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| Mens Ignatian Retreat - UK |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-28-2023, 07:57 PM - Forum: Event Schedule
- Replies (1)
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When: 27th May - 1st June
Where: TBC
Who: Fr. David Hewko
Cost: whatever you can afford - financial help is available for those of limited means...
Please save the date in your diary and let us know if you wish to attend: recusantsspx@hotmail.co.uk
A similar retreat for ladies will follow later in the year.
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| Abp. Viganò: Canceled Benedictine nuns are ‘victims of the ideological fury of the Bergoglians’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-28-2023, 11:34 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Abp. Viganò: Canceled Benedictine nuns are ‘victims of the ideological fury of the Bergoglians’
The goal that animates the entire action of this pontificate is of an ideological bent: to normalize religious life
to the new pauperist, migrationist, environmentalist, ecumenical, and synodal paradigm.
Feb 27, 2023
Editor’s note: the following is the full text of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s first intervention on the situation of the Monastery of Maria Tempio dello Spirito Santo in Pienza, Italy, after it was “subjected to harassment and serious abuses by the Holy See in an attempt to remove the nuns from the building assigned to them by the diocese.”
“This particular story is paradigmatic of a deplorable situation extended to the whole universal Church, in which the contemplative life is under fierce attack.”
(LifeSiteNews - emphasis mine) — After the disclosure of conflicting and contradictory news relating to the recent events that have involved the cloistered community of the Benedictine Monastery of Pienza, I consider it my duty as a pastor to intervene to re-establish the truth of the facts, as they are verifiable to those who are not prejudiced and care both about the fate of these religious women, as well as highlighting the attitude of open hostility towards them on the part of ecclesiastical Authority.
This first contribution of mine comes from my direct and personal knowledge of the abbess and the nuns, on whose behalf I intend to speak. In this first part I will analyze the sequence of events. A second essay will consider the content of the Holy See’s measures, framing them in the broader context of Bergoglio’s demolishing action. A third essay will propose some initiatives to be undertaken.
Origins
First of all, it is necessary to start from the birth of the Monastery. Twelve of the thirteen religious who compose it come from the Benedictine community Santa Maria delle Rose of Sant’Angelo in Pontano, belonging to the Piceno Federation.
This monastery in the Italian region of Marche experienced a moment of rebirth when it began to welcome female vocations from the so-called “Neocatechumenal Way” [the Cammino] of Kiko Argüello. It was in fact from the Cammino that our young women entered religion, only to be sent in 2013 by the same leaders of the Neocatechumenal Way to establish a new Benedictine foundation in Holland, in the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam, with the agreement of Bishop Josef Marianus Punt. The new monastery was approved by the Holy See the following year.
As has already happened in Santa Maria delle Rose and in practically all the communities under Kiko’s control, so too in Holland the autonomy of government of the Monastery was put to the test by the serious and undue interference of the leaders of the Cammino. This parallel Neocatechumenal hierarchy established by Argüello and his “catechists” led the sisters to the decision – taken collegially in chapter – to distance themselves from the Cammino.
After four years, Bishop Punt was forced to remove the Nuns under pressure from Kiko, who threatened to withdraw his Neocatechumenal priests from the diocese, because these priests were actually the only ones on whom the bishop could rely and they constitute a considerable part of his diocesan presbytery. This demonstrates the capacity for interference in the life and governance of the Church on the part of a lay association that has planned its infiltration into the ecclesial body in such a way as to make itself indispensable, so that once it has been accepted in the dioceses it would be able to impose its pastoral line.
At this point the Sisters wanted to return to Italy, to the Monastery of Pontano, but the earthquake of 2016 seriously damaged it and so it was impossible to return.
Obviously, this decision of the nuns, constituting yet another proof of the manipulative action of the leaders of the movement, has created a vacuum around our Benedictines, abandoned to themselves and deprived of any sustenance and support from the leaders of the Cammino.
The nuns seek hospitality in Italy, but the diocesan bishops and monasteries whom they have asked have given them a diffident refusal once they learn of the origin of the community from the ranks of the Neocatechumenal movement. Because of the problems caused in the dioceses and parishes by the Cammino, the Neocatechumenals no longer enjoy the enthusiastic welcome they received in the past, and this mistrust also affects the nuns, who are rejected precisely because of their origin.
Arrival in Italy
This then is the situation of the nuns, who arrive in Italy with the mark of infamy of having escaped the manipulations and heretical indoctrination of the powerful Spanish guru.
Their modernist approach, however, allowed the sisters to find hospitality in Pienza, where, in August 2017, Bishop Stefano Manetti welcomed them, in consideration of the fact that for years the diocese had witnessed the inexorable extinction of contemplative religious life.
Very happy to be able to have a female Benedictine monastery, Manetti temporarily gave them space to live in the summer seminary that was no longer in operation, took care of paying their utilities, and promised the sisters that he would find a suitable structure to become their definitive home, which was necessary for them to be able to canonically erect a monastery sui juris, that is, directly dependent on the Holy See.
Although Manetti did not keep his promise to find a suitable home for the sisters, in February 2019 he still managed to obtain permission from the Holy See for the erection of the Monastery sui juris. This appeared to be a real forcing of Canon Law, which provides as a condition for the erection of a Monastery sui juris that the community must own the building in which it is located. Manetti promised the sisters that he would personally guarantee their stability.
All this took place with the approval of the chapter of the nuns’ Monastery of origin. The process ended in 2019 with the election of the Abbess, Sister Maria Diletta of the Holy Spirit, who received the abbatial blessing from Manetti.
After a few months, Manetti offered them a nine-year loan contract, revocable without any reason, on the condition that the sisters provide for their ordinary and extraordinary expenses, as well as bearing the costs of the renovation and upgrading of the building. The religious were therefore faced with an inadmissible proposal, both because they lacked economic means and also because they were not actually protected for the future.
It is evident that the contradictory and wavering behavior of Manetti was used to force the nuns to leave, without officially expelling them. Why the curia was so interested in reclaiming the summer seminary would soon become clear.
At this point it is appropriate to recall that a Benedictine monastery sui juris, depending exclusively on the Holy See, is not required to join a “Federation,” that is, a group of monasteries that share a specific spiritual and governmental approach.
The Apostolic Constitution Vultum Dei Quærere, promulgated by Bergoglio on June 29, 2016, intervened to modify the practice established by Venerable Pius XII with the Apostolic Constitution Sponsa Christi Ecclesia of 1950.
This was the basis for the Cor Orans Instruction of May 15, 2018, which constituted the application of the new provisions on the suppression and federation of Monasteries. Needless to say, these two documents have as their purpose the demolition of the contemplative life and the progressive re-education of religious sisters, precisely by means of the federations.
Using the inexorable decimation of vocations as an excuse, Cor Orans makes it possible to unite the religious of several monasteries, ensuring that the assets of these monasteries – often consisting of prestigious historic buildings located in magnificent places – are confiscated by the Holy See.
The nuns thus find themselves torn from their spiritual family and sent to new communities, with the obligation of taking “refresher courses,” that is, indoctrination and “reprogramming,” outside the cloister. The more traditional communities are obviously the ones that are the most persecuted.
This clarification is necessary in order to understand how, once they arrived in Italy and were established in a Monastery with their own abbess, the nuns of Pienza showed extreme “flexibility” by making themselves available – although not having the obligation, since they were established in a Monastery sui iuris – to make contact with the existing federations so as to evaluate which of them was most suited to their charism.
The advent of the pandemic interrupted this process, especially after the lockdowns. But the work of devastation of Cor Orans continues inexorably, as evidenced by the undue pressure of the Holy See on the Monastery of Pienza, which, as has been mentioned, is not in the least obliged to join a federation since it is sui juris.
The problem, in fact, was created when Bishop Manetti chose this canonical form, but without guaranteeing its ownership of its own property, which is a condition for a Monastery sui juris. The transfer of Manetti and the appointment of Cardinal Lojudice – a friend of the vicar general and former rector of the seminary – must have led the bishop to try to settle a situation of irregularity before the arrival of his successor. In the decree of erection, Manetti declared:
Quote:In accordance with the canonical legislation in force, I erect in the diocese of Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza the Monastery of Benedictine Nuns […] in Pienza with all the privileges and spiritual graces that the other monasteries of the aforementioned Order legitimately enjoy, having provided for all the requests of the universal laws of the Church, especially with regard to the cloister, the sustenance of the nuns and their spiritual assistance. [Emphasis added]
But we know that this was not the case: the property of the Monastery was still owned by the diocese, and the sustenance of the Nuns by the diocese was limited to the payment of utilities. For this reason, the bishop cannot formalize their removal and limits himself to verbally exerting pressure on the sisters to leave.
The Discovery of the Ancient Rite
In 2020, thanks to a priest friend of the Monastery and to some providential meetings with figures linked to the world of tradition, the sisters “discovered” the Tridentine Liturgy, and Manetti applied the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in their favor, believing that the occasional celebration of the Mass in the ancient rite could help the community to definitively free itself from its Neocatechumenal formation.
The following year he contacted the Benedictine monks of Norcia to help the nuns on this journey. When Traditionis Custodes was promulgated, the bishop instructed some priests of Rome to ensure the Sunday celebration of Mass in the Tridentine rite, provided that it did not become their only liturgical form.
In the meantime, the sisters continued to look throughout Italy for a Monastery to which they could transfer, without success. Historical monasteries that are presently uninhabited are too expensive to live in, or need large amounts of restoration that a small group of nuns would not even remotely be capable of addressing.
On the other hand, the Benedictine communities with few nuns consider it problematic to welcome thirteen sisters, who would represent a sort of revolution for their quiet and regular life. The nuns then asked the bishop to leave them where they are, offering to take care of the payment of the utilities, until then only partially paid by the diocese since it was receiving a substantial reimbursement from the nuns.
The Arrival of the New Bishop
In April 2022 the news came of the transfer of Bishop Manetti to the episcopal chair of Fiesole. This decision of the Holy See led the bishop – perhaps in order to remedy a situation of grave canonical irregularity before the arrival of his successor – to verbally revoke the permission granted to the nuns to be able to avail themselves of the Tridentine Mass. From this moment on, Manetti did not even provide for their spiritual assistance, depriving them of Holy Mass – including Mass in the “ordinary form” – even on Sundays and Holy Days.
And that’s not all: in front of the sisters he declared that he never intended to expel them, but warned them that Don Antonio Canestri – who was still rector of the seminary even though it had been abandoned and converted into a Monastery, and who is also an old friend of the new bishop, Cardinal Lojudice – had every intention of getting them out of the way. Canestri then presented himself at the Monastery, with arrogance and intimidating tones, even to the point of violating the cloister by entering the cells of the Nuns and claiming ownership of the property. Canestri’s intention to make a profit is obvious.
Here is therefore explained, with all the evidence, that the disciplinary actions against the nuns were merely a pretext aimed purely at a financial operation, along the lines of the Monastery of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. On the other hand, a structure located on a hill overlooking the enchanting Val d’Orcia represents a succulent profit opportunity for the coffers of the Diocese and the Holy See.
Let me be clear: the economic and real estate question is the element that pushes many ecclesiastics to execute Cor Orans for the sole purpose of making money or ingratiating themselves with the Bergoglian court. But the true and deepest goal, the one that animates the entire action of this “pontificate,” is of an ideological bent: to normalize religious life to the new pauperist, migrationist, environmentalist, ecumenical, and synodal paradigm imposed by the junta of the Argentinian.
It is behaving no differently towards the faithful and traditional communities, which have seen the rights that the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI granted them in 2007 canceled or drastically reduced with Traditionis Custodes. In essence, it is as if a government incentivized companies to invest in certain sectors, and then as soon as they started to do so it forced them into bankruptcy by canceling or cutting incentives.
Needless to say, such an operation, as well as being cowardly and morally reprehensible, is not the result of inexperience or inability, but of a targeted desire to create as much damage as possible. If we then combine Cor Orans and Traditionis Custodes, the fate is inexorably sealed.
The aversion of Cardinal Lojudice towards the inconvenient sisters was not long in manifesting itself. On the occasion of his taking possession of the Chair of Pienza, the new bishop refused to allow them to receive Communion kneeling, humiliating them before the whole city by making them stand up and receive Communion in the hand, and in the sacristy he rebuked them, telling them that in their Monastery they could do as they wished, but that in public they had to conform to common practice (moreover in violation of liturgical norms, which allow the faithful to kneel and receive the Sacred Host on the tongue).
The Events Preceding the Apostolic Visitation
In September 2022 Lojudice informed the nuns that he wanted to come and visit them, coincidentally precisely in conjunction with their absence from the Monastery. When his secretary was informed that the sisters would not be present since they were going away for a spiritual retreat, he replied that their presence would be necessary because the cardinal’s visit was mainly aimed at making a real estate valuation estimate of the building.
I believe the order of priorities that animates the “pastoral” action of the Bergoglian bishops is evident: first business, then propaganda and photos posing with Roma and immigrants (which alone will have been enough to tickle Bergoglio), and then only if there is time remaining is attention given to the only contemplative community of the diocese.
The Dicastery for Religious acts no differently, engaged as it is in lucrative speculative operations with the sale of real estate, which it does not hesitate to make available by mowing down the few communities that survived the post-conciliar crisis of vocations.
The nuns of Pienza manage to postpone the visit of Lojudice to November 8. But on October 11, without any warning Mother Roberta (who would later turn out to be the visitor) showed up without warning at the door of the Monastery along with the Abbot of Pontida and a third person.
They found no one there, since the nuns were all on retreat in another region, and so this raid also failed. But on November 1 the Abbot of Pontida renewed the offensive, announcing an apostolic visit to the abbess and confirming that the sisters would be present on the following November 3.
The abbess then called Lojudice to find out if he was aware of the apostolic visitation. The cardinal denied knowing anything, but then contradicted himself by admitting that on October 11 he had accompanied the visitators who had presented themselves at the Monastery without announcing themselves. On that occasion the bishop pointed out that he had learned that the nuns had Mass celebrated in the ancient rite and that they had not yet entered any federation.
There are two things to keep in mind. First: the “traditional” conversion of the nuns. Second: their failure to join a Benedictine federation. As already mentioned above, the federations, after Bergoglio’s Cor Orans instruction, are being used as institutions of re-education and indoctrination to the new course of action. The fact that the Monastery of Pienza is sui juris, and therefore not required to federate, unleashed the fury of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, at the head of which is Cardinal Braz de Aviz, the one who, to be clear, on the occasion of a meeting with cloistered nuns to present to them the wonders of Cor Orans told them: “Treat your life as adults, not as adulterers!”
The Brazilian cardinal is assisted by the secretary Monsignor José Rodriguez Carballo, who is the main person responsible for the financial collapse of the Order of Friars Minor Franciscans – in whose events the “mysterious” death of two characters appears – of which Carballo had been minister general before being promoted by Bergoglio as secretary of the entire constellation of Orders and Religious Congregations of the Catholic Church.
On the other hand, what better task for a person who has proven corrupt and unable to manage the administration of his order? And what had the Order of Friars Minor invested in, if not in drugs and weapons? Let’s not forget that Carballo is involved both in this scandal and in the persecution, among others, of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, not only because of their conservative position but also for the sake of their conspicuous real estate, which the Holy See has not been able to appropriate only because it was registered to a civil association.
Just in the past few days it has been learned that Bergoglio has decided to expropriate – literally – the assets of ecclesiastical bodies, declaring them “the property of the Holy See as a whole and therefore belonging to its unitary, non-divisible and sovereign patrimony.”
As we can see, the fate of the nuns has slightly anticipated the fate of all the communities. Which means, in simple terms, that from now on – since the Pope is now the legal owner of all the goods of the Church – he can dispose of them independently, not only in order to sell them and make money, but even more importantly so as to have a juridical lever with which to blackmail convents, monasteries, dioceses, seminaries, and other institutes, which previously remained autonomous and free to make their own choices without fear of suffering extortion.
The practice of the Church has always protected the property of the goods of ecclesiastical entities, precisely to guarantee with it that necessary independence of means which is the premise of a free and conscious choice of fidelity to the Apostolic See. Bergoglio’s recent motu proprio – which seems to have been written by Klaus Schwab – reverses this situation, blackmailing religious orders and dioceses, with those modalities of transfer of sovereignty that in temporal issues characterize the coup d’état of the European Union, the WHO, and the World Economic Forum against governments.
I do not know if my Brothers in the episcopate and the superiors of the religious congregations realize what this decision of Bergoglio represents for them and for their independence, since they are now de facto deprived of all authority and reduced to mere officials at the mercy of the diktats of the Vatican.
The Apostolic Visitation
On November 2, 2022, one day before the date of the scheduled meeting, the Abbess of Pienza discovered that the Abbot of Pontida would be arriving shortly – that is, by surprise and with clear intimidating intentions. Any ecclesiastic knows that an apostolic visitation is a delicate event to be managed with great charity and by trying to make it the least traumatic as possible, since it is still an inspection of superiors and is implicitly motivated by serious reasons.
For this reason, it is to be judged, to say the least, imprudent to increase the pressure, with a community of young, cloistered nuns who have already been tried by the vicissitudes they have been exposed to so far, even to the point of presenting himself one day before, as if to take the nuns “by surprise.”
The two visitors, according to well-tested methods, acted with unscrupulousness, making use of duplicity and lies. The interrogations of the sisters were real torture sessions: they tried with every possible method to wear down the sisters psychologically, foment divisions, and take advantage of them to destroy the fabric of the community as well as the psychophysical balance and serenity of the nuns.
Next the Abbot of Pontida, Dom Giordano Rota, arrived at the Monastery. He is also – what a strange coincidence – consultor of the Vatican Dicastery for Religious, and therefore employed by Braz de Aviz and Carballo, who are notoriously corrupt and ultraprogressive. So then, we have: the visitor chosen by Rome, who is a progressive; Mother Roberta, who is a progressive; and the bishop, Cardinal Lojudice, who is a progressive.
All three, ça va sans dire are strictly pro-Bergoglian and aligned with the new course of action. The same goes for the sisters who would accompany them in the inquisitorial action against the poor nuns.
The visitators questioned all the religious, keeping them under pressure for up to an hour and a half. The questions speak for themselves:
“What would you do if you were abbess? What would you change about the community and the abbess? How do you see the future of the community? Why do you have the altar facing the wall? What is behind the recitation of the Pater Noster in Latin? What are those things on the altar [referring to the relics]? Do you know how much money you have? Didn’t you ask yourself why no federation or monastery wanted you? How did you choose who would go to Holland? Don’t you see that the building is not suitable for having the enclosure?”
Intimidating questions, in which we understand not only the preventive measures of the visitors, but also their aversion to the traditional charism as well as their ultimate goal: to have a pretext to close the Monastery and regain possession of the property; a goal that, as we have seen, had long been in the sights of the Vicar General and of Lojudice.
The apostolic visit – which had nothing “apostolic” about it whatsoever – ended on November 5, among other things catching the Visitators red-handed while secretly taking photos of the altar of the chapel – which faces the tabernacle and the cross – and of the products of the nuns offered in the entrance parlor as is done in many religious houses.
Obviously, to keep pressure on the poor religious, the visitators refused to specify either why they were sent by the Dicastery – since there was no serious fact that justified their presence – or to divulge any details of their final evaluation. These are both things that the visitators should have said, if only in the name of the much-vaunted Bergoglian parrhesia.
New intimidation and Incursions
Once this inspection was concluded, the cardinal’s visit scheduled for November 8 was postponed. On November 15, he presented himself with the vicar general, Don Antonio Canestri. As soon as he entered, he inquired if the nuns themselves prepared the jams offered for sale, saying that the mayor of Pienza had received rumors that they bought those jams at the supermarket and then resold them with the label of the Monastery.
To the indignant response of the religious, offended by this gratuitous and unjustified insinuation, the cardinal realized that he was discovered and accused them of being uncooperative and hostile. At this point the nuns asked him if he needed the building, and they were told: “Not for me personally, no.”
It should be emphasized that this insistence on asking questions about the products of the nuns has nothing to do with the apostolic visitation, and that it appears as a specious argument in the absence of valid canonical reasons.
Moreover, resorting to material issues involving the mayor exacerbated the situation by extending it to the civil sphere that until then had no right to intervene. In any case, the religious have not committed any irregularity by offering for sale jams, rosaries, candles, and other products made by them, in order to receive the liberality of their few benefactors and friends, which is necessary for their subsistence.
At noon on February 13, 2023, Don Raffaele Mennitti, the vicar for consecrated life of the Diocese of Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza and Don Paolo, Lojudice’s personal secretary, came to the Monastery and delivered a letter in a sealed envelope for each religious, stating that they did not know what the contents of the letter were. In my subsequent intervention I will examine the content of these letters sent by the Holy See to the Monastery.
That same afternoon, at 4 p.m., the two priests returned together with the president of the Piceno federation, Mother Vacca, and the vicar of the federation, Mother Di Marzio, who claimed that they needed to enter so that Vacca could speak with every nun.
At this point the Abbess, Mother Diletta, and all the sisters went out and declared that they did not consent to their intimidating and unannounced break-in. Mother Diletta was then ordered by Mennitti to “obey the Church.” She replied that they should be ashamed to abuse their power in this way and that the nuns were not required to obey iniquitous orders.
Not satisfied with the improvisation, the messengers of the curia and the Dicastery constrained some relatives of the sisters, trying to frighten them and induce them to convince the nuns to submit. Mennitti even took Mother Diletta by the arm, pulling her so that she would listen to him, claiming that their fears were unfounded.
The next day Mother Diletta found that she could not obtain money from the ATM, and she discovered from the bank that her delegation to operate the account of the Monastery has been revoked and replaced with a new one in the name of Mother Vacca.
The account with the miserable resources of the nuns – a mere six thousand euros ($6323) – was therefore in fact seized by authority, depriving the sisters of their very means of subsistence. And thank goodness that the solicitudes of the visitators were of a spiritual nature…
Probably informed of the facts, Manetti called Mother Diletta to put pressure on her, trying to understand if the visit the next day of Lojudice had any hope of success.
On February 16, Mother Vacca sent Mother Diletta a letter on WhatsApp in which she warned her to let her take possession of the Monastery, as ordered in the Dicastery’s communication, which in the meantime has been challenged by the sisters and therefore is considered suspended in its effects. Mother Vacca threatened serious canonical and civil consequences in case of disobedience.
The Recourse to the ‘Secular Arm’
On the morning of February 17, Manetti came to the monastery, along with Don Paolo, the personal secretary of Lojudice, Mother Vacca, the president of the Picena federation, Mother Di Marzio, the vicaress of the federation, Paolo Arcangioli, the marshal of the Pienza Carabinieri, and two other armed officers
The quick-thinking sisters took video footage of this surreal incursion, which even involved the help of the “secular arm.” The sisters’ canon lawyer has rightly noted, among other things, that such a recourse to the Carabinieri constitutes a violation of the norms of the concordat and is unheard of that – for a question that the curia insists on defining as the result of a misunderstanding – there was no hesitation to terrorize the sisters by bringing in the presence of the police.
On February 19, the diocese published its infamous press release, which was picked up and reprinted by Toscana Oggi and La Nazione. This statement, which is full of inaccuracies and omissions, ends with a directive that people should not give any financial support the Monastery. Aqua et igni interdictæ, that is, deprived of any support and help from other citizens as a consequence of the revocation of their citizenship, just as was done in ancient Rome. This is Bergoglio’s “church of mercy.”
And that’s not all: a few days later, the Carabinieri of Pienza called the relatives of the sisters to tell them that they would be summoned in order to gather statements about the Monastery, without making any formal notification. I don’t want to imagine who gave the order, or how the Carabinieri could have lent themselves to this grotesque inquisitory soap opera, even to the point of asking people not to tell anyone that they had called, precisely so as to further frighten the besieged nuns.
From the website of the ANSA news agency one further learns that a formal warning has been given to the Nuns by the Diocese of Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza, signed by attorney Alessandro Pasquazi. One wonders under what title this communication was sent to the news agency, since no notification of this warning has to date been presented to the sisters.
This is the latest act, at least for now, of a pièce that is halfway between a grotesque farce and a tragedy, whose actors are divided into victims and perpetrators.
The victims are the thirteen nuns. Victims because of their troubled past, in which they were able to grow spiritually and escape the pressures and obsessive interference of the establishment of the Neocatechumenal Way, thus arriving in Pienza; victims of the bureaucratic mess of Bishop Manetti, who established them as a Monastery sui juris even though they did not own their own property; victims of the desires of unscrupulous ecclesiastics, “guilty” of being a bothersome presence that impeded the economic ecploitation of the building that hosted them; victims of the ideological fury of the Bergoglians due to their drawing closer to the Tradition and their desire not to bow down to modernist indoctrination by denying fidelity to Our Lord and their own charism.
The facts that I have set forth can be verified; they are corroborated by incontestable proofs and confirmed by numerous testimonies. Their concatenation shows the premeditated nature of the attack on the sisters and allows us to guess what were the true purposes of those who attacked them, as well as what the specious excuses are with which they have attempted to draw attention away from the principal element of this entire affair: the absence of any true or justified reasons for proceeding against them.
Inventing new and unfounded accusations along the way will not be able to hide the fact that the apostolic visit is merely the umpteenth attempt – cloaked in an apparent respect for the canonical norms – to strike communities of contemplative life – and even more so if they are of a traditional bent.
In the second part of this essay we will see how these Vatican provisions are completely illegitimate and have no value under canon law.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
26 February 2023
Dominica I in Quadragesima
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| Academics Call For WWII-Style Rationing Of Food And Fuel To Stop Climate Change |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-28-2023, 07:35 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
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Academics Call For WWII-Style Rationing Of Food And Fuel To Stop Climate Change
ZH | FEB 28, 2023
As we have outlined outlined in detail many times in the past, there is little to no concrete evidence supporting the theory that man-made carbon emissions have any relevance whatsoever to weather and climate change. There is no evidence of a "climate crisis" and no evidence that human industry and agriculture makes a negative impact on the Earth's temperatures. There is no evidence that carbon emissions have a causation effect on global warming and no evidence to support "tipping point" theories that assert that a mere 1.5°C increase in temps will lead to environmental catastrophe.
Climate activists relying on a tiny time frame of around 100 years of our planet's weather history as evidence to support their claims while ignoring the millions of years of temperature changes that occurred without human input is alarming and anti-science. In fact, the Earth has been much warmer (and cooler) multiple times in its history that it is today suggests that people have very little influence on the climate in general.
Beyond the lack of scientific evidence in terms of carbon emissions and global warming, there is also the issue of political and social control rooted in climate laws. Right now in Europe the farming industry is facing bureaucratic Armageddon as governmental red tape and climate based taxation are set to make the growing of food impossible for a majority of farmers. UN and EU climate controls are being implemented now and will effectively destroy large portions of the EU economy, and the establishment wants to bring these same policies to the US.
Some people might argue that they are not farmers or captains of industry, so why should they care? The problem is that carbon controls will not be limited to businesses and agriculture; they will one day be present in your home.
A group of academic researchers now argues that in order to stop climate change (which has nothing to do with man-made carbon) every individual will have to accept restrictions on what they can buy, what they can eat and how much fuel and electricity they can use. In a paper titled 'Rationing And Climate Change Mitigation' the group asserts that a rapid reduction of global emissions is needed and that rationing similar to standards enforced during two world wars, and specifically those measures used during WWII, should be enforced again by governments. Only, this time rationing would not be in the name of supporting a war effort but in the name of fighting the phantom of climate catastrophe.
This is not the first time rationing for individuals has been suggested in relation to climate change, though. The World Economic Forum and the UN have long argued in favor of a micro-management approach to carbon controls, using the narrative of "individual carbon footprint tracking." Here, Alibaba president J. Michael Evans boasts at the WEF's Davos conference about "individual carbon footprint tracking" coming soon:
The creation of the climate crisis bogeyman is an obvious ploy for centralized authoritarianism in the name of "the greater good." It's a tiny minority of money elites and political elites fabricating the threat of an impending planet-wide disaster while paying groups of activist scientists billions of dollars to support the false claims. Then, these same elitists offer their own solution, which is to give them even more power to dictate every detail of the lives of average citizens while limiting our access to food, energy and other resources vital to survival (or rebellion).
This is about creating a world in which every individual is required to constantly justify their existence and prove they are worthy to the globalist machine. It is tantamount to emissions based slavery.
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| The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-28-2023, 07:30 AM - Forum: The Architects of Vatican II
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The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’
by John Vennari - 2012
The expression “hermeneutic of continuity” came into vogue with the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI.
On December 22, 2005, in his speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI laid out what would be the program of his pontificate. Usually a Pope will do this in his first encyclical, but informed commentators at the time observed that Pope Benedict appeared to lay out the program for his pontificate in this December 22 address, and not his first encyclical.
In this speech, it is clear that the pivotal principle that would be the program for his pontificate is the Second Vatican Council. (1)
![[Image: P001_Ratz-3.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_m-q/P001_Ratz-3.jpg)
Benedict's ecumenism with schismatics, heretics, Jews and Muslims contradicts the Magisterium prior to the Council
However, says the Pope, there has been a problem with the Council. Too many in the Church, he laments, approach the Council through a “hermeneutic of rupture” and a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” with the past. Thus, Pope Benedict says, many Catholics have approached the Council with an interpretation of rupture with the past.
The proper way to approach the Council, he insists, is through a “hermeneutic of continuity.” His basic claim — and this has always been his claim as Cardinal Ratzinger — is that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture with Tradition, but a legitimate development of it. We can find this legitimate development if we approach the Council through a hermeneutic — an interpretation — of continuity.
This gives the impression to many that Pope Benedict XVI plans a restoration of Tradition in the Church.
But this is not the case. Yes, Pope Benedict issued the Motu Proprio freeing the Tridentine Mass. This was a matter of justice for which he deserves credit, and it is something we could have guessed he would do, even based on his statements as Cardinal Ratzinger.
But the hermeneutic of continuity does not signal a return to Tradition. Rather, it is another attempt, first and foremost, I believe, to save Vatican II.
Vatican II is still his pivotal principle. The so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” approach will give us nothing more than a new synthesis between Tradition and Vatican II — a synthesis between Tradition and Modernism — which is not a legitimate synthesis.
Novel approach
Initially I want to focus on just one aspect that tells us from the beginning that the “hermeneutic of continuity” approach does not signal a true restoration of Tradition. This is the term itself. Pope Benedict does not employ the Traditional terminology for the preservation of Tradition, but has effectively invented a new expression: “hermeneutic of continuity”.
This is because his approach to Tradition is at odds with what the Church taught for 2000 years.
For example, Benedict XVI never says that the answer to the crisis in the Church is to return the admonition of Pope Agatho who said, “Nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.”(2)
Pope Benedict never says that the answer to today’s ecclesiastical chaos is to return to the formula contained in the Oath against Modernism, that the Catholic is bound to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another, different from the one which the Church held previously.”(3)
He cannot use terminology like this because it conflicts with the new teachings of Vatican II, with the new teachings concerning religious liberty and ecumenism. These new teachings are clearly “different from the one which the Church held previously.”(4)
When Pope St. Pius X was battling to maintain Catholic truth and Tradition, he did not come up with his own original phrase in the Oath Against Modernism. The terminology he employed is the ancient terminology of the Church, found in the writings of the Fathers, and enshrined in infallible dogmatic definitions that a Catholic must believe for salvation.
As far back as the 4th Century, St. Vincent of Lerins explained what constitutes the proper development of Catholic doctrine:
Quote:“But perhaps some will say: Is there to be no progress of religion in the Church? There is, certainly, and very great ... But it must be a progress and not a change. Let, then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each and all of individuals and of the whole Church, in all ages and in all times, increase and flourish in abundance; but simply in its own proper kind, that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one in the same sense, and one in the same judgment.”(5)
St. Vincent of Lerin’s teaching on Tradition was dogmatically and infallibly enshrined in Vatican I. This demonstrates that the exact same teaching on Tradition was maintained in the Church for more than 1400 years. Vatican I teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius:
Quote:“Hence that meaning (sensus) of the sacred doctrine must always be retained which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and we must never abandon that meaning under the appearance or in the name of a deeper understanding.”
Vatican I’s Dei Filius goes on to say that any authentic development in the understanding of doctrine “must proceed in its own class, in the same dogma, with the same meaning and the same explanation.” This is the same basic wording of St. Vincent of Lerins, unchanged for over 1400 years.
And this, as noted, was the wording Pope St. Pius X employed in his Oath against Modernism, wherein the man taking the Oath swears before God to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia).”(6)
Pope Benedict XVI never uses terminology like this. Even as Cardinal Ratzinger he never employed such terminology. The sad fact remains that Pope Benedict XVI and most of our modern Church leaders cannot even use traditional terminology when they claim they are trying to maintain Tradition, but come up with new phrases: “Reciprocal integration”(7) or “hermeneutic of continuity.”
The employment of this new phrase, along with his obvious commitment to the novel aspects of Vatican II such as ecumenism (8) and religious liberty, (9) tells us that as much as we would want it to be true, Pope Benedict XVI is not a Pope of Tradition. He will continue with the novel policies of Vatican II. It may not be in the same wildcat manner as his immediate predecessor. It may be a bit more subdued and refined, and perhaps, a bit more Traditional in appearance. Pope Benedict will even attempt more discipline in certain areas, specifically in liturgical matters, than ever did John Paul II.
But in the end — as far as doctrine — it is still Vatican II’s new orientation that will dominate. What we are commanded in Vatican I and the Oath against Modernism to believe the Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” as the Church always taught, will be neither mentioned nor reinforced.
Thus, no matter how many times we hear the expression “hermeneutic of continuity,” no matter how many times we are told that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture: the fact remains that Vatican II’s new approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty — and by extension, Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty (10) — is at odds with the traditional Magisterium of the centuries. Here we do not find continuity, but rupture.
Thus, and I say this with respect, I will not be enthused about any report that Pope Benedict XVI wishes a true return to Tradition, until we hear him employ the terminology for Tradition used for 1500 years; until we hear him call for a return to Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” of what the Church always taught.
1. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia offering them his Christmas Greetings, Thursday, December 22, 2005. Available on Vatican Webpage.
2. Apud Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, n.7.
3. Oath against Modernism, 1910. (emphasis added)
4. For example, the French Bishops made a formal statement in which they abandoned even the intention of fighting for the Social Kingship of Christ. The Bishops of France plainly said in the Dagens Report in 1997: “Without hesitation, we accept, as Catholics, to take place in the present cultural and institutional context, which is especially characterized by the emergence of individualism and by the principle of secularity. We reject any nostalgia for times gone by when the principle of authority seemed to be an unquestionable fact. We do not dream of an impossible return to what used to be called Christendom.” - Apud Fr. Alain Lorins, DICI, 2008: September 27/October 8 edition.
5. Apud Fr. Edward F. Hanahoe, S.A., “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, November 1962, Part II, p. 328. (emphasis added)
6. Dei Filius, Vatican I.
7. The new concepts of “Reciprocal Integration” and “Enrichment of Faith” were key principles of Pope John Paul II. See Fr. Johannes Dörmann, Pope John Paul II’s Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi, (Kansas City, Angelus Press, 2003), Part II, Volume 3, pp. 1-38.
8. One of the many examples of Pope Benedict’s new ecumenical approach. On August 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, he conducted an ecumenical meeting in Cologne, Germany. Here he said regarding ecumenism: “... this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity. ... To this end, dialogue has its own contribution to make.” This statement bears no continuity with what the Popes have taught for 2000 years, that the non-Catholic must convert to Christ’s one true Church for unity and salvation. Apud. Apostolic Journey to Cologne, On the Occasion of the XX World Youth Day. Ecumenical Meeting, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Cologne — Archbishop’s House: Friday, 19 August 2005. On Vatican webpage here (emphasis added)
9. Fr. Yves Congar openly admitted Vatican II’s new doctrine of Religious Liberty is a rupture with the past. Congar said, “What is new in this teaching in relation to the doctrine of Leo XIII and even of Pius XII … is the determination of the basis peculiar to this liberty, which is sought not in the objective truth of moral or religious good, but in the ontological quality of the human person.” Apud Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council (Angelus Press), p. 21.
10. For more examples of Pope Benedict’s novel ecumenical approach, see: “Assisi 2012: Religious Indifferentism on Parade” and “Common Mission and ‘Significant Silence’” (on Pope Benedict’s approach to modern Judaism). (all at www.cfnews.org )
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| Expanded Pre-1955 Hebdomada Sancta (Holy Week) Book Available |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-27-2023, 07:45 PM - Forum: General Commentary
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New Expanded Edition of Pre-55 Holy Week Congregational Book
![[Image: Screenshot%202023-02-25%20173541.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Q1iS3GLa1JMpF3Hu7ygpE4NKKgQaV91zApNCOcn6pD3dzIYdpxVqTbGJtaAuN3niM75eSdErelOm3269nG0WlMovXuwoLXBCfGfKVeHYy6OJOV33pwtcbUzBk476VV1tqh9VRqz_EN7fVOqWcbO9cgVNlljcPThHoPabuHPHA4PkY988VQ/s320/Screenshot%202023-02-25%20173541.jpg)
NLM | February 27, 2023
I’m pleased to announce the second revised and expanded edition of Roman-Seraphic Books’ Pre-1955 Hebdomada Sancta (Holy Week) congregational book, containing all the ceremonies and texts, in parallel Latin & English, with spiritual and historical commentary. The book also contains the pre-55 Vigil of Pentecost as well.
The Second Edition now including the full text of the offices of Tenebrae for the Sacred Triduum, alongside other appendices for Stations of the Cross, the Seven Sorrows, and more.
Nearly 400 pages and with full-color illustrations, the book is quite comprehensive yet printed in a font that is easy to read — truly a book that can be used by congregations year after year.
The Second Edition is available from Roman Seraphic Books (www.romanseraphicbooks.com) at a reduced price from last year, down to $24.97 (from $28.97). International shipping options and bulk orders available.
Roman-Seraphic Books aspires, over time, to preserve and spread the traditional (pre-55) liturgical books, as well as the books pertinent to the Franciscan spiritual patrimony.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre 1982: In the Heart of the Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-27-2023, 07:07 PM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - February 1982
The Role of the [traditional] Priestly Society of St. Pius X in the Heart of the Church
Conference Given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Buenos Aires, Argentina 13 August 1981
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is always a great joy for me to return to this beautiful Republic of Argentina. I'm already beginning to know the country, but unfortunately, I am not yet able to speak to you in Spanish and I will have to seek Father Faure's help to translate for me.
We know that many questions are being asked about my attitude in the Church, about my position in the Church. What is the attitude of Monsignor Lefebvre in the Catholic Church? What is the situation of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X in the heart of the Church?
I would like to be able to answer these questions in the most exact and correct manner. To do this I think we are obliged to consider briefly what the actual situation in the Church is, and in this way explain the reasons for our attitude and our position.
I think that finding myself before a select audience—before a profoundly Catholic audience—it will not be necessary for me to insist on what the situation in the Church was until Vatican Council II. It can be said, in a general way, that the Church, the men of the Church, such as they were during the time of Pope Pius XII, whom I knew personally when I was Apostolic Delegate for French Africa, were very different from what they are today. I had the opportunity to meet frequently with Pius XII every year for eleven years.
I can say that generally, in the Roman Congregations and in the Vatican, there existed a very profound sense of the Catholic Faith. They truly worked for the reign of the Faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ and for the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ—a reign over people, over families and over society.
Indeed, you know well that for four centuries great efforts have been made to fight against that Catholic doctrine, that Faith of the Church, but the truth is that when one went to the Vatican, he would find that the Catholic Faith was alive in all those Roman Congregations and there would be found considerable support, above all for a missionary bishop such as I was. At that time, if we needed to enlighten our faith on some point of doctrine, it was sufficient to consult the congregation of the Holy Office to obtain a precise and clear answer, in conformity with the Faith of the Church and its Magisterium. There was no hesitation!
In the same way, to know what kind of relations the Vatican wanted to maintain between the Holy See and civil societies, it sufficed to direct oneself to the Secretariat of State which had then, very clear and very precise principles before the states which were not Catholic regarding Catholic states. For example, I remember well that in General Franco's time, in Spain, Pope Pius XII used to tell me that never had there been realized an agreement so conformed to Catholic doctrine as the agreement reached with the Spanish government. To make such a statement was a most extraordinary thing for the Holy Father to do.
There was experienced then, in all these dominions the secular knowledge of the Church, just as the knowledge and protection of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary towards her children can be felt. When the principles of the relations between the Vatican and the states were facilitated by the Catholic Faith there were no difficulties in anything having to do with relations of the states with the Church. Regarding Her mission of saving souls, when the states were Catholic, the Holy See counted on the support of the chiefs of state, of whom She asked that Our Lord Jesus Christ be the one to reign in society. When the chiefs of state drew up a constitution they would provide in the first article that "the Catholic religion is the only one officially recognized by the state." In this way, what the Holy See wanted was accomplished: the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls, not in order to have a temporal influence in those states.
Concerning states that were not Catholic, for example Senegal, where I spent fifteen years as Archbishop over 3,500,000 inhabitants. There were 3,000,000 Moslems and 500,000 Animists, of which, happily, 100,000 were converted to the Faith. We were, consequently, a small minority. And what did the Church do in this case? She sent priests, bishops, religious men and women, brothers of the Christian schools—brothers who were dedicated to teaching the people, so that slowly, surely, those who did not believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, would be converted to the Church, would be transformed into Christians, even at the price of the blood of those preachers.
How many of these missionaries sent by the Church during the course of centuries have been massacred, massacred because they said that Our Lord Jesus Christ should be the King of people, King of society? These missionaries the Church has raised to Her altars and has considered them martyrs. In the same way the Church has raised to Her altars many saints, holy popes, holy bishops, holy priests, religious men and women, fathers of families, mothers of families, kings, queens, the poor. So did the Church show the example of these persons who had worked—each one in Her midst, who had worked in the course of their lives to sanctify themselves by the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to establish His reign in souls. All these kings and queens who have been canonized give us an extraordinary example which we would do well to adopt in our days.
How proud we could be to have in our day examples of kings and queens who would live like saints! What examples this would mean for the whole world! And that posture was conserved by the Church until the times of Pius XII.
But, unfortunately, we must recognize that something has changed in the Church. Of course, when I say the Church I am conscious of the fact that the Church cannot change, because the Church will always be eternal, holy, universal, catholic and apostolic. So that, when I speak of the Church, it is not realized or taken into account that I do not wish to attack the Church. I have an immense veneration for the Church and I think that I continue always working for the Church, as I did in the times of Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII.
But we cannot help recognizing that something important has changed in the Church.
If we go back to the first causes of the actual situation, if we look for the first author of these changes, we will meet the first enemy, the great enemy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His sworn enemy—Satan himself. The devil always fought against Our Lord Jesus Christ and he could have thought he triumphed at the moment of the Crucifixion, at the moment of Calvary but there he was also defeated, for which reason he went on attacking the Mystical Body of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church, and then, from the beginning, and for three centuries, there were thousands and thousands of martyred Christians who gave testimony of the Faith—of their faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then came the heresies, the schisms, the attacks against the Faith, the divisions brought to life by the devil and so, disgracefully, millions of Christians separated themselves from the Church. Satan also invented false religions which made the work of the missions difficult by making impossible the conversion of entire nations. That was the work of the devil for fifteen centuries, we can say, until the moment of the French Revolution.
Until that time the devil worked as an enemy of the Church, to destroy the Church from without and so he was able to take entire nations away from the Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ and bring them to the gates of hell. Afterwards, to be more sure in his attacks on the Church, which was defended by her children and governed by those who were called lieutenants of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Catholic princes, Satan attacked those same governments of the Catholic states and unleashed a persecution against those Catholic states which resulted in their no longer being Catholic states. The atheistic states, the states that did not profess any religion, persecuted the Catholic Church, which was then attacked by the same lay-states which had become anti-Catholic states. This constituted a considerable success for Satan within those states, those universities, those schools in which he formed generations imbued with liberalism, modernism, atheism, so that the moment arrived for Satan to take over those states. In the end, all Catholic homes allowed themselves to be penetrated by this climate.
Pope St. Pius X says in his first Encyclical of 1904:
Quote:"As of now the enemy is not outside of the Church but within the Church itself,"
and St. Pius X designates the places where the enemy is found: the enemy is in the seminaries, the enemy has infiltrated the seminaries, among the professors of the seminaries. This is clear! It is St. Pius X himself who says so!
Fifty years before this text from St. Pius X, Pope Pius IX showed the bishops the plan of the secret society and asked that the acts of the Italian secret societies be published. In these documents can be read:
Quote:"from now on we will penetrate the parishes and into the episcopates, and into the seminaries and so we will have parish priests, bishops and cardinals who will be our disciples, and from these cardinals we hope one day to have a pope, who will be imbued with our ideas and will not appear to have been elected by the secret societies. Thus the Christian people will think they are following the Chair of Peter and in its place they will follow us."
Fifty years later this satanic plan is realized, according to the same words of St. Pius X, and since then, since fifty years ago, in the fifty years following, not only secret societies revealed this plan and this acitivity, but even the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima and at LaSalette predicted that one day the enemy would mount to the highest positions in the Church. This means something very grave: that perhaps there will be no need to climb as high as the Holy Father but to the positions in command in the Church.
And so we come to Vatican Council II, in which those who were imbued with these modernist ideas would end up triumphant. I was witness, in particular, during a last session of the Advisory Council preparatory to the Council itself (I was a member of the Central Commission in which there were seventy Cardinals and twenty bishops, among which I was counted as President of the Episcopal Assembly of French Africa), to a violent discussion between Cardinal Bea and Cardinal Ottaviani about the document on religious freedom.
These two Cardinals confronted each other to such a point that Cardinal Ruffini (of Palermo) had to intervene, saying he was sorry to assist at such a serious discussion between two Cardinals, members of the College of Cardinals, and for this reason the only solution left was to appeal to the higher authority, that is to say, the Pope. In this session, Cardinal Bea entitled his thesis, "De libertate religiosa" ("About Religious Liberty"); on the contrary, Cardinal Ottaviani entitled it "About Religious Tolerance." This is how Cardinal Ottaviani defended the traditional thesis of the Church and Cardinal Bea, the liberal thesis. These two theses were submitted to a vote. The Cardinals voted and we proved, according to the results, that they were totally divided. Some were liberals and supported Cardinal Bea, and others were conservative and traditionalists and they supported Cardinal Ottaviani.
The result of this was, in agreement with what we have seen of the Council, that the liberals won. This cannot be denied. They were the ones who dominated in Vatican Council II, unfortunately, (disgracefully), with the support of His Holiness Paul VI. This was clearly appreciated when the names of the four moderators Pope Paul VI named to the Council were made known. These moderators were Cardinals Agagianiain, Suenens, Dopfner and Lercaro. Of these, only one was conservative: Cardinal Agagianian. He did not speak, but remained silent. He was a timid man, very discreet, who spoke little, he did not allow his influence to be felt. Cardinal Lercaro was the Bishop of Florence. His Vicar General in Florence was a member of the Communist Party. Cardinal Suenens, on his part, God only knows what he has done before and after the Council to extend his liberal ideas. For example: he gave conferences in Canada in favor of the marriage of priests. Cardinal Dopfner, on his part, kept his ecumenism very marked. He himself was saying that first came common prayer between Catholics and Protestants and then you could speak about doctrine. This made the majority of bishops who formed part of the Council follow the liberal minority, which, in fact, dominated in the Council. These were the three moderators of the Council, three moderators named by the Chair of Peter, and this shows what orientation the Chair of Peter had.
Several hours would be needed to be able to show you how the liberals dominated during the course of Vatican II. So that you can know this exactly, for yourselves, it seems opportune for me to advise you read a book by Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, which was originally written in English and was then translated into other languages, and where it is impartially shown, because its author was not, properly speaking, a traditionalist, the image of the battle which developed in the Council between the liberals and some conservatives who could still speak.
We cannot forget that Pope John XXIII expressly asked the Cardinals of the Roman Curia, who were without doubt the most traditional, not to intervene in the discussions of the Council. In fact, even though the Roman Cardinals integrated the commissions they no longer spoke. This was a very hard blow for the conservative groups who were keeping themselves faithful to the tradition of the Catholic Church, who were not innovators, who were not modernists.
We met in a small group after the second year of the Council: Monseigneur Sigaud, Monseigneur Corli (Bishop of Gaeta), Monseigneur Castro Meyer (Bishop of Campos), and I, and we began to work so that we would be able to unite bishops who could oppose themselves to this great danger which was presenting itself throughout the Church. There were never more than two hundred and fifty of us.
I would like to give you just one example of what the Council was: We did everything possible so that Vatican Council II would condemn Communism. Being a pastoral council (we should not forget that Vatican II was a pastoral council), that is to say, a council which has as its principal preoccupation the salvation of souls, which has as its object the destruction of the errors that menace souls, it was necessary, without doubt that this Council should be opposed to the greatest danger presenting itself in this age, as is Communism—a danger which extends itself throughout the world.
This Council, where 2,500 bishops responsible for the Catholic Church were meeting was not capable of formally condemning Communism.
We, on our part, made all the effort possible to have Communism condemned. So we managed to get 450 signatures to ask for this condemnation. Monseigneur Siguad and I went to see Monseigneur Felici, the Secretary of the Council, carrying in our hands the signatures we had gathered within the time specified by the internal regulations, so that this condemnation of Communism could be proposed to the Council Fathers. When Monseigneur Garrone who was the Postulator of the Council made reference to this document, he said that only one bishop had presented the possibility of having Communism condemned, even though we had gathered 450 signatures. He said, "I haven't heard anyone speak of this." We know that Monseignor Glorieux, who was one of the secretaries of the Council, made this list of signatures disappear so that we could not look for others to present to the Council Fathers.
Confronted with this situation we thought we would direct ourselves to the bishops from behind the Iron Curtain: Cardinal Wyszynski, Cardinal Beran and Cardinal Slypyi, who had been persecuted by Communism, who had been imprisoned. We thought that if we could get the support of these three Cardinals, we might be able to get close to a thousand signatures. The two of us then went to see Cardinal Wyszynski, Cardinal Beran and Cardinal Slypyi. We had prepared a project with a very careful format in Monseignor Carli's charge, in which the Council Fathers were asked to condemn Communism.
In the first place, we went to see Cardinal Beran, who at that moment was Archbishop of Prague. Cardinal Beran said,
Quote:"I am totally in agreement with you, I want to sign the document, but not alone. If I sign alone, the Communists will attack my family in Czechoslovakia. I want to sign, but I want other bishops, other cardinals, to support this position also because if we are many it will be much more difficult for them to attack me."
He finally signed, and we promised him that if no other bishop signed the declaration, we would return his signature. Then we approached Cardinal Slypyi who lived in the Vatican itself, behind the sacristy at St. Peter's. When we met him and presented him with the document, he said,
Quote:"I am totally in agreement with you. If there is an error we should condemn, it is Communism. You already know what my position is, but I am guest of the Vatican, and I'm sure that up there (pointing to the cupola of St. Peter's), they don't want Communism condemned. I know this very well."
Lastly, we went to see Cardinal Wyszynski, and not finding him in his rooms I spoke to him on the telephone. Cardinal Wyszynski said to me,
Quote:"Monseigneur, you know what my intervention was on that point at the Council. I asked at the Council that a complete document be drawn up to condemn Communism and nobody supported me; my proposition was rejected, and I no longer want to do any intervening."
We saw ourselves obliged to return Cardinal Beran's (Archbishop of Prague) signature. This is the true story of this document on the condemnation of Communism which was never approved by the Council. This example alone shows what Vatican II was, a Council in which 2,500 Fathers were gathered together which did not confront Communism, the major enemy of God, of the Church, of all spiritual principles. A Council which acts in this manner condemns itself.
I'm not going to insist any more about all those doings of the Council, of that pastoral Council which produced fruits which were, without a doubt, disastrous. After the Council, the liberals who had triumphed completely during it, occupied all the commissions that were in charge of bringing forth the proclaimed reforms. All the persons who directed these commissions, which were those in charge of putting everything into practice, all the congregations were in the hands of the modernists and the liberals. Even now, we can say, generally, that the Roman Congregations are in the hands of the modernists and the liberals who have succeeded those who have died.
Having shown what my attitude was, I return then to the questions I asked at the beginning of this conference. Are you amazed that someone condemns us? Are you amazed that the authorities of the Church persecute us, me in particular, who together with Monseignor Siguad and Monseignor Carli were, in a way, inside the Council, the spearpoint, of Catholic tradition and to the fidelity of the Church of always, of fidelity to the Church? Now that the chiefs of the Roman Congregations are those liberals who triumphed at the Council, it is evident that they will have as their objective the persecution of all traditionalists.
Of me, for example, who have formed a seminary which has been approved in the regular manner by the bishop of the diocese of the place and which has been constituted in agreement with all the canonical rules. The fact that the seminary should have been developed has disquieted them and they have prepared a kind of plot against it and against the Society which I have founded; a plot, definitely against us, to accomplish the suppression of the tradition of the Church. I don't think this can surprise anyone. We can affirm that they don't have enemies on the left, they only have enemies on the right. Time goes by and I would not like to tire you.
If I were to give you all the details of this plot and of the form in which the condemnation of my seminary and of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X was arrived at, you would be astounded. I give you just one detail: after the visit which took place at the Seminary at Ecône, Switzerland, by two monsignors sent from Rome, I was invited to that city by three Cardinals to give some complementary information. This meeting to which I was invited, did not constitute in any way an ecclesiastical court. It can be said that it was simply a visit in courtesy.
At the beginning of the interview, present at which were Cardinal Garrone, Cardinal Wright and the Spanish Cardinal Tabera, Cardinal Garrone asked me, "Monseigneur, will you permit us to record this conversation?" I told him that they could record it on the condition that they would afterwards give me a copy of same. He said, "Yes, of course, we will give it to you."
Nevertheless, having finished the conference, when I asked them for the copy of the conversation, they denied it to me. A second example that shows what this interview with the Roman Cardinals was: wanting to know who had named those Cardinals to interview me, if they constituted a commission, if it had to do with a particular initiative or was something that the Pope had ordered—and that I didn't know anything about, had no document, no official note and never had anything like it been done at the Vatican. I directed myself to Cardinal Staffa, who was the President of the Apostolic Assignment of the Roman Tribunal, and there I presented a recourse of complaint. I paid the fees which are demanded in the Roman Tribunal, so that I could present a complaint and I was given a receipt.
Once I did this, Cardinal Villot, who was at that time the Secretary of State, wrote a letter by his hand and in his own handwriting, to Cardinal Staffa, forbidding him to give me any document and ordering him to close the process immediately. In this way, we can see how the executive power injected itself into the sphere of the judicial power. Something which had never happened in the Church and it kept Cardinal Staffa from passing judgment on my complaint. In such a way that the Society, my seminaries and I, myself, were condemned without due process, without judgment, without documents and without being able to relate this condemnation to the visit of the two monsignors to Ecône.
I myself had the opportunity to tell Pope John Paul II (I had already told Pope Paul VI) that the form in which I had been condemned was worse than that used by the Soviets: at least they establish the farce of a tribunal; in my case, even that wasn't allowed. In fact, I should close my seminaries, immediately expel my seminarians who were at their studies in the middle of the year, and then dismiss all the teachers. You understand that a situation like this one can only be attributed to the occupation of the Church—the occupation of the Church by modernism which persecutes the traditionalists.
Remember the story of Cardinal Mindszenty? The way in which that Cardinal was treated by the Vatican can be considered ignoble. Cardinal Mindszenty, the hero of his people, who wanted to remain for many years in the selfsame Hungary, shut up in the United States Embassy to be near his people, was treated worse by the Roman Congregations, the Roman Curia, than he had been by the Soviets. Cardinal Slypyi is another example. He himself told me,
Quote:"I have been treated worse here, in Rome, than I was in Ukrainia."
One more example: Cardinal Wysznski. When he went into Rome he was watched, without being able to circulate freely around the city. All of this shows an absolutely ignoble persecution. Why? Because these three Cardinals were traditionalists. Then, when they tell us, "You should obey," we answer them,
Quote:"We don't want to obey the enemies of the Church. I do not want to obey those who destroy the Church. I do not admit it."
What Pope Paul VI entitled the "auto-destruction" of the Church is nothing else than what the self-same bishops and priests are realizing within the Catholic Church. I do not want to contribute to the destruction of the Church!
What I have just finished telling you is sad, but the Cardinals who are actually in Rome, whose names you certainly know, continue in this new policy, this new attitude of the Church, contrary to the tradition of Christ. Be it through the liturgy, through teaching, through the catechism, through the general policy of the Church before states and civil societies, a completely new orientation has been imposed. Everything has changed in the Church.
In the liturgy it is very clear. All our sacraments have been overthrown and subverted, all the old books have been suppressed and replaced by new books. This is not treating of a reform like that of St. Pius V, which had as its objective to remove from the Mass the additions made during the years which were precisely not in agreement with Tradition. The reform of St. Pius X had the same sense: elements were removed which had been acquired in preceding years which were not very conformed to Tradition, so as to return to that Tradition. But here one treats of the suppression of Tradition, of a new concept of the Mass, a concept which is more Protestant than Catholic, which was accomplished through the presence of six Protestant pastors who were called to transform our Mass.
It's a new thing in the treatment of the Mass, of the Holy Mass of always: to call six pastors so that they came to change it. What could these Protestants say when they were asked: "What would you like us to change in the Mass?" but to align our liturgy with the Protestant liturgy. This is the sense of the dialogue which is so much spoken of, a very grave attitude which responds to a general principle, to consider the religion of others as true as ours. Consequently, to consider that the Catholic religion is not the only religion through which one can be saved, the only divine religion, founded by God, founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, with a perfectly different orientation from the others—it is inconceivable!
The Church itself has asked the states to not be Catholic states any more, to suppress the first articles of their constitutions, which say: 'The Catholic religion is the only religion recognized by the State." It is the Holy See itself which has asked this of the different states and it is because of this that there are no more Catholic states. That is finished. Because the Holy See desires that all religions be recognized equally in all the states, that all religions be equal. This is a completely new orientation for the Church. Never has the Church accepted, never has the Church taken this stand. The Church has never accepted that Our Lord Jesus Christ be put on an equal footing with Buddha, Luther and all those founders of false religions.
From the political point of view, you know well, you know perfectly, in almost the whole world, the Episcopates positively favor the Communist revolution and socialism.
In France, the election of Mitterand was owed to a large degree to the efforts of the bishops and priests who asked the faithful to vote in socialism. Result: we have four Communist ministers and this with the support of bishops and clerics. It's unimaginable! Rome did not intervene to prevent this socialist government from taking hold in France. A government, that is, in its deeds, militantly atheistic and which will monopolize all the teaching and which, consequently, will have all the Catholic schools in its hands.
When I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico last January, the Mexican Episcopate published a document which expressly approved of the revolution in El Salvador, to the point of asking that the Mexican Catholics contribute—be it with arms to go and fight against the government, be it with money to help the revolution. Where are we going? What Church is this? They tell us: "You disobey!" But, should we obey? Could it be that these bishops represent the Church? Without a doubt, there are still good bishops and these bishops are persecuted. You have an example in your homeland—Monsignor Tortolo, who never became Cardinal and who could well have been the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. The case of Monsignor Morcillo, Archbishop of Madrid, whom I know very well, consitutes another example. Monsignor Morcillo was never a Cardinal. They used to tell him, "You can't be a Cardinal because the primary diocese in Spain is the diocese of Toledo, therefore being a Cardinal corresponds only to the Bishop of Toledo." Immediately after the death of Monsignor Morcillo, Monsignor Tarancon who was the Archbishop of Madrid, was raised to the cardinalate. All the secretaries of the Council were named Cardinal, but Monsignor Morcillo, also a secretary, never was.
Cardinal Siri, who was President of the Italian Episcopal Conference was stripped of his office only one month after the election of Paul VI. We have to say that there are enemies of the Church who have occupied the Church. The Church is occupied!
You know Cardinal Pironio very well. A Cardinal who, having the ideas and attitudes he does, was named President of the Congregation for Religious. Another example, Cardinal Knox. A Cardinal who is, in fact, sacrilegious. During the Eucharistic Congress at Melbourne (at that moment I was in Australia, although I did not assist at the Congress), the so-called "Kamburu Mass" took place. What is a "Kamburu Mass"? He made the primitive population who live in the interior in Australia come. Men dressed in a manner you can just imagine, who danced on the platform which had been prepared for the Mass, next to the altar; they danced their primitive dances while the words of Consecration were being pronounced. What this man did is a sacrilege, and this man was named Prefect of the Congregation of Rites. What can this man do before such a Congregation?
Cardinal Baggio, for example, who was Apostolic Nuncio in Chile, and had to abandon the country for reasons not very favorable to him (you have only to ask the government of Chile what those reasons were), it's he who is now in charge of the naming of bishops!
Cardinal Casaroli, actual Secretary of State, can be found on the list of the Masonic Lodge P2 which is published by the newspapers. I'm not the one who says so, it's the Italian newspapers.
How can it be conceived that the Church continue its work of sanctification by means of those men? While they are at the head of the Church, we traditionalists will always be persecuted, and the Church will continue its auto-destruction.
I conclude. On our part, we have already chosen and we will not change that choice. We want to follow the Church that has always been. We want to remain faithful to the 250 popes who have defended Tradition and the Catholic Faith. We want to continue the priesthood in the Church and it is for that reason that we will continue to ordain priests in spite of the prohibition from Rome. We want to ordain true priests so that they can continue praying the true Mass, throughout the world and the length of history. This is indispensable.
All those liturgical reforms have been made by that evil spirit of ecumenism, of false ecumenism. It is because of this that the Faith has disappeared and that there are no longer any vocations. I have had the joy of already ordaining more than one hundred young priests, members of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X.
In October, we will have 270 seminarians, seminarians who belong to the five seminaries which have been founded in only ten years. You know that we have actually begun the work of a seminary here, in the Argentine Republic, forty kilometers from Buenos Aires, the La Reja neighborhood, where we already have twenty vocations, without counting the seminarians who, having completed their year of spirituality in the Argentine seminary, are now continuing their studies at Ecône, at Albano, or those having a monastic vocation are following it at Bedoin and San Michel-en-Brenne, France.
This [Argentine] seminary is under the particular care of Reverend Father Michel Faure and its director is Father Morello. We want to build a seminary capable of sheltering 120 seminarians, who will come from all the countries of Spanish America, to continue that priesthood of which I am speaking to you, to continue the Catholic Faith in these lands. Where will your children go if they no longer have Catholic schools? Because in the Catholic schools that actually exist, they are taught principles contrary to the Faith.
We have made our choice. We will not change it because we want to be Catholic. We want to die Catholics.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Dominicans of Avrillé: Holiness in the Family - Sincerity and Lies |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-27-2023, 11:22 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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HOLINESS IN THE FAMILY
Sincerity and Lies
by Brother François-Marie O.P.
from “Le Sel de la Terre” 120 (Spring 2022)
“Lord! Who will dwell in your tabernacle? Who will rest on your holy mountain [Heaven]? He who speaks the truth in his heart and has not deceived in his words” (Ps 14)
IT IS OF THE HIGHEST IMPORTANCE, if we want to lead to Heaven the children whom the good Lord has entrusted to us, to take care to educate them, from their earliest years, in the practice of the virtues that make them good, that is to say, similar to God who is infinite Goodness.
We will begin these talks with the virtue of truthfulness or sincerity, which goes hand in hand with the flight from the opposite vice: lying
Sincerity
The Truth
God created us in his image. He gave us the word to imitate him.
Just as God has an eternal word, the Word, which is the true expression of the eternal wisdom of the Father and therefore the absolute Truth, so we have our Word, which must be the true expression of our thought. When we do this, we are truly imitators and children of God.
Truth is what is. Every word must be the expression of what is, that is, of the truth.
We may be insincere in our dealings with God: in our self-examination, in confession, in prayer, in our inner conversation with him, but we will not be able to deceive him, for God knows everything. We will be the main victims of this lie.
The same is not true of our neighbor. He can be deceived, and both justice and charity require that we be true to him, so that he will not be deceived either by our words or by our actions.
The Benefits of Sincerity
The sincerity of children does honor to the parents and greatly facilitates the work of education. We have a good example of this good habit in the children of the Barbedette family, whose eldest child was 12 years old at the time of the apparitions in Pontmain (France) on January 17, 1871:
Knowing that her children were not in the habit of lying, Mrs. Barbedette asked them to describe what they saw, then after some time, disconcerted by the fact that she saw nothing, but not questioning their word, she sent for the sister teacher to verify, then the priest.
These parents, profoundly Catholics, had succeeded in giving their children the habit of sincerity. It allowed the inhabitants of the village, all grouped behind their parish priest, to believe in the reality of the apparition, to react promptly to the expectation of the Virgin Mary, that is, to pray. The result was to stop the advance of the German army.
How to Develop Sincerity in Children
There are three ways:
a) Give the Example
* By never deceiving children.
We set the stage for lying every time we promise things – rewards or punishments – and then fail to keep our word, because we have spoken too quickly, impatiently or thoughtlessly.
If these failures are repeated frequently, children learn that words can be different from actions.
* By setting an example of truth, especially where it costs.
This doesn’t have to be in words, but in actions. Children who see a parent scratch a car while parking and leave without saying anything will probably not learn a good lesson from it; likewise if, at the entrance to a museum, they hear him lie about the age of one of them in order to benefit from the reduced rate.
In this area, small and seemingly insignificant mistakes can have serious consequences on a child’s conscience, and he or she will conclude that lying is allowed whenever it is useful. He will immediately make applications, the seriousness of which he alone will judge, and the parents will know nothing about it, or too late.
b) Inspire a Deep Esteem For Sincerity
* By praising this virtue often, and by making it admired when good examples allow it.
* By blaming the lie.
* By stating loud and clear that we will be proud to have children who practice this virtue.
Be concerned with truth to the point of detail. When your children tell their “adventures”, help them to tell things accurately down to the smallest detail, correcting their exaggerations or confusions.
c) Encourage the Sincerity of Children
* By faith. Jesus is the Truth. He knows all, he sees all. If you love the truth, you will be a friend of Jesus. If you lie, you become a friend of the devil who is the father of lies.
* By discretion.
One should never make fun of the scruples and ingenuity of children, nor make them known to others. The child who sees his confidences betrayed will close his heart definitively.
In a delicate matter, avoid questions that show our doubt or ignorance too clearly. Still not very virtuous, because of his age, the child who understands that he can lie with impunity will easily give in to temptation.
What to do then? As much as possible, get information from other sources by doing a little investigation. When you have enough information to know what happened, you can help the child practice truthfulness. If the evidence is not specific enough and the mistake is not serious, it is better to look the other way than to destroy trust.
* By the remission of the punishment.
The child must see the difference in treatment between an admitted and an unconfessed fault. If he is to be punished, he must not be given the impression that the cause of his grief is his sincerity, for he will never again confide in anyone.
However, if the offence requires it, it must be repaired, but with kindness, so that he feels appeased and even happy to have told the truth. It is sometimes possible not to punish at all, but this should be the exception.
The Lie
The Eighth Commandment: “Thou Shall Not Lie”.
God’s commandments are based on God’s nature and on our own. They tend to make us a living image of our Creator, making us good, virtuous and ultimately, happy.
As God is the supreme Truth, nothing is more contrary to Him than lying; this is why He absolutely forbids it by the eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not lie”, in order to prevent man from insulting his Creator. Indeed, every lie being the negation of a truth, tends to deny God, the supreme Truth. That is why no one must lie.
This is the negative part of the commandment which, like all the others, also has a positive part, commanding us to tell the truth. An effective education should not be limited to prohibitions, but should emphasize what is ordered for the good of the child: this is why we began this talk by talking about the virtue of truthfulness.
Lying In General
St. Augustine aptly defines lying by saying that it consists in speaking against one’s own thought in order to deceive.
a) Two Conditions Are Necessary For a Lie To Exist:
* expressing things one does not think ‑ whether they are true or false. Saying something that is false but believed to be true is not a lie, but a mistake. On the other hand, one can lie by saying something that is materially true, but which one believes to be false.
* intend to deceive. Fabulous or romantic stories, ironic jokes expressed by antiphrasis or obvious exaggeration are not lies as long as they do not aim to deceive.
b) Lying Has a Triple Evil:
* It harms the liar, who degrades himself by taking away something of his likeness to God. The liar makes himself guilty, both before God and before his own conscience. Lying can lead to blindness and damnation.
He who gets used to telling small lies as a child, whatever the reason, will tell bigger ones as an adult: he will lie in his commitments, in his business, etc.
* The liar deprives his neighbor of the truth. He makes him take the false for the true, which can lead to great damage and great faults.
* The liar offends God in the person of his Word who said: “I am the Truth” and honors, in his place, Satan the father of lies.
The Lie in Society Today
In the 18th century, one of the “great ancestors” of our republican and anti-Catholic (French) society, the ill-fated Voltaire wrote:
“Lying is a vice only when it does harm; it is a very great virtue when it does good. So be more virtuous than ever. You must lie like a devil, not timidly, not for a time, but boldly and always. Lie, my friends, lie, I will return it to you on occasion.” [Letter to Thiériot, October 21, 1736].
The motto had many followers, in politics, in economics, in education, in the press, and in morality.
In the 20th century, Marxism used lying as a battle tactic and made it a “virtue,” extolled in its “catechism” for its militants. In the 21st century, we are told that we have entered the “post-truth” era, that is, no objective truth is admitted anymore. The official discourse is constructed according to the ideology of the time, according to the objectives to be achieved, whether they be military, educational, political or scientific. One must see in this perspective the insistence on the Darwinist theory of evolution, on global warming due to CO₂, on the health crisis, etc.
Lying In Children Today
The child is naturally sincere; he speaks as he thinks and spontaneously corrects what seems to him to be contrary to the truth. Mental restriction, dissimulation, deceit, and hypocrisy are not usually the work of the child. This tendency to truth, which is fundamental, is however wounded by original sin and can be wounded even more by the environment and education.
All educators know that most children lie by the time they are old enough to be reasonable. Of course, it is usually not in serious matters, but children who never or almost never lie are very rare.
It seems that this ailment has become more common than it used to be. This means that even in the best families, something has been missed in early childhood education. We reported above the example of the Barbedette children in Pontmain in 1871. Let us cite here two other examples:
Lucia of Fatima in 1917 never lied, even when her mother beat her to force her to say she had not seen the Blessed Virgin.
That of Jacqueline Aubry, the little visionary of Ile-Bouchard (France) in 1947: her parents rarely practiced and there was no family prayer, however her mother could testify that her daughter had never lied, that is why she believed her when she told the vision of the Holy Virgin.
What To Do When You See That The Child Is Lying
* If it is the first time, we must mark our surprise, our sorrow with gravity.
* If the child reoffends, he should be kept in disgrace by limiting relations with him to what is strictly necessary. Examples from the Scriptures should be used to show the severity of God’s punishment for lying, such as the story of Ananias and Sapphira in the Acts of the Apostles.
What Are The Main Reasons Children Lie
* Fear: this is the most common. The child has done something wrong, for example, broken an object, not learned a lesson or cannot do an assignment; fearing to be scolded or punished, he/she chooses the easy way out that seems to solve the problem, by telling a lie, or even by cheating in class if it is an assignment.
The point is that the child would rather go out and play than complete a task or service. If asked the question, “Have you finished?” In games, children cheat because they want to win.
* Vanity: to show off, he magnifies what is to his advantage, he diminishes or denies what would make him look bad.
We see that the child lies because his virtue is weak. Certainly, he has the infused virtues that accompany sanctifying grace, but he does not sufficiently possess the acquired virtues, which are formed by the repetition of virtuous acts. He reacts “naturally”, in most cases. He lacks humility, courage, generosity, love of justice, and therefore frankness, sincerity and loyalty.
Three Remedies For Lying Children
1. It is necessary to inculcate, from the earliest age, the love of truth, explaining to children that Jesus is the Truth itself, and that, in order to be a friend of Jesus, one must always tell the truth. Jesus, being God, sees all and knows all; we cannot hide anything from him. If one does not tell the truth, one is a friend of the devil. Moreover, it is cowardly to lie.
2. If you discover that something wrong has been done, do not ask your child questions in an angry, threatening tone, but encourage him to tell the truth and assure him that a frank confession will earn him forgiveness. If your child is loyal, do not punish him or her, but encourage him or her to make amends (these are two different things). This will eliminate lying out of fear. The child accepts the consequences of his misdeeds very well because he has a sense of justice, and generally there is no malice in most of his faults. He will gladly make amends, for example by doing a favor.
3. Point out to the child how much peace his or her soul feels when he or she has told the truth. Some time ago, in a school, a small group of children had damaged the bottom of a plasterboard wall, already damaged by humidity and by a few kicks. The next day, after the prayer, the director asked that the culprits come forward, assuring that they would not be punished, but would have to repair the damage by doing some services. The perpetrators of this degradation promptly denounced themselves, and diligently carried out the requested repairs. Of course, the parents had to bear some of the costs. But each child became aware of the consequences of his or her own stupidity, either by accompanying the father to repair the damaged wall, or by contributing to the costs with his or her piggy bank, or by rendering compensatory services at home.
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| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for the First Week of Lent |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-27-2023, 08:32 AM - Forum: Lent
- Replies (6)
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God is merciful! Yes; the mercy of God is infinite; but with all that mercy, how many are lost every day! I come to heal the contrite of heart! God heals those sinners who have a good will. He pardons their sins, but He cannot pardon their determination to go on sinning.
I.
The sinner says: But God is merciful. I reply: Who denies it? The mercy of God is infinite; but with all that mercy, how many are lost every day! I come to heal the contrite of heart. (Is. lxi. 1). God heals those who have a good will. He pardons sin; but He cannot pardon the determination to sin. The sinner will reply: But I am young. You are young: but God does not count years, but sins. And this reckoning of sins is not the same for all. In one, God pardons a hundred sins, in another a thousand, another He casts into hell after the second sin. How many has the Lord sent there at the first sin! St. Gregory relates that a child of five years old was cast into hell for uttering a blasphemy. The Blessed Virgin revealed to that great servant of God, Benedicta of Florence, that a girl of twelve years old was condemned for her first sin. Another child of eight years sinned, and after his first sin, died and was lost. We are told in the Gospel of St. Matthew, that the Lord immediately cursed the fig-tree the first time that He found it without fruit, and it withered: May no fruit grow on thee forever! (Matt. xxi. 19). Another time God said: For three crimes of Damascus, and for four, I will not convert it. (Amos i. 3). Some presumptuous man may perhaps ask the reason of God why He pardons three and not four sins. In this we must adore the Divine judgments of God, and say with the Apostle: O the depth of the riches, of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! (Rom. xi. 33). St. Augustine says: "He well knows whom He pardons and whom He does not pardon; when He shows mercy to any one, it is gratuitous on His part; and when He denies it, He denies it justly."
The obstinate sinner will reply: But I have so often offended God, and He has pardoned me; I hope, therefore, He will pardon me this other sin. But I say: And because God has not hitherto punished you, is it always to be thus? The measure will be filled up, and the chastisement will come. Samson, continuing his wanton conduct with Dalila, hoped nevertheless to escape from the hands of the Philistines, as he had done before; I will go out as I did before and shake myself. (Jud. xvi. 20). But that last time he was taken, and lost his life. Say not, I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? Say not, says the Lord, I have committed so many sins, and God has never punished me: For the Most High is a patient rewarder. (Ecclus. v. 4). That is, the time will come when He will repay all; and the greater His mercy has been, so much the greater will be the punishment.
When I am tempted, O my merciful God, I will instantly and always have recourse to Thee. Hitherto I have trusted in my promises and my resolutions, and I have neglected to recommend myself to Thee in my temptations; and this has been my ruin. No; from this day henceforth Thou shalt be my hope and my strength; and thus shall I be able to accomplish all things. Give me the grace, then, through Thy merits, O my Jesus, to recommend myself always to Thee, and to implore Thy aid in my necessities. I love Thee, O my Sovereign Good, amiable above all that is amiable, and Thee only will I love; but Thou must help me. And thou also, O Mary my Mother, thou must help me by thy intercession; keep me under the mantle of thy protection, and grant that I may always call upon thee when I am tempted; thy name shall be my defence.
II.
St. Chrysostom says, that we ought to fear more when God bears with the obstinate sinner than when He punishes him: "There is more cause to fear when He forbears than when He quickly punishes"; because, according to St. Gregory, God punishes more rigorously those whom He waits for with most patience, if they remain ungrateful: "Whom He waits for the longer He the more severely condemns." Often, adds the Saint, do those whom He has borne with for a long time die suddenly at last, without having time to be converted: "Often those who have been borne with a long time are snatched away by sudden death, so that it is not permitted them to shed a tear before they die." Especially, the greater the light which God has given you has been, the greater will be your blindness and obstinacy in sin: For it had been better for them (said St. Peter) not to have known the way of justice, than after they had known it, to turn back. (2 Peter ii. 21). And St. Paul said, that it is impossible (morally speaking) for a soul that sins after being enlightened to be again converted: For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift ... and are fallen away, to be renewed again unto penance. (Heb. vi. 4, 6).
Terrible, indeed, is what the Lord says against those who are deaf to His calls: Because I have called and you have refused ... I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared. (Prov. i. 24, 26). Take notice of those two words, I also; they signify that as the sinner has mocked God, confessing, promising, and yet always betraying Him, so the Lord will mock him at the hour of death. Moreover, the Wise Man says: As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly. (Prov. xxvi. 11). So he who relapses into the sins he has detested in Confession, becomes odious to God.
Behold me, O my God, at Thy feet. I am that loathsome sinner who so often returned to feed upon the forbidden fruit which I had before detested. I do not deserve mercy, O my Redeemer; but the Blood Thou hast shed for me encourages and compels me to hope for it. How often have I offended Thee, and Thou hast pardoned me! I have promised never again to offend Thee; and yet I have returned to the vomit, and Thou hast again pardoned me. Do I wait, then, for Thee to send me straight to hell--or to give me over to my sins which would be a greater punishment than hell? No, my God, I will amend; and that I may be faithful to Thee, I will place all my trust in Thee.
Spiritual Reading
SAY NOT: "I HAVE SINNED AND WHAT EVIL HATH BEFALLEN ME?"
If God chastised sinners the moment they insult Him, we should not see Him so much despised. But, because He does not instantly punish their transgressions, and because, through mercy, He restrains His anger and waits for their return, they are encouraged to continue to offend Him. For, because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evils without any fear. (Eccles. viii. 11). But it is necessary to be persuaded that, though God bears with us, He does not wait, nor bear with us forever. Expecting, as on former occasions, to escape from the snares of the Philistines, Samson continued to allow himself to be deluded by Dalila. I will go out as I did before, and shake myself. (Jud. xvi. 20). But the Lord was departed from him. Samson was at last taken by his enemies, and lost his life. The Lord warns you not to say: I have committed so many sins, and God has not chastised me. Say not: I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for the Most High is a patient rewarder. (Ecclus. v. 4). God has patience for a certain term, after which He punishes all your sins; the first and the last. And the greater has been His patience, the more severe His vengeance.
Hence according to St. John Chrysostom, God is more to be feared when He bears with sinners than when He instantly punishes their sins. And why? Because, says St. Gregory, they to whom God has shown most mercy, shall, if they do not cease to offend Him, be chastised with the greatest rigour. The Saint adds that God often punishes such sinners with a sudden death, and does not allow them time for repentance. And the greater the light God gives certain sinners for their correction, the greater is their blindness and obstinacy in sin. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than, after they had known it, to turn back. (2 Pet. ii. 21). Miserable the sinners who, after having been enlightened, return to the vomit. St. Paul says, that it is morally impossible for them to be again converted. For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated--have tasted also the heavenly gifts, ... and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance. (Heb. vi. 4).
Listen, then, to the admonition of the Lord: My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more, but for thy former sins pray that they may be forgiven thee. (Ecclus. xxi. 1). My child, add not sins to those which you have already committed, but be careful to pray for the pardon of your past transgressions; otherwise, if you commit another mortal sin, the door of the Divine Mercy may be closed against you, and your soul may be lost forever. When, then, the devil tempts you again to yield to sin, say to yourself: If God pardons me no more, what shall become of me for all eternity? Should the devil, in reply, say: "Fear not, God is merciful," answer him by saying: What certainty or what probability have I, that, if I return again to sin, God will show me mercy or grant me pardon? Behold the threat of the Lord against all who despise His calls: Behold I have called and you refused ... I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared. (Prov. i. 24). Mark the words I also; they mean that, as you have mocked the Lord by betraying Him again after your Confession and promises of amendment, so He will mock you at the hour of death. I will laugh and will mock. But God is not mocked. (Gal. vi. 7).
O folly of sinners! If you purchase a house, you spare no pains to get all the securities necessary to guard against loss; if you take medicine, you are careful to assure yourself that it cannot injure you; if you pass over a river, you carefully avoid all danger of falling into it; and, for a transitory enjoyment, for the gratification of revenge, for a brutal pleasure, which lasts but a moment, you risk your eternal salvation, saying: "I will go to Confession after I commit this sin!" And when, I ask, are you to go to Confession? You say: "Tomorrow." But who promises you tomorrow? Who assures you that you shall have time for Confession, and that God will not deprive you of life, as He has deprived so many others, in the act of sin? "Are you sure of a whole day," says St. Augustine, "and you cannot be sure of an hour?" You cannot be certain of living for another hour, and you say: "I will go for Confession tomorrow!" Listen to the words of St. Gregory: "He who has promised pardon to penitents, has not promised tomorrow to sinners." God has promised pardon to all who repent; but He has not promised to wait till tomorrow for those who insult Him. Perhaps God will give you time for repentance, but perhaps He will not. But, should He not give it, what shall become of your soul? In the meantime, for the sake of a miserable pleasure, you lose the grace of God, and expose yourself to the danger of being lost forever.
Would you, for such transient enjoyments, risk your money, your honour, your possessions, your liberty, and your life? No; you would not. How, then, does it happen that, for a miserable gratification, you risk your soul, Heaven and God? Tell me: Do you believe that Heaven, Hell, Eternity, are Truths of Faith? Do you believe that, if you die in sin, you are lost forever? Oh, what temerity, what folly, to condemn yourself voluntarily to an Eternity of torment with the hope of afterwards reversing the sentence of your condemnation! "No one," says St. Augustine, "wishes to fall sick with the hope of getting well." No one can be found so foolish as to take poison with the hope of preventing its deadly effects by adopting the ordinary remedies. And you will condemn yourself to hell, saying that you expect to be afterwards preserved from it. O folly! which, in conformity with the Divine threats, has brought, and brings every day, so many to hell. Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, and evil shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know the rising thereof. (Is. xlvii. 10). You have sinned, trusting rashly in the Divine mercy; the punishment of your guilt shall fall suddenly upon you, and you shall not know from whence it comes.
What do you say? What resolution do you make? If, after reading this, you do not firmly resolve to give yourself to God, I weep over you, and regard you as lost.
Evening Meditation
REFLECTIONS AND AFFECTIONS ON THE PASSION OF JESUS CHRIST
I.
Now behold our loving Jesus already on the point of being sacrificed on the altar of the Cross for our salvation, in that blessed night which preceded His Passion. Let us hear Him saying to His Disciples at the last supper that He takes with them, With desire have I desired to eat this pasch with you. (Luke xxii. 15). St. Laurence Justinian, considering these words, asserts that they were all words of love: "With desire have I desired; this is the voice of love." As if our loving Redeemer had said, O men, know that this night, in which My Passion will begin, has been the time most longed after by Me during the whole of My life; because I shall now make known to you, through My sufferings and My bitter death, how much I love you, and will thereby oblige you to love Me, in the strongest way it is possible for Me to do. A certain author says that in the Passion of Jesus Christ the Divine Omnipotence united itself to Love, --Love sought to love man to the utmost extent that Omnipotence could arrive at; and Omnipotence sought to satisfy Love as far as its desire could reach.
O Sovereign God! Thou hast given Thyself entirely to me; and how, then, shall I not love Thee with my whole self? I believe, --yes, I believe Thou hast died for me; and how can I, then, love Thee so little as constantly to forget Thee, and all that Thou hast suffered for me? And why, Lord, when I think on Thy Passion, am I not quite inflamed with Thy love, and do not, then, become entirely Thine, like so many holy souls who, after meditating on Thy sufferings, have remained the happy prey of Thy love, and have given themselves entirely to Thee?
II.
The spouse in the Canticles said that whenever her Spouse introduced her into the sacred cellar of His Passion, she saw herself so assaulted on all sides by Divine love, that, all languishing with love, she was constrained to seek relief for her wounded heart: The king brought me into the cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me. Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples; because I languish with love. (Cant. ii 4, 5). And how is it possible for a soul to enter upon the meditation of the Passion of Jesus Christ without being wounded, as by so many darts of love, by those sufferings and agonies which so greatly afflicted the Body and Soul of our loving Lord, and without being sweetly constrained to love Him Who loved her so much? O Immaculate Lamb, thus lacerated, covered with Blood, and disfigured, as I behold Thee on this Cross, how beautiful and how worthy of love dost Thou appear to me! Yes, because all these wounds that I behold in Thee are so many signs and proofs of the great love Thou bearest to me. Oh, if all men did but contemplate Thee often in that state in which Thou wert one day made a spectacle to all Jerusalem, who could help being seized with Thy love? O my beloved Lord, accept me to love Thee, since I give Thee all my senses and all my will. And how can I refuse Thee anything, if Thou hast not refused me Thy Blood, Thy life, and all Thyself?
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| Anne Catherine Emmerich: The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ |
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Posted by: Stone - 02-27-2023, 06:30 AM - Forum: Lenten Devotions
- Replies (78)
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The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
From the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich
London, Burns and Lambert [1862]
Taken from here
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PREFACE TO THE FRENCH TRANSLATION
BY THE ABBÉ DE CAZALÈS.
THE writer of this Preface was travelling in Germany, when he chanced to meet with a book, entitled, The History of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, from, the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, which appeared to him both interesting and edifying. Its style was unpretending, its ideas simple, its tone unassuming, its sentiments unexaggerated, and its every sentence expressive of the most complete and entire submission to the Church. Yet, at the same time, it would have been difficult anywhere to meet with a more touching and life-like paraphrase of the Gospel narrative. He thought that a book possessing such qualities deserved to be known on this side the Rhine, and that there could be no reason why it should not be valued for its own sake, independent of the somewhat singular source whence it emanated.
Still, the translator has by no means disguised to himself that this work is written, in the first place, for Christians; that is to say, for men who have the right to be very diffident in giving credence to particulars concerning facts which are articles of faith; and although he is aware that St. Bonaventure and many others, in their paraphrases of the Gospel history, have mixed up traditional details with those given in the sacred text, even these examples have not wholly reassured him. St. Bonaventure professed only to give a paraphrase, whereas these revelations appear to be something more. It is certain that the holy maiden herself gave them no higher title than that of dreams, and that the transcriber of her narratives treats as blasphemous the idea of regarding them 6in any degree as equivalent to a fifth Gospel; still it is evident that the confessors who exhorted Sister Emmerich to relate what she saw, the celebrated poet who passed four years near her couch, eagerly transcribing all he heard her say, and the German Bishops, who encouraged the publication of his book, considered it as something more than a paraphrase. Some explanations are needful on this head.
The writings of many Saints introduce us into a now, and, if I may be allowed the expression, a miraculous world. In all ages there have been revelations about the past, the present, the future, and even concerning things absolutely inaccessible to the human intellect. In the present day men are inclined to regard these revelations as simple hallucinations, or as caused by a sickly condition of body.
The Church, according to the testimony of her most approved writers, recognises three descriptions of ecstasy; of which the first is simply natural, and entirely brought about by certain physical tendencies and a highly imaginative mind; the second divine or angelic, arising from intercourse held with the supernatural world; and the third produced by infernal agency.1 Lest we should here write a book instead of a preface, we will not enter into any development of this doctrine, which appears to us highly philosophical, and without which no satisfactory explanation can be given on the subject of the soul of man and its various states.
The Church directs certain means to be employed to ascertain by what spirit these ecstasies are produced, according to the maxim of St. John: ‘Try the spirits, if they be of God.’ When circumstances or events claiming to be supernatural have been properly examined according to certain rules, the Church has in all ages made a selection from them
Many persons who have been habitually in a state of ecstasy have been canonised, and their books approved. 7But this approbation has seldom amounted to more than a declaration that these books contained nothing contrary to faith, and that they were likely to promote a spirit of piety among the faithful. For the Church is only founded on the word of Christ and on the revelations made to the Apostles. Whatever may since have been revealed to certain saints possesses purely a relative value, the reality of which may even be disputed—it being one of the admirable characteristics of the Church, that, though inflexibly one in dogma, she allows entire liberty to the human mind in all besides. Thus, we may believe private revelations, above all, when those persons to whom they were made have been raised by the Church to the rank of Saints publicly honoured, invoked, and venerated; but, even in these cases, we may, without ceasing to be perfectly orthodox, dispute their authenticity and divine origin. It is the place of reason to dispute and to select as it sees best.
With regard to the rule for discerning between the good and the evil spirit, it is no other, according to all theologians, than that of the Gospel. A fructibus eorum, cognoscetis eos. By their fruits you shall know them. It must be examined in the first place whether the person who professes to have revelations mistrusts what passes within himself; whether he would prefer a more common path; whether far from boasting of the extraordinary graces which he receives, he seeks to hide them, and only makes them known through obedience; and, finally, whether he is continually advancing in humility, mortification, and charity. Next, the revelations themselves must be very closely examined into; it must be seen whether there is anything in them contrary to faith; whether they are conformable to Scripture and Apostolical tradition; and whether they are related in a headstrong spirit, or in a spirit of entire submission to the Church.
Whoever reads the life of Anne Catherine Emmerich, and her book, will be satisfied that no fault can be found in any of these respects either with herself or with her revelations. Her book resembles in many points the writings of a great number of saints, and her life also bears the 8most striking similitude to theirs. To be convinced of this fact, we need but study the writings or what is related of Saints Francis of Assissium, Bernard, Bridget, Hildegarde, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Sienna, Ignatius, John of the Cross, Teresa, and an immense number of other holy persons who are less known.. So much being conceded, it is clear that in considering Sister Emmerich to have been inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, we are not ascribing more merit to her book than is allowed by the Church to all those of the same class. They are all edifying, and may serve to promote piety, which is their sole object. We must not exaggerate their importance by holding as an absolute fact that they proceed from divine inspiration, a favour so great that its existence in any particular case should not be credited save with the utmost circumspection.
With regard, however, to our present publication, it may be urged that, considering the superior talents of the transcriber of Sister Emmerich’s narrations, the language and expressions which he has made use of may not always have been identical with those which she employed. We have no hesitation whatever in allowing the force of this argument. Most fully do we believe in the entire sincerity of M. Clèment Brentano, because we both know and love him, and, besides, his exemplary piety and the retired life which he leads, secluded from a world in which it would depend but on himself to hold the highest place, are guarantees amply sufficient to satisfy any impartial mind of his sincerity. A poem such as he might publish, if he only pleased, would cause him to be ranked at once among the most eminent of the German poets, whereas the office which he has taken upon himself of secretary to a poor visionary has brought him nothing but contemptuous raillery. Nevertheless, we have no intention to assert that in giving the conversations and discourses of Sister Emmerich that order and coherency in which they were greatly wanting, and writing them down in his own way, he may not unwittingly have arranged, explained, and embellished them. But this would not have the 9effect of destroying the originality of the recital, or impugning either the sincerity of the nun, or that of the writer.
The translator professes to be unable to understand how any man can write for mere writing’s sake, and without considering the probable effects which his work will produce. This book, such as it is, appears to him to be at once unusually edifying, and highly poetical. It is perfectly clear that it has, properly speaking, no literary pretensions whatever. Neither the uneducated maiden whose visions are here related, nor the excellent Christian writer who has published them in so entire a spirit of literary disinterestedness, ever had the remotest idea of such a thing. And yet there are not, in our opinion, many highly worked-up compositions calculated to produce an effect in any degree comparable to that which will be brought about by the perusal of this unpretending little work. It is our hope that it will make a strong impression even upon worldlings, and that in many hearts it will prepare the way for better ideas,—perhaps even for a lasting change of life.
In the next place, we are not sorry to call public attention in some degree to all that class of phenomena which preceded the foundation of the Church, which has since been perpetuated uninterruptedly, and which too many Christians are disposed to reject altogether, either through ignorance and want of reflection, or purely through human respect. This is a field which has hitherto been but little explored historically, psychologically, and physiologically; and it would be well if reflecting minds were to bestow upon it a careful and attentive investigation. To our Christian readers we must remark that this work has received the approval of ecclesiastical authorities. It has been prepared for the press under the superintendence of the two late Bishops of Ratisbonne, Sailer and Wittman. These names are but little known in France; but in Germany they are identical with learning, piety, ardent charity, and a life wholly devoted to the maintenance and propagation of the Catholic faith. Many French priests have 10given their opinion that the translation of a book of this character could not but tend to nourish piety, without, however, countenancing that weakness of spirit which is disposed to lend more importance in some respects to private than to general revelations, and consequently to substitute matters which we are simply permitted to believe, in the place of those which are of faith.
We feel convinced that no one will take offence at certain details given on the subject of the outrages which were suffered by our divine Lord during the course of his passion. Our readers will remember the words of the psalmist: ‘I am a worm and no man; the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people;’ and those of the apostle: ‘Tempted in all things like as we are, without sin.’ Did we stand in need of a precedent, we should request our readers to remember how plainly and crudely Bossuet describes the same scenes in the most eloquent of his four sermons on the Passion of our Lord. On the other hand, there have been so many grand platonic or rhetorical sentences in the books published of late years, concerning that abstract entity, on which the writers have been pleased to bestow the Christian title of the Word, or Logos, that it may be eminently useful to show the Man-God, the Word made flesh, in all the reality of his life on earth, of his humiliation, and of his sufferings. It must be evident that the cause of truth, and still more that of edification, will not be the losers.
1See, on this head, the work of Cardinal Bona, De Descretione Spirituum.
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