| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 334 online users.
» 1 Member(s) | 331 Guest(s)
Bing, Google, Jules
|
|
|
| St. Basil: Homilies on Creation |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-26-2022, 09:05 AM - Forum: The Saints
- Replies (8)
|
 |
St. Basil: Homilies on Creation
HOMILY I: In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth
1. IT is right that any one beginning to narrate the formation of the world should begin with the good order which reigns in visible things. I am about to speak of the creation of heaven and earth, which was not spontaneous, as some have imagined, but drew its origin from God. What ear is worthy to hear such a tale? How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!
But before weighing the justice of these remarks, before examining all the sense contained in these few words, let us see who addresses them to us. Because, if the weakness of our intelligence does not allow us to penetrate the depth of the thoughts of the writer, yet we shall be involuntarily drawn to give faith to his words by the force of his authority. Now it is Moses who has composed this history; Moses, who, when still at the breast, is described as exceeding fair;(2) Moses, whom the daughter of Pharaoh adopted; who received from her a royal education, and who had for his teachers the wise men of Egypt;(3) Moses, who disdained the pomp of royalty, and, to share the humble condition of his compatriots, preferred to be persecuted with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting delights of sin; Moses, who received from nature such a love of justice that, even before the leadership of the people of God was committed to him, be was impelled, by a natural horror of evil, to pursue malefactors even to the point of punishing them by death; Moses, who, banished by those whose benefactor he had been, hastened to escape from the tumults of Egypt and took refuge in Ethiopia, living there far from former pursuits, and passing forty years in the contemplation of nature; Moses, finally, who, at the age of eighty, saw God, as far as it is possible for man to see Him; or rather as it had not previously been granted to man to see Him, according
to the testimony of God Himself, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently and not in dark speeches.”(4) It is this man, whom God judged worthy to behold Him, face to face, like the angels, who imparts to us what he has learnt from God. Let us listen then to these words of truth written without the help of the “enticing words of man’s wisdom”(5) by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to produce not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed by them.
2. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”(1) I stop struck with admiration at this thought. What shall I first say? Where shall I begin my story? Shall I show forth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith? The philosophers of Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those who were too ignorant to rise to a knowledge of a God, could not allow that an intelligent cause presided at the birth of the Universe; a primary error that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material
principles and attributed the origin of the Universe(2) to the elements of the world. Others imagined that atoms,(3) and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider’s web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Deceived by their inherent atheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that was all was given up to chance.(4) To guard us against this error the writer on the creation, from the very first words, enlightens our understanding with the name of God; “In the beginning God created.” What a glorious order! He first establishes a beginning, so that it might not be supposed that the world never had a beginning. Then be adds “Created” to show that which was made was a very small part of the power of the Creator. In the same way that the potter, after having made with equal pains a great number of vessels, has not exhausted either his art or his talent; thus the Maker of the Universe, whose creative power, far from being bounded by one world, could extend to the infinite, needed only the impulse of His will to bring the immensities of the visible world into being. If then the world has a beginning, and if it has been created, enquire who gave it this beginning, and who was the Creator: or rather, in the fear that human reasonings may make you wander from the truth, Moses has anticipated enquiry by engraving in our hearts, as a seal and a safeguard, the awful name of God: “In the beginning God created”–It is He, beneficent Nature, Goodness without measure, a worthy object of love for all beings endowed with reason, the beauty the most to be desired, the origin of all that exists, the source of life, intellectual light, impenetrable wisdom, it is He who “in the beginning created heaven and earth.”
3. Do not then imagine, O man! that the visible world is without a beginning; and because the celestial bodies move in a circular course, and it is difficult for our senses to define the point where the circle begins, do not believe that bodies impelled by a circular movement are, from their nature, without a beginning. Without doubt the circle (I mean the plane figure described by a single line) is beyond our perception, and it is impossible for us to find out where it begins or where it ends; but we ought not on this account to believe it to be without a beginning. Although we are not sensible of it, it really begins at some point where the draughtsman has begun to draw it at a certain radius from the centre.(1) Thus seeing that figures which move in a circle always return upon themselves, without for a single instant interrupting the regularity of their course, do not vainly imagine to yourselves that the world has neither beginning nor end. “For the fashion of this world passeth away”(2) and “Heaven and earth shall pass away.”(3) The dogmas of the end, and of the renewing of the world, are announced beforehand in these short words put at the head of the inspired history. “In the beginning God made.” That which was begun in time is condemned to come to an end in time. If there
has been a beginning do not doubt of the end.(4) Of what use men are geometry–the calculations of arithmetic–the study of solids and far-famed astronomy, this laborious vanity, if those who pursue them imagine that this visible world is co-eternal with the Creator of all things, with God Himself; if they attribute to this limited world, which has a material body, the same glory as to the incomprehensible and invisible nature; if they cannot conceive that a whole, of which the parts are subject to corruption and change, must of necessity end by itself submitting to the fate of its parts? But they have become “vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”(1) Some have affirmed that heaven co-exists with God from all eternity;(2) others that it is God Himself without beginning or end, and the cause of the particular arrangement of all things.(3)
4. One day, doubtless, their terrible condemnation will be the greater for all this worldly wisdom, since, seeing so clearly into yam sciences, they have wilfully shut their eyes to the knowledge of the truth. These men who measure the distances of the stare and describe them, both those of the North, always shining brilliantly in our view, and those of the southern pole visible to the inhabitants of the South, but unknown to us; who divide the Northern zone and the circle of the Zodiac into an infinity of parts, who observe with exactitude the course of the stars, their fixed places, their declensions, their return and the time that each takes to make its revolution; these men, I say, have discovered all except one tiring: the fact that God is the Creator of the universe, and the just Judge who rewards all the actions of life according to their merit. They have not known how to raise themselves to the idea of the consummation of all things, the consequence of the doctrine of judgment, and to see that the world must change if souls pass from this life to a new life. In reality, as the nature of the present life presents an affinity to this world, so in the future life our souls will enjoy a lot conformable to their new condition. But they are so far from applying these truths, that they do but laugh when we announce to them the end of all things and the regeneration of the age. Since the beginning naturally precedes that which is derived from it, the writer, of necessity, when speaking to us of things which had their origin in time, puts at the head of his narrative these words–“In the beginning God created.”
5. It appears, indeed, that even before this world an order of things(1) existed of which our mind can form an idea, but of which we can say nothing, because it is too lofty a subject for men who are but beginners and are still babes in knowledge. The birth of the world was preceded by a condition of things suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers, outstripping the limits of time, eternal and infinite. The Creator and Demiurge of the universe perfected His works in it, spiritual light for the happiness of all who love the Lord, intellectual and invisible natures, all the orderly arrangement(2) of pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind and of whom we cannot even discover the names. They fill the essence of this invisible world, as Paul teaches us. “For by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers”(3) or virtues or hosts of angels or the dignities of archangels. To this world at last it was necessary to add a new world, both a school and training place where the souls of men should be taught and a home for beings destined to be born and to die. Thus was created, of a nature analogous to that of this world and the animals and plants which live thereon, the succession of time, for ever pressing on and passing away and never stopping in its course. Is not this the nature of time, where the past is no more, the future does not exist, and the present escapes before being recognised? And such also is the nature of the creature which lives in time,–condemned to grow or to perish without rest and without certain stability. It is therefore fit that the bodies of animals and plants, obliged to follow a sort of current, and carried away by the motion which leads them to birth or to death, should live in the midst of surroundings whose nature is in accord with beings subject to change.(4) Thus the writer who wisely tells us of the birth of the Universe does not fail to put these words at the head of the narrative. “In the beginning God created;” that is to say, in the beginning of time. Therefore, if he makes the world appear in the beginning, it is not a proof that its birth has preceded that of all other things that were made. He only wishes to tell us that, after the invisible and intellectual world, the visible world, the world of the senses, began to exist.
The first movement is called beginning. “To do right is the beginning of the good way.”(1) Just actions are truly the first steps towards a happy life. Again, we call “beginning” the essential and first part from which a thing proceeds, such as the foundation of a house, the keel of a vessel; it is in this sense that it is said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,”(2) that is to say that piety is, as it were, the groundwork and foundation of perfection. Art is also tile beginning of the works of artists, the skill of Bezaleel began the adornment of the tabernacle.(2) Often even the good which is the final cause is the beginning of actions. Thus the approbation of God is the beginning of almsgiving, and the end laid up for us in the promises the beginning of all virtuous efforts.
6. Such being the different senses of the word beginning, see if we have not all the meanings here. You may know the epoch when the formation of this world began, it, ascending into the past, you endeavour to discover the first day. You will thus find what was the first movement of time; then that the creation of the heavens and of the earth were like the foundation and the groundwork, and afterwards that an intelligent reason, as the word beginning indicates, presided in the order of visible things.(4) You will finally discover that the world was not conceived by chance and without reason, but for an useful end and for the great advantage of all beings, since it is really the school where reasonable souls exercise themselves, the training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight of visible and sensible things the mind is led, as by a hand, to the contemplation of invisible things. “For,” as the Apostle says, “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”(1) Perhaps these words “In the beginning God created” signify the rapid and imperceptible moment of creation. The beginning, in effect, is indivisible and instantaneous. The beginning of the road is not yet the road, and that of the house is not yet the house; so the beginning of time is not yet time and not even the least par-title of it. If some objector tell us that the beginning is a time, he ought then, as he knows well, to submit it to the division of time–a beginning, a middle and an end. Now it is ridiculous to imagine a beginning of a beginning. Further, if we divide the beginning into two, we make two instead of one, or rather make several, we really make an infinity, for all that which is divided is divisible to the infinite.(3) Thus then, if it is said, “In the beginning God created,” it is to teach us that at the will of God the world arose in less than an instant, and it is to convey this meaning more clearly that other interpreters have said: “God made summarily” that is to say all at once and in a moment.(3) But enough concerning the beginning, if only to put a few points out of many.
7. Among arts, some have in view production, some practice, others theory.(4) The object of the last is the exercise of thought, that of the second, the motion of the body. Should it cease, all stops; nothing more is to be seen. Thus dancing and music have nothing behind; they have no object but themselves. In creative arts on the contrary the work lasts after the operation. Such is architecture–such are the arts which work in wood and brass and weaving, all those indeed which, even when the artisan has disappeared, serve to show an industrious intelligence and to cause the architect, the worker in brass or the weaver, to be admired on account of his work. Thus, then, to show that the world is a work of art displayed for the beholding of all people; to make them know Him who created it, Moses does not use another word. “In the beginning,” he says “God created.” He does not say “God worked,” “God formed,” but” God created.” Among those who have imagined that the world co-existed with God from all eternity, many have denied that it was created by God, but say that it exists spontaneously, as the shadow of this power. God, they say, is the cause of it, but an involuntary cause, as the body is the cause of the shadow and the flame is the cause of the brightness.(1) It is to correct this error that the prophet states, with so much precision, “In the beginning God created.” He did not make the thing itself the cause of its existence.(2) Being good, He made it an useful work. Being wise, He made it everything that was most beautiful. Being powerful He made it very great.(3) Moses almost shows us the finger of the supreme artisan taking possession of the substance of the universe, forming the different parts in one perfect accord, and making a harmonious symphony result from the whole.(4)
“In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” By naming the two extremes, he suggests the substance of the whole world, according to heaven the privilege of seniority, and putting earth in the second rank. All intermediate beings were created at the same time as the extremities. Thus, although there is no mention of the elements, fire, water and air,(5) imagine that they were all compounded together, and you will find water, air and fire, in the earth. For fire leaps out from stones; iron which is dug from the earth produces under friction fire in plentiful measure. A marvellous fact! Fire shut up in bodies lurks there hidden without harming them, but no sooner is it released than it consumes that which has hitherto preserved it. The earth contains water, as diggers of wells teach us. It contains air too, as is shown by the vapours that it exhales under the sun’s warmth(1) when it is damp. Now, as according to their nature, heaven occupies the higher and earth the lower position in space, (one sees, in fact, that all which is light ascends towards heaven, and heavy substances fall to the ground); as therefore height and depth are the points the most opposed to each other it is enough to mention the most distant parts to signify the inclusion of all which fills up intervening Space. Do not ask, then, for an enumeration of all the elements; guess, from what Holy Scripture indicates, all that is passed over in silence.
8. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” If we were to wish to discover the essence of each of the beings which are offered for our contemplation, or come under our senses, we should be drawn away into long digressions, and the solution of the problem would require more words than I possess, to examine fully the matter. To spend time on such points would not prove to be to the edification of the Church. Upon the essence of the heavens we are contented with what Isaiah says, for, in simple language, he gives us sufficient idea of their nature, “The heaven was made like smoke,”(2) that is to say, He created a subtle substance, without solidity or density, from which to form the heavens. As to the form of them we also content ourselves with the language of the same prophet, when praising God “that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”(3) In the same way, as concerns the earth, let us resolve not to torment ourselves by trying to find out its essence, not to tire our reason by seeking for the substance which it conceals. Do not let us seek for any nature devoid of qualities by the conditions of its existence, but let us know that all the phenomena with which we see it clothed regard the conditions of its existence and complete its essence. Try to take away by reason each of the qualities it possesses, and you will arrive at nothing. Take away black, cold, weight, density, the qualities which concern taste, in one word all these which we see in it, and the substance vanishes.(4)
If I ask you to leave these vain questions, I will not expect you to try and find out the earth’s point of support. The mind would reel on beholding its reasonings losing themselves without end. Do you say that the earth reposes on a bed of air?(1) How, then, can this soft substance, without consistency, resist the enormous weight which presses upon it? How is it that it does not slip away in all directions, to avoid the sinking weight, and to spread itself over the mass which overwhelms it? Do you suppose that water is the foundation of the earth?(2) You will then always have to ask yourself how it is that so heavy and opaque a body does not pass through the water; how a mass of such a weight is held up by a nature weaker than
itself. Then you must seek a base for the waters, and you will be in much difficulty to say upon what the water itself rests.
9. Do you suppose that a heavier body prevents the earth from failing into the abyss? Then you must consider that this support needs itself a support to prevent it from failing. Can we imagine one? Our reason again demands vet another support, and thus we shall fall into the infinite, always imagining a base for the base which we have already found.(3) And the further we advance in this reasoning the greater force we are obliged to give to this base, so that it may be able to support all the mass weighing upon it. Put then a limit to your thought, so that your curiosity in investigating the incomprehensible may not incur the reproaches of Job, and you be not asked by him, “Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?”(4) If ever you hear in the Psalms, “I bear up the pillars of it;”(5) see in these pillars the power which sustains it. Because what means this other passage, “He hath founded it upon the sea,”(6) if not that the water is spread all around the earth? How then can water, the fluid element which flows down every declivity, remain suspended without ever flowing? You do not reflect that the idea of the earth suspended by itself throws your reason into a like but even greater difficulty, since from its nature it is heavier. But let us admit that the earth rests upon itself, or let us say that it rides the waters, we must still remain faithful to thought of true religion and recognise that all is sustained by the Creator’s power. Let us then reply to ourselves, and let us reply to those who ask us upon what support this enormous mass rests, “In His hands are the ends of the earth.”(1) It is a doctrine as infallible for our own information as profitable for our hearers.
10. There are inquirers into nature(2) who with a great display of words give reasons for the immobility of the earth. Placed, they say, in the middle of the universe and not being able to incline more to one side than the other because its centre is everywhere the same distance from the surface, it necessarily rests upon itself; since a weight which is everywhere equal cannot lean to either side. It is not, they go on, without reason or by chance that the earth occupies the centre of the universe. It is its natural and necessary position. As the celestial body occupies the higher extremity of space all heavy bodies, they argue, that we may suppose to have fallen from these high regions, will be carried from all directions to the centre, and the point towards which the parts are tending will evidently be the one to which the whole mass will be thrust together. If stones, wood, all terrestrial bodies, fall from above downwards, this must be the proper and natural place of the whole earth. If, on the contrary, a light body is separated from the centre, it is evident that it will ascend towards the higher regions. Thus heavy bodies move from the top to the bottom, and following this reasoning, the bottom is none other than the centre of the world. Do not then be surprised that the world never falls: it occupies the centre of the universe, its natural place. By necessity it is obliged to remain in its place, unless a movement contrary to nature should displace it.(3) If there is anything in this system which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of God. Grand phenomena do not strike us the less when we have discovered something of their wonderful mechanism. Is it otherwise here? At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason.
11. We might say the same thing of the heavens. With what a noise of words the sages of this world have discussed their nature! Some have said that heaven is composed of four elements as being tangible and visible, and is made up of earth on account of its power of resistance, with fire because it is striking to the eye, with air and water on account of the mixture.(1) Others have rejected this system as improbable, and introduced into the world, to form the heavens, a fifth element after their own fashioning. There exists. they say, an aethereal body which is neither fire, air, earth, nor water, nor in one word any simple body. These simple bodies have their own natural motion in a straight line, light bodies upwards and heavy bodies downwards; now this motion upwards and downwards is not the same as circular motion; there is the greatest possible difference between straight and circular motion. It therefore follows that bodies whose motion is so various must vary also in their essence. But, it is not even possible to suppose that the heavens should be formed of primitive bodies which we call elements, because the reunion of contrary forces could not produce an even and spontaneous motion, when each of the simple bodies is receiving a different impulse from nature. Thus it is a labour to maintain composite bodies in continual movement, because it is impossible to put even a single one of their movements in accord and harmony with all those that are in discord; since what is proper to the light particle, is in warfare with that of a heavier one. If we attempt to rise we are stopped by the weight of the terrestrial element; if we throw ourselves down we violate the igneous part of our being in dragging it down contrary to its nature. Now this struggle of the elements effects their dissolution. A body to which violence is done and which is placed in opposition to nature, after a short but energetic resistance, is soon dissolved into as many parts as it had elements, each of the constituent parts returning to its natural place. It is the force of these reasons, say the inventors of the fifth kind of body for the genesis of heaven and the stars, which constrained them to reject the system of their predecessors and to have recourse to their own hypothesis.(2) But yet another fine speaker arises and disperses and destroys this theory to give predominance to an idea of his own invention.
Do not let us undertake to follow them for fear of falling into like frivolities; let them refute each other, and, without disquieting ourselves about essence, let us say with Moses “God created the heavens and the earth.” Let us glorify the supreme Artificer for all that was wisely and skillfully made; by the beauty of visible things let us raise ourselves to Him who is above all beauty; by the grandeur of bodies, sensible and limited in their nature, let us conceive of the infinite Being whose immensity and omnipotence surpass all the efforts of the imagination. Because, although we ignore the nature of created things, the objects which on all sides attract our notice are so marvellous, that the most penetrating mind cannot attain to the knowledge of the least of the phenomena of the world, either to give a suitable explanation of it or to render due praise to the Creator, to Whom belong all glory, all honour and all power world without end. Amen.
|
|
|
| US citizens were given secret Covid “decree violation” scores |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-26-2022, 07:47 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism
- No Replies
|
|
US citizens were given secret Covid “decree violation” scores
Mass surveillance during the first months of the US lockdowns.
Reclaim the Net | October 25, 2022
Voter analytics firm PredictWise harvested location data from tens of millions of US cellphones during the initial Covid lockdown months and used this data to assign a “Covid-19 decree violation” score to the people associated with the phones.
These Covid-19 decree violation scores were calculated by analyzing nearly two billion global positioning system (GPS) pings to get “real-time, ultra-granular locations patterns.” People who were “on the go more often than their neighbors” were given a high Covid-19 decree violation score while those who mostly or always stayed at home were given a low Covid-19 decree violation score.
Not only did PredictWise use this highly sensitive location data to monitor millions of Americans’ compliance with Covid lockdown decrees but it also combined this data with follow-up surveys to assign “Covid concern” scores to the people who were being surveilled. PredictWise then used this data to help Democrats in several swing states to target more than 350,000 “Covid concerned” Republicans with Covid-related campaign ads.
In its white paper, PredictWise claims that Democrats were able to “deploy this real-time location model to open up just over 40,000 persuasion targets that normally would have fallen off” for Mark Kelly who was running for Senate at the time and has now been elected.
“PredictWise understood that there were potential pockets of voters to target with Covid-19 messaging and turned high-dimensional data covering over 100 million Americans into measures of adherence to Covid-19 restrictions during deep lockdown,” the company states in the white paper.
PredictWise doesn’t provide the exact dates when this location data was collected but its white paper does note that the data was collected during Covid lockdowns and used during Senator Kelly’s 2020 election campaign. State-level US lockdowns began on March 15, 2020 and Kelly was elected on November 4, 2020 so the data appears to have been collected during the first few months of this 11 month period.
Location data and survey data are just two of the many types of data PredictWise claims to have access to. According to its white paper, PredictWise also tracks “telemetry data” (which is “passively sourced cell-phone data”), media consumption data, and unregistered voter data (which contains verified data on over 50 million unregistered voters that’s updated daily and sourced from credit files and portal registration data). Additionally, PredictWise claims that “Crate&Barrel” (which seems to be a reference to the online furniture and home decor shopping portal Crate & Barrel) is one of the portal registration data sources it has access to.
In total, PredictWise says its data “tracks the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors” of over 260 million Americans – a figure that represents 78% of the entire US population of 333 million.
PredictWise uses the data it collects to create scores on 13 issue preference clusters and 7 value-frame, or psychometric clusters. These clusters use more than 30 million behavioral data points. PredictWise also claims to be able to use this data to predict the party of unregistered voters.
Many apps on your phone have pivoted to selling your location data to coronavirus researchers and others
This mass surveillance of location data and lockdown compliance is just one of the many examples of the large-scale data harvesting that occurred during the pandemic. Private companies tracked the everyday activities of citizens, pushed remote learning surveillance technologies, increased surveillance in the workplace, and more. Meanwhile, governments ushered in numerous forms of surveillance such as forcing citizens to wear ankle bracelet trackers, secretly surveilling vaccine recipients via their phones, and combining vaccine passports with digital IDs.
|
|
|
|
| Pope Francis joins ecumenical leaders in Rome to promote peace in the ‘spirit’ of 1986 Assisi meetin |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-26-2022, 06:17 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis joins ecumenical leaders in Rome to promote peace in the ‘spirit’ of 1986 Assisi meeting
Pope Francis has attended the past three ecumenical events, promoting his 'blasphemous' form of brotherhood at each one.
![[Image: pope-santegidio1-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/pope-santegidio1-810x500.jpg)
Pope Francis chats with Sayyed Abu Al-Qasim Al-Dibaj of the World Pan-Islamic Jurisprudence Organization
Oct 25, 2022
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis joined numerous ecumenical leaders on Tuesday at the Colosseum to take part in an interfaith prayer meeting entitled “The Cry for Peace,” which was held in the “spirit of” the 1986 inter-religious meeting led by John Paul II at Assisi.
Pope Francis closed the three-day conference on its last day, taking part in two key events. Inside the Colosseum, he joined ecumenical leaders for a prayer service, then outside the ancient walls of the Colosseum he joined leaders from various religions, including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, on the stage.
While Francis attended the Christian prayer service inside the Colosseum, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and Tenrikyo leaders held their own prayer services simultaneously.
The “Il Grido della Pace” (The Cry for Peace) conference began Sunday with addresses from French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian President Sergio Matterella.
READ: Pope Francis calls for ‘more vaccines’ at meeting of world leaders in Rome
It was organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, based in the Trastevere district of Rome. The conference is the 36th such meeting, following John Paul II’s notorious 1986 inter-religious meeting at Assisi.
Delivering speeches at the various roundtables during the conference were a host of leading figures in both ecclesial and political spheres, including:
- Cardinal Matteo Zuppi – president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and a longtime supporter of Sant’Egidio
- Vatican Curial officials, including Cardinals Kurt Koch, José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça, Walter Kasper, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia
- Shaykh Muhammad bin Abdul Karim al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim world league
- Pro-abortion U.N. and Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs
- Chief Rabbis from a number of countries
- Muslim “theologians”
- International journalists and TV presenters
The Sant’Egidio community itself is noted to hold a favorable position in Pope Francis’ Vatican, with Zuppi a longtime supporter and ecclesiastical general to the group. Matteo Bruni – also a longtime member of the Community – is the Holy See Press Office director.
Pope Francis has attended the past three events, and at last year’s he called for “peace … fraternity … vaccines” in an event that focused on a call for more COVID-19 injections.
Drawing on Fratelli Tutti and signing of ecumenical pact
Addressing the ecumenical leaders and some hundreds of participants outside the Colosseum, Francis echoed the cry for peace, warning against nuclear war.
![[Image: POPE-santegidio.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/POPE-santegidio.jpg)
Pope Francis addressing the Sant’Egidio conference at the Colosseum, 2022. He is flanked by Sayyed Abu Al-Qasim Al-Dibaj of the World Pan-Islamic Jurisprudence Organization and the Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni
In doing so, the Pope – and other speakers – quoted from his controversial encyclical “Fratelli Tutti.”
Addressing the participants, Francis referenced the “fraternal relations between religions [which] have taken decisive steps forward,” adding that “more and more, we feel that we are all brothers and sisters!”
That text of Francis’s has been described by former Papal Nuncio to the U.S. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò as promoting a “blasphemous” form of brotherhood without God and pushing “religious indifferentism.”
Viganò added that “religious indifferentism, implicitly promoted in the text Fratelli Tutti, which defines as ‘a good for our societies’ the presence of any religion – instead of ‘the liberty and exaltation of Holy Mother Church’ – denies in fact the sovereign rights of Jesus Christ, King and Lord of individuals, of the societies and of nations.”
After the pope’s speech, the assembled leaders followed his lead in signing an “Appeal for peace 2022,” which called upon political leaders to promote peace. While it was addressed from “the representatives of the Christian Churches and World Religions,” the Appeal did not reference religion.
![[Image: signing-1-scaled.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/signing-1-scaled.jpg)
Pope Francis signs the Peace Appeal
‘Spirit of Assisi’ guiding the event
Speaking outside the Colosseum, Sant’Egidio president Marco Impagliazzo referenced the “spirit of Assisi” to be embodied at the event.
Indeed, the annual conference is modeled on the “scandalous” inter-religious 1986 Assisi meeting at which Pope John Paul II prayed together with Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and representatives of many other religions.
John Paul II addressed the representatives of the different religions, saying that the event was “the result of prayer, which, in the diversity of religions, expresses a relationship with a supreme power that surpasses our human capacities alone.” He added that “religions are many and varied, and they reflect the desire of men and women down through the ages to enter into a relationship with the Absolute Being,” but did not mention the primacy of the Catholic faith, as taught by the Church. Instead, he referenced the “good of humanity” as the binding theme.
As last year, the event’s logo was a swirling, seven colored rainbow flag topped with a white dove.
Speaking to gloria.tv two years ago, Bishop Athanasius Schneider stated that the 1986 Assisi meeting was a “preparation” for the worship of the Pachamama statues in the Vatican Gardens, as it accustomed Catholics to the “erroneous teaching … that all religions are on the same level.”
That meeting was further described by author Henry Sire as an act of “sacrilege” and “idolatrous worship.”
|
|
|
|
Names of the Deceased for November |
|
Posted by: Our Lady of Fatima Chapel - 10-25-2022, 01:00 PM - Forum: For the Souls in Purgatory
- No Replies
|
 |
Names of the Deceased
November, the Month of the Holy Souls, is right around the corner. Beginning today, and during the entire month of November, Our Lady of Fatima Chapel is accepting names of the deceased to be placed upon the altar for remembrance during every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered throughout November.
The names of the deceased placed upon our altar will also be remembered during each Holy Mass offered at all of the SSPX-MC missions; wherever the Holy Sacrifice is scheduled to be offered by the Apostolate during the month of November.
Please send the names of the deceased you wish to be prayed for to:
By Email:
ourladyofatimachapel@gmail.com
By Postal Mail:
OUR LADY OF FATIMA CHAPEL
16 DOGWOOD ROAD SOUTH
HUBBARDSTON, MA 01452
The Western tradition identifies the general custom of praying for the dead dating as far back as the Second Book of Maccabees 12:42-46. The custom of setting apart a special day for intercession for the faithful departed on November 2nd was first established by Saint Odilo of Cluny (d. 1048) at his abbey of Cluny in 998. From Cluny the custom spread to the other houses of the Cluniac order, which became the largest and most extensive network of monasteries in Europe. The custom was soon adopted in several dioceses in France, then spread throughout the Western Church. It was accepted in Rome only in the fourteenth century. While November 2nd remained the liturgical observance, in time the entire month of November became associated in the Western Catholic tradition with prayers for the departed; and the lists of names of those to be remembered being placed in the proximity of the altar on which the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered.
The legend connected with its foundation is given by Peter Damiani in his Life of Saint Odilo: A pilgrim returning from the Holy Land was cast by a storm on a desolate island. A hermit living there told him that amid the rocks was a chasm communicating with purgatory, from which perpetually rose the groans of tortured souls. The hermit also claimed he had heard the demons complaining of the efficacy of the prayers of the faithful, and especially prayers from the monks of Cluny, in rescuing their victims. Upon returning home, the pilgrim hastened to inform the abbot of Cluny, who then set November 2nd as a day of intercession on the part of his community for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis quorum animas omnium fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen
|
|
|
|
| Abp. Viganò: The Vatican must withdraw its support of the ‘disastrous’ COVID shots |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-25-2022, 07:53 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
Abp. Viganò: The Vatican must withdraw its support of the ‘disastrous’ COVID shots
The results that are now emerging from the official data published in all the countries that adopted the mass vaccine campaign are incontestably disastrous.
![[Image: IMG_3909-810x500.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_3909-810x500.jpeg)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
Oct 21, 2022
Editor’s Note: Below follows the text of a letter sent by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the moral character and physical dangers of COVID-19 inoculations and the Church’s instructions to the faithful on their use.
This letter was also addressed to members of the Holy See, including Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of His Holiness; Cardinal Peter Turkson, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences; and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
(LifeSiteNews) – Your Eminence,
Last year, on October 23, 2021, I wrote a letter to the president of the United States Bishops’ Conference, which was also sent to you, in which I expressed – as I have already done publicly – my very strong reservations on various extremely controversial aspects regarding the moral legitimacy of the use of experimental gene serums produced using mRNA technology.
In that letter, which was written with the help of eminent scientists and virologists, I highlighted the need to update the “Note on the morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines,” due to the scientific evidence that had emerged even then and moreover had been declared by the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves.
Permit me, Your Eminence, to renew my appeal in the light of recent declarations made by Pfizer to the European Parliament and the publication of official data by the world health agencies.
First of all, I remind you that the document from the Dicastery over which you preside was promulgated on December 21, 2020, in the absence of complete data about the nature of the gene serum and its components, and also without any results from the efficacy and safety trials. The subject of the Note was limited to the “moral aspects of the use of the vaccines against COVID-19 that have been developed from cell lines derived from tissues obtained from two fetuses that were not spontaneously aborted.” The Congregation further reiterated: “We do not intend to judge the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, although ethically relevant and necessary, as this evaluation is the responsibility of biomedical researchers and drug agencies.” Safety and efficacy were thus not the subject of the Note, which in expressing an opinion about the “moral aspects of the use” did not deem it appropriate to comment on the “morality of the production” of these drugs.
The safety and efficacy of the individual vaccines should have been established after a period of experimentation, which normally takes several years. But in this case the health authorities have decided to carry out the experimentation on the entire population, departing from the normal practice of the scientific community, international regulations, and the laws of individual nations.
The results that are now emerging from the official data published in all the countries that adopted the mass vaccine campaign are incontestably disastrous: it is emerging that people who have been subjected to inoculation with the experimental serum not only have never been protected from contagion by the virus, nor from grave forms of illness, but they have actually been made more vulnerable to COVID-19 and its variants due to the irreversible compromising of their immune systems caused by mRNA technology. The data also highlights serious short- and long-term effects, such as sterility, the inducement of miscarriages in pregnant women, the transmission of the virus to children through breastfeeding, the development of serious heart conditions including myocarditis and pericarditis, the return of cancerous tumors that had previously been cured, and a whole series of other debilitating diseases. The many cases of sudden deaths – which until recently were stubbornly considered as having no relation to inoculation with the serum – are revealing the consequence of repeated doses, even in people who are young, healthy, and physically fit.
Members of the military, who are rigorously controlled by health personnel for safety reasons, are showing the same incidence of adverse effects after receiving the serum. Countless studies are now confirming that the serum may cause forms of acquired immunodeficiency in those who receive it. Worldwide, the number of deaths and grave pathologies following vaccination is increasing exponentially. These vaccines have caused more deaths than all other vaccines combined in the last thirty years. And not only this: in many nations the number of those who have died after vaccination is significantly higher than the number of those who died from COVID.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now Dicastery), although not expressing an opinion on the efficacy and safety of the serums, nevertheless defined them as “vaccines,” taking for granted that they would give immunity and protect people against active and passive contagion. But this element has now been disavowed by the declarations that are coming from all of the world health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO), who now say that those who are vaccinated may become infected themselves and infect other people more seriously than people who are not vaccinated, and also that their immune systems have been drastically reduced if not actually cancelled.
The drugs that have been called “vaccines” thus do not correspond to the official definition of a vaccine, to which the Note presumably refers. A “vaccine” is defined as a preparation which induces the production of protective antibodies by an organism, conferring a specific resistance against a determined infective illness (either viral, bacterial, or protozoal). This definition has now been modified by the WHO, because otherwise it would not have been able to include anti-COVID drugs within the definition of a vaccine, since these drugs do not induce the production of protective antibodies and do not confer a specific resistance against the infectious disease caused by Sars-CoV-2.
It should be pointed out that the presence of graphene oxide both in the batches of the “vaccine” as well as in the blood of those who have been inoculated has now been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, despite the fact that there is no scientific justification for its presence nor for its pharmaceutical use on human beings due to its toxicity. The devastating effects of graphene oxide on the organs of people who have been subjected to inoculation are now evident, and it is likely that pharmaceutical companies will soon be held accountable.
Your Eminence surely already knows that the use of these technologies with self-assembling graphene oxide nanostructures has also been patented in order to allow for the tracking and remote control of subjects, in particular in order to monitor the vital parameters of each patient in a way that is connected to the cloud via the Bluetooth signal emitted by these nanostructures. As proof that this information is not the result of the ruminations of some conspiracy theorists, Your Eminence perhaps knows that the European Union has chosen as winners of a competition two projects dedicated to technological innovation: “The Human Brain and Graphene.” These two projects will each receive one billion euros in funding over the next ten years.
The “vaccines” against COVID-19 have been presented as the only possible alternative to a deadly disease. This was false from the very beginning, and with the perspective of two years it has also been confirmed as false: there were and are alternative treatments, but they have been methodically boycotted by the pharmaceutical companies – because they are inexpensive and not profitable for them – and discredited by scientific publications financed by Big Pharma with articles that were later withdrawn because they were clearly based on falsified data.
Furthermore, COVID-19 has been revealed to be – as was known and as was scientifically evident – a seasonal form of the coronavirus that is treatable and not deadly, a form of flu that causes only a minimal number of deaths among people who already have some other underlying condition. The multi-year monitoring of the coronavirus leaves no doubt in this regard and also eliminates the element of a “health emergency” that was used as a pretext to impose the vaccines.
International norms specify that an experimental drug cannot be authorized for distribution except in the absence of another effective alternative treatment. This is why drug agencies around the world have prevented the use of ivermectin, hyperimmune plasma, and other treatments whose effectiveness has been demonstrated. There is no need to remind Your Eminence that all of these agencies, along with the WHO, are almost entirely financed by pharmaceutical companies and foundations linked to them and that there is a grave conflict of interest at the highest levels.
In the past few days the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had to answer to the Parliament about the PNRR (The National Recovery and Resilience Plan) funding that was obtained for the laboratories in Italy and Greece where her husband works, without forgetting that the same president refused to provide the European Court of Auditors with the text messages she exchanged with the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, about supply contracts, messages which still have not been revealed.
The imposition of the experimental serum took place through a coordinated employment of methods that was unprecedented in recent history, using mass manipulation techniques that are well known to psychology experts. In this operation of media terrorism and the violation of the natural rights of individuals, accompanied by intolerable blackmail and discrimination, the Catholic hierarchy chose to take sides with the system, making itself the promoter of “vaccines,” even reaching the point of recommending them as a “moral duty.” The media skillfully used the spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff and his media influence to confirm the mainstream narrative, and this was an essential element in the success of the entire vaccination campaign, convincing many of the faithful to undergo inoculation because of the trust they have placed in the Pope and his global role.
The vaccination obligations imposed on employees of the Holy See, following the lines of protocols imposed in other nations, have confirmed the Vatican’s absolute alignment with extremely careless and reckless positions that are completely void of any scientific validity. This has exposed the Vatican City State to possible liability on the part of its officials, with a further burden on its treasury; and the possibility should not be excluded that the faithful may bring collective lawsuits against their own pastors, who have been converted into salesmen of dangerous medicines.
After more than two years, the Church has not considered it necessary to make any statement to correct the Note, which in the light of new scientific evidence is now outdated and substantially contradicted by the harsh reality of the facts. Limiting itself strictly to an evaluation of the morality of the use of the vaccines, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has not taken account of the proportionality between the benefits of the gene serum – which have been completely absent – and the short- and long-term adverse side-effects which are now before everyone’s eyes.
Since it is now evident that the drugs sold as vaccines do not give any significant benefit and on the contrary may cause a very high percentage of death or serious diseases even in people for whom COVID is not a serious threat, it is no longer possible to consider valid any attempt to demonstrate a proportionality between risks and benefits, thus eliminating one of the assumptions on which the Note was based: “The morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed” (n. 5).
We know well that there is no “absence of other means,” and that the serum neither stops nor prevents the epidemic: this makes the mRNA “vaccine” produced with aborted cell lines not only morally unacceptable but also absolutely dangerous for one’s health, and in the case of pregnant women also for the health of their children.
The Church, in expressing a moral evaluation of the vaccines, cannot fail to take into consideration the many elements that contribute to formulating an overall judgment. The Congregation cannot limit itself to the general theory of the moral lawfulness of the drug in itself – a lawfulness that is completely questionable given its ineffectiveness, the absence of tests of its genotoxicity and carcinogenicity, and the evidence of side-effects. Instead, the Congregation must speak out about this fact as soon as possible: now that the complete uselessness of the serums “to stop or even prevent the epidemic” has been demonstrated, it can no longer be administered, and indeed there is a moral obligation for health authorities and drug companies to recall it as something dangerous and harmful, and for the individual faithful to refuse inoculation.
I further believe, Most Reverend Eminence, that the time has come for the Holy See to definitively distance itself from those private entities and multinational corporations that have believed that they can use the authority of the Catholic Church to endorse the neo-Malthusian project of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. It is not tolerable that the voice of the Church of Christ continues to be complicit in a plan to reduce the global population based on the chronic pathologizing of humanity and the induction of sterility; and this is even more necessary in the face of the scandalous conflict of interests to which the Holy See is exposed by accepting sponsorship and funding from the architects of these criminal plans.
It will not escape Your Eminence that there are very serious implications for the Holy Church as a result of her reckless support for the “psychopandemic” narrative. Taking advantage of Francis’ words and addresses to lead the faithful to submit themselves to a serum that has not only proven to be useless but actually gravely harmful has seriously compromised the authority of the Vatican, prompting it to propagate a treatment based on data that has proven to be partial and counterfeited.
This reckless and less-than-transparent behavior involved an interference by the supreme ecclesiastical authority in a field of strictly scientific concern which is instead “the responsibility of biomedical researchers and drug agencies.” After this betrayal, how will faithful Catholics and those who look to the Church as a sure guide be able to consider the Church’s positions as reliable and credible with any amount of serenity or confidence? And how will it be possible to remedy the damage that has been caused to those who, having neither medical training nor competence, have undergone a treatment that has actually compromised their health or led to premature death, for the sole reason that it was recommended to them by the Pope, or their bishop, or their parish priest, who told them that unless they were vaccinated they could not come to church, serve Mass, or sing in the choir?
The Catholic hierarchy has experienced a decline in recent years that is directly proportional to the support it has given to the globalist ideology: its commitment to support the vaccine campaign is not an isolated case, judging by the participation of the Holy See in climate initiatives – which are also based on false assumptions that have nothing scientific about them – and trans-humanistic endeavors.
But this is not the purpose for which Our Lord placed the Church on earth: she must first and foremost proclaim the Truth, keeping herself far away from dangerous involvements with the powerful of the earth, and even more so with those among them who are notoriously hostile to the teaching of Christ and Catholic morality. If the hierarchy does not shake itself away from this obsequious enslavement, if it does not rediscover the courage and dignity to stand up against the mentality of the world, it will be overwhelmed and will fall victim to its own inability to be a stumbling block and a sign of contradiction.
I am certain, Your Eminence, that you will want to consider the particular gravity of these themes, as well as the urgency of an enlightened intervention that is faithful to the teaching of the Gospel and the salus animarum which is and remains the suprema lex of the Church.
In Christo Rege,
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
18 October 2022.
|
|
|
|
| Canadian credit union partners with Visa to launch carbon-tracking credit card |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-25-2022, 06:38 AM - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
|
|
Canadian credit union partners with Visa to launch carbon-tracking credit card
The new carbon-tracking credit card will allow those with it the ability to 'connect their daily spending decisions to the change they want to see in the world.'
![[Image: carbon-footprint-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/carbon-footprint-810x500.jpg)
shutterstock.com
Oct 24, 2022
(LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian credit union will be launching a Visa credit card which will allow users the option to track their carbon emissions.
Vancity says its “Carbon Counter” Visa card is a Canada first and claims it is needed for “climate action.”
Those who sign up for the program will get a monthly total of their purchasing carbon footprint, as well as “advice” on how to make more “climate” friendly purchases.
According to Vancity’s Chief External Relations Officer Jonathan Fowlie, its members want “ways to reduce the impact they have on the environment, particularly when it comes to the emissions that cause climate change.”
He added that the new carbon-tracking credit card will allow those with it the ability to “connect their daily spending decisions to the change they want to see in the world.”
Vancity’s program is being launched in partnership with the German company ecolytiq.
Visa is also backing the program as well in what is known as a “green transformation” of the worldwide banking system.
The CEO of Visa Europe Charlotte Hogg said last year that “A significant shift is needed towards more sustainable behaviors to meet the global net-zero goals by 2050.”
Groups such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) along with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been strong proponents of pushing agendas that track people’s finances, much like social credit like schemes in place in China.
A large part of the great “reset” idea is the implementation of purchasing tracking mechanisms on consumers under the guise of following one’s so-called “carbon footprint.”
Indeed, at this year’s WEF’s Annual Summit in Davos, Switzerland, China-based Alibaba Group spoke of new technology that would track people’s carbon footprints through the monitoring of their spending, eating, and traveling habits.
Klaus Schwab, the WEF founder and chairman, told thousands at the Davos summit that “the future is built by us, by a powerful community such as you here in this room.”
Since taking office in 2015, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pushed the radical environmental agenda also being promoted by the WEF as part of its “Great Reset” agenda.
Indeed, Trudeau’s 2022 budget includes a portion that mandatory climate-related reporting is in the works for all federally regulated financial institutions in Canada.
This is part of a push for businesses to adopt so-called “Environmental Social Governance (ESG).”
ESG, as it is known, is a set of standards for business operations that can be used by global investors to see whether a company is following standards when it comes to its environmental, social, and governance work models.
A company’s ESG indicator can be used to create a climate “score” of a business, including its overall carbon emissions, along with internal accounting practices.
The Great Reset is a militant plan created by global elites that “seeks to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.” Its many critics say it would create a new world order with aspects of the Chinese Social Credit System.
READ: Federal Reserve announces social credit system ‘exercise’ to ensure banks comply with ‘climate’ models
In recent months, the Canadian federal government, citing “climate change,” has been looking to implement a “Great Reset” backed by nitrogen-rich fertilizer reduction policies in Canada like those in Sri Lanka and the Netherlands.
The Trudeau government said that a 30 percent reduction in fertilizer by 2030 is one of its goals as part of its radical climate agenda.
Farmers have warned that such radical fertilizer reduction policies will devastate the agricultural industry in Canada, which could lead to possible food shortages.
LifeSiteNews has reported that there is an official job posting by the Trudeau government for officers in the so-called “Environmental Enforcement Directorate.”
A June 2017 peer-reviewed study by two scientists and a veteran statistician confirmed that most of the recent global warming data have been “fabricated by climate scientists to make it look more frightening.”
|
|
|
|
| Dom Prosper Guéranger: The Children of Darkness will put forward their False Doctrines |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-23-2022, 06:00 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
- No Replies
|
|
Taken from Dom Prosper Guéranger's Explanation of the Epistle for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost:
Epistle
Lesson of the Epistle of Saint Paul, the Apostle, to the Ephesians. Ch. v.
Brethren: See therefore, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise, But as wise: redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore become not unwise, but understanding what is the will of God. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury; but be ye filled with the holy Spirit, Speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father: Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ.
Explanation
As the nuptials of the Son of God approach their final completion, there will be also, on the side of hell, a redoubling of rage against the Bride, with a determination to destroy her. The dragon of the Apocalypse, the old serpent who seduced Eve, will vomit his vile foam, as a river, from his mouth—that is, he will urge on all the passions of man, that they may league together for her ruin. But do what he will, he can never weaken the bond of the eternal alliance; and having no power against the Church herself, he will turn his fury against the last children of the new Eve, who will have the perilous honor of those final battles, which are described by the Prophet of Patmos.
It is then more than at all previous times that the Faithful will have to remember the injunction given to us by the Apostle in today’s Epistle; that is, they will have to comport themselves with that circumspection which he enjoins, taking every possible care to keep their understanding, no less than their heart, pure in those evil days. Supernatural light will, in those days, not only have to stand the attacks of the children of darkness, who will put forward their false doctrines; it will, moreover, be minimized and falsified by the very children of the light yielding on the question of principles; it will be endangered by the hesitations and trimmings and human prudence of those who are called far-seeing men. Many will practically ignore the master-truth, that the Church never can be overwhelmed by any created power. If they do remember that our Lord has promised himself to uphold his Church even to the end of the world, they will still have the impertinence to believe that they do a great service to the good cause by making certain politically clever concessions, which, if they were tried in the balance of the sanctuary, would be found under weight! Those future worldly-wise people will quite forget that our Lord will have no need for helping him to keep his promise of crooked schemes, however shrewd those may be; they will entirely overlook this most elementary consideration—that the cooperation, which Jesus deigns to accept, at the hands of his servants, in the defense of the rights of his Church, never could consist in the grabling, or in the disguisement, of those grand truths which constitute the power and beauty of the Bride. Is it possible that they will forget the Apostle’s maxim, which he lays down in his Epistle to the Romans —that the conforming oneself to this world— the attempting an impossible adaptation of the Gospel to a world that is un-christianized is not the means for proving what is the good, and acceptable, and the perfect will of God. So that it will be a thing of great and rare merit, in many an occurrence of those unhappy times, to merely understand what is the will of God, as our Epistle expresses it.
Look to yourselves, would St. John say to those men, that ye lose not the things which ye have wrought; make yourselves sure of the full reward, which is only given to the persevering thoroughness of doctrine and faith! Besides, it will be then, as in all other times, that, according to the saying of the Holy Ghost, the simplicity of the just shall guide them, and far more safely, than any human ingenuity could do; humility will give them Wisdom; and, keeping themselves closely united to this noble companion, they will be made truly wise by her, and will know what is acceptable to God. They will understand that aspiring, like the Church herself, to union with the eternal Word—fidelity to the Spouse, for them, as it is for the Church, is nothing else than fidelity to the truth; for the Word, who is the one same object of love to both of them, is, in God, no other than the splendor of infinite truth. Their one care, therefore, will ever be to approach nearer and nearer to their Beloved by a continually increasing resemblance to him; that is to say, by the completest reproduction, both in their words and works, of the beautiful Truth. By so doing, they will be serving their fellow creatures in the best possible way, for they will be putting in practice the counsel of Jesus, who bids them seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and confide in him for all the rest. Others may have recourse to human and accommodating combinations, fitted to please all parties; they may put forward dubious compromises which (so their suggestors think), will keep back, for some weeks, or some months perhaps, the fierce tide of revolution—but those who have God’s spirit in them will put a very different construction on the admonition given us, by the Apostle, in today’s Epistle, where he tells us to redeem the time.
It was our Lord who bought time, and at a great price; and he bought it for us, that it might be employed, by his faithful servants, in procuring glory for God. By most men, it is squandered away in sin or folly; but those who are united to Christ, as living members to the Spouse of their souls, will redeem it; that is, they will put such an intensity into their faith and their love, that as far as it is possible for human nature, not a moment of their time shall be anything but an earnest undiminished tribute of their service of their Lord. To the insolent and blasphemous things, which are then to be spoken by the Beast, these determined servants of God will give, for their brave answer, the cry of St. Michael, which he uttered against Satan, who was the helper of the Beast: Who is like unto God!
These closing weeks of the year used, in olden times, to be called: Weeks of the holy Angel. We have seen, in one of these Sundays, how there was announced the great Archangel’s coming to the aid of God’s people, as Daniel, the Prophet, had foretold would be at the end of the world. When, therefore, the final tribulations shall commence; when exile shall scatter the Faithful and the sword shall slay them, and the world shall approve all that, prostrate, as it then will be, before the Beast and his image—let us not forget that we have a leader chosen by God, and proclaimed by the Church; a leader who will marshal us during those final combats in which the defeat of the Saints will be more glorious than were the triumphs of the Church, in the days when she ruled the world. For what God will then ask of his servants will not be success of diplomatical arrangements, nor a victory won by arms, but fidelity to his truth, that is, to his Word; a fidelity all the more generous and perfect, as there will be an almost universal falling off around the little army fighting under the Archangel’s banner. Uttered by a single faithful heart, and under such circumstances, and uttered with the bravery of faith and the ardor of love—the cry of St. Michael, which heretofore routed the infernal legions will be a greater honor to God than will be the insult offered to him by the millions of the degraded followers of the Beast.
Let us get thoroughly imbued with these thoughts, which are suggested by the opening lines of our Epistle. Let us also master the other instructions it contains, and which after all, differ but little from the ones we have been developing. On this Sunday, when formerly was read the Gospel of the nuptials of the Son of God, and the invitation to his divine banquet—our holy Mother, the Church, appropriately in the Epistle, bids us observe the immense difference there is between these sacred delights and the joys of the world’s marriage feasts. The calm, the purity, the peace of the just man, who is admitted into intimacy with God, are a continual feast to his soul; the food served up at that feast is Wisdom; Wisdom too is the beloved Guest, who is unfailingly there. The world is quite welcome to its silly and often shameful pleasures; the World and the soul, which, in a mysterious way, he has filled with the Holy Spirit, join together to sing to the eternal Father in admirable unison; they will go on, forever, with their hymns of thanksgiving and praise, for the materials of both are infinite. The hideous sight of the earth’s inhabitants, who will then, by thousands, be paying homage to the harlot who sits on the Beast and offers them the golden cup of her abominaions—no, not even that will interfere in the least with the bliss caused in heaven by the sight of those happy souls on earth. The convulsions of a world in its last agony, the triumphs of the woman drunk with the blood of the martyrs—far from breaking in on the harmony which comes from a soul which is united with the Word, they will but give greater fullness to her notes which sound forth the divine, and greater sweetness to the human music of the human song. The Apostle tells all this in his own magnificent way, where he says: Who, then, shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? True, it is written: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter;—but in all these things, we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
|
|
|
|
| Archbishop Lefebvre: New Rite of Mass Condemned by the Tradition of the Church |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-23-2022, 10:24 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
- Replies (1)
|
|
New Rite Condemned by the Tradition of the Church
![[Image: marcel_lefevre.jpg?itok=7YE9dpn3]](https://fsspx.news/sites/sspx/files/styles/dici_image_full_width/public/news/marcel_lefevre.jpg?itok=7YE9dpn3)
FSSPX.NEWS [Adapted]
Archbishop Lefebvre gives here the theological reasons for which the SSPX has constantly opposed the Novus Ordo Missæ which came out of the Second Vatican Council.
We find a very enlightening synthesis in the collection of declarations by its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, The Mass of All Time. Likewise, in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, published in 1985, the comparison between the old and the new Mass has lost nothing of its relevance, in spite of the desire of the Holy See to correct some abuses in the conciliar liturgy during the past few years.
The New Rite Already Judged
Extracts from The Mass of All Time
1. The judgement of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci
We are not judging the intention but the facts (and the consequences of these facts, similar incidentally, to those of past centuries where these reforms had been introduced) oblige us to acknowledge, along with Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci1 (Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, sent to the Holy Father on September 3, 1969) that the “Novus Ordo Missae […] represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated [at] the Council of Trent”
2. A new rite already condemned by several Popes and Councils
It is a conception more Protestant than Catholic which expresses everything which has been unduly exalted and everything which has been diminished.
Contrary to the teachings of the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, contrary to the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII, the role of the faithful in the participation of the Mass has been exaggerated, and the role of the priest has been belittled to that of a mere president.
It has exaggerated the place given to the liturgy of the Word and lessened the place given to the propitiatory Sacrifice. It has exalted the communal meal and secularized it, at the expense of respect for and faith in the Real Presence effected by transubstantiation.
In suppressing the sacred language, it has pluralized the rites ad infinitum, profaning them by incorporating worldly or pagan elements, and it has spread false translations at the expense of the true faith and genuine piety of the faithful.
And yet the Councils of Florence3 and Trent4 had both declared anathemas against all of these changes, while affirming that our Mass in its Canon dated back to Apostolic times.
The popes St. Pius V and Clement VIII insisted on the necessity of avoiding changes and transformation and of preserving perpetually this Roman Rite hallowed by Tradition.
The desacralization of the Mass and its secularization lead to the laicization of the priesthood, in the Protestant manner5.
How can this reform of the Mass be reconciled with the canons of the Council of Trent and the condemnations in the Bull Auctorem Fidei of Pius VI?
3. “It is Tradition which condemns them, not me”
I do not set myself up as a judge; I am nothing, I am merely an echo of a Magisterium which is clear, which is evident, which is in all of the books, the papal encyclicals, council documents, basically in all of the theological books prior to the Council. What is being said now does not at all conform with the Magisterium which has been professed for two thousand years. Therefore it is the Tradition of the Church, her Magisterium which condemns them. Not me!
4. The traditional judgments of the Church on the Eucharist are definitive
As for our attitude vis-à-vis the liturgical reform and the breviary, we must hold fast to the affirmations of the Council of Trent. It is hard to see how to reconcile it with the liturgical reform. Yet the Council of Trent is a dogmatic, definitive Council and once the Church has made a definitive pronouncement on certain matters, another council may not change these definitions. Without this no more truth is possible!
Faith is something which is unchangeable. When the Church has presented it with all of her authority, there is an obligation to believe it to be immutable. Now, if the Council of Trent went to the trouble of adding anathemas to all of the verities concerning the sacraments and the liturgy, it was not for nothing. How can they behave so casually, as if the Council of Trent no longer exists and say that Vatican II has the same authority and consequently can change everything? We might just as well change our Credo which dates from the Council of Nicea, which is much more ancient, because Vatican II has the same authority and is more important than the Council of Nicea…
It is our duty to be firm about these things, and this is the strongest response we can make to the liturgical reform: it goes against the absolutely definitive and dogmatic definitions of the Council of Trent.
5. An avowal by Paul VI
Here is an interesting little fact which illustrates what Paul VI thought of the changes in the Mass. (…) Jean Guitton asked him: “Why would you not accept that the priests at Ecône continue to celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V? It was what was said before. I do not see why the seminary is refused the ancient Mass. Why not allow them to celebrate it?” The response given by Paul VI is very significant. He replied: “No, if we grant the Mass of St. Pius V to the Society of St. Pius X, all that we have gained through Vatican II will be lost.” (…) It is extraordinary that the pope could see the ruin of Vatican II in the return of the ancient Mass. It was an incredible revelation! This is why the liberals wanted so much for us to say this Mass which represents for them a totally different concept of the Church. The Mass of St. Pius V is not liberal, it is anti-liberal and anti-ecumenical. Therefore it cannot conform to the spirit of Vatican II.
Holy Sacrifice or Eucharistic meal?
Extract from Open Letter to Confused Catholics.
In preparation for the 1981 Eucharistic Congress, a questionnaire was distributed, the first question of which was: “Of these two definitions: ‘The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’ and ‘Eucharistic Meal’, which one do you adopt spontaneously?” There is a great deal that could be said about this way of questioning Catholics, giving them to some extent the choice and appealing to their private judgment on a subject where spontaneity has no place. The definition of the Mass is not chosen in the same way that one chooses a political party.
Alas! The insinuation does not result from a blunder on the part of the person who drew up the questionnaire. One has to accept that the liturgical reform tends to replace the idea and the reality of the Sacrifice by the reality of a meal. That is how one comes to speak of Eucharistic celebration, or of a “Supper”; but the expression “Sacrifice” is much less used. It has almost totally disappeared from catechism handbooks just as it has from sermons. It is absent from Canon II, attributed to St. Hippolytus.
This tendency is connected with what we have discovered concerning the Real Presence: if there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer any need for a victim. The victim is present in view of the sacrifice. To make of the Mass a memorial or fraternal meal is the Protestant error. What happened in the sixteenth century? Precisely what is taking place today. Right from the start they replaced the altar by a table, removed the crucifix from it, and made the “president of the assembly” turn around to face the congregation. The setting of the Protestant Lord’s Supper is found in Pierres Vivantes, the prayer book prepared by the bishops in France which all children attending catechism are obliged to use:
“Christians meet together to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Mass... They proclaim the faith of the Church, they pray for the whole world, they offer the bread and the wine. The priest who presides at the assembly says the great prayer of thanksgiving.”
Now in the Catholic religion it is the priest who celebrates Mass; it is he who offers the bread and wine. The notion of president has been borrowed directly from Protestantism. The vocabulary follows the change of ideas. Formerly, we would say, “Cardinal Lustiger will celebrate a Pontifical Mass.” I am told that at Radio Notre Dame, the phrase used at present is, “Jean-Marie Lustiger will preside at a concelebration.” Here is how they speak about Mass in a brochure issued by the Conference of Swiss Bishops: “The Lord’s Supper achieves firstly communion with Christ. It is the same communion that Jesus brought about during His life on earth when He sat at table with sinners, and has been continued in the Eucharistic meal since the day of the Resurrection. The Lord invites His friends to come together and He will be present among them.”
To that every Catholic is obliged to reply in a categorical manner, “NO! the Mass is not that!” It is not the continuation of a meal similar to that which Our Lord invited Saint Peter and a few of his disciples one morning on the lakeside, after His Resurrection. “When they came to land they saw a charcoal fire there and a fish laid thereon and bread. Jesus said to them, come and dine. And none of them durst ask Him, ‘Who art thou?,’ knowing that it was the Lord. And Jesus cometh and taketh the bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner” (John 21: 9-13).
The communion of the priest and the faithful is a communion to the Victim Who has offered Himself up on the altar of sacrifice. This is of solid stone; if not it contains at least the altar stone which is a stone of sacrifice. Within are laid relics of the martyrs because they have offered their blood for their Master. This communion of the Blood of Our Lord with the blood of the martyrs encourages us also to offer up our lives.
If the Mass is a meal, I understand the priest turning towards the congregation. One does not preside at a meal with one’s back to the guests. But a sacrifice is offered to God, not to the congregation. This is the reason why the priest as the head of the faithful turns toward God and the crucifix over the altar.
At every opportunity emphasis is laid on what the New Sunday Missal calls the “Narrative of the Institution.” The Jean-Bart Centre, the official centre for the Archdiocese of Paris, states, “At the center of the Mass, there is a narrative.” Again, no! The Mass is not a narrative; it is an action.
Three indispensable conditions are needed for it to be the continuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross: the oblation of the victim, the transubstantiation which renders the victim present effectively and not symbolically, and the celebration by a priest, consecrated by his priesthood, in place of the High Priest Who is Our Lord.
Likewise the Mass can obtain the remission of sins. A simple memorial, a narrative of the institution accompanied by a meal, would be far from sufficient for this. All the supernatural virtue of the Mass comes from its relationship to the Sacrifice of the Cross. If we no longer believe that, then we no longer believe anything about Holy Church, the Church would no longer have any reason for existing, we would no longer claim to be Catholics. Luther understood very clearly that the Mass is the heart and soul of the Church. He said: “Let us destroy the Mass and we shall destroy the Church.”
Now we can see that the Novus Ordo Missae, that is to say, the New Order adopted after the Council, has been drawn up on Protestant lines, or at any rate dangerously close to them. For Luther, the Mass was a sacrifice of praise, that is to say, an act of praise, an act of thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiatory sacrifice which renews and applies the Sacrifice of the Cross. For him, the Sacrifice of the Cross took place at a given moment of history, it is the prisoner of that history; we can only apply to ourselves Christ’s merits by our faith in His death and resurrection. Contrarily, the Church maintains that this Sacrifice is realized mystically upon our altars at each Mass, in an unbloody manner by the separation of the Body and the Blood under the species of bread and wine. This renewal allows the merits of the Cross to be applied to the faithful there present, perpetuating this source of grace in time and in space. The Gospel of St. Matthew ends with these words: “And behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”
The difference in conception is not slender. Efforts are being made to reduce it, however, by the alteration of Catholic doctrine of which we can see numerous signs in the liturgy.
Luther said, “Worship used to be addressed to God as a homage. Henceforth it will be addressed to man to console and enlighten him. The sacrifice used to have pride of place but the sermon will supplant it.” That signified the introduction of the Cult of Man, and, in the Church, the importance accorded to the “Liturgy of the Word.” If we open the new missals, this revolution has been accomplished in them too. A reading has been added to the two which existed, together with a “universal prayer” often utilized for propagating political or social ideas; taking the homily into account, we often end up with a shift of balance towards the “word.” Once the sermon is ended, the Mass is very close to its end.
Within the Church, the priest is marked with an indelible character which makes of him an alter Christus: he alone can offer the Holy Sacrifice. Luther considered the distinction between clergy and laity as the “first wall raised up by the Romanists”; all Christians are priests, the pastor is only exercising a function in presiding at the Evangelical Mass. In the Novus Ordo, the “I” of the celebrant has been replaced by “we”; it is written everywhere that the faithful “celebrate,” they are associated with the acts of worship, they read the epistle and occasionally the Gospel, give out Communion, sometimes preach the homily, which may be replaced by “a dialogue by small groups upon the Word of God,” meeting together beforehand to “construct” the Sunday celebration. But this is only a first step; for several years we have heard of those responsible for diocesan organizations who have been putting forward propositions of this nature: “It is not the ministers but the assembly who celebrate” (handouts by the National Center for Pastoral Liturgy), or “The assembly is the prime subject of the liturgy”; what matters is not the “functioning of the rites but the image the assembly gives to itself and the relationship the co-celebrants create between themselves” (Fr. Gelineau, architect of the liturgical reform and professor at the Paris Catholic Institute). If it is the assembly which matters then it is understandable that private Masses should be discredited, which means that priests no longer say them because it is less and less easy to find an assembly, above all during the week. It is a breach with the unchanging doctrine: the Church needs a multiplicity of Sacrifices of the Mass, both for the application of the Sacrifice of the Cross and for all the objects assigned to it, adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation, and impetration.
As if that were not enough, the objective of some is to eliminate the priest entirely, which has given rise to the notorious SAAP (Sunday Assemblies in the Absence of the Priest). We can imagine the faithful gathering to pray together in order to honor the Lord’s Day; but these SAAP are in reality a sort of “dry Mass,” lacking only the consecration; and the lack, as one can read in a document of the Regional Center for Social and Religious Studies at Lille, is only because “until further instructions lay people do not have the power to carry out this act.” The absence of the priest may even be intentional “so that the faithful can learn to manage for themselves.” Fr. Gelineau in Demain la Liturgie writes that the SAAP are only an “educational transition until such time as mentalities have changed,” and he concludes with disconcerting logic that there are still too many priests in the Church, “too many doubtless for things to evolve quickly.”
Luther suppressed the Offertory; Why offer the pure and Immaculate Host if there is no more sacrifice? In the French Novus Ordo the Offertory is practically non-existent; besides which it no longer has this name. The New Sunday Missal speaks of the “prayers of presentation.” The formula used reminds one more of a thanksgiving, a thank-you, for the fruits of the earth. To realize this fully, it is sufficient to compare it with the formulas traditionally used by the Church in which clearly appears the propitiatory and expiatory nature of the Sacrifice “which I offer Thee for my innumerable sins, offenses and negligence, for all those here present and for all Christians living and dead, that it may avail for my salvation and theirs for eternal life.” Raising the chalice, the priest then says, “We offer Thee, Lord, the chalice of Thy redemption, imploring Thy goodness to accept it like a sweet perfume into the presence of Thy divine Majesty for our salvation and that of the whole world.”
What remains of that in the New Mass? This: “Blessed are You, Lord, God of the universe, You who give us this bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands. We offer it to You; it will become the bread of life,” and the same for the wine which will become “our spiritual drink.” What purpose is served by adding, a little further on: “Wash me of my faults, Lord. Purify me of my sin,” and “may our sacrifice today find grace before You”? Which sin? Which sacrifice? What connection can the faithful make between this vague presentation of the offerings and the redemption that he is looking forward to? I will ask another question: Why substitute for a text that is clear and whose meaning is complete, a series of enigmatic and loosely bound phrases? If a need is found for change, it should be for something better. These incidental phrases which seem to make up for the insufficiency of the “prayers of presentation” remind us of Luther, who was at pains to arrange the changes with caution. He retained as much as possible of the old ceremonies, limiting himself to changing their meaning. The Mass, to a great extent, kept its external appearance, the people found in the churches nearly the same setting, nearly the same rites, with slight changes made to please them, because from then on people were consulted much more than before; they were much more aware of their importance in matters of worship, taking a more active part by means of chant and praying aloud. Little by little Latin gave way to German.
Doesn’t all this remind you of something? Luther was also anxious to create new hymns to replace “all the mumblings of popery”. Reforms always adopt the appearance of a cultural revolution.
In the Novus Ordo the most ancient parts of the Roman Canon which goes back to apostolic times has been reshaped to bring it closer to the Lutheran formula of consecration, with both an addition and a suppression. The translation in French has gone even further by altering the meaning of the words pro multis. Instead of “My blood which shall be shed for you and for many,” we read “which shall be shed for you and for the multitude.” This does not mean the same thing and theologically is not without significance.
You may have noticed that most priests nowadays recite as one continuous passage the principal part of the Canon which begins, “the night before the Passion He took bread in His holy hands,” without observing the pause implied by the rubric of the Roman Missal: “Holding with both hands the host between the index finger and the thumb, he pronounces the words of the Consecration in a low but distinct voice and attentively over the host.” The tone changes, becomes intimatory, the five words “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” operate the miracle of transubstantiation, as do those that are said for the consecration of the wine. The new Missal asks the celebrant to keep to the narrative tone of voice as if he were indeed proceeding with a memorial. Creativity being now the rule, we see some celebrants who recite the text while showing the Host all around or even breaking it in an ostentatious manner so as to add the gesture to their words and better illustrate their text. The two genuflections out of the four having been suppressed, those which remain being sometimes omitted, we have to ask ourselves if the priest in fact has the feeling of consecrating, even supposing that he really does have the intention to do so.
|
|
|
|
| Archbishop Lefebvre: New Rite of Mass Condemned by the Tradition of the Church |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-23-2022, 10:24 AM - Forum: New Rite Sacraments
- Replies (4)
|
|
New Rite Condemned by the Tradition of the Church
FSSPX.NEWS [Adapted]
Archbishop Lefebvre gives here the theological reasons for which the SSPX has constantly opposed the Novus Ordo Missæ which came out of the Second Vatican Council.
We find a very enlightening synthesis in the collection of declarations by its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, The Mass of All Time. Likewise, in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, published in 1985, the comparison between the old and the new Mass has lost nothing of its relevance, in spite of the desire of the Holy See to correct some abuses in the conciliar liturgy during the past few years.
The New Rite Already Judged
Extracts from The Mass of All Time
1. The judgement of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci
We are not judging the intention but the facts (and the consequences of these facts, similar incidentally, to those of past centuries where these reforms had been introduced) oblige us to acknowledge, along with Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci1 (Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, sent to the Holy Father on September 3, 1969) that the “Novus Ordo Missae […] represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated [at] the Council of Trent”
2. A new rite already condemned by several Popes and Councils
It is a conception more Protestant than Catholic which expresses everything which has been unduly exalted and everything which has been diminished.
Contrary to the teachings of the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, contrary to the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII, the role of the faithful in the participation of the Mass has been exaggerated, and the role of the priest has been belittled to that of a mere president.
It has exaggerated the place given to the liturgy of the Word and lessened the place given to the propitiatory Sacrifice. It has exalted the communal meal and secularized it, at the expense of respect for and faith in the Real Presence effected by transubstantiation.
In suppressing the sacred language, it has pluralized the rites ad infinitum, profaning them by incorporating worldly or pagan elements, and it has spread false translations at the expense of the true faith and genuine piety of the faithful.
And yet the Councils of Florence3 and Trent4 had both declared anathemas against all of these changes, while affirming that our Mass in its Canon dated back to Apostolic times.
The popes St. Pius V and Clement VIII insisted on the necessity of avoiding changes and transformation and of preserving perpetually this Roman Rite hallowed by Tradition.
The desacralization of the Mass and its secularization lead to the laicization of the priesthood, in the Protestant manner5.
How can this reform of the Mass be reconciled with the canons of the Council of Trent and the condemnations in the Bull Auctorem Fidei of Pius VI?
3. “It is Tradition which condemns them, not me”
I do not set myself up as a judge; I am nothing, I am merely an echo of a Magisterium which is clear, which is evident, which is in all of the books, the papal encyclicals, council documents, basically in all of the theological books prior to the Council. What is being said now does not at all conform with the Magisterium which has been professed for two thousand years. Therefore it is the Tradition of the Church, her Magisterium which condemns them. Not me!
4. The traditional judgments of the Church on the Eucharist are definitive
As for our attitude vis-à-vis the liturgical reform and the breviary, we must hold fast to the affirmations of the Council of Trent. It is hard to see how to reconcile it with the liturgical reform. Yet the Council of Trent is a dogmatic, definitive Council and once the Church has made a definitive pronouncement on certain matters, another council may not change these definitions. Without this no more truth is possible!
Faith is something which is unchangeable. When the Church has presented it with all of her authority, there is an obligation to believe it to be immutable. Now, if the Council of Trent went to the trouble of adding anathemas to all of the verities concerning the sacraments and the liturgy, it was not for nothing. How can they behave so casually, as if the Council of Trent no longer exists and say that Vatican II has the same authority and consequently can change everything? We might just as well change our Credo which dates from the Council of Nicea, which is much more ancient, because Vatican II has the same authority and is more important than the Council of Nicea…
It is our duty to be firm about these things, and this is the strongest response we can make to the liturgical reform: it goes against the absolutely definitive and dogmatic definitions of the Council of Trent.
5. An avowal by Paul VI
Here is an interesting little fact which illustrates what Paul VI thought of the changes in the Mass. (…) Jean Guitton asked him: “Why would you not accept that the priests at Ecône continue to celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V? It was what was said before. I do not see why the seminary is refused the ancient Mass. Why not allow them to celebrate it?” The response given by Paul VI is very significant. He replied: “No, if we grant the Mass of St. Pius V to the Society of St. Pius X, all that we have gained through Vatican II will be lost.” (…) It is extraordinary that the pope could see the ruin of Vatican II in the return of the ancient Mass. It was an incredible revelation! This is why the liberals wanted so much for us to say this Mass which represents for them a totally different concept of the Church. The Mass of St. Pius V is not liberal, it is anti-liberal and anti-ecumenical. Therefore it cannot conform to the spirit of Vatican II.
Holy Sacrifice or Eucharistic meal?
Extract from Open Letter to Confused Catholics.
In preparation for the 1981 Eucharistic Congress, a questionnaire was distributed, the first question of which was: “Of these two definitions: ‘The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’ and ‘Eucharistic Meal’, which one do you adopt spontaneously?” There is a great deal that could be said about this way of questioning Catholics, giving them to some extent the choice and appealing to their private judgment on a subject where spontaneity has no place. The definition of the Mass is not chosen in the same way that one chooses a political party.
Alas! The insinuation does not result from a blunder on the part of the person who drew up the questionnaire. One has to accept that the liturgical reform tends to replace the idea and the reality of the Sacrifice by the reality of a meal. That is how one comes to speak of Eucharistic celebration, or of a “Supper”; but the expression “Sacrifice” is much less used. It has almost totally disappeared from catechism handbooks just as it has from sermons. It is absent from Canon II, attributed to St. Hippolytus.
This tendency is connected with what we have discovered concerning the Real Presence: if there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer any need for a victim. The victim is present in view of the sacrifice. To make of the Mass a memorial or fraternal meal is the Protestant error. What happened in the sixteenth century? Precisely what is taking place today. Right from the start they replaced the altar by a table, removed the crucifix from it, and made the “president of the assembly” turn around to face the congregation. The setting of the Protestant Lord’s Supper is found in Pierres Vivantes, the prayer book prepared by the bishops in France which all children attending catechism are obliged to use:
“Christians meet together to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Mass... They proclaim the faith of the Church, they pray for the whole world, they offer the bread and the wine. The priest who presides at the assembly says the great prayer of thanksgiving.”
Now in the Catholic religion it is the priest who celebrates Mass; it is he who offers the bread and wine. The notion of president has been borrowed directly from Protestantism. The vocabulary follows the change of ideas. Formerly, we would say, “Cardinal Lustiger will celebrate a Pontifical Mass.” I am told that at Radio Notre Dame, the phrase used at present is, “Jean-Marie Lustiger will preside at a concelebration.” Here is how they speak about Mass in a brochure issued by the Conference of Swiss Bishops: “The Lord’s Supper achieves firstly communion with Christ. It is the same communion that Jesus brought about during His life on earth when He sat at table with sinners, and has been continued in the Eucharistic meal since the day of the Resurrection. The Lord invites His friends to come together and He will be present among them.”
To that every Catholic is obliged to reply in a categorical manner, “NO! the Mass is not that!” It is not the continuation of a meal similar to that which Our Lord invited Saint Peter and a few of his disciples one morning on the lakeside, after His Resurrection. “When they came to land they saw a charcoal fire there and a fish laid thereon and bread. Jesus said to them, come and dine. And none of them durst ask Him, ‘Who art thou?,’ knowing that it was the Lord. And Jesus cometh and taketh the bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner” (John 21: 9-13).
The communion of the priest and the faithful is a communion to the Victim Who has offered Himself up on the altar of sacrifice. This is of solid stone; if not it contains at least the altar stone which is a stone of sacrifice. Within are laid relics of the martyrs because they have offered their blood for their Master. This communion of the Blood of Our Lord with the blood of the martyrs encourages us also to offer up our lives.
If the Mass is a meal, I understand the priest turning towards the congregation. One does not preside at a meal with one’s back to the guests. But a sacrifice is offered to God, not to the congregation. This is the reason why the priest as the head of the faithful turns toward God and the crucifix over the altar.
At every opportunity emphasis is laid on what the New Sunday Missal calls the “Narrative of the Institution.” The Jean-Bart Centre, the official centre for the Archdiocese of Paris, states, “At the center of the Mass, there is a narrative.” Again, no! The Mass is not a narrative; it is an action.
Three indispensable conditions are needed for it to be the continuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross: the oblation of the victim, the transubstantiation which renders the victim present effectively and not symbolically, and the celebration by a priest, consecrated by his priesthood, in place of the High Priest Who is Our Lord.
Likewise the Mass can obtain the remission of sins. A simple memorial, a narrative of the institution accompanied by a meal, would be far from sufficient for this. All the supernatural virtue of the Mass comes from its relationship to the Sacrifice of the Cross. If we no longer believe that, then we no longer believe anything about Holy Church, the Church would no longer have any reason for existing, we would no longer claim to be Catholics. Luther understood very clearly that the Mass is the heart and soul of the Church. He said: “Let us destroy the Mass and we shall destroy the Church.”
Now we can see that the Novus Ordo Missae, that is to say, the New Order adopted after the Council, has been drawn up on Protestant lines, or at any rate dangerously close to them. For Luther, the Mass was a sacrifice of praise, that is to say, an act of praise, an act of thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiatory sacrifice which renews and applies the Sacrifice of the Cross. For him, the Sacrifice of the Cross took place at a given moment of history, it is the prisoner of that history; we can only apply to ourselves Christ’s merits by our faith in His death and resurrection. Contrarily, the Church maintains that this Sacrifice is realized mystically upon our altars at each Mass, in an unbloody manner by the separation of the Body and the Blood under the species of bread and wine. This renewal allows the merits of the Cross to be applied to the faithful there present, perpetuating this source of grace in time and in space. The Gospel of St. Matthew ends with these words: “And behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”
The difference in conception is not slender. Efforts are being made to reduce it, however, by the alteration of Catholic doctrine of which we can see numerous signs in the liturgy.
Luther said, “Worship used to be addressed to God as a homage. Henceforth it will be addressed to man to console and enlighten him. The sacrifice used to have pride of place but the sermon will supplant it.” That signified the introduction of the Cult of Man, and, in the Church, the importance accorded to the “Liturgy of the Word.” If we open the new missals, this revolution has been accomplished in them too. A reading has been added to the two which existed, together with a “universal prayer” often utilized for propagating political or social ideas; taking the homily into account, we often end up with a shift of balance towards the “word.” Once the sermon is ended, the Mass is very close to its end.
Within the Church, the priest is marked with an indelible character which makes of him an alter Christus: he alone can offer the Holy Sacrifice. Luther considered the distinction between clergy and laity as the “first wall raised up by the Romanists”; all Christians are priests, the pastor is only exercising a function in presiding at the Evangelical Mass. In the Novus Ordo, the “I” of the celebrant has been replaced by “we”; it is written everywhere that the faithful “celebrate,” they are associated with the acts of worship, they read the epistle and occasionally the Gospel, give out Communion, sometimes preach the homily, which may be replaced by “a dialogue by small groups upon the Word of God,” meeting together beforehand to “construct” the Sunday celebration. But this is only a first step; for several years we have heard of those responsible for diocesan organizations who have been putting forward propositions of this nature: “It is not the ministers but the assembly who celebrate” (handouts by the National Center for Pastoral Liturgy), or “The assembly is the prime subject of the liturgy”; what matters is not the “functioning of the rites but the image the assembly gives to itself and the relationship the co-celebrants create between themselves” (Fr. Gelineau, architect of the liturgical reform and professor at the Paris Catholic Institute). If it is the assembly which matters then it is understandable that private Masses should be discredited, which means that priests no longer say them because it is less and less easy to find an assembly, above all during the week. It is a breach with the unchanging doctrine: the Church needs a multiplicity of Sacrifices of the Mass, both for the application of the Sacrifice of the Cross and for all the objects assigned to it, adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation, and impetration.
As if that were not enough, the objective of some is to eliminate the priest entirely, which has given rise to the notorious SAAP (Sunday Assemblies in the Absence of the Priest). We can imagine the faithful gathering to pray together in order to honor the Lord’s Day; but these SAAP are in reality a sort of “dry Mass,” lacking only the consecration; and the lack, as one can read in a document of the Regional Center for Social and Religious Studies at Lille, is only because “until further instructions lay people do not have the power to carry out this act.” The absence of the priest may even be intentional “so that the faithful can learn to manage for themselves.” Fr. Gelineau in Demain la Liturgie writes that the SAAP are only an “educational transition until such time as mentalities have changed,” and he concludes with disconcerting logic that there are still too many priests in the Church, “too many doubtless for things to evolve quickly.”
Luther suppressed the Offertory; Why offer the pure and Immaculate Host if there is no more sacrifice? In the French Novus Ordo the Offertory is practically non-existent; besides which it no longer has this name. The New Sunday Missal speaks of the “prayers of presentation.” The formula used reminds one more of a thanksgiving, a thank-you, for the fruits of the earth. To realize this fully, it is sufficient to compare it with the formulas traditionally used by the Church in which clearly appears the propitiatory and expiatory nature of the Sacrifice “which I offer Thee for my innumerable sins, offenses and negligence, for all those here present and for all Christians living and dead, that it may avail for my salvation and theirs for eternal life.” Raising the chalice, the priest then says, “We offer Thee, Lord, the chalice of Thy redemption, imploring Thy goodness to accept it like a sweet perfume into the presence of Thy divine Majesty for our salvation and that of the whole world.”
What remains of that in the New Mass? This: “Blessed are You, Lord, God of the universe, You who give us this bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands. We offer it to You; it will become the bread of life,” and the same for the wine which will become “our spiritual drink.” What purpose is served by adding, a little further on: “Wash me of my faults, Lord. Purify me of my sin,” and “may our sacrifice today find grace before You”? Which sin? Which sacrifice? What connection can the faithful make between this vague presentation of the offerings and the redemption that he is looking forward to? I will ask another question: Why substitute for a text that is clear and whose meaning is complete, a series of enigmatic and loosely bound phrases? If a need is found for change, it should be for something better. These incidental phrases which seem to make up for the insufficiency of the “prayers of presentation” remind us of Luther, who was at pains to arrange the changes with caution. He retained as much as possible of the old ceremonies, limiting himself to changing their meaning. The Mass, to a great extent, kept its external appearance, the people found in the churches nearly the same setting, nearly the same rites, with slight changes made to please them, because from then on people were consulted much more than before; they were much more aware of their importance in matters of worship, taking a more active part by means of chant and praying aloud. Little by little Latin gave way to German.
Doesn’t all this remind you of something? Luther was also anxious to create new hymns to replace “all the mumblings of popery”. Reforms always adopt the appearance of a cultural revolution.
In the Novus Ordo the most ancient parts of the Roman Canon which goes back to apostolic times has been reshaped to bring it closer to the Lutheran formula of consecration, with both an addition and a suppression. The translation in French has gone even further by altering the meaning of the words pro multis. Instead of “My blood which shall be shed for you and for many,” we read “which shall be shed for you and for the multitude.” This does not mean the same thing and theologically is not without significance.
You may have noticed that most priests nowadays recite as one continuous passage the principal part of the Canon which begins, “the night before the Passion He took bread in His holy hands,” without observing the pause implied by the rubric of the Roman Missal: “Holding with both hands the host between the index finger and the thumb, he pronounces the words of the Consecration in a low but distinct voice and attentively over the host.” The tone changes, becomes intimatory, the five words “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” operate the miracle of transubstantiation, as do those that are said for the consecration of the wine. The new Missal asks the celebrant to keep to the narrative tone of voice as if he were indeed proceeding with a memorial. Creativity being now the rule, we see some celebrants who recite the text while showing the Host all around or even breaking it in an ostentatious manner so as to add the gesture to their words and better illustrate their text. The two genuflections out of the four having been suppressed, those which remain being sometimes omitted, we have to ask ourselves if the priest in fact has the feeling of consecrating, even supposing that he really does have the intention to do so.
|
|
|
|
| The Seven Stars of the Carthusians |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-23-2022, 07:13 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
- No Replies
|
|
The Seven Stars of the Carthusians
TIA | October 22, 2022
St. Bruno is often pictured tonsured and in the habit of the Carthusian Order, which he founded in the 11th century. Some paintings identify him by a halo of golden stars, as at right. The stars relate to an episode in St. Bruno's Vita.
![[Image: H236_Bru.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H236_Bru.jpg)
![[Image: H236_Fun.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H236_Fun.jpg)
St. Bruno founder of the Carthusians; below, a corpse proclaims he is condemned by God's 'just judgment'
In the year 1084 a small group of men had gathered together, asking divine inspiration for living a more perfect life of prayer and contemplation. They included St. Bruno, the leader, and some of the most learned men of the time: Landuin, the two Stephens of Bourg and Die, canons of Sts. Rufus, Hugh the Chaplain, as well as two laymen, Andrew and Guérin.
These seven men had attended a funeral in Paris of a noted scholar famous for upright living. While the corpse was being carried to church on a stretcher, it lifted its head and said, "I am condemned by the just judgment of God."
Amazed and fearful, the priests decided to delay the funeral until the following day, but on the next day the same thing happened again.
And again on the third day the corpse proclaimed, "I am condemned by the just judgment of God."
Then St. Bruno said to his companions: "If a man of such dignity and erudition, and who was reputed so upright in his life is damned, what can become of us miserable men?"
Bruno proposed that the seven of them should seek salvation by imitating St. Paul the Hermit and withdrawing from this corrupt world. That is how they came to visit the Bishop of Grenoble, Hugh of Châteauneuf, who was known for his holiness.
On the night before the visit, the Bishop had a dream in which God made Himself a fitting habitation among the Chartreuse Mountains, a rugged area north of Grenoble. Above the habitation was a circle of seven golden stars.
The next morning, the seven men – led by St. Bruno – came to visit the Bishop to ask for his advice about their desire to withdraw from the world to a life of prayer in some wilderness. Remembering the dream, the Bishop conducted them to that very site he had seen in his dream amidst those precipitous rocks and mountains almost always covered with snow in Chartreuse. In 1084 they set up what became the motherhouse of the Carthusian Order.
As the fame of St. Bruno and the Chartreuse monks grew, he attracted more and more men to the life of prayer, penitence and labor. Pope Urban II, who had been Bruno's pupil when he taught in Reims, called him to Rome to help the Pope in his difficult Pontificate. The Pope asked St. Bruno to become the Archbishop of Reggio di Calabria.
But the Saint refused. He agreed with Bl. Urban II to return to his life of prayer. However, the Pope asked St. Bruno to not go too far away. So, he went to a mountain cave in a desert place near Squillace in Calabria to continue the solitary life. That is why St. Bruno is also depicted at times with a Bishop's miter at his feet.
The Friendship of Count Roger
One day in 1091 Count Roger of Calabria was hunting in those lands when his dogs began to bark around the Saint’s cave. The Count entered and found St. Bruno at his prayers. He was so struck by the Saint's holiness, that thenceforward he greatly honored him and his companions and supplied their wants.
![[Image: H236_Cou.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H236_Cou.jpg)
Count Roger of Calabria discovers St. Bruno in a cave on his property
That same year the Count granted St. Bruno and his companions the lands around the caves they occupied.
St. Bruno went also to visit Count Roger's brother, Count Robert Guiscard, in Mileto to help Guiscard when sick (1098 and 1101), and to baptize his son Roger (1097), the future King of Sicily.
But more often it was the Count Roger who went into the desert to visit his solitary friends, and when, through his generosity, the Monastery of St. Stephen was built in 1095 near the hermitage of St. Mary, there was erected adjoining it a small country house where he would retire whenever he could escape his pressing affairs.
In the year 1098, this same Count Roger was besieging the town of Capua. One of his men named Sergius, a Greek by birth to whom he had given the command of 200 men, succumbed to a bribe and determined to betray him by delivering the Count's army to the Prince of Capua during the night.
It was on the 1st of March that he was to execute his intention. On that very night, St. Bruno, who was in the desert of Squilantia in Calabria, appeared to Count Roger and told him to fly to arms promptly if he did not want to be taken by his enemies unexpectedly.
The Count started from his sleep, and commanded his men to mount their horses to inspect the camp. They met Sergius and his men with the Prince of Capua, who, perceiving them, immediately fled out of the camp. However, Count Roger's men took 162 of the traitors, from whom they learned all the secret of the betrayal.
On the following 29th of July, Count Roger went to Squilantia and related to St. Bruno what had happened to him. The Saint said: "It was not I who warned you. It was the Angel of God, who is near Catholic Princes in time of war."
Thus does the Count Roger relate the affair himself, in a privilege granted to St. Bruno.
![[Image: H236_Cre.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H236_Cre.jpg)
The Carthusian Crest with its 7 stars over a globe surmounted by a Cross:
Stat Crux dum Volvitur Orbis
(The Cross stands while the world turns) |
|
|
|
| Marie-Julie Jahenny Prophecy Regarding the New Mass |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-23-2022, 06:40 AM - Forum: New Rite Sacraments
- Replies (1)
|
|
Taken from here: http://www.catholictradition.org/Passion/jahenny.htm
THE CONSPIRACY TO INVENT THE "NEW MASS"
On November 27, 1902 and May 10, 1904, Our Lord and Our Lady announced the conspiracy to invent the "New Mass":
Quote:"I give you a WARNING. The disciples who are not of My Gospel are now working hard to remake according to their ideas and under the influence of the enemy of souls a MASS that contains words that are ODIOUS in My sight. When the fatal hour arrives when the faith of my priests is put to the test, it will be (these texts) that will be celebrated in this SECOND period ... The FIRST period is (the one) of my priesthood which exists since Me. The SECOND is (the one) of the persecution when the ENEMIES of the Faith and of Holy Religion (will impose their formulas) in the book of the second celebration ... These infamous spirits are those who crucified Me and are awaiting the kingdom of THE NEW MESSIAH."
(Therefore, it is the Jews who are responsible for the new Mass; and in fact the formula of the Offertory of the new Mass is inspired on the Jewish Kabbala. Jean Bustorf, in his Synagoga Judaica, the 1661 edition, page 242, gives the following words:
For the bread: "Benedictus Tu, Domine Deus noster, mundi domine qui panem nobis a terra produxisti."
For the wine: "Benedictus Tu, Domine Deus noster, mundi domine qui vineae fructum creaveris."
And Our Lord Adds:
Quote:"Many of My holy priests will refuse this book sealed with the words of the abyss."
Then sadly: "Unfortunately amongst them are those who will accept, it will be used."
|
|
|
|
| Desacrificing the Mass - Parts I & II |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2022, 07:18 AM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
- Replies (1)
|
|
Desacrificing the Mass - Part I
How Sacrifice Is Present in the Tridentine Mass
Fr. Stephen F. Somerville | March 26, 2007
In the Tridentine Mass, there is a particularly solemn invocation of the Holy Trinity. It comes at the end of the Canon of the Mass, just before the Our Father prayer. This invocation has five signs of the Cross, made by the priest with the consecrated Bread and Wine, that is, the true Body and Blood of Christ. These crosses are succeeded by a gesture of elevation or lifting up of the Victim toward Heaven.
The priest prays, meanwhile, that "all honor and glory" be given to God at this usually-called "minor elevation" of the Most Holy Victim in the Sacrifice which we call the Mass. Here are the words of the full prayer:
Through Christ, and with Him, and in Him, all honor and glory is given to Thee, O God the Father, in the unity of the of the Holy Ghost, until the end of world without end.
![[Image: A038_Mass.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_a/A038_Mass.jpg)
The element of sacrifice is clearly present in the pre-Vatican II Mass
These few lines remind us that the self-sacrifice of the Victim Jesus, offered in bloody manner on Good Friday at Mount Calvary, and now renewed by the priest on the Catholic Altar, this sacrifice, I repeat, is the supreme act of honor and glory to God. Nothing gives the Father more praise and pleasure than the oblation or offering of His Beloved Son's Body and Blood.
This offering is re-presented, made present and actual again, or made new, by the ordained priest every time he says Mass. It is not a fresh crucifixion of Jesus; it is not another killing or dying of Christ. It is the one and only sacrifice of the Eternal Son, now incarnate, and it is achieved on our altar by the separate consecrations of the bread and the wine. These become, by Divine Power, the true and real Body and Blood of the same Victim Christ as on Good Friday. The same Sacrifice is therefore present, is offered, and is pleasing to the Father.
Let us keep in mind that Jesus' whole life was an offering to God. He did not wait till Good Friday to please and glorify His Father. As soon as He came into the world, He uttered the words of the prophetic psalmist: "Here I am, Lord; I come to do Thy will." The Gospel records that He said: "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." He said, "I do always the things that please Him." He said, "The Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing (Jn 5:19)." He said, "I honor my Father." (8:49) Twice in Jesus' earthly life, at His Baptism and His Transfiguration, God the Father testified aloud to the loving obedience of Jesus by saying "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
We began these reflections by declaring the sacrifice of Jesus' Body and Blood at the Minor Elevation of the Mass. It says, "Through Christ, all honor to Thee, Father, in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, forever."
But you might answer, these words do not say sacrifice very clearly. Can we be sure that the Mass really is a Sacrifice offered by Christ to the Father? The answer is, yes, we can be certain. Let us look at the Mass prayers, and see what they say.
At the very beginning, we hear three times, "I will go unto the altar of God" What is the altar? It is the sacred stone on which to offer sacrifice. When the priest climbs the altar steps, he prays "to be worthy to enter with pure mind into the Holy of holies, " which means the holy place in God's temple for offering sacrifice.
![[Image: A038_SacrificeofMelchizedech%20.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_a/A038_SacrificeofMelchizedech%20.jpg)
The sacrifices of the Old Covenant were prefigures of the Holy Mass
At the beginning of the Offertory, that is, the offering-time for the sacrifice, the priest prays, "Father, accept this stainless host (and host means Victim, the object of sacrifice), which I offer for my sins, for all present, for all faithful Christians, living and dead, so that it may lead to our salvation. " This sacrifice language comes from the Latin prayer Suscipe Sancte Pater.
Notice that sacrifice is being offered also for dead Christians, that is, for the faithful departed. We must remember that the Commander of the Maccabees army in the Old Testament sent money to the Jerusalem temple for sacrifices to be offered for his soldiers who had died in battle, "so that they might be loosed from their sins." So today, we Catholics often have Masses said for the departed in order to atone for their sins, and help to release them from purgatory into heaven.
Moments later, at the Mass Offertory, the priest prays to God the Sanctifier to "bless this sacrifice" and while so saying, he makes the sign of the Cross over the bread and wine, that is, precisely the sacrifice.
Then, washing his hands, the priest prays Psalm 25, a hymn of praise for the old Jerusalem temple, that is, the sacred building made for sacrifices. He says "I will go about Thy altar, Lord...I have loved the beauty of Thy house, the place of Thy glory...I have avoided evil men, whose hands are grasping sin and blood and bribes, not holy sacrifices. Be merciful unto me, my foot hath stood in the way of right, not wrong." These two prayers – the Veni Sanctificator and the Lavabo are clearly the prayers of a true priest offering a real sacrifice.
Immediately after them, the priest prays Suscipe Sancta Trinitas, with its unmistakable language of true ritual sacrifice. He says, Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation which we offer thee as memorial of the passion, resurrection and ascension of Christ. The priest strikingly anticipates the consecration and change of the bread and wine gifts into the very Body and Blood of Good Friday and the Easter Christ. It will not be a mere psychological, subjective calling to mind, but a concrete memorial. The flesh and blood of the Victim will really lie before our eyes.
The priest prays on, (Receive, Lord, this offering, also) to honor Holy Mary, John the Baptist, the Apostles and All Saints, that it may honor them, and save us wayfarers. Notice the Catholic care to honor both God and the Saints, and to assist ourselves, with the kindly intercession of the Saints. These are points of doctrine rejected by the Protestants: Purgatory and Intercession and Veneration regarding the Saints. The Sacrifice of the Mass declares these truths by such prayers as these.
Is it now clearer that the Catholic Mass actually affirms itself a true sacrifice of worship? Yes, it is surely clearer. But the clearest is yet to come, in the Canon Prayer of the Roman Mass. The priest begins it, still in silence as he was for the offertory prayers, and he says, "Father... accept and bless these + gifts, these + presents, these holy and + unspotted Sacrifices," and he makes three emphatic signs of the Cross over the offerings of bread and wine, as if to drive home the connection between them and the One who expired in self-sacrifice on the very Cross.
![[Image: A038_duccioLastSupper.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_a/A038_duccioLastSupper.jpg)
The Last Supper by Duccio di Buoninsegna
More prayers follow, using plain sacrifice terminology. I will cite just one of these, which precedes the Consecration. It is Quam oblationem. The priest asks: 0 God, please bless, approve, and ratify this oblation that it may become the Body and Blood of thy beloved Son, Jesus. "
Now comes the climactic consecration of the Mass. People tend to think that this account of what Jesus did and said at the Last Supper is copied from the four Gospels. Not so! These Gospels were written down 25 or more years after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. But Mass had been offered by the Apostles with the early Church right from Pentecost Day and perhaps even earlier. Before His Ascension, it is entirely likely that Jesus taught His disciples how to conduct the service and sacrifice of Holy Thursday. Our Roman Canon contains details not in any of the Four Gospels. For example, the expression Mystery of Faith at the wine consecration. It clearly helps to express wonder and awe at the moment of change to the Blood of Christ. Pope Innocent III in 1202 declared we believe that the form of words in the Canon came from the Apostles who received them from Christ, and their successors from them.
We call this change transubstantiation, that is, change of substance, not of appearance. What we must specially notice here is the format of the Latin Altar Missal. The words of consecration, that is, the essential form words of the Sacrament, are picked out in very large, indented type, often with colored illumination. The priest is instructed to bow down low when uttering the words, In a self-audible whisper, with great reverence, as if he were speaking in the very Person of Christ, and this is precisely the case. It is no mere narrative of the Last Supper of Christ.
Finally, the language is clearly that of sacrifice. It says "the chalice...of the new and eternal covenant," that is, the sacrifice ratifying said covenant. It says the Blood “will be shed,” as in sacrifice. It is shed "for you and for many, unto the remission of sins," as it is in a true sacrifice intended to propitiate the Deity.
After the consecration, in Unde et memores, the priest remembers the passion of Christ and offers to God - and I quote – “a pure + victim, a holy + victim, a spotless + victim, the holy bread of + eternal life and the chalice + of everlasting salvation.” Five hand-signs of the Cross over the offerings accompany these words. The next prayer expressly compares this offering with famous sacrifices of old, namely of Abel (son of Adam), of patriarch Abraham, and of High Priest Melchisedech. Then the priest asks the Angels to carry the offerings up to the very altar of God in Heaven, just as Jesus Himself ascended to Heaven six weeks after His sacrificial immolation on Calvary. This too is clear sacrifice-language.
The purpose of sacrifice is not only to honor God, but to propitiate Him, that is, appease Him, after the offences of men's sins. In other words, Sacrifice must be pleasing to God, and must re-establish good relations, or what we call "communion" with God. Accordingly, the Sacrifice of the Mass now enters into its communion phase, and this is specially expressed by reverently partaking of the flesh of the Victim, in what we call Holy Communion. As we all know instinctively, to share food together is a sign of brotherly love. The Mass is a Sacrament of our mystical unity with Christ and one another.
I now conclude all these remarks with reference to one final, brief, but magnificent declaration of sacrifice in the Roman Mass. It is the prayer Placeat tibi just before the priest's final blessing. In brief he says, "O Holy Trinity, may my service please thee, and may my sacrifice be acceptable to thee, and be a propitiation to win thy loving mercy." It is now abundantly clear. The Roman Rite Catholic Mass is indeed a Sacrifice, truly and really, offered for the honor of God and the salvation of men. The words of the Mass say this; the gestures of the Mass reinforce it.
|
|
|
|
| Benedict XVI: Biased Interpretation of St. Robert Bellarmine |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2022, 07:04 AM - Forum: The Architects of Vatican II
- No Replies
|
|
Biased Interpretation of St. Robert Bellarmine
TIA | April 6, 2011
I have a fervent devotion to all of Holy Mother Church's Doctors and strive to revive their timeless teachings in modernist times.
Incredibly, in the last several weeks, Pope Benedict XVI has found public occasion to modernize, contemporize and conciliarize no fewer than five of the Bride of Christ's holiest and most traditional of Doctors: St. Robert Bellarmine; St. Francis de Sales, St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, and St. Lawrence of Brindisi.
Benedict's penchant for engaging in historical revisionism seems boundless. Unfortunately, his efforts generally succeed owing to Conciliar Catholics' spiritual blindness and to their overwhelming ignorance of their Faith and the authentic and glorious history of our Holy Church. Here I chose to defend only one of these five Doctors, St. Robert Bellarmine, due to the number and weightiness of the papal inaccuracies spun around him.
![[Image: A085_Bellarmine.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_a/A085_Bellarmine.jpg)
St. Robert Bellarmine, defender of the Faith against Protestantism
In a general audience February 23, 2011 in Paul VI Hall, Benedict XVI downplayed the polemical nature of St. Robert’s Bellarmine preaching. (Zenit, “On St. Robert Bellarmine," Feb. 23, 2011).
Trying to give a new look to the Saint’s famous work Controversiae, which firmly responded to Protestant errors, the Pope called its style “historical,” “an attempt to confirm the Church’s identity in face of the Protestant Reformation,” rather than a theological refutation of error. This work, he said, “attempts to synthesize the various theological controversies of the time, avoiding every controversial and aggressive style in confronting the ideas of the Reformation.”
Quite the contrary, St. Robert Bellarmine was a heroic and brilliant Defender of the Faith and enemy of all heresies and all those heretics responsible for spreading the dissent that swept through Europe in the wake of Protestantism's great revolt against God.
It was not only the “ideas” of the Reformation but its errors that he categorically refuted. In fact, he affirmed the opposite of what now Benedict XVI attributes to him. Indeed, judging the heretics St. Robert stated in his work on Christian Doctrine, "Amongst Catholics, there are good and bad, but among heretics not one can be good," the Saint affirmed in another (Cf. Doctrina Christiana, Paris: 1870).
A militant defender of the Faith
I labored to have St. Robert speak in his own defense and to indisputably prove that at no time in his long and illustrious ecclesiastical life was he ever a 'synthesizer of theological controversies,’ as presented by Pope Ratzinger. What follows are but a few texts of this Great Saint and Doctor of the Church in which he defends the Faith and attacks the heretics. They present a quite different picture of the Saint than the non-controversial and non-aggressive preacher described by the present Pontiff in his audience.
He is clear when he condemns heretics and schismatics and declares they should not be called Christian:
•"Heretics and schismatics place an obstacle to God's grace by their sins of infidelity and schism in which they actually persevere." (On the Sacrament of Baptism, Book I Chapter 6).
• "A manifest heretic is not a Christian, as is clearly taught by St. Cyprian, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Jerome and others." (On the Church Militant)
• "For men are not bound, or able to read hearts; but when they see that someone is a heretic by his external works, they judge him to be a heretic pure and simple, and condemn him as a heretic." (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30)
In conflict with Benedict’s promotion of ecumenism and respect for the false religions, St. Robert Bellarmine boldly proclaims that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church:
• "The knowledge of the dogmas of the Faith of Christ is necessary for everyone who earnestly desires the salvation of his soul." (Christian Doctrine, Introduction)
• "Our [present day] heretics, more audacious than Pelagians, deny that Baptism is necessary, not only for the remission of sin, but also for the attainment of Heaven. However, those who imagine that there is another remedy besides Baptism openly contradict the Gospels, the Councils, the Fathers, and the consensus of the Universal Church." (On Baptism, Book I, Chapter 4)
Contradicting once again the teaching of Benedict XVI, St. Robert Bellarmine echoes the constant teaching of the Church, affirming that all those who do not accept Christ and His Gospel will be condemned to Hell for all eternity:
• "If the Son of God will have all men to be saved, how is it that so many suffer the torments of Hell? I answer in one word: they wish it. He sends preachers of His Gospel to all parts of the world to proclaim: "He who believes, and is baptized, shall be saved. "And if any are unwilling to enter on this way, they perish by their own fault and not by the lack of will on the part of the Redeemer. For an hour the perfidious Jews exulted over Christ in His sufferings; for an hour Judas enjoyed the price of his avarice; for an hour Pilate gloried that he had regained the friendship of Herod and not lost the friendship of Caesar. But for nearly two thousand years they have all been suffering the torments of Hell, and their cries of despair will be heard for ever and ever." (The Seven Words Spoken by Christ on the Cross, Westminster, MD: Carroll Press, Thomas Baker, 1933)
These are just some texts I can present of the Great Doctor of the Church to show that he can never be presented as an ecumenical saint, as Benedict XVI tried to do..
One could perhaps say that the papal “historical reinterpretation” of St. Robert Bellarmine is not so different from a falsification.
|
|
|
|
| ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ movie is now available for free viewing [until October 28] |
|
Posted by: Stone - 10-22-2022, 06:53 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- Replies (2)
|
|
‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ movie is now available for free viewing
'When people get fearful, their capacity for critical thinking gets disabled.'
![[Image: Fauci-810x500.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Fauci-810x500.png)
Dr. Anthony Fauci
YouTube
Oct 19, 2022
(LifeSiteNews) – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in collaboration with Jeff Hays Films has released a film version of Kennedy’s bestselling book “The Real Anthony Fauci” that details the extent of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s influence on global public health, especially during the time of the declared COVID pandemic.
Currently, the movie is available to view for free at the film’s website for a limited time.
The film is jam-packed with information about the life of Anthony Fauci and his role in the transformation of public health into a veritable pseudo-governmental infrastructure that has decided public policy for decades.
The film begins with a summary of Event 201, which was a pandemic-response exercise that took place just weeks before the advent of COVID-19 in the public discussion.
That event, the film recalls, was sponsored by the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, and the CIA had a hand in its operations. The notion of fighting “misinformation” was a central theme at the pandemic exercise, as was the idea of asymptomatic spread, a rushed vaccine, and other things.
The film portrays the event as something like a simulation for what was to come with the declared pandemic just a couple months later.
Showing the unprecedented response to the coronavirus, the film showed a montage of the various media campaigns that appear engineered to get everyone to think in the same manner about the virus. Kennedy believes this was done to stoke fear among the populous.
At one point, he remarked, “When people get fearful, their capacity for critical thinking gets disabled.”
In came Fauci, portrayed by the media as the cool, calm and collected scientist as opposed to the vilified and bombastic President Donald Trump.
mRNA vaccine-tech inventor Dr. Robert Malone quipped “in comes Tony Fauci, savior of the West.”
The overall thesis of the film, as in the book, is that Fauci has been on a decades-long quest to be something of a Czar of public health, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Highlights of his time working in public health during the HIV/AIDS crisis are shown, and Fauci can be seen recommending something like social distancing as a preventive to contracting HIV even then.
The film notes that the narrative on HIV/AIDS was woefully incorrect, as was the narrative on COVID, and as he did then, Fauci has remained obstinate that he has done nothing wrong even in the face of severe criticism from colleagues and other scientists.
Another point the film makes is that Fauci has a history of jumping on the bandwagon of expensive and highly toxic medicines as treatments for diseases, ignoring their devastating harm to life and health and ignoring and or belittling and suppressing far safer medicines that can be repurposed for little to no money.
This has played out in the present day with Fauci’s reluctance to recommend safe and effective COVID treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and instead recommended highly dangerous and expensive remdesivir, as well as the now-proven dangerous COVID jabs.
The film is packed with loads more information about Fauci’s professional life and how his endeavors climaxed in his massive influence over the world’s response to COVID.
Those interested in watching the whole thing can do so if they act quickly, as the film will only be free until October 28.
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: f05b195e-59be-4d69-bb0d-f48df45eea74.jpg]](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/ea2da4ca63cd8ed8cba4ddc85/images/f05b195e-59be-4d69-bb0d-f48df45eea74.jpg)
![[Image: A085_Temple2.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_a/A085_Temple2.jpg)
