorities, from the Pope to the cardinals and bishops of the entire world following these ideas; for indeed the bishops of the whole world are following the false ideas of the Council with their ecumenism and liberalism. God alone knows where it is all going to end.
WAR WITH SATAN
For our part, however, if we wish to remain Catholic and to continue the Church, we have the grave and imprescriptible duty binding us firstly to increase the number of priests, priests believing in Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Kingship, in His kingship over society, according to the Church's doctrine. That is why I am happy that the book on liberalism has appeared today, my dear friends, so that you may nourish your minds on it and grasp in depth what our combat is all about. It is not a human combat! We are at grips with Satan! It is a combat requiring all the supernatural strength we need to fight against the adversary who means to destroy and uproot the Church, who means to destroy everything Our Lord Jesus Christ did. He meant to destroy Our Lord from the moment He was born, and now He means to continue destroying His Mystical Body, to destroy the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to destroy all His institutions whatsoever.
So we must be aware of this dramatic and apocalyptic combat through which we are living, and not play it down, because the moment we play it down, we no longer wish to give battle, we become weaklings and we dare no longer proclaim the Truth; we no longer dare to proclaim the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ because our godless and atheistic world does not want to hear of it. To say that Our Lord Jesus Christ should reign over societies is folly as far as the world is concerned. "You are backward-looking, out-of-date fossils, stuck fast in the Middle Ages ", we hear, "that doctrine is over and done with, it belongs to the past! Let's hear no more of Our Lord Jesus Christ reigning over societies!"
And so we might tend to be afraid of this public opinion opposing us because we stand for the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us in any case not be surprised to find that any demonstrations of ours in favour of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ come up against an army directed by Satan to destroy us, to hinder and nullify any influence we might have.
THE SOCIETY'S CONTINUATION
Hence we are happy today to be carrying out these priestly ordinations, and in all sincerity we think it is not possible to abandon the Society of St. Pius X placed in our hands by the good Lord. For it is not I that founded it, it is truly Our Lord who founded it, in unbelievable circumstances. And now, after some 17 years of existence, our Society has spread throughout the world, seconded by other initiatives which - thanks be to God - have arisen with us and around us: all the religious and nuns with us today, who have stood up like ourselves, to proclaim that Our Lord Jesus Christ is King, and not to desert Him. Are we going to desert Him? Are we going to let Him be crucified a second time? Are we going to quit the Church presently undergoing her Passion, and not come to her aid ? And what will become of souls if nobody dares any longer proclaim the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ? And what will become of souls if we no longer provide them with the true grace they need? All this is cryingly obvious, and so let us be convinced of it.
MEANS OF CONTINUATION
And that is the reason why it is likely that I shall give myself some successors to be able to continue the work of our Society. Because Rome is in darkness, because Rome at present can no longer hear the voice of truth -Rome no longer hears the voice of truth. Then what are we to do? What answer has there been to our appeals? For 20 years now I have been going to Rome. I have been writing, I have been speaking, I have been sending documents to say to them: -"Follow Tradition, come back to Tradition, otherwise the Church will be ruined. You, the appointed successors of those who built the Church, you must continue to build and not to demolish!" They are deaf, stone deaf to our appeals.
And the last document we have just received from them proves it amply. They are shutting themselves up in their errors, they are shutting themselves up in darkness, and they are quite simply going to lead souls into apostasy, the ruination of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the ruination of the Catholic and Christian Faith. Well, if that is what God asks of us, we shall not hesitate to provide ourselves with auxiliaries to continue the work of the Society, for we cannot believe that God wishes this work to be destroyed, to come to an end, to continue no further, for souls to be abandoned and for the Church by that very fact to have no more pastors.
ABNORMAL TIMES
We are living in a quite unique age, we must realize that. The situation is not normal, least of all in Rome. Read the Italian journal "Si, si, no, no", edited by the dear Sisters who are here today, who have come to see Ecône and to get some encouragement for the work they are doing. The journal "Si, si, no, no" gives us precise information on the situation in Rome, a perfectly incredible situation, unparallelled in all history! Never has there been anything like it!
Never! -The Pope making himself, as I was saying a little while ago, into a sort of guardian of the Pantheon of all religions, making himself the Pontiff of Liberalism! Tell me, tell me, pray - has such a situation ever existed in the Church? What are we to do, faced with such a reality? Weep, no doubt. Oh. weep, we do! Our heart is grieved, our heart is crushed by this situation! We would give our life, we would shed our blood to turn it around -but there it is.
CONSECRATIONS: GOD'S WILL
The situation is such, the work placed in our hands by the good Lord is such, that faced with this darkness in Rome, faced with the Roman authorities' pertinacity in error, faced with this refusal to return to Truth or Tradition on the part of those who occupy the seats of authority in Rome, faced with all these things, it seems to us that the good Lord is asking for the Church to continue. This is why it is likely that before I give account of my life to the good Lord, I shall have to consecrate some bishops.
APPEAL TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN
My dear friends, my dear brethren, let us pray. Let us pray with all our hearts, let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary! We shall go to Fatima on August 22nd to ask Our Lady of Fatima to help us. They would not reveal her Third Secret, they buried the message of the Virgin Mary. No doubt this message was meant to prevent what is happening today. Had her message been made known, most likely we would not be where we are today, the situation in Rome, would not be what it is today. The Pope refused to make public the Virgin Mary's message: well, the punishments foretold by Mary are coming: the apostasy announced in Scripture is on its way; the coming of the Anti-Christ draws near, as is perfectly obvious. So, faced with this quite exceptional situation, we too must take exceptional means.
There you have it, my dear brethren, my dear friends, during this Mass we shall pray, especially to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, guardians of the Church: may they enlighten us! May they help us! May they obtain for us the Gift of Strength and the Gift of Wisdom to continue their work, to carry on the work of Peter and Paul and all their successors. Let us ask for this from the Blessed Virgin Mary above all, and let us consecrate our persons, our families, our cities to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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| Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: A Letter to Future Bishops |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 07:13 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Adveniat Regnum Tuum
A Letter to Future Bishops
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 1987
Taken from here [Emphasis mine].
My dear friends,
The See of Peter and the posts of authority in Rome being occupied by anti-Christs, the destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord is being rapidly carried out even within His Mystical Body here below, especially through the corruption of the Holy Mass which is both the splendid expression of the triumph of Our Lord on the Cross - Regnavit a Ligno Deus - and the source of the extension of His kingdom over souls and over societies. Hence the absolute need appears obvious of ensuring the permanency and continuation of the adorable Sacrifice of Our Lord in order that "His Kingdom come." The corruption of the Holy Mass has brought the corruption of the priesthood and the universal decadence of Faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
God raised up the Priestly Society of St. Pius X for the maintenance and perpetuity of His glorious and expiatory Sacrifice within the Church. He chose Himself some true priests instructed in and convinced of these divine mysteries. God bestowed upon me the grace to prepare these Levites and to confer upon them the grace of the priesthood for the continuation of the true Sacrifice according to the definition of the Council of Trent.
This is what has brought down upon our heads persecution by the Rome of the anti-Christs. Since this Rome, Modernist and Liberal, is carrying on its work of destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord, as Assisi and the confirmation of the Liberal theses of Vatican II on Religious Liberty prove, I find myself constrained by Divine Providence to pass on the grace of the Catholic episcopacy which I received, in order that the Church and the Catholic priesthood continue to subsist for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls.
That is why, convinced that I am only carrying out the holy will of Our Lord, I am writing this letter to ask you to agree to receive the grace of the Catholic episcopacy, just as I have already conferred it on other priests in other circumstances. I will bestow this grace upon you, confident that without too long a delay the See of Peter will be occupied by a successor of Peter who is perfectly Catholic, and into whose hands you will be able to put back the grace of your episcopacy so that he may confirm it.
The main purpose of my passing on the episcopacy is that the grace of priestly orders be continued, for the true Sacrifice of the Mass to be continued, and that the grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation be bestowed upon children and upon the faithful who will ask you for it.
I beseech you to remain attached to the See of Peter, to the Roman Church, Mother and Mistress of all Churches, in the integral Catholic Faith, expressed in the various creeds of our Catholic Faith, in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in conformity with what you were taught in your seminary. Remain faithful in the handing down of this Faith so that the Kingdom of Our Lord may come.
Finally, I beseech you to remain attached to the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, to remain profoundly united amongst yourselves, in submission to the Society's Superior General, in the Catholic Faith of all time, remembering the words of St. Paul to the Galatians (1:8-9): "But even if we or an angel from heaven were to teach you a different gospel from the one we have taught you, let him be anathema."
As we have said before, now again I say: "if anyone teaches you a different gospel from what you have received, let him be anathema." My dear friends, be my consolation in Christ Jesus, remain strong in the Faith, faithful to the true Sacrifice of the Mass, to the true and holy priesthood of Our Lord for the triumph and glory of Jesus in heaven and upon earth, for the salvation of souls, for the salvation of my own soul.
In the hearts of Jesus and Mary I embrace you and bless you. Your father in Christ Jesus,
+ Marcel Lefebvre
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| Bishop of Regensburg "Forbids" FSSPX Ordinations |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-27-2024, 06:54 AM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
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Bishop of Regensburg "Forbids" FSSPX Ordinations
![[Image: 0rxo3trj5aw5ggbgzxmmbatafdogqpulz4mro3y....85&webp=on]](https://seedus3932.gloriatv.net/storage1/0rxo3trj5aw5ggbgzxmmbatafdogqpulz4mro3y.webp?secure=bjO_z01PgT_Cyrde310SKg&expires=1719639385&webp=on)
gloria.tv | June 27, 2024
Monsignor Rudolf Voderholzer, Bishop of Regensburg, Germany, who is considered a "conservative", has "forbidden" the "unauthorised ordinations" at the Priestly Society of St Pius X seminary in Zaitzkofen near Regensburg.
As reported by Bistum-Regensburg.de on 26 June, Voderholzer had nothing better to do than to write a letter to the seminary's rector, Father Pascal Schreiber, stating that the ordinations were "not permitted".
Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, who is based in Ecône, Switzerland, will ordain a Hungarian and a Czech candidate to the priesthood in Zaitzkofen.
Monsignor Voderholzer expressed his hope that in the future the Priestly Society of St Pius X will make an honest effort "to return to full communion with the Catholic Church".
"Once again I feel obliged to protect the order of the Church and, as Ordinarius loci, to prohibit the unauthorised ordinations for the area of the Diocese of Regensburg, as in previous years," Voderholzer wrote in his letter.
Voderholzer has been writing his reservations since 2017, describing the FSSPX clergy as "suspended", while Francis has even granted them the permission to hear confessions. So much for the "order of the Church"...
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| FSSPX Distances Itself from Monsignor Viganó |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-26-2024, 01:47 PM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
- Replies (2)
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FSSPX Distances Itself from Monsignor Viganó
gloria.tv | June 26, 2024
The Priestly Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) issued a statement on 2[4] June distancing itself from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
In his recent public defence, Viganò compared himself to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the FSSPX.
But the FSSPX objects that there is a crucial difference between them: "In his text, Archbishop Viganò makes a clear declaration of sedevacantism. In other words, according to him, Pope Francis is not a pope".
But: "On this point, neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor the fraternity he founded would agree."
On the other hand, as bad as it was when Mgr Lefebvre rebelled [and Viganó was a happy employee of the Holy See], what is happening now in the Church is at least ten times worse, and the shockwave that Mgr Lefebvre created was much greater than the one that Monsignor Viganó is causing today.
Quote:The Vatican Activates Extrajudicial Proceedings Against Archbishop Viganò
![[Image: carlo_maria_vigano.webp?itok=T3lvYfCe]](https://fsspx.news/sites/default/files/styles/content_image_16_9_desktop/public/fsspxactualites/fsspxnews/carlo_maria_vigano.webp?itok=T3lvYfCe)
JUNE 24, 2024
SOURCE: FSSPX NEWS
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published on the internet the letter from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). It notified him of his summons to appear at the DDF Palace on June 20, after the opening of an “extrajudicial” criminal trial against him.
A Little Explanation
What is an extrajudicial criminal trial? According to the DDF Vademecum published on June 5, 2022, the extrajudicial criminal trial, sometimes called an “administrative trial,” is a form of criminal trial which reduces the formalities provided for in the judicial trial in order to accelerate the course of justice. It does not eliminate the procedural guarantees required for a fair judgment.
For offenses reserved to the DDF, it is up to the DDF alone, on a case-by-case basis, ex officio or at the request of the Ordinary, to decide whether to proceed this way. Just like a judicial trial, an extrajudicial criminal trial can take place at the DDF – which is the case for Viganò – or be entrusted to a lower authority.
The Accusations Made by the DDF
The decree of summons mentions the charge Viganò will face during the trial. The crime of schism is put forward, because of certain public affirmations negating the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church: denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis; rupture of communion with him; and rejection of the Second Vatican Council.
Following this summons, Viganò published a communiqué, available online, to respond to these accusations. He defends himself in various ways, invoking the doctrinal wanderings of the current pontificate; rejecting neo-modernist errors; and asserting his case compares to that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, also summoned in his time to the Palace of the former Holy Office .
There is, however, one point which significantly differentiates him from the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X: Archbishop Viganò makes a clear declaration of sedevacantism in his text. In other words, according to him, Pope Francis is not pope.
How does he explain this? Because of a “defect of consent” from Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio when accepting the papacy. That is, according to Viganò, Cardinal Bergoglio considered the papacy as something other than what it really is. He accepted the pontifical office without fully consenting, and this error resulted in the nullity of his acceptance. His pontificate would therefore be that of a place-holder.
Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society he founded have not ventured down that perilous road.
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| Belgium: Archbishops Must Pay Compensation to Woman "Denied" Deacon Training |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-26-2024, 01:37 PM - Forum: General Commentary
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Belgium: Archbishops Must Pay Compensation to Woman "Denied" Deacon Training
![[Image: z40eopw26iojmnykltet5rfr4yv3ubqd6y3d5sj....30&webp=on]](https://seedus2043.gloriatv.net/storage1/z40eopw26iojmnykltet5rfr4yv3ubqd6y3d5sj.webp?secure=XFZiMm2ie7bGi4fdZ53huA&expires=1719597730&webp=on)
gloria.tv | June 26, 2024
A court in Mechelen has found retired Archbishop Jozef De Kesel, 77, and his successor as Brussels Archbishop Luc Terlinden, 55, guilty of discrimination (June 25).
Veer Dusauchoit, 62, from the Flemish town of Herent, tried to register for deacon training but was refused entry because she is a woman. She filed a lawsuit.
The court ruled that both archbishops had violated "gender equality" and must pay the elderly woman of 1,500€ in compensation.
At the same time, the court admitted that it could not rule on church law because of the principle of separation of church and state and the constitutional principle of freedom of religion. The woman will not be admitted to the diaconal training.
The parties can appeal the decision.
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| Transhumanism: They Are Using Lab-Grown Human Brains To Run Computers |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-26-2024, 01:35 PM - Forum: General Commentary
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They Are Using Lab-Grown Human Brains Called "Organoids" To Run Computers
![[Image: Snip20240623_4-800x532.jpg?itok=NF4BMis9]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Snip20240623_4-800x532.jpg?itok=NF4BMis9)
JUN 26, 2024
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com [Emphasis in the original]
When I first started researching this, I could hardly believe that it was true. A company in Switzerland known as “Final Spark” has constructed a bizarre hybrid biocomputer that combines lab-grown miniature human brains with conventional electronic circuits. This approach saves an extraordinary amount of energy compared to normal computers, but there is a big problem. The lab-grown miniature human brains keep wearing out and dying, and so scientists have to keep growing new ones to replace them.
Stem cells that are derived from human skin tissue are used to create the 16 spherical brain “organoids” that the system depends upon. I realize that this sounds like something straight out of a really bad science fiction movie, but it is actually happening.
Scientists at Final Spark are calling their hybrid computer “the Neuroplatform”, and it is being reported that it only uses “a fraction of the energy required to power a traditional set up”…
Quote:Swiss tech startup FinalSpark is now selling access to biocomputers that combine up to four tiny lab-grown human brains with silicon chips.
This new bioprocessing platform, called the Neuroplatform, uses small versions of human brains to do computer work instead of silicon chips. The company says it can fit 16 of these mini-brains onto the Neuroplatform and use a fraction of the energy required to power a traditional set up.
The platform, currently adopted by nine institutions, integrates hardware, software and biology to construct a processing system that is energy-efficient and high-performing.
This “breakthrough” is being hailed as a way to save a gigantic amount of energy.
But what about the lab-grown human brains that are being enslaved to run the Neuroplatform?
Each of the 16 mini-brains is made up of approximately 10,000 living neurons, and they are kept alive by a “microfluidics system that supplies water and nutrients for the cells”…
Quote:Rather than merely integrating biological concepts into computing, FinalSpark’s online platform ‘taps’ into spherical clusters of lab-grown human brain cells called organoids. A total of 16 organoids are housed within four arrays that connect to eight electrodes each and a microfluidics system that supplies water and nutrients for the cells.
The approach, known as wetware computing, in this case harnesses researchers’ abilities to culture organoids in the lab, a fairly new technology that allows scientists to study what are essentially mini replicas of individual organs.
During their short lives, the mini-brains are literally trained to perform certain tasks using a reward and punishment system…
Quote:Researchers do this by training the organoids through a reward system. The organoids are rewarded with dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure (and addiction).
Meanwhile, as “punishment,” the organoids are exposed to chaotic stimuli, such as irregular electrical activity.
If the enslaved mini-brains do what they are supposed to do, they are rewarded with lots of pleasure.
If the enslaved mini-brains do not do what they are supposed to do, they are hit with lots of “irregular electrical activity”.
In other words, these miniature human brains are tortured until they learn to obey.
Reading that should literally make you sick.
What these scientists are doing is so incredibly evil.
Final Spark claims that the miniature human brains use “a million times less power than their silicon counterparts”…
Quote:Swiss technology firm Final Spark has successfully launched Neuroplatform, the world’s first bioprocessing platform where human brain organoids (lab-grown miniaturized versions of organs) perform computational tasks instead of silicon chips.
The first such facility hosts the processing prowess of 16 brain organoids, which the company claims uses a million times less power than their silicon counterparts.
Final Spark hopes that their new “technology” will become the primary energy source for the AI revolution.
Because at this point training AI models uses a colossal amount of conventional energy…
Quote:According to Final Spark’s estimates, training the popular large language model GPT-3 that powered ChatGPT in its initial days alone consumed 10 GWh of energy. This is a whopping 6,000 times more energy than an average European city consumes in an entire year.
Replacing silicon chips with bioprocessors could lead to drastic energy savings. Final Spark allows research labs to experience the power of biological processors on the Neuroplatform.
To a lot of people out there, this is going to sound really great.
Final Spark insists that the processor that it has created will use a million times less energy compared to a normal silicon chip.
There is just one enormous problem.
The mini-brains keep dying and must be regularly replaced.
At first they would die “in just a few hours”, but now they are apparently living for up to 100 days…
Final Spark faced many challenges in its early years since the organoids would die in just a few hours. The company has worked on this shortcoming and improved its MEA systems to ensure that organoids live for 100 days.
These “organoids” are literally worked to death.
They are hooked up to electrodes and worked until they can work no more…
Quote:Final Spark has made working these varied components possible through an innovative setup called Multi-Electrode Arrays (MEAs), where the three-dimensional masses of brain tissue are placed.
Each MEA has four brain organoids that interface with eight electrodes. These electrodes perform the dual role of stimulating the organoids and recording the data they process.
Data transfer is done through digital analog converters with a 16-bit resolution and a 30 kHz frequency. A microfluidic system provides life support for the MEAs, and cameras can monitor their overall operation.
Have you ever seen “The Matrix”?
I was reminded of that film as I researched all of this.
Just like in that movie, human energy powers the entire system.
And just like in that movie, those that power the system are enslaved.
The creators of “the Neuroplatform” insist that this is perfectly okay because the mini-brains are not sentient beings.
Whether that is true or not, what they are doing is still very wrong.
Creating miniature human brains and using them to power a computer may be a way to save a lot of energy, but it also perfectly illustrates how far our society has fallen.
We are crossing lines that should never be crossed, and eventually we will pay a very great price for the crimes that our scientists are committing.
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| Details of the New Document Prohibiting Masses in the Roman Rite |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-26-2024, 08:31 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- Replies (1)
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Details of the New Document Prohibiting Masses in the Roman Rite [Latin Mass]
gloria.tv | June 26, 2024
There is indeed a Vatican document more restrictive than Traditionis Custodes (2021), it is supported by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and has been presented to Francis, writes Diane Montagna on RemnantNewspaper.com (25 June).
The document prohibits all priests who do not belong to recognised institutes from celebrating Mass in the Roman Rite.
It prohibits bishops from celebrating or authorising the celebration of Mass in their dioceses. All existing permissions granted by the Vatican will be suspended.
Personal parishes run by institutes such as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter or the Institute of Christ the King would be allowed to continue.
The document is being drafted as an "apostolic constitution". Drafting began in February 2023, just weeks after the death of Benedict XVI.
The first version was mainly written by Vittorio Francesco Viola, Secretary of the Dicastery for the Liturgy. Viola wears the episcopal ring of the inventor of the Novus Ordo, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (+1982).
But, in the meantime, the Vatican has undermined its power so badly that a new document would change little, since Francis' radical centralism and liturgical radicalism can be ignored "for pastoral reasons".
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| Mgr Antonio de Castro Mayer: On the KINGSHIP Our Lord Jesus-Christ |
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Posted by: Stone - 06-25-2024, 09:11 AM - Forum: Add'nl Clergy
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Anonymous English translation by a Resistance member [PDF of the English translation]:
Le Sel de la Terre
'MANDEMENT' (A bishop's letter) On the KINGSHIP Our Lord Jesus-Christ
SALT Of The EARTH No. 82, AUTUMN 2012 English Translation
"Love much the intelligence and the comprehension of the truth."
"For it is necessary to understand well in order to believe truly: even as it is still more necessary to believe in order to understand well." - Saint Augustin, Letter to Consentius and Sermon 43.
Mandement on the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ
by Mgr Antonio de Castro Mayer
by the grace of God and the Holy Apostolic See, bishop of the Diocese of Campos.
We reproduce here, translated into French for the first time, the remarkable pastoral letter addressed by Mgr. de Castro Mayer to his clergy and faithful on December 8, 1976. The theme of this letter is the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ. As, over the next four years, we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the ill-fated Second Vatican Council, the need to recall Catholic doctrine on Christ the King is greater than ever. Among the Council's errors, religious freedom ranks first. Religious freedom is the "legal apostasy of society", as Leo XIII put it in E giunto (July 19 1889), it's the secularization of Catholic states, it's the rejection of the social kingship of Our Lord. This is precisely what Monsignor de Castro Mayer proposes to explain here, drawing extensively on the texts of the pontifical magisterium. We admire the profoundly Catholic and supernatural spirit of this 'mandement'. How we'd love to read similar ones today!
N.B.: We encourage our readers to refer to issue no. 37 of Le Sel de la terre, dedicated to Mgr de Castro Mayer.
Dear collaborators and dear Sons,
AT THE CLOSING of the Holy Year of 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Our Lord Jesus-Christ the King. He fixed the day as the last Sunday in October, the one before the feast of All Saints. The new calendar moved it to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, at the end of November.
With this new liturgical Feast, dedicated in particular to solemnizing the universal kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, the Pope's aim was to provide an effective remedy for secularism, the plague that is eating away at human society, "the plague of our age", says the Pope.
To justify His expression, and to express His hope in the fruits that the new liturgical solemnity would produce, Pius XI wrote His memorable encyclical Quas primas, dated December 11 of the Holy Year 1925. Fifty years have passed: his teaching remains just as timely, given that the punishments that have befallen mankind, particularly with the long war of 1939-1945, have not turned men away from their impiety. And even those who make profession of religious faith continue to live as if God did not exist.
It is therefore useful, indeed necessary, to repeat to the faithful, again and again, the importance of the feast of Our Lord Jesus-Christ the King, in order to encourage them to practice, in their private lives as well as in their family and social lives, the submission due to the Sovereign of the universe, and so that hope of the fruits that this Feast is destined to produce in souls is not frustrated.
This is the reason for this conversation with you, dear collaborators and beloved sons, through which we hope to encourage one another to zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Divine sovereignty
First of all, let us strengthen our faith in the universal kingship of our divine Saviour.
He is truly king of the universe, that is to say He has absolute sovereignty over the whole human race, over all men, even over those outside His sheepfold, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. For, truly, every person is a creature of God. He owes his whole being to Him, both for the unity of his nature, and for each of the parts of which he is composed: body, soul, powers, intelligence, will, sensibility. Even the actions of these powers, and all their organs, are gifts from God. God's sovereignty extends to the goods of fortune, which are the fruits of His ineffable liberality. The simple consideration that no one chooses or can choose the family to which he or she belongs on earth, with its respective social position, is enough to convince us of this fundamental truth of our existence.
It follows that God Our Lord is the sovereign master of all men, both as individuals and as social groups, insofar as, when they are constituted into various communities, they do not lose their condition of creature. This being so, the very existence of civil society obeys the designs of God, who made man's nature social. Consequently, all peoples, all nations, from the most primitive to the most civilized, from the smallest to the greatest powers, all are subject to the divine sovereignty, and therefore obliged to recognize this gentle heavenly domination.
The Kingship of Jesus-Christ
God confided this sovereignty to His only Son, as the Holy Scriptures frequently attests.
Generally speaking, St Paul declares that God "made His Son heir of all things" (Heb 1:2). For his part, Saint John confirms the thought of the Apostle to the Gentiles in many passages of his Gospel. For example, when he reminds us that "the Father judges no one, but that He has given all power to judge to the Son" (Jn 5:22). Now, the prerogative of rendering justice belongs to the king; he who possesses it is endowed with sovereign power.
This universal kingship which the Son inherited from the Father is not to be understood only as the eternal inheritance by which, with the divine nature, He received all the attributes which make Him equal and consubstantial with the first person of the Holy Trinity, in the unity of the divine essence. This universal kingship is attributed especially to Jesus-Christ as man, mediator between heaven and earth. For the mission of the Incarnate Word was precisely to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Indeed, the expressions in Sacred Scripture relating to the Kingship of Jesus-Christ refer, without the shadow of a doubt, to His human
condition.
He is presented to the world as the Son of David, come to inherit His Father's throne, which extends to the ends of the earth, and which is eternal, without limit of time. It is in these terms that the archangel Gabriel announces the dignity of Mary's Son: "You will bear a son, to whom you will give the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; He will reign forever over the house of Jacob, and His kingdom will have no end" (Lk 1:31-33). It was also as king that the Magi from the East sought Him out to worship Him: "Where is He that is born king of the Jews?" they asked Herod on their arrival in Jerusalem (Mt 2:2). Consequently, the mission that the eternal Father entrusted to His Son in making Him man consisted in establishing a kingdom on earth, the kingdom of heaven. It is through the establishment of this kingdom that the ineffable charity with which, from all eternity, God has loved mankind, mercifully drawing them to Himself, will become a reality: "Dilexi te, ideo attraxi te miserans - I have loved you, therefore in My mercy I have drawn you" (Jer 31:3).
This is why Jesus devotes His public life to announcing and establishing His kingdom, sometimes referred to as the kingdom of God, sometimes as the kingdom of heaven. In the oriental manner, He uses evocative parables to establish the idea and nature of the kingdom He has come to found. And His miracles seek to convince His people that His kingdom has arrived, that He is in their midst. "Si in digito Dei ejicio daemonia, profecto pervenit in vos Regnum Dei - "But if I by the finger of God cast out devils; doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you." (Lk 11:20).
The constitution of this kingdom absorbed so much of His activity that the Judaic apostasy profited of the idea to justify the accusation it brought against Him before Pilate's tribunal: "Si hunc dimittis, non es amicus Caesaris - If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend" they cried to the proconsul, "for whoever makes himself king declares himself against Caesar!" (Jn 19:12). And Jesus Christ, by approving the opinion of His enemies, confirms before the Roman procurator that He really is king: "You say well, I am king" (Jn 18:37).
King in the Literal Sense
The royal character of Jesus-Christ's work can no longer be doubted. He is king.
But our faith demands that we understand the scope and meaning of the divine Redeemer's kingship. From the outset, Pius XI excludes the metaphorical sense by which we call king and royal that which is most excellent in a human way of being or acting, as when we speak of the queen of goodness, the king of poets, and so on. No. Jesus-Christ is not king according to this transposition of meaning. He is king in the true (proper) sense of the word. In the Holy Scriptures, we see Him exercising the royal prerogatives of a sovereign government, dictating laws and threatening punishment to those who transgress them. In His famous "Sermon on the Mount" (Mt 5:4ff.), the Savior can be said to have promulgated the code of His kingdom. As the true sovereign, He demands obedience to His laws on pain of nothing less than eternal damnation. Similarly, in the Last Judgment scene - when the Son of Man comes to judge the living and the dead - where He announces the end of the world: 'The Son of Man will then come with great power and majesty [...], He will separate men as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats [...] and He will say to those on His right, "Come, you blessed of my Father", and to those on His left, "Go, you cursed, to eternal fire" [...]. 'And they will go away, these to eternal torment, and the righteous to eternal life' (Mt 25:31ff.).
A sentence that is both very gentle and fearsome. Very sweet for the good, because of the unparalleled excellence of the reward awaiting them. Fearsome and frightening for the wicked, by the extreme punishment to which they are eternally condemned.
Such a consideration is enough to show the capital importance for men to discern where here below, on earth, the kingdom of Jesus-Christ lies, since to be part of it or not decides their eternal fate. We say "here, on earth", because it is in this world that man merits his reward or punishment after death. It is here on earth, then, that men must incorporate themselves into this ineffable kingdom of God, both temporal and eternal, since it is formed in this world to blossom in heaven.
The Catholic Church, Kingdom of God
The same sacred Scriptures that have led us to the knowledge of the Kingship of Jesus-Christ tell us who, in the present world, are the authentic leaders of His Kingdom, as continuators of the divine Master's mission. The authorized guides of Christ's flock are the legitimate successors of the Apostles; indeed, it was on the Apostles that the Savior built His Church, that is to say His kingdom, and it is within her bosom that men make their way to heaven.
In fact, it was to the Apostles that Jesus entrusted His power, and He demanded the same obedience from them as He did from Himself: "Whoever listens to you listens to Me", said the divine Master, "whoever despises you despises Me" (Lk 10:16). In another passage, explaining the power to govern, to direct His society, the Church, He declared to them: "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven" (Mt 18:18).
After His resurrection, He clarifies the sovereign power granted to the Apostles, saying that it even includes the forgiveness of sins, God's exclusive prerogative: "Sins will be forgiven to those to whom you forgive them, and they will be retained by those to whom you retain them" (Jn 20:23). Having thus made it clear throughout His life, and by means of various expressions, that He was passing on to His Apostles His power to guide men to heaven, as if to sum up His will, at the moment of leaving this world to return to the bosom of the eternal Father, Jesus entrusts them with the direction of His work; it will continue on earth, for at the end of the world, God must be glorified and souls saved: "All power," He tells His Apostles, "has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, then, and teach all peoples to observe all the things I have commanded you" (Mt 28:20). There is an obligation to obey the Apostles' orders as if they were legitimate superiors, on pain of losing one's soul: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16). Believing, that is to say, accepting and living in accordance with the Apostles' doctrine - that is "believing" in the truest sense of the word, with all one's soul - and consequently behaving as a subject of the kingdom of Jesus-Christ, of the holy Church. For, at the supreme moment when He handed over His powers to the Apostles, Our Lord guaranteed the permanence of His work, of His Church, of His kingdom - three expressions which have the same meaning; and this by declaring that He would remain with the Apostles until the end of the world, in other words, that the Apostles would be the legitimate successors with whom He would remain present, so that they would maintain the integrity of the inheritance received: "I will always be with you until the consummation of the ages" (Mt 28:20).
The Church is Hierarchical
Finally, to ensure that the unity of government necessary for kingdoms to preserve themselves and achieve, in an orderly fashion, the purpose for which they are constituted is not lacking, Jesus instituted the sacred hierarchy which, in the holy Church, instructs, governs and sanctifies the people. He made Peter the indestructible rock of the Church, giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven and gathering in his hands all the power conferred on all the Apostles: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:18 ff.).
In like manner the Church that possesses the successor of Peter and the successors of the Apostles, She is the Church of Christ. In Her lies the kingdom of Jesus-Christ. And this Church, the only one of its kind in the world, which possesses, in the pope, the successor of Saint Peter, and in the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, is the Catholic Church, apostolic and roman. And insofar as we are part of it, insofar as we live according to its doctrine, that we belong to the kingdom of Christ, that we ourselves are faithful vassals of the King of glory, and we ourselves are on our way to the kingdom of heaven, eternal beatitude.
Dear sons, look at the other denominations, those that usurp the title of Christian: they all have a later date of birth than the divine Master. Only the Roman Catholic Church can trace Her origins back to the time of Jesus-Christ. From then on, She alone is truly apostolic, coming in direct line from the Apostles. She is the Church of Christ.
A Principally Spiritual Kingship
Jesus is King in the truest sense of the word. He exercises His sovereignty on earth through His Church, His mystical body, a visible and hierarchical society, endowed with all the powers to lead men towards the end for which they w ere created: to give glory to God and save their souls. Thus, to be part of Christ's Church and to live as a docile and obedient subject of the King of kings, Jesus-
Christ, is the condition of eternal happiness.
These considerations make it clear from the outset that the kingdom of Jesus Christ is spiritual - "praecipuo quodam modo, in a very special way", says Pius XI in his encyclical. It is spiritual because it concerns domains related to the spiritual life, which transcends the limits of earthly life, as well as to divine worship and the sanctification of souls.
The Saviour Himself attested to this before Pilate's court. In response to the proconsul's question: "Are you a king?", Jesus answered affirmatively: "You say well, I am king" (Jn 18:37). Shortly before, He had already explained to the Roman magistrate the special nature of His reign: "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My people would have fought so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But My kingdom is not from here" (Jn 18:36); that is, He does not concern himself with earthly affairs restricted to this world. And in the next verse, Jesus is more explicit, linking His kingdom with the empire of truth: 'For this reason I was born and came into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth My voice." (Jn 18:37).
Although all power, even in the civil order, belongs to Jesus according to His humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union, the Savior reassures the rulers of the earth: His reign is not of this world. In the same sense, every year at Epiphany, the Church repeats: "Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat coelestia - He does not seize mortal kingdoms who gives the celestials."
The Two Powers
As we have just seen, the divine Master has foreseen the coexistence of two sovereign powers on earth.
One presides over temporal life, and is embodied in the person of Caesar. This power must be respected, honored and obeyed, for the Lord commands us to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" (Mt 22:21). The reason for this is that this power too is conferred by God our Lord, as the divine Master declared to the representative of the Roman emperor, when He told him: "You would have no power over Me if it had not been given to you from on high" (Jn 19:11). And the Apostle adds: "All power comes from God" (Rom 13:1). Consequently, Christians must accept civil power and submit to it with love, that is, not out of fear of punishment, but as to an authority
delegated by God, for the prince acts as a minister of God. (Rom 13:4).
The other power looks after the interests of the soul, bringing man into relationship with God and leading him to eternal salvation. It deals with religious duties, worship of God and obedience to the divine commandments. This power is the proper power of the reign of Jesus-Christ; it must be respected and obeyed with special reverence, because contempt for it reaches God Himself: "Whoever despises you despises me, and whoever despises Me despises the One who sent Me" (Lk 10:16).
All men are bound to obey these two supreme powers: in temporal affairs, all must obey civil power, even those who share in religious power; in God's affairs, all must obey spiritual power, even civil authorities. However, although sovereign, state authority gives way to religious authority, for "we must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Consequently, in the event of conflict, religious duties prevail, provided they concern the eternal destiny of souls.
Relationship between Church and State
Thus, the natural structure of the government of human society, according to historical order - that is, taking into account Revelation and the constitution of the holy Church to preside over spiritual affairs - requires 'mutual collaboration' between these two supreme powers, Church and State. The Church will recognize civil power and lead the faithful to sincere respect for the authority of the State, to which it will provide loyal collaboration in everything that is for the benefit of society and does not run counter to the law of God. For its part, the State will recognize the one Church to which God has entrusted the care of spiritual matters, namely: the divine cult and the salvation of souls. And since man's life on earth must be directed towards eternal salvation, not only must the State not oppose the Church's specific action, but it must also help it, positively, by creating a framework in society that encourages the practice of virtue, piety and faith, and makes it difficult to sin, impiety, and in general, the proliferation of vice.
Leo XIII formulates this thought with precision:
Quote:"For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavour should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.
"Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfilment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus-Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate.1."
Dear sons, you see that it is exclusively in a state constituted in accordance with this doctrine that the kingship of Jesus-Christ can be effective and complete. This is why it has been constantly taught by the ecclesiastical magisterium.
1 - Enc. Immortale Dei, #6 Nov. 1, 1885.
The Church Fathers
Thus, St Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390) declares that imperial magistrates are subject to the authority of bishops as the flesh is to the spirit and earthly things to heavenly things 2; St John Chrysostom (d. 407) expounds the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority by means of the comparison between the sun and the moon 3; St. Ambrose, in his letter to Valentinian against Auxentius, declares that "the emperor is in the Church and not above the Church; for the good emperor helps the Church, he does not refuse it4".
Saint Augustine, in chapter 24 of Book V of The City of God, cites, among the emperor's obligations, that of placing his power at the service of the divine majesty in order to extend its reign. And in a letter to Count Boniface, governor of Africa, commenting on the words of the Psalm: "Serve the Lord in fear", he teaches that kings serve the Lord by forbidding and punishing transgressions of God's commandments. On this point, St. Augustine makes a clear difference between the way kings serve God, and the service proper to each individual: the individual serves God by living in accordance with the faith, whereas the king does so by promulgating laws with the appropriate severity, to command what is right and forbid what is contrary to justice. After giving several examples from the Old
Testament, in which he emphasizes the action of rulers against the works of impiety, the holy doctor concludes: kings serve the Lord as kings, serving Him as only kings can.
In the middle of the 5th century, St. Leo I, pope from 440 to 461, wrote to Emperor Leo of Constantinople to urge him to apply the decrees of the Council of Constantinople against the maneuvers of the Eutychians (monophysite), and reminded him that "royal power was not given to him only for the government of the world, but above all for the defense of the Church1".
2 - Hom. XVII.
3 - Hom. XV on the 2nd to the Corinthians.
4 - Saint Ambrose, Sermo contra Auxentium, de basilicis tradendis, preached in Milan in 386, when Valentinian II gave the order to grant some churches to the Arians.
Roman Pontiffs and Emperors
It was particularly in its relations with the emperors of Constantinople that the Church had occasion to reaffirm these principles of Catholic doctrine. Thus, in August 484, Pope Saint Felix II pointed out to Emperor Zeno that he must protect the freedom of the Church and that he himself must submit to priestly power in the causes of God, this submission being beneficial even to the State. Saint Gelasius, also pope, had to repeat the same sacred lesson to Emperor Anastasius I. In 494, he sent him this famous document on the subject of the two powers existing on earth, and the harmony that must be maintained between them: 'I beg your piety not to deem it presumptuous of me to exercise the duties received from God: let it not be thought that a Roman prince takes the truth addressed to him as an insult. For, august emperor, there are two supreme powers governing the world: the holy authority of the pontiffs and the royal power.
Between them, the priestly authority is all the greater as the pontiffs must even give an account before the divine tribunal of the deeds of kings. Surely you know, most merciful son, that even though your dignity places you above other men, in spite of everything you must bow your head before those who are entrusted with divine matters [...]
If, in fact, the priests themselves obey your laws in matters of public order, knowing that the empire has been granted to you by divine disposition, and because they do not wish to give the appearance of opposing, even in purely material matters, a judgement which is beyond their jurisdiction, how much more appropriate for you to obey religiously those whose duty it is to administer the divine mysteries 2?
Around the year 506, another pope, St. Simacus, reminded Emperor Anastasius of Catholic doctrine. In order to forestall any possible objection from his august correspondent, he wrote to him: "Perhaps you will say: it is written: 'We must be subject to all power'. To this, the Pope replies: "We respect human authorities as long as they do not set their will against God. Moreover, if all power comes from God, all the more does the power that presides over divine affairs issue from it. Be subject to God in us, and we will be
subject to God in you."
Later, it was the turn of St Nicholas I (pope from 858 to 867) to refresh Emperor Michael III's memory of the two supreme powers to which men are subject in the world: in spiritual matters, the empire must be subordinate to the priesthood, while sacred ministers are subordinate to the empire in the temporal order1.
1 - Letter 156, 3.
2. Letter to the emperor Anastase, 494
The Middle Ages
When the new European nations were formed as a consequence of the ruin of the Roman Empire, the Church continued to teach its doctrine on the obligations of the state in religious matters.
As far back as the 7th century, St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) recognized that kings have full powers in the affairs of the century, but that they cannot neglect their duties towards God, nor their respect for the Church, "quam a Christo tuendam susceperunt - whose custody they have received from Christ 2". The thought of the Archbishop of Seville, along with that of St. Augustine, reappeared in the ecclesiastical masters of later centuries. They used a variety of images to expound the Church's traditional teaching. Following the example of St. Bernard, they speak of two swords: the sword of the spirit wielded by the Church, which concerns matters of the soul, and the temporal sword, intended for the service of the Church. At other times, as in the case of Pope Innocent III, the intimate union between body and soul is used as an example to illustrate the harmony and mutual dependence between the two supreme authorities that guide men towards the fullness of earthly life, subordinated to eternal life.
Or again, in Gracian, the relationship between Church and State is compared to those that exist between the sun and the moon. Just as this satellite of the earth benefits from the light of the sun then also in turn beneficial to the earth, so by the guidance of the Church the State achieves its proper purpose, which is to make its subjects happy.
1. Letter 'Proposueramus quidem, Sept. 28 865 A.D.
2. Sent. III 51
Such is the traditional doctrine that flows from the acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium concerning political relations between the Church and the various sovereigns. Pope Urban II, for example, wrote to Alfonso VI of Spain: "Two dignities, King Alfonso, govern this world in the first place: that of priests and that of kings; however, the priestly dignity, my dear son, so surpasses the royal dignity that, of the kings themselves, we must give account to the King of kings 1."
St. Thomas Aquinas, both in his Summa Theologica and in his treatise on the government of states written for the King of Cyprus 2, sets out and justifies the common teaching of the Church on this question. Starting from the principle that the end of society cannot be opposed to the end of each of its members, and that their ultimate end is the enjoyment of God, he concludes that political government must also ensure that men gathered in society attain heavenly beatitude through a virtuous life.
"However," continues St Thomas, "as guiding or leading to this end does not belong to human government, but to divine government [...] and in order that the spiritual may be distinguished from the temporal, the ministry of this kingdom has not been granted to earthly kings but to priests, and principally to the Sovereign Priest, successor of Peter, vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom all the kings of Christendom must be subject as to Our Lord Jesus-Christ Himself 3."
And in the next chapter, the Angelic Doctor adds:
"[...] It belongs, for this reason, to the office of the king to procure for the multitude a good life [according to virtue], as befits the attainment of heavenly beatitude; that is to say, he must prescribe what leads to this heavenly beatitude, and forbid, as far as possible, what is contrary to it 4. "
1 - PL 151, 289 - In VILLOSLADA, Historia de la Iglesia católica, II, Edad Media,
Madrid, 2nd ed. LAC, p. 409.
2 - De Regimine Principum or De Regno, L. I, c. 14.
3 - ID, ibid.
4 - ID, L. I. c. 15.
Christian Civilization
In this way, the Church, the true educator of humankind, leads society towards that ideal situation where life in society achieves equilibrium and well-being, thanks to natural subordination of all earthly activity to the ultimate end in which lies the perfection of happiness to which reasonable nature aspires. Leo XIII reminds us that this was the condition of society in the Middle Ages.
Indeed, in his encyclical Immortale Dei of November 1 1885, he wrote:
Quote:"There was a time when the philosophy of the Gospel governed the States. [...] At that time, the priesthood and the empire were bound together by a happy concord and the friendly exchange of good offices. Organized in this way, civil society produced fruits beyond all expectations, the memory of which remains, and will remain, consigned as it is to innumerable documents that no artifice of adversaries can corrupt or obscure."
At this time, what Yves de Chartres considered an indispensable law of relations between the Church and civil society was being realized:
Quote:"When the empire and the priesthood live in harmony, the world is well governed," he wrote to Pascal II [pope from 1099 to 1118], "and the Church is flourishing and fruitful. But when discord arises between them, not only do small things not grow, but the great themselves wither miserably 1."
The Apostasy of the "New Law"
Unfortunately, dear sons, modern times mark the rupture of the perfect harmony between priesthood and empire, which Leo XIII praised as the source of so many benefits for human relations.
First, it was the Christian rulers who resented the Pope's autonomy. This led to the dissolution of Western religious unity, culminating in the 18th century in what the aforementioned pontiff qualifies as "new law". In the name of the equality and dignity common to all men, any authority whose origin is not the human will itself is rejected.
"It follows that the State does not believe itself bound by any obligation to God, does not officially profess any religion, [...] that it must attribute to them all equality in law, for the sole purpose of preventing them from disturbing public order 2. "
Dear sons, a minimum of reflection on such a theory shows that in a political and social order conceived in this way, the kingship of Jesus-Christ disappears, and the salvation of souls becomes very difficult. A society founded on these principles does not recognize, purely and simply, the sovereignty of God our Lord. How can it call itself Christian if its legitimate representatives - while individually claiming to be Catholics and piously fulfilling their religious duties- - cannot, as public persons, recognize the will of God expressed in His true Church?
We think, dear sons, that it is hardly necessary to point out that, in such a legal disposition, the salvation and sanctification of souls, far from being encouraged, on the contrary encounter the greatest obstacle: they lack the favorable environment that would be provided by legislation openly concerned with the rights of God.
1 - Letter 238. Quoted by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei.
2 - Leo XIII, Immortale Dei.
The Secular State, the Ideal of the Occult Powers
Furthermore, in his encyclical Humanum genus of April 20, 1884, the same Leo XIII denounced the fact that the secular state, strictly neutral in religious matters, is the means that occult forces consider most apt to annihilate and "destroy the whole religious and social Christian order". To this end, they teach that "among the various forms of religion, there is no reason to prefer one over another; all must be placed on an equal footing". The Pope observes that "this principle is enough to ruin all religions, and particularly the Catholic religion for, being the only true one, it cannot, without suffering the last of the insults and injustices, tolerate that other religions are equal to it 1".
The logical consequence of such a principle is the secularism of the State, "the great error of the present age", which consists in relegating concern for religion to the rank of indifferent things. This is why we said, dear sons, that in a political and social regime conceived in this way, it is impossible for the Church to fulfill the mission it has received to establish the reign of Jesus-Christ on earth.
1 - Leo XIII, Humanum genus, April 20, 1884.
The Inversion of Values
Likewise, dear sons, it's worth noting that in the "new law", the social status of religion is reversed. It has been transformed from a guide and organizer of human acts to one of the many private manifestations of the soul, subject like all others to the limits imposed by public order. According to the traditional magisterium, on the contrary, in line with common sense, the State, whose task it is to provide for the goods of the temporal order, is subordinate in its activities to the ultimate end of citizens, and can do nothing to make it difficult to obtain it; on the contrary, it must encourage knowledge of true religion and the practice of virtue.
In the new conception, it is the Church that is subordinate to the State, since, in its activities, it must abstain from anything that the State deems contrary to public order. How can the Church still provide the world with an image of God's excellence and sovereignty, when it sees its field of action restricted to the simple particular interest, which the State enlarges or reduces according to what seems best to it? With such a conception, it's hard to see how a Communist government could be blamed for, say, condemning a priest for baptizing a child, even if he had done so with the parents' consent.
Objective Public Order
And if anyone, dear sons, were to object that this is not just any public order, understood arbitrarily, but the only true public order - that which is objective and indisputably constitutes the common good, and which therefore excludes abuses of authority - if anyone were to oppose such a sophism, it would be easy for you to reply that, in such a hypothesis, we are already leaving the "new law". It's worth pointing out here that without the acceptance of an objective morality, and without the exact notion of the good that morality gives us, an objective public order is inconceivable, since it becomes impossible to know the common good. And if we disregard (abstract -Ed.) true religion, we can no longer conceive of a just objective morality. Consequently, when we appeal to public order or the common good against abuses of authority, we leave behind the "new law" that recognizes no norm superior to man, declaring once and for all that the human will is the source of all law.
'Common good, objective public order' - these are terms that cannot be understood unless they are linked to the idea of a morality superior to man, serving as a standard for the acts of rational creatures. This objective morality culminates in the human being's obligation to worship God, according to the sovereign will of the Almighty Lord. In other words, it obliges man to profess the
true religion. With great aptness, St. Pius X asserted, against Le Sillon - the secular apostolic movement seeking to bring all religions closer together: "There is no true civilization without moral civilization, and there is no true moral civilization without true religion1" .
1 - Apostolic letter Our Apostolic Charge, August 25, 1910.
Half-truths
The quotation from St. Pius X's apostolic letter on Le Sillon leads us to alert you, my dear sons, to the way in which heterodoxy nestles in our midst. Let us apply to faith a rule of action that is proper for the moral virtues.
There is, in fact, a prudence in action that requires a certain indulgence when dealing with men bearing a fallen nature, and whose purpose is to avoid extinguishing a wick that is still smoking. "If you have to put the iron in the wound, you must first feel it with a light hand", said Saint Gregory the Great 1".
But transposing this prudence to the realm of principles can be catastrophic. "Truth," asserted the same Saint Pius X, "is one and indivisible, eternally the same, and does not submit to the whims of the times 2. This is why truth is uncompromising, and why it inherently perishes when it is shared and attenuated. We cannot, therefore, apply to it the condescension with which moral virtue tolerates a certain adaptation to different situations, nor that patience dictated by prudence summed up by the maxim once enunciated by Cicero:
"Summum jus, summa injuria3 - excessive justice, the height of injustice." For the moral order of actions, without sacrificing the regulatory norms of human behavior, must take account of human deficiencies, in imitation of divine patience, which seems to turn a blind eye to human sins in order to obtain their penance and conversion4.
Truth is not to be found in this realm of 'action'. It belongs to the order of 'being', of what is or is not. It is understandable that a human act should be incomplete; it is inconceivable that a truth should be incomplete, because the true idea corresponds to the being to which it refers. If the idea corresponds to reality, there is truth; in the contrary case, the idea is incomplete. It is simply false.
If, out of condescension towards the human frailty, we transpose the prudential principle of action into the order of being and of the truth, by proposing imprecise terms which are not certain, but which do not appear to be totally false either, thus offering a kind of half-truth, we undermine and destroy the faith in the spirit of the faithful. The perpetrators of such a calamity are those who, when false systems arise, strive to find an arrangement, a compromise with these ideologies, by the intermediary of movements which pretend to be apostolic, but which are sufficiently vague and floating so as not to hurt the susceptibility of those outside the Church's flock. They act as a fifth column among the faithful, the edifice of faith being washed out of them.
1 - Quoted by SAINT PIE X in His encyclical Jucunda sane, March 12, 1904.
2 - Encyclical Jucunda sane.
3 - De Officiis, I, 10.
4 - Book of Wisdom, 11, 23.
Agreement Among All Religions
Such a course of action received its doctrinal justification in a principle we see proclaimed in the 16th century by the famous Erasmus of Rotterdam: "Every man possesses the true theology." At the root of this maxim is the assertion that, in the final analysis, there is a profound religious agreement between all men, despite their doctrinal differences. It is only on this condition that the statement "every man possesses the true theology" makes sense. Consequently, there is no conflict between opposing religions, since they are opposed in appearance only. They are merely different manifestations of the same true theology possessed by every man. If we delve more deeply into a religious thought that at first sight seems different from the others, we find, beyond the divergences, the same identical basis common to all. Consequently, the best way to deal with new religious theories and non-Catholic beliefs is to avoid confrontation, polemics and rigid positions, and to ensure that each member of the faithful keeps an equal distance from the different 'credo', since all men find unity in the true theology they hold. Underneath the different religious denominations, there is agreement, a common ground. In other words, there are no errors as such. There are only divergences.
This mental attitude, generalized by diffusion of the free examination of the Protestant pseudo-reformers, prepared minds for compromise with apostasy when the "new law" arose, born of the rise of liberalism from philosophers of the 18th century.
A Vitally Christian State
You know, dear sons, the position taken on this issue by the men of the 19th-century French newspaper 'L'Avenir': Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert.
Despite official censure by the Church, this position reappeared in the aforementioned Sillon social movement and in the well-known ideas of certain Catholic philosophers, who advocated a 'vitally' Christian society, flourishing within a state officially and legitimately secular.
In the thinking of these authors, society would have evolved: from the sacred State of the Middle Ages, to the modern secular state. A natural, historical evolution, which would even have seen a deepening of the doctrinal. For, in the latter period, the independence of the two powers - spiritual and temporal, religious and civil, Church and State - would have been further strengthened.
Thanks to a better understanding of the limits of its action and power, the State would henceforth remain entirely aloof from the religious question, contenting itself with giving the Church - as well as the citizens who are members of it and the religious sects already existing or to come - full civil freedom, so that it could carry out its work in individual souls and within families, through action of an exclusively private nature. The state would not be Christian, but neither would it be oppressive. Within the framework of this legal status, the Church would have the freedom to create, through its apostolic action, a 'vitally' Christian society in an autonomous state, which would not exert religious pressure, being absolutely incompetent in this field. Still according to this opinion, such a state would adapt to the actual times, where is manifested, in the bosom of various peoples and even to the utmost interior of a nation, a pluralism of beliefs.
Lastly, such a state would be more attentive to the dignity of man and to divine Revelation, both of which require the free determination of the creature in the choice of its religious 'credo'.
This would be a way of overcoming, at the level of principles and therefore radically, the misunderstandings between Church and State that have arisen throughout history.
Ignorance of Natural Law and of the Catholic Doctrine
The extent to which this way of understanding the state's religious situation is far removed from natural reason and Christian Revelation, and how detrimental it is to the Church's mission of restoring all things in Christ Jesus, that this is evident, beyond the reflections of common sense, by the entire tradition of the ecclesiastical magisterium. This magisterium, far from accepting a modification of patristic doctrine in the light of historical developments on the question of the relationship between State and religion, has endeavoured on the contrary to confirm the teaching of all time, by highlighting the incalculable and inescapable evils that would result from the formal denial of public recognition of God's rights over State and society.
The Church's True Doctrine on this Subject
The Church has never accepted that, as a matter of principle, the State should be secular or neutral in religious matters. This can easily be seen in the history of the Church since the end of the Middle Ages.
In fact, what we are asserting is contained in the definition of Boniface VIII (pope from 1294 to 1303), declaring that it is necessary for salvation that all creatures submit to the Roman pontiff (Bull Unam Sanctam, November 18, 1302). But it is above all in his unceasing condemnation of 'religious indifferentism' designated as 'the cause of the apostasy of the nations', that one can find this teaching. For religious indifferentism is a necessary consequence of the proposition that the State must be secular as a matter of principle. Yet this religious indifferentism, the logical consequence of the official atheism sought by the secular state, has been denounced by pontiffs, particularly since the French Revolution, as the greatest obstacle to the full realization of the reign of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
From Pius VI to Gregory XVI
Pius VI, in His first encyclical 'Inscrutabile divinae Sapientiae consilium' of Christmas 1775, Leo XII, in his encyclical 'Ubi primum' of May 5, 1824, Pius VIII (1829-1830), in 'Traditi' (his only encyclical written at the start of his short-lived twenty-month pontificate), all, as Christ's vicars on earth, full of zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, all, unanimously, pointed to 'religious indifferentism as the cause of the evils' afflicting society and hindering the Church's action.
Pius VII, who governed the Church during the extremely difficult period of Napoleon's hegemony (1800-1823), did not fail to censure the equality of cults sought by Bonaparte:
Quote:"Under the equal protection given to all cults," warned the Pope, "hides and disguises the most dangerous, the most cunning persecution imaginable against the Church of Jesus-Christ, and, by misfortune, the most elaborate [attempt] to throw confusion and even destroy it, if it were possible for the forces and wiles of hell to prevail against it".
Under the Bourbon Restoration, Pius VII deplored the similar position taken by Louis XVIII's Constitutional Charter, also favorable to the freedom of all cults.
Gregory XVI, too, could only repress this "delirium" - as he called religious indifferentism and the freedom of all cults taught within the Church - since this delirium was professed, as we have seen, by influential clergymen and laymen, so blinded that they did not hesitate to present it as a very profitable means to the
cause of religion (encyclical Mirari vos, August 15, 1832).
Quanta cura and the Syllabus
Despite these authoritative explanations and condemnations, dear sons, the avalanche of new ideas swelled and threats against "the cause of the Church, the salvation of souls and the good of human society itself" increased. Pius IX therefore repeated the magisterial teaching of his predecessors in several encyclicals, consistorial addresses and apostolic letters, once again condemning such absurdities of the human mind. The importance of the subject, however, was so great for the Church's mission, that the Pope felt it was his duty as Vicar of Christ to issue a special and more solemn magisterial document, in which he would make clear the absolute opposition between the new naturalistic conceptions of the state, culture and civilization, and Catholic doctrine.
Furthermore, he ordered a catalog to be drawn up, bringing together all these errors in propositions that would express them without distorting their nature, and at the same time show the logical link between them: this act of papal magisterium is known as the 'Syllabus', and Pius IX sent it to the bishops of the entire world with his encyclical 'Quanta Cura' of December 8, 1864.
In it, the Sovereign Pontiff proscribed the thesis of secularism on the part of the State, because it impedes the action that the Church is charged with exercising by divine command:
Quote:These misleading and perverse opinions," writes the Pope, "are all the more detestable in that they aim principally to hinder and overthrow that power of salvation which the Catholic Church, by virtue of the mission and mandate received from Her divine Author, must exercise freely until the consummation of the centuries, no less with regard to individuals than to nations, peoples and their leaders. They seek to destroy this mutual alliance and concord between the Priesthood and the Empire, which has always proved propitious and salutary to Religion and society.
Consequently, Pius IX calls 'shameless impiety' the relentlessness of those who, in accordance with the impious and absurd principle of naturalism, teach that... ' ... the best political regime and the progress of civil life absolutely require that human society be constituted and governed without any more regard for Religion than if it did not exist, or at least without making any difference between true and false religions. And against the doctrine of the Holy Scripture, of the Church and of the Holy Fathers, they assert without hesitation that: the best condition of society is one in which power is not recognized as having the duty of repressing violations of Catholic law by legal penalties, except in the case as required for public tranquility"1.
1 - PIE IX, Quanta cura, December 8, 1864.
Leo XIII and Tradition
Despite the vigilance of Pius IX, dear sons, new ideas continued to spread and endanger the existence of the Church as a society of public right, realizing on earth the kingdom of God for the eternal salvation of mankind. It was therefore necessary for the successor of Pius IX to reassert Catholic teaching against the naturalism and secularism of the State, which were undermining the edifice of the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
Leo XIII struck at the root of the evil, denouncing the founding principle on which the secular state is based, indifferent in spiritual matters and entirely autonomous from any religious denomination: the principle that power comes from the people.
"All power comes from God", teaches the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the Apostle (Rom 13:1); "all power comes from the people", dogmatizes the Revolution and the "new law". This law opposes God and man, as two totally alien persons, autonomous from each other. From man, in his free and sovereign will, asserts the "new law", the State takes root, as in its primary source, so that political society accepts no higher authority than the people, whose will is expressed through universal suffrage.
Here, Leo XIII points to the cause of social apostasy. For such a principle justifies an agnostic and even atheistic state, very conciliatory or neutral in matters of religion. Moreover, it is through this principle that the rebellion of the creature is accomplished, for it is the social expression of the satanic cry "non serviam - I will not serve"; as is also the expression of the unholy ideal suggested by the angel of darkness to our first parents: "You shall be as gods, knowing for yourselves what is good and what is evil" (Gen 3:5).
In order to cut this evil at its root, his encyclical Diuturnum illud of June 21, 1881, Leo XIII dealt at length with the origin of political authority, setting out exactly the doctrine of the Faith, corroborated by reason, diametrically opposed to the teachings of the "new law", the acceptance of which is indispensable to the Church if it is to fulfill its mission on earth. Drawing on St. Paul (Rm 13:1), and St. Peter (1 Pe 2, 13) the Pope reminds us that all power comes from God. Consequently, he who resists power is resisting a divine order, which may lead to his own condemnation, since those who govern act as God's ministers.
This first principle of the good civil order of society implies two indispensable consequences for the public establishment of the Kingdom of God in the State: firstly, civil authorities can do nothing against the law of the Lord. For while they govern as agents of God, their power is limited by the decrees of the One by whose will they exercise power. Secondly, among its most important obligations, by virtue of the same fundamental principle, political power has that of rendering official worship to God, its sovereign Lord. Not just any worship, but the worship willed by God, i.e. the true worship of the Catholic Church.
'This is why, just as no one is allowed to neglect his duties towards God, [...] so political societies cannot without crime behave as if God did not exist in any way, or do without religion as foreign and useless, or admit one indifferently according to their good pleasure. In honoring the Divinity, they must strictly follow the rules and mode according to which God Himself has declared that He wishes to be honored 1'.
The doctrine on the divine origin of political power logically unfolds in two directions that concern the religious attitude of the State, namely: the affirmation of harmony between religious and civil society, between Church and State, and the affirmation of the State's subordination to the Church in the religious and spiritual realm. As you can see, dear sons, we are returning to the doctrine of the early centuries of the Church, in accordance with the principle of St. Vincent de Lerins, a principle that the first Vatican Council canonized: "In the Catholic Church, one must apply oneself with the utmost diligence to professing what has been believed' everywhere, always and by all'.2
At a time when the apostasy of the nations was on the increase, a subject of such great importance demanded particular attention from the Holy See. Leo XIII responded to the expectations of the faithful with several encyclicals, especially 'Immortale Dei', dated November 19, 1885, on the Christian constitution of States. Even today, dear sons, reading these documents from the pontifical magisterium is extremely opportune.
1 - LEON XIII, encyclical Immortale Dei.
2 - Commonitorium, 2, 5, in KIRCH, Enchiridion Fontium historiæ Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, 742.
Tolerance of Evil
In Leo XIII's political teaching, the traditional doctrine on the two powers - spiritual and temporal, Church and State - is presented in a systematic and clear exposition, dispelling any kind of doubt on the matter. It is only natural that later popes should refer to it. This is what St. Pius X did in His encyclical 'Vehementer' of February 11, 1906, prompted by the French government's rupture of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and also in his apostolic letter 'Our Apostolic Mandate' of August 25, 1910, on the errors of the Sillon, already mentioned. Benedict XV did likewise in his first encyclical Ad Beatissimi, of November 1, 1914. Also Pius XI, in various documents, but especially in the one we commented on above on the kingship of Jesus-Christ [Quas primas, December 11, 1925], where he called on the faithful to unite to triumph over "the plague of our time, secularism". Finally, Pius XII, in his first encyclical 'Summi Pontificatus' of October 20, 1939, took up the argument of 'Quas primas' in order to once again, insistently, recommend the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
Throughout his long pontificate, Pius XII addressed this subject on a number of occasions. Thus, in his "Address to the Participants of the 5th Congress of Italian Catholic Jurists", on December 6, 1953, he clarified the principle previously established by Leo XIII: "That which does not correspond to truth and the moral norm has objectively no right to existence, propaganda or action." Man, in fact, was created for truth and goodness. And in his effort to attain the knowledge of truth and the practice of the good, he enjoys, because of his social nature, the right to be helped by the ambient framework established in society by the action of the State. Therefore a state which, as a matter of principle, authorizes or promotes the public practice of false religions, or of principles contrary to moral law, would not help, but would actually make it more difficult for its members to perfect their reasonable lives. This, moreover, was the reason
given by Pius XII to justify his doctrinal intolerance:
Quote:'It is contrary to nature [...] to consider error and evil as indifferent things. God Himself could not give positive authorization to teach or do what is contrary to religious truth or moral good, because it would be in contradiction with His absolute truthfulness and holiness 1.
Of itself, therefore, the State is under a grave obligation to favor true religion and repress false cults. However, the application of this principle must be nuanced. In other words, it is in the designs of Providence that public power should carefully examine the factual situation of the people, or of all the peoples subject to it, in religious matters.
And, as circumstances require, it may or may not tolerate false or superstitious cults alongside true religion. It can never positively approve the existence and propaganda of such cults. However, the actual conditions in which society finds itself may be such that a legislative act authorizing the existence and even the propaganda of certain false beliefs may constitute an act with a double effect: one bad effect, which is the public authorization of superstition; and another good effect - the appeasement of conflicts that would make it impossible for people to live together, or other analogous goods. In these concrete circumstances, the State can tolerate the existence and practice of false religions, provided this is required by the common good, which remains the norm regulating the rights and duties of the State.
1 - PIE XII, Allocution aux juristes catholiques italiens, December 6, 1953.
Abnormal Situation
Like Leo XIII, Pius XII makes it clear that this is not the ideal situation for the state's relations with religion and divine worship. At no time and in no way do they accept the thesis of the secular state, based solely on the proper purpose of civil society, which would be purely temporal. They are, however, inclined to justify the 'toleration ' of evil, i.e. the religious neutrality of the state when (and uniquely in this case) an imperative social requirement makes it indispensable. In practice, tolerance finds its backing in the way God our Lord Himself acts, who desires man to come to faith through a free determination of his will. This is illustrated by the Gospel parable of the weeds sown by the enemy in the field where the father of the family has sown wheat. Although the presence of tares is an evil, the Lord nevertheless allows it to grow in the midst of the wheat, because the good of uprooting it could turn into a greater evil, or stand in the way of some excellent good. In the parable, this is the danger that the wheat will also be lost.
Saint Thomas Aquinas explains how civil authority can tolerate certain evils in society:
Quote:'Human government derives from divine government, and must take it as its model. Now God, although omnipotent and sovereignly good, nevertheless allows evils to occur in the universe, when He could prevent them, because their suppression would remove great goods and lead to greater evils. Thus, in human government, those rightly tolerate some evils, lest some goods be prevented, or even lest worse evils be incurred 1.
However, it should not be forgotten that toleration relates exclusively to evil things 2.
This is why, in itself, it is never a good. Consequently, 'it cannot claim any rights 3'.
Faith must be Free
In reality, anyone who would base his argument on the freedom that must characterize the act of faith would be going against the whole of the Church's traditional doctrine if he were to deduce from it the right of man to freely and publicly profess the religion he finds best, or a religion that is false because he himself is convinced that it is true. Apostolic Tradition has never taught this.
And, my dear sons, the parable of the tares and the wheat (Mt 13:24-30) cannot be used to support some pseudo right to profess false religions, because, in traditional teaching, there is no interpretation of the parable in this sense.
Saint Augustine, who for some time had been in favor of compromises with heretics, was soon admitted that it was right for them to be repressed. Saint John Chrysostom deems it appropriate any repression of the public activity of heretics, excepting only capital punishment. Saint Thomas Aquinas also considers it natural to prevent heretics from engaging in religious activity.
In fact, when we say that faith must be embraced by a free act of the will, we are in no way giving a right of power to error, since in adherence to error or evil, there is no perfection, either of the intelligence or of the will. On the contrary, there is a deficiency. So man, as a reasonable being, has the right to freely adhere to revealed truth and freely practice virtue, but 'he does not have the right to deform his intelligence by accepting error, or his will by the practice of vice'. Our Lord himself affirms that he who sins is not free, but is enslaved by sin. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains:
Quote:'The condition of a slave arises when a person acts not according to his nature, but under the pressure of another. Now, man, according to his nature, is reasonable. So when he acts in accordance with reason, he acts according to his nature, driven by a proper movement, his own. And this is what freedom is all about. But when he sins, he acts contrary to reason, and it is as if he were moved by another. This is why he who sins is enslaved by sin 4.
1 - II-II, q. 10, a. 11.
2 - Saint Augustine, En. in Ps. 1, 20.
3 - Let's be clear: the "tolerated" have no natural right to be tolerated, but their tolerance can be guaranteed by a civil right. On the other hand, tolerance is for the common good, not for the particular good of the tolerated; it is therefore a matter of general justice, not commutative justice. (Editor's note)
4 - Commentary on St John's Gospel, lectura 4, c. 8; see also Leo XIII's encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.
If the state were not obliged to protect true religion exclusively, it would be fundamentally failing in its purpose. This purpose is clearly to provide citizens with the means to achieve a suitable perfection of their life on earth, but in dependence on their ultimate end, which can only be reached through the profession and practice of the true religion. This is why Pius XII teaches that not even God can give the State the right to be indifferent in religious matters. In short, tolerance is always the tolerance of an evil, which can be admitted in concrete circumstances, whenever required to obtain a necessary or superior good, and even if it's only a question of removing a situation that makes life in society impossible or harmful.
With great zeal, Gregory XVI describes as an "absurd and erroneous principle", or rather, a "delusion", the freedom of conscience that allows everyone to practice their religion publicly 1. Saint Augustine said that "there is no worse death for the soul than the freedom of error 2. Just because pride and sensuality have succeeded in imbuing contemporary mentality with a spirit of rebellion, striving to shake off every kind of yoke imposed by faith and morality, does not mean that we are going to deny the truth taught by right reason and by the ecclesiastical magisterium in a continuous and invariable manner.
1- Encyclical Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.
2 - Letter 166.
Freedom and Responsibility in the Act of Faith
My dear sons, let us close this chapter with a final consideration that underlines the wisdom with which God's mercy, and consequently, His Church, acts. God our Lord wants the act of faith, by which man enters the kingdom of Christ, to be free and meritorious. To this end, He gives all men the necessary grace, without which the supernatural act of faith, worthy of eternal life, would be impossible. In view of His benevolence, of His grace, which He refuses to withhold from no-one, Our Lord makes the act of faith obligatory for salvation. Nevertheless, in His infinite mercy, He endures the sinner on this earth, so that he may not die eternally, but "be converted and live" (Ez 33:11).
The corollary of these truths of the Catholic religion is that the act of faith cannot be imposed on man's interior forum of his conscience. Infidelity can be a sin, a serious sin. But it is not lawful to force a man's will not to commit it. It is each individual, aided by grace, who must freely and with horror reject this impiety which consists in not paying attention to divine Revelation. Consequently, no human power can force a person to adhere to the true Faith. The use of violence to impose conversion has always been condemned by the Church.
Hence the Magisterium envisages the possibility, temporary or exceptional, that someone may find himself in invincible ignorance of the true religion. Such an individual deserves respect and attention, as long as his unbelief is only material. He has not deformed his will by linking it to evil in a responsible manner. This aberration, however, does not give him the right to profess his error, since, objectively, he is in error; and error "has no right to existence, propaganda or action 1".
We recall, dear sons, the Catholic doctrine on the kingship of Jesus-Christ here on earth, because the secularism of modern times easily obscures it in the minds of the faithful, and, without a firm conviction of what we should believe, our apostolate loses the zeal essential to its effectiveness. The weakness of love for
the truth among the upright is responsible, in large part, for the progress of apostasy in today's society.
The principle we are expressing to you, dear sons, is universal, even though our apostolate is usually restricted to the environment in which we live and the terrain in which we have the opportunity to act, but it is always the same doctrine that makes every form of apostolate fruitful, from the most modest to the most vast and sublime.
1 - PIE XII, Allocution aux participants du 5e congrès des juristes catholiques italiens, December 6, 1953.
Summary and Pastoral Considerations
Therefore, before turning to the pastoral consequences of the teaching set out here, we shall summarize it, dear sons, so that it may be better fixed in your minds.
1. Our Lord Jesus-Christ, true God and true man, as Mediator between heaven and earth and Redeemer of the human race, was constituted by the eternal Father as King of the universe in the fullest sense of the word. Through the establishment of His kingdom of truth, justice and peace, is realized His mission, ordained for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Although de jure Jesus is also a temporal king, de facto He has reserved for Himself sovereignty over those things which bind man to God and concern eternal salvation.
2. Since the establishment of this kingdom on earth is the 'raison d'etre' of the Church of Christ, i.e. the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, the kingship of Jesus-Christ inherently requires that political society be constituted in accordance with the one Church of Christ.
3. However, the kingship of Jesus-Christ must not be imposed by force or violence. It is by a free act of the will that man adheres to the faith and enters the kingdom of Christ. This condition of human nature - that we can only enter Christ's kingdom through the exercise of a free act - does not give error or vice any right to a peaceful existence in the state, let alone a right to propaganda and action. For, man being created for truth and goodness, there is nothing in him that gives him the right to adhere with impunity to error or consent to vice.
4. This condition, though it does not confer a 'right', nevertheless justifies the State in exercising 'tolerance' towards false religious confessions, as long as concrete circumstances require it, in view of a great good to be obtained, or an evil to be avoided. Tolerance of false religions, or of certain behaviors contrary to the rule of morality, is therefore always a 'lesser evil', and for this reason cannot be considered a normal, definitive situation. He would be mistaken who claims to elevate to the rank of principle the mixing of good and evil in the parable of the wheat and the tares. The parable presents a fact, not a right. It exposes the fact of the situation of the good in the world, who, according to the designs of Providence, will always be surrounded by evil people. The latter, explains St. Augustine, exercise the faithful in the practice of virtue and confirm them in the faith. The parable in no way claims to give notice of the right for error or evil to exist, as if, as a matter of principle, the normal situation of the state entailed or required granting all religious beliefs the freedom to exist and propagate.
5. Moreover, the State cannot be dispensed from its duties towards true religion on the pretext that it must concern itself only with earthly realities; for in devoting itself to its specific end, the State must not and cannot forget the subordination of earthly goods to the ultimate, eternal end of the citizens. It will only act properly if it itself submits to the true religion, which is the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, endowed with clearly manifested characteristics. So that, generally speaking, no one can be excused for not knowing it or not living by its commandments.
Our Duties towards the Kingship of Jesus-Christ
Establishing the kingdom of Jesus-Christ in society is an apostolic objective which obliges all the faithful. However, it must always be carried out in an orderly and peaceful manner, in imitation of Jesus-Christ and the Apostles who obeyed and commanded obedience to the constituted public powers, except in cases where the power imposed laws or ordered acts contrary to God's will.
Leo XIII affirms that the first Christians were... '... of exemplary fidelity to princes, and as perfect an obedience to the laws of the State as they were permitted. They displayed a marvellous radiance of holiness on all sides; they strove to be useful to their brethren and to attract others to follow Our Lord, yet they were prepared to give way and die bravely if they could not, without wounding their consciences, retain honours, magistracies and military offices' 1.
Our Conversion
The obligation to work for the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus-Christ, which concerns each of us, dear sons, begins with 'our very own conversion'. Above all, we must let Jesus-Christ reign over our being, by conforming our own will, our actions and our behavior, to the most holy will of God, expressed in His commandments and in the directives of His holy Church, whose spirit we must assimilate above all. Such submission obliges us to shun the solicitations of the world.
This is how the first Christians completely reformed pagan society, converting it and building the city of God, Christian civilization, on its ruins. Let's listen to Leo XIII:
Quote:'In this way, they rapidly introduced Christian institutions not only into domestic homes, but also into the camps, the Curia and even the imperial palace. [...] So when it was permitted to profess publicly the Gospel, the Christian faith appeared in a large number of cities, not still wavering, but strong and already full of vigour 2.
1 - LEON XIII, Immortale Dei.
2 - LEON XIII, Immortale Dei. See Tertullian: "We're only from yesterday, and already we're filling everything that is yours, your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your municipalities, your conciliabules, your camps themselves, the tribes, the decuries, the palace, the senate, the forum". (Apol., 37). (Editor's note)
In the Family
Personal action takes place within families. When the austerity of the Christian life reigns within the family, when the atmosphere of the home is imbued with faith and encourages the practice of virtue, people find it easier to overcome the seductions of impiety and vice that come from the passions, the devil and the spirit of the world.
Dear sons, it is important to stress the 'enormous responsibility of parents' in the Catholic education of their children; for, on their vigilance, on what they have done positively to educate their children, depends the spirit which, later on, will animate all the latter's behaviour. Without decisive action on the part of parents, it is impossible to establish the reign of Jesus-Christ in society. On this subject, let us denounce, dear sons, the harmful influence exerted on the family atmosphere by television, magazines, bad books or frivolous reading.
Be aware, beloved sons, that good families come together in larger social groups, from which civil society is formed. And this is how, through firm but patient action, we can contribute to the renewal of the State, by gradually christianizing it. As the divine Saviour said in the parable of the leaven in the dough (Mt 13:33), it is through the continuous radiance of the good odour of JesusChrist that the fervour of the faithful will reconquer the world, for the service of the King of glory.
In Public Life
This is why, dear sons, the devil, by ambushes of every kind, attacks the integrity of the Christian family, attacking it in its nature as well as in its duties and the ordinary course of its life. You understand, therefore, that our eagerness for Jesus-Christ to be the sovereign Lord of society cannot be confined to particular personal or family actions, however important and necessary they may be. We must 'also act in public life', both positively and to prevent families from being asphyxiated by these disorders of all kinds that are tolerated to satisfy the misunderstood freedom of modern people.
As Leo XIII warns, when he emphasizes this obligation of the faithful, action in public life must be taken in an orderly and serene manner: without provoking strife between classes, without arousing spirits against the established order; but by acting firstly by good example, that absolutely indispensable weapon, and then, by all legal means - writings, manifestos, collective representations, etc. - with the aim to prevent the approval of laws or customs that are contrary to Christian faith and morals, such as divorce, induced abortion under any pretext, the free sale of contraceptives, their use in hospitals and maternity wards, sex education in schools, public licentious behaviour, the dissemination of pornography, the free circulation of films offensive to Jesus-Christ, which offend dogma or corrupt the family, etc.
An identical positive activity is also needed, with a view to achieving a public order inspired by the Christian spirit, which prepares citizens to adhere to the true faith in Jesus-Christ, as proclaimed by His Church, the One that is Catholic, Apostolic and Roman.
Schools: Teaching Religion is not Enough
Whence this apostolate and the rights of parents, dear sons, include organized action 'against the school monopoly' being established in our homeland1 under the pretext of educational efficiency.
This action is essential, first and foremost, because the very real situation for the Brazilian people, will be one of official secular education. So, in a school where the official teaching is secular, it is not possible to give students a Catholic education. This training requires that all disciplines be considered as a harmonious whole, so that, animated by the same spirit, they integrate the spirit of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, Wisdom of God, to whose glory all sciences must be ordered. The late Carlos de Laet2 rightly said that secular teaching is by its very nature seditious. And he gave the example of writing, an apparently indifferent subject, where the teacher necessarily loses his neutrality when he has to explain, for example, why the word God is written with a capital letter.
And it's not by introducing religious education into official establishments that we'll remedy the ills of secularism. In the first place, because it's a condition of simple favor to religious education in these establishments.
1 - In Brazil, the school monopoly is much more recent than in France. (Editor's note)
2 - Carlos DE LAET (1847-1928), Brazilian journalist and essayist, a vigorous polemicist, brilliant in His columns and articles.
What's more, as this teaching is often inserted into a system that does not give it its rightful place, the development of the Catholic mentality is immediately altered. Secondly, as Pius XI observes, religious instruction given in a school where other subjects ignore religion, and even work against it, is absolutely insufficient to give anyone a Catholic formation.
Therefore, if they accept the introduction of religious instruction into the 'curriculum' of school subjects, in order to uphold the principle that education cannot do without religion, Catholic parents must take great care to give their children a religious training outside school, in order to correct the evils to which we alluded above 1.
Above all, they must take a special stand against the school monopoly, so that their rights to educate their children are truly recognized and respected in all their fullness. Let them demand protection and support for private schools. They can even assume control of it, or at least give themselves the opportunity to influence its activities.
It's worth recalling Pius XI's comments to parents about national socialist schools:
Quote:'...Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which eliminate, in school questions, the respect of this free will of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral.
...Therefore, we shall never cease frankly to represent to the responsible authorities the iniquity of the pressure brought to bear on you and the duty of respecting the freedom of education. Yet do not forget this: none can free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your children. None of your oppressors, who pretend to relieve you of your duties can answer for you to the eternal Judge, when He will ask: "Where are those I confided to you?" May every one of you be able to answer: "Of them whom Thou hast given me, I have not lost any one" (John xviii. 9).
1 - Bishop de Castro-Mayer wrote this at a time when it was still possible to make do with intermediate solutions, because the official school system was not entirely corrupt everywhere. Today, as the situation worsens, the only advice is: put your children in traditional schools if you don't want them to go to perdition! (Editor's note)
2 - Encyclical 'Mit brennender Sorge', March 14, 1937.
Slackening of the Faith
As we engage in these considerations with you, dear sons, our hearts ache at the indifference with which many Catholics approach the problem of educating the younger generation. A good many of them confine themselves, at most, to looking for a college that carries the Catholic label. They dispense of discovering more accurate information, and feel they have no responsibility in the matter. Where does such a lack of faith come from?
To a large extent, it stems from the love of ease 1, with which these Catholics have been contaminated by the 'liberalism of modern civilization', made up of the immoderate enjoyment that is the hallmark of the consumer society. But this lack of faith also stems from a' lack of confidence in grace', which is in some ways more serious.
In fact, many of us feel that God's grace has become insufficient to overcome the wickedness into which the world is plunged today. Although we don't express it clearly, we do in fact judge that the apostasy of society, and consequently of states, has become so profound that it is no longer possible to speak of the social reign of Our Lord. We would have to be content with a 'modus vivendi' in which we seek to save as many souls as possible, while at the same time refraining from fighting, even in the long term, in favor of a Catholic State.
Hence, the accommodation of many, who profess the Catholic faith, with the paganization of society. Naturalism has led them to trust in their own strength and lack confidence in grace. They worry that they have everything to achieve, and, realizing their inability to defeat the monster of secularism, they judge that 'the only possible path is that of concessions'. The reasoning should be entirely different. Feeling their weakness, their inability to overcome the modern spirit, these people should turn to grace, and be assured of its omnipotence against all God's enemies.
On the anniversary of the death of Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Pius X noted that His admirable predecessor had distinguished Himself precisely in that He had ignored the prudence of the flesh...
Quote:'... and in the preaching of the Gospel, and in the other admirable works he accomplished for the relief of human misery. He followed the example of the Apostles, who said on the day they set out to proclaim Christ throughout the world: "We preach Jesus crucified, a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23). But if ever there was a time when the helps of human prudence may have seemed opportune, it is indeed that time: for minds were in no way prepared to welcome this new doctrine, which was so strongly repugnant to passions everywhere in control, and clashed head-on with the brilliant civilization of the Greeks and Romans2.
1 - The Brazilian text uses the term "comodismo", which could be translated as "commodism" if the word didn't already refer to a scientific theory (developed by Henri Poincarao). We're talking here about that form of practical liberalism that seeks ease and compromise with the spirit of the world. (Editor's note)
2 - Encyclical Iucunda sane, March 12, 1904.
Religion within Human limits
Dear sons, this lack of confidence in the efficacy of grace, this overconfidence in our own abilities, was already present in the time of the divine Master. In fact, what else does this attitude of the Saviour's disciples indicate, when they judged His words to be harsh and impossible to follow? "Durus est hic sermo et quis potest eum audire? " (Jn 6:61). What were these disciples asking for, if not a Christian message they could put into practice themselves? What were they refusing, if not a grace so powerful that it would make them overcome their own misery?
Basically, it was a question of finding a compromise between the severity of the Gospel preached by Jesus-Christ and the principles of the world; a religion, definitely, that would "understand" human conditions and "would adapt" to their weaknesses.
However, these disciples did not always have imitators who followed them in all their attitudes. Unwilling to follow the rules laid down by the Savior, they abandoned Him. Over the centuries, not all those who would promulgate their pride and lack of confidence in grace would reproduce (imitate Ed.)their open defection. Many would remain in the bosom of the Church, only to deform it, and create a 'new Church', closer to the times, more accessible to its passions, and for that reason, inauthentic, false. This is how heresies appeared suddenly.
How Heresies are Born
It's a normal part of human psychology that man seeks a reason to legitimize his actions. Because of a lack of confidence in grace and a weakening of his faith, he becomes accustomed to a trivialized and peaceful coexistence with the error and evil present in society, and looks for a principle that endorses his behavior and gives what he does and thinks a semblance of coherence.
This phenomenon, which lies at the root of the heresies of the past, can still be found today in various movements that have arisen within the Church, generous in appearance because they intend to devote themselves to the conversion of those outside Christ's fold. But their generosity is infected with the love of the world 1. To smooth the way, they resort to a less rocky presentation, if we may put it that way, of revealed morality and doctrine, and, consequently, more accessible to minds accustomed to living, to varying degrees, according to the maxims of the world. In reality, such movements rob Revelation of the clarity of its dogmas and, by the same token, falsify it, for in the words of Our Lord, the 'yes' must be 'yes', and the 'no' must be 'no'. What dilutes these clarifications comes from the Evil One (see Mt 5:37).
Immortification
These movements are known precisely for their compromising apostolate, which attenuates traditional severity. They weaken the precepts of morality, avoiding the emphasis on a life that is usually serious and austere, and allowing themselves liberties that offend souls accustomed to the image of the faithful Catholic docilely attached to Sacred Scripture and to Tradition. An image full of confidence, no doubt, but also of a holy and respectful fear of God.
More by their way of proceeding than by clear teachings, these movements we're talking about distill a Christianity in which levity of morals and freedom of speech, commonplace in today's paganized world, are considered absolutely normal and of no great importance. We've already had occasion to warn you, dear sons, against coarse language, social leveling, vulgar manners and irreverence towards Our Lord, all of which can be found in circles imbued with the ideology and spirit of the Cursilhos2. We are told that there are other similar movements suffering from the same defects. These movements would bridge the gap between Christianity and the easy, sensual lifestyle that capitulates to the evil tendencies of nature inherited from original sin. Then appears a new Church, having lost confidence in the omnipotence of grace - which, however, was able to bring down and raise up a St. Paul - the sublime character of Christ's religion to the level of human nature and its deficiencies.
1 - Their generosity is "comodista", inclined to compromise with the world.
2 - The term is a calque of the Spanish word, Cursillos de cristiandad, "Little course in Christianity". A Catholic action movement that emerged in Spain in 1944, it quickly became a vehicle for ecumenism. Bishop de Castro Mayer refers in a note (in the Italian translation of SiSi NoNo in August 2011), to "Nostra Carta Pastoral sobre cursilhos de Cristiandade, 3rd ed., Vera Cruz, Sao Paulo, 1973." (Editor's note)
The Spirit of Independence
A second characteristic of these movements, linked to pride - that other fundamental tendency of fallen nature - is the spirit of independence from Tradition. The coryphae of the movements we're talking about make no secret of their claim to be building a renewed Christianity. They strive to convince their peers that they have at last rediscovered with certainty the true substance of the Christian message, which had been obscured by the excesses of Tradition. In this, they are contumacious1.
They are the only ones who know how to apply the words of the Gospel to today's world. They claim a similar autonomy from the hierarchy. Outwardly very respectful, they seek - as we have often heard said in recent years - ecclesiastical leaders who "understand" them, i.e. who accept their positions. Absolutely convinced that their thinking is authentically Christian, they say nothing to arguments based on Sacred Scripture and Tradition. And so they continue, obstinate in their ideas and their proselytism. As they feel that only by maintaining their links with the Church will they be listened to, they invoke a few ecclesiastical approbations, the existence of which they do not always prove, and the content of which they are carefully cautious to divulge their contents- when it exists. Some, like the so called "Catholic Pentecostals", go further: they believe in a direct, more or less perceptible influence of "the Spirit", without the intervention of the hierarchy.
All these movements, without judging the intentions of their instigators, are in fact inspired by the modernist mentality, whose rules of action were as follows: to remain in the Church in order to renovate it in depth; and, within the Church, to transcend the limits of the hierarchy, in order to reach the essence of Christianity that exists in the subconscious of every human being. As a tactic, they sought to silence publications and arguments opposed to them, and endeavored to discredit their opponents2.
1 - In Roman law, a "contumax" is an individual who shows an inclination to despise authority. In ecclesiastical law, contumacy refers to the attitude of a sinner who, externally, shows arrogance towards ecclesiastical authority and refuses to amend his ways. (Editor's note)
2 - Antonio FOGAZZARO, Il Santo, and St. Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, September 8, 1907.
The Antidote: Living by Faith
You see, dear sons, that with such a mentality, it is out of the question to think of establishing the kingship of the divine crucified One. His kingship is opposed to that social atmosphere produced by the domination of passions wounded by original sin. This mentality is entirely committed to a compromise that seeks to preserve the faith without separating itself from man's "conquests", by virtue of the autonomy that the deprivation of grace would have indirectly procured him, when sin reduced him to his natural condition.
To guard against the contamination of such a harmful spirit, spread by movements of the type we have described, it is necessary, dear sons, that you make the spirit of faith more alive in yourselves.
Above all, anchor in your minds the exact concept of the faith indispensable to salvation, the faith without which, says St. Paul, "it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6). This faith is a supernatural virtue, infused by God, whose object is revealed Truth. The first Vatican Council defined it as follows:
Quote:'This faith, which is the beginning of man's salvation, the Catholic Church professes to be a supernatural virtue by which, forewarned by God and helped by His grace, we believe the things He has revealed to us to be true, not because of their intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself who reveals, who can neither deceive Himself nor us'1.
Thus, the fundamental condition for belonging to Christ's flock is to accept revealed truths in their exact meaning, as proposed to us by the Holy Church. To think otherwise, to reduce faith to an act of trust or mere sentiment, is to fall into heresy. As a result, any movement, association or group of the faithful that claims to be Catholic - and especially if it is destined to the apostolate, to the propagation of the spirit of Jesus-Christ in the social milieu in which it finds itself -this movement, then, must first and foremost have as its aim a firm and scrupulous adherence to revealed doctrine. What's more, these truths, which divine goodness has deigned to manifest to man, must be accepted with humility and gratitude, as expounded by the Holy Church, the only infallible teacher to whom God our Lord has entrusted the deposit of His Revelation.
Without a docile submission of the intelligence to this revealed truth, attentive above all not to distort in any way what God has deigned to make known through His Church, there is no authentic Catholicism. There is only an appearance, which can mislead one's neighbor, and which, as a result, presents the danger of making him deviate towards an equally erroneous conception of the faith.
We repeat: this attitude of submission, fundamental for the Catholic, implies obedience to a double external authority: to the truth proposed by Revelation, and to the Church which transmits it.
Because this requires us to admit our inferiority and limitations, the modern mind rebels against this attitude, in the name of reason and Rights of man. It's this spirit of rebellion that drives - albeit perhaps unconsciously - the movements we've been talking about. The remedy for contamination by this spirit lies in humble and loving obedience to the authentic magisterium, receiving revealed dogma in the sense that the Church has always taught. Without this pure and unreserved faith, we are not immune to the virus of adaptation to the world, which St. Paul condemned.
1 - Vatican I, session 3, Constitution 'Dei Filius', ch. 3 (DS 3008).
Living by Faith
With the same docility, without wrapping them in the sinuosities of our selflove, we must hear and practice the precepts enunciated by the divine Master, so that He may reign in us and we may be effective instruments in spreading His reign in souls.
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Lk 9:23). This is the golden rule, irreplaceable. Without "let him deny himself", without renouncing our egoism, our pleasures and our desires, in order to do God's will alone, sanctification is illusory, the apostolate practically sterile and exposed to the danger of being led astray in the direction of compromise with the world.
This renunciation requires daily mortification; consequently, every day, we must take up the cross that Our Lord sends us: the cross of the exact fulfillment of our duties of state; the cross of patience towards our neighbor; the cross of the struggle against human respect.
Such a precept, understood according to its objective truth, is incompatible with the maxims of the world. Only a spirit of faith, living in the hope of future realities that will only be revealed in eternity, is capable of accepting it and loyally proposing to live by it. Rightly understood, it shows us how all those movements that aspire to establish a new Church and practice openness to the ways of being and behaving of the modern world, stray dangerously far from the path that leads to God's glory and eternal salvation.
The Spirit of the World
Let us agree, dear sons, that the temptation to seek agreement between the doctrine of salvation and the spirit of the age is tempting. Everywhere we are offered, including the inclination inherent in our sinful nature, a false charity, the fruit of a naturalistic conception of existence.
That's why the divine Master never tires of warning His disciples against living according to worldly principles. In His great priestly prayer, after the Last Supper, Jesus asks the Eternal Father, in a special way, to preserve His disciples from the contagion of the world (Jn 17:9-15). And the reason for this request is that the whole world is under the influence of the Evil One (1 Jn 5:19), by the lure of concupiscence, vanity and pride (1 Jn 2:16). In the same vein, St. Paul urges us to flee the temptation to conform to the spirit of the present age (Rom 12:2).
If, aided by confident and fervent prayer, we remain faithful in this vigilance, God our Lord will have mercy on us and grant us the grace not to get caught up in the meshes of an apparent, but false apostolate; that is, an apostolate which, if it does not totally renounce the social reign of Jesus-Christ over the world today, accommodates itself to a half-christianity, conceived in the manner of a union between two antagonistic spirits: 'Christian austerity and the wanderings of modern life. The result of such an alliance can only be the nausea of which the Apocalypse speaks (Apo 3:16), and which provokes the Lord's reprobation.
Dear Sons, in His encyclical 'Immortale Dei', Leo XIII echoes the admonitions of Jesus-Christ, and draws the attention of those who dedicate themselves to the work of spreading the Kingdom of God in society, to the two dangers that threaten them: connivance with false opinions, and a less energetic firmness than that demanded by the truth.
Let us therefore, dear sons, avoid our charity degenerating into an encouragement to error or vice. And let our patience never be an incitement to persevere in evil.
The Prayer
"Sine me nihil potestis facere - Without me, you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). Union with Jesus-Christ, dear sons, so that He may reign in us, and so that we may be crusaders in the service of His reign, is absolutely necessary.
This union with the Redeemer of mankind, the fruit of grace, is nourished and made more intense by the reception of the sacraments and by the practice of the Christian virtues, especially charity, which brings us to avoid anything in our lives that is displeasing to God our Lord, and which arouses in us a genuine interest in our neighbor, especially in his sanctification.
The indispensable means of maintaining union with Jesus-Christ, zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and at the same time making our apostolate effective, is prayer, that sovereign means which the divine Savior has bequeathed to us for obtaining all the favors of heaven.
Therefore, dear sons, we urge you always to use this weapon, so effective in establishing the reign of Jesus-Christ on earth, first within yourselves and then in the society in which you live.
"Ask, and you shall receive" (Jn 16:24), said the infallible Word, which can and does accomplish what it promises. If our country isn't as Catholic as it should be, it's partly our fault. If we had asked with faith, with confidence, surely we would have been sanctified and our prayers granted. Well! pray, dear sons, pray with the ardent will to receive what you ask for.
Prayer is so necessary that Jesus himself taught us how to pray. For us, He composed the most beautiful and complete of prayers: the 'Our Father'. It is the prayer we should say every day. In it, we ask precisely for the grace that this reign of God to come to us. Indeed, what else do we implore in the second petition of the Our Father, if not that God's reign may come to us? Thy kingdom come!" (Mt 6:10). So let us fervently say the' Our Father', paying close attention to what we're asking for, and begging with a burning desire to see its fulfillment: "Thy kingdom come!" We may lack all other means of extending the reign of Jesus Christ -- science, health, personal charisma, the ability to captivate crowds,...everything! but we never lack the means of prayer. IT IS the indispensable means. The others, without it, are ineffective; but, through prayer, we are made capable of exercising that apostolate which, according to the designs of Providence, it behooves to us to accomplish. Prayer is within our reach. Let us use it with a burning desire to be heard. God takes great account of the fervor of our desire when we ask Him for grace. So let's pray with all our heart and soul, and we'll obtain it.
Especially if we call upon the intercession of the Mediatrix of all graces, the Queen of heaven and earth, the most holy Mary, Our Lady. Let us confide our aspirations and preoccupations to Her. And She, against all human hope - "in spem contra spem, against all hope, keeping hope" (Rom 4:18) - will make her divine Son reign over the world today, fulfilling the kind and gentle promise She made at Fatima: "In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!"
With our affectionate blessing in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, we pray the most holy Virgin, Mother of God, to grant our dear cooperators and dear sons, perseverance in the love of Jesus-Christ, for the glory of God and the good of souls.
Given in our episcopal city of Campos, on the eighth day of December one thousand nine hundred and seventy-six, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Antonio, bishop of Campos.
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