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  Nicaragua Escalates Repression Against Catholic Clergy
Posted by: Stone - 08-06-2024, 06:43 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence - No Replies

Nicaragua Escalates Repression Against Catholic Clergy


The Tico Times | August 4, 2024

At least 12 priests have been arrested in recent days in a new wave of detentions targeting Catholic Church clergy in Nicaragua, according to a human rights NGO operating from exile in Costa Rica.

“In the last 48 hours, there has been a repressive escalation against priests of the Catholic Church” in the Matagalpa department, in the northern part of the country, stated the Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Más in a communiqué.

“Several parishes have been besieged, and at least 12 priests have been arbitrarily detained, some of whom are now missing and in a state of enforced disappearance,” the organization specified.

On Thursday and Friday, Nicaraguan police carried out operations in parishes of the dioceses of Matagalpa and Estelí (north), reported Martha Patricia Molina, a lawyer and researcher on church-related issues, currently exiled in the United States, via social media platform X.

Nicaraguan human rights activist Haydee Castillo, also exiled in the United States, stated on X that “last night Matagalpa was besieged by police and paramilitary forces.” The Nicaraguan government has not commented on these reports.

President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, claim that the Church supported the 2018 protests against the government, which resulted in over 300 deaths according to the UN, and which Managua considers an attempted coup sponsored by Washington.

Murillo has described the clergy as “children of the devil” or “agents of evil” who engage in “spiritual terrorism.” “This is the largest crackdown since December 2023,” when another dozen priests were detained, the collective stated. In January, about thirty religious figures were released and sent to the Vatican.

A week ago, a group of United Nations experts denounced that the Nicaraguan government has maintained “systematic” attacks against the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations since the 2018 protests.

From April 2018 to March 2024, the group documented “73 cases of arbitrary detentions of members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations,” although they noted that “the total number could be higher.”

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  Hotez Calls For Police Deployment Against "Anti-Vaxxers"
Posted by: Stone - 08-04-2024, 06:16 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism - No Replies

Hotez Calls For Police Deployment Against "Anti-Vaxxers"

[Image: Shutterstock_2204313927-800x469.jpg?itok=qBKiw0Cw]


ZH | Aug 03, 2024
Authored by Paul Thacker via The Brownstone Institute,

Social media went a little bonkers last week when an interview of Texas Children’s Hospital’s Dr. Peter Hotez began circulating with the Big Pharma insider calling for the United Nations and NATO to deploy security forces against “anti-vaxxers” in the United States. Dr. Hotez’s statements first appeared on the YouTube channel of an international pediatric conference that took place in Colombia, but the interview then jumped onto X.

The Simposio Internacional de Actualización en Pediatría (International Symposium of Pediatric Updates) later removed the interview from YouTube although photos can still be found on Facebook.

In clips of Hotez’s interview that continue to circulate on X, he claims “anti-vaxxers” caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States. I uploaded one clip to my YouTube channel which you can watch here:
Quote:What I’ve said to the Biden administration is, the health sector can’t solve this on its own. We’re going to have to bring in Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, Justice Department to help us understand how to do this.

I’ve said the same with…I met with [WHO general director] Dr. Tedros last month…to say, I don’t know that the World Health Organization can solve this on our own. We need the other United Nations agencies—NATO. This is a security problem, because it’s no longer a theoretical construct or some arcane academic exercise. Two hundred thousand Americans died because of anti-vaccine aggression, anti-science aggression.

And so, this is now a lethal force…and now I feel as a pediatric vaccine scientist…it’s important, just as important for me to make new vaccines, to save lives. The other side of saving lives is countering this anti-vaccine aggression.

Hotez has long been noted for promoting controversial and sometimes false statements about the Covid pandemic and then accusing his critics of “anti-science.”

[Image: image-71-758x800.jpg?itok=7jFVe_fk]

But this is not the first time Hotez has called for police to deploy against those who disagree with his views on science. Last October, Scientific American platformed Hotez as an expert on “anti-science” and didn’t bat an eyelid when he said support for scientists would require intervention by the Department of Homeland Security and the creation of a federal interagency task force.

[Image: image-72-539x800.jpg?itok=-xLcHWhs]

Dr. Hotez again called for deploying federal police to support science during a grand rounds lecture he gave in August 2021. A whistleblower at Texas Children’s Hospital sent me the lecture where Hotez said the “disinformation empire” threatened America and would need to be dealt with by the Department of Homeland Security:
Quote:The problem is the disinformation empire is so vast and pervasive that until we do something more definitive to get to the source of the disinformation and stop it, it’s not going to have that much of an impact. And that’s where everybody moves away from me.

And I tend to be out on a…out on my own here.


Earlier this year, Time Magazine named Hotez a “Science Warrior” and one of the 100 most influential people in global health.


Republished from the author’s Substack

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  Eight days too late: Vatican Condemns Olympic Opening Ceremonies
Posted by: Stone - 08-04-2024, 06:06 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - Replies (1)

Vatican 'saddened' by 'certain scenes' at Olympics' opening ceremony
The ceremony depicted a mock Last Supper with drag queens


Fox News | August 3, 2024

The opening ceremony of the Olympics was immediately under criticism, and it "saddened" Pope Francis.

A statement released by the Vatican Saturday evening said there should be "no allusions ridiculing the religious convictions of many people."

"The Holy See was saddened by certain scenes during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games and can only join the voices that have been raised in recent days to deplore the offence caused to many Christians and believers of other religions," the statement said.

"At a prestigious event where the whole world comes together to share common values, there should be no allusions ridiculing the religious convictions of many people. The freedom of expression, which is clearly not called into question here, is limited by respect for others."

The ceremony turned heads when it included a headless Marie Antoinette early on, then a ménage à trois.

However, what made critics most angry was when the ceremony appeared to depict a mock Last Supper with people dressed in drag.

The performance took place during a floating parade on the Seine River last week and featured drag queens seated around a table with one person, painted blue, sitting atop the table. Many argue the display resembled the Da Vinci painting depicting a scene from the Gospel of John when Jesus announces that one of his apostles would betray him.

There's been mixed messaging from Olympic organizers over what was behind the drag scene. One spokesperson reportedly admitted to the New York Post that creative director Thomas Jolly took inspiration from da Vinci's painting, "The Last Supper." Others have claimed no offense was intended, and it was merely a nod to Greek mythology.

Many Christian faith leaders and celebrities, like Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, fitness guru Jillian Michaels, Elon Musk, actress Candace Cameron Bure and ex-transgender influencer Oli London, expressed disappointment in the depiction.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.; Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini; conservative French politician and European Parliament member Marion Maréchal; and Hungary’s ambassador to the Vatican, Eduard Habsburg, are among officials who condemned the presentation.

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: St. Peter in Chains 8/1/24 "God Freed the Pope From Secular Chains"
Posted by: Deus Vult - 08-03-2024, 08:03 PM - Forum: August 2024 - No Replies

St. Peter in Chains 8/1/24 
"God Freed the Pope From Secular Chains"


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  Francis pens fourth letter to LGBTQ activist Fr. James Martin
Posted by: Stone - 08-03-2024, 06:23 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

Francis "Spiritually United with Homosex Conference"


gloria.tv [slightly adapted] | August 1, 2024

Francis has once again written a letter, dated July 11, to the homosexual activist James Martin, a "Jesuit".

It is his fourth letter in connection with Martin's homosexual propaganda group 'Outreach'. The occasion for this letter is an Outreach conference on August 2 to 4 at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University with some 300 participants.

A Eucharist on Saturday will be presided over by the homosexual activist Wilton Gregory who is also Cardinal of Washington.

Francis wrote to Martin a few lines in Spanish:

Quote:Dear brother,

Thank you very much for your [10 July] e-mail.

I am happy that Cardinal Gregory will preside over a Eucharist; I will be spiritually with him and with all of you, united in prayer.

Thank you for praying for me. I do the same for you. May Jesus bless you and the Blessed Virgin protect you.

[Image: paojoese5d01awbbp2khdzsxqpsb3ym1b3yafyu....24&webp=on]

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  Erdoğan Calls on Mute Francis to Defend Christ
Posted by: Stone - 08-03-2024, 06:13 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

Erdoğan Calls on Mute Francis to Defend Christ


gloria.tv |August 2, 2024

Following the blasphemy at the Paris Olympics, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on Francis to "speak out together".

Francis loves to speak out on almost everything, but only when he knows he has the media activists of the oligarchs on his side, who, however, love blasphemies against Christ.

According to Abc.es (1 August), Francis "finished his holidays" on Wednesday, which allowed (sic) him to take the phone call with Erdoğan.

In reality, Erdoğan forced Francis to take the phone call because he had publicly announced on Tuesday that he would call Francis to share his "indignation" at the "immoral demonstrations during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games".

Turkish government sources said on social media that during the conversation Erdoğan criticised that "under the pretext of 'freedom of expression and tolerance', human dignity is being trampled upon and religious and moral values are being mocked, which offends both Muslims and the Christian world".

As a result, he said, "it is necessary to raise a united voice and show a common attitude against these offences".

The embarrassed Vatican did not give details of Francis' response, but the Turkish government has assured that Francis thanked Erdoğan [very privately] for "his sensitivity to the humiliation of religious values".

When Erdoğan publicly explained the reasons for the call to members of his AKP party on Tuesday, he told them he wanted to "share with the Pope the immorality committed against the Christian world and against all Christians".

He noted that "the Olympic Games have been used as an instrument of perversion that corrupts human nature".


* * *


AP: After Olympics, Turkey's Erdogan seeks unity with Pope Francis against acts that mock sacred values

[Image: 39uhm539o2jyi9nm99uursjmbyhswz6t7k4h0zj....61&webp=on]

gloria.tv [adapted] | August 2, 2024

After Olympics, Turkey's Erdogan seeks unity with Pope Francis against acts that mock sacred values (yahoo.com)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Pope Francis on Thursday about the “immoral display” at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics and called for a unified stance against acts that ridicule sacred values, according to a statement from Erdogan’s office.

The Turkish leader told the pontiff in a telephone call that “human dignity was being trampled on, religious and moral values were being mocked, offending Muslims as much as the Christian world,” the statement said.

In an unprecedented display of inclusivity, drag queens took center stage at the ceremony last week, showcasing the vibrant and influential role of the French LGBTQ+ community.

But the ceremony also attracted criticism over a tableau reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” The scene featured drag queens and other performers in a configuration reminiscent of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Erdogan, who has adopted a staunch anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in recent years, conveyed to the pope the necessity “to raise our voices together and take a common stance against these,” according to the statement.

The Turkish leader, whose ruling party has roots in the country's Islamic movement, often labels the LGBTQ+ community as “deviant” and a danger to traditional family values.

Pride marches in Turkey have been banned since 2015.

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - August 4, 2024
Posted by: Stone - 08-02-2024, 11:21 AM - Forum: August 2024 - No Replies

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - August 4, 2024 - “Miracles of St. Dominic” (NH)
w/ Commemoration of St. Dominic


Video






Audio

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Finding Body of St. Stephen, Protomartyr/First Saturday - 8/3/24
Posted by: Stone - 08-02-2024, 11:18 AM - Forum: August 2024 - No Replies

Finding of the Body of St. Stephen, Protomartyr/First Saturday 
August 3, 2024
“O Clement, O Loving, O Sweet Virgin Mary!” (NH)





Audio

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  Fr. Hewko's Sermons: St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori/First Friday - August 2, 2024
Posted by: Stone - 08-02-2024, 11:16 AM - Forum: August 2024 - No Replies

Feast of St. St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori/First Friday 
August 2, 2024
“St. Alphonsus on the Love of the Sacred Heart” (NH)



Audio

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  The Rosary: A School of Contemplation – Garrigou-Lagrange, 1941
Posted by: Stone - 08-02-2024, 05:21 AM - Forum: Prayers and Devotionals - No Replies

The Rosary: A School of Contemplation – Garrigou-Lagrange, 1941
“The words are a kind of melody which soothes the ear and isolates us from the noise of the world.”

[Image: https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama...2x675.jpeg]

Image: Wiki Commons CC

WM Review | Oct 10, 2022


The Rosary: A School of Contemplation from The Mother of the Saviour and Our Interior Life
by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP

Some line breaks and headings added for clarity.

From among the many customary devotions to Our Lady, such as the Angelus, the Office of the Blessed Virgin, the Rosary, we shall speak especially of the last in so far as it prepares us for and leads us up to contemplation of the great mysteries of salvation. After Holy Mass it is one of the most beautiful and efficacious forms of prayer, on condition of understanding it and living it.

It sometimes happens that its recitation – reduced to that of five mysteries – becomes a matter of routine. The mind, not being really gripped by the things of God, finds itself a prey to distractions. Sometimes the prayer is said hurriedly and soullessly. Sometimes it is said for the purpose of obtaining temporal favours, desired out of all relation to spiritual gain. When a person says the Rosary in such a way, he may well ask himself in what way his prayer is like that of which Pope Leo XIII spoke in his encyclicals on the Rosary, and about which Pius XI wrote one of his last apostolic letters.

It is true that to pray well it is sufficient to think in a general way of God and of the graces for which one asks. But to make the most out of our five mysteries, we should remember that they constitute but a third of the whole Rosary, and that they should be accompanied by meditation – which can be very simple – on the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, which recall the whole life of Jesus and Mary and their glory in Heaven.


The Three Great Mysteries of Salvation

The fifteen mysteries of the Rosary thus divided into three groups are but different aspects of the three great mysteries of our salvation: the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life.

The mystery of the Incarnation is recalled by the joys of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of the Saviour, His Presentation in the Temple and His finding among the doctors.

The mystery of the Redemption is recalled by the different stages of the Passion: the Agony in the garden, the Scourging, the Crowning with thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion.

The mystery of eternal life is recalled by the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Assumption of Our Lady and her crowning as Queen of Heaven.

Thus, the Rosary is a Credo: not an abstract one, but one concretised in the life of Jesus who came down to us from the Father and who ascended to bring us back with Himself to the Father. It is the whole of Christian dogma in all its splendour and elevation, brought to us that we may fill our minds with it, that we may relish it and nourish our souls with it.

This makes the Rosary a true school of contemplation. It raises us gradually above vocal prayer and even above reasoned out or discursive meditation. Early theologians have compared the movement of the soul in contemplation to the spiral in which certain birds – the swallow, for example – move when they wish to attain to a great height. The Joyful Mysteries lead to the Passion, and the Passion to the door of Heaven.

The Rosary well understood is, therefore, a very elevated form of prayer which makes the whole of dogma accessible to all.


Practical and Contemplative

The Rosary is also a very practical form of prayer for it recalls all Christian morality and spirituality by presenting them from the sublime point of view of their realisation in Jesus and Mary. The mysteries of the Rosary should be reproduced in our lives. Each of them is a lesson in some virtue – particularly in the virtues of humility, trust, patience and charity.

There are three stages in our progress towards God. The first is to have knowledge of the final end, whence comes the desire of salvation and the joy to which that desire gives rise. This stage is symbolised in the joyful mysteries which contain the good news of the Incarnation of the Son of God who opens to us the way of salvation. The next stage is to adopt the means – often painful to nature – to be delivered from sin and to merit Heaven. This is the stage of the sorrowful mysteries. The final stage is that of rest in the possession of eternal life. It is the stage of Heaven, of which the glorious mysteries allow us some anticipated glimpse.

The Rosary is therefore most practical. It takes us from the midst of our too human interests and joys and makes us think of those which centre on the coming of the Saviour. It takes us from our meaningless fears, from the sufferings we bear so badly, and reminds us of how much Jesus has suffered for love of us and teaches us to follow Him by bearing the cross which divine providence has sent us to purify us. It takes us finally from our earthly hopes and ambitions and makes us think of the true object of Christian hope – eternal life and the graces necessary to arrive there.

The Rosary is more than a prayer of petition. It is a prayer of adoration inspired by the thought of the Incarnate God, a prayer of reparation in memory of the Passion of Our Saviour, a prayer of thanksgiving that the glorious mysteries continue to reproduce themselves in the uninterrupted entry of the elect into glory.


The Rosary and Contemplative Prayer

A more simple and still more elevated way of reciting the Rosary is, while saying it, to keep the eyes of faith fixed on the living Jesus who is always making intercession for us and who is acting upon us in accordance with the mysteries of His childhood, or His Passion, or His glory. He comes to us to make us like Himself. Let us fix our gaze on Jesus who is looking at us. His look is more than kind and understanding: it is the look of God, a look which purifies, which sanctifies, which gives peace. It is the look of our Judge and still more the look of our Saviour, our Friend, the Spouse of our souls.

A Rosary said in this way, in solitude and silence, is a most fruitful intercourse with Jesus. It is a conversation with Mary too which leads to intimacy with her Son.

We sometimes read in the lives of the saints that Our Blessed Lord reproduced in them first His childhood, then His hidden life, then His apostolic life, and finally His Passion, before allowing them to share in His glory. He comes to us in a similar way in the Rosary and, well said, it is a prayer which gradually takes the form of an intimate conversation with Jesus and Mary. It is easy to see how saintly souls have found in it a school of contemplation.


Repetition and Contemplation

It has sometimes been objected that one cannot reflect on the words and the mysteries at the same time. An answer that is often given is that it is not necessary to reflect on the words if one is meditating on or looking spiritually at one of the mysteries. The words are a kind of melody which soothes the ear and isolates us from the noise of the world around us, the fingers being occupied meanwhile in allowing one bead after another to slip through. Thus, the imagination is kept tranquil and the mind and the will are set free to be united to God.

It has also been objected that the monotony of the many repetitions in the Rosary leads necessarily to routine. This objection is valid only if the Rosary is said badly. If well said, it familiarises us with the different mysteries of salvation and recalls what these mysteries should produce in our joys, our sorrows, and our hopes. Any prayer can become a matter of routine – even the Ordinary of the Mass.

The reason is not that the prayers are imperfect, but that we do not say them as we should – with faith, confidence and love.


The spirit of the Rosary as St Dominic conceived it

To understand the Rosary better it is well to recall how St Dominic conceived it under the inspiration of Our Lady at a time when southern France was ravaged by the Albigensian heresy – a heresy which denied the infinite goodness and omnipotence of God by admitting a principle of evil which was often victorious. Not only did Albigensianism attack Christian morality, but it was opposed to dogma as well – to the great mysteries of creation, the redemptive incarnation, the descent of the Holy Ghost,’ the eternal life to which we are called.

It was at that moment that Our Blessed Lady made known to St Dominic a kind of preaching till then unknown, which she said would be one of the most powerful weapons against future errors and in future difficulties. Under her inspiration, St Dominic went into the villages of the heretics, gathered the people, and preached to them the mysteries of salvation – the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life. As Mary had taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries, and after each short instruction he had ten Hail Marys recited – somewhat as might happen even today at a Holy Hour.

And what the word of the preacher was unable to do, the sweet prayer of the Hail Mary did for hearts. As Mary had promised, it proved to be a most fruitful form of preaching.

If we live by the prayer of which St Dominic’s preaching is the example our joys, our sorrows, and our hopes will be purified, elevated and spiritualised. We shall see that Jesus, Our Saviour and Our Model, wishes to make us like Himself, first communicating to us something of His infant and hidden life, then something of His sorrows, and finally making us partakers of His glorious life for all eternity.

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  Why was St Robert Bellarmine declared a Doctor of the Church?
Posted by: Stone - 08-02-2024, 05:01 AM - Forum: The Saints - No Replies

Why was St Robert Bellarmine declared a Doctor of the Church?
Sometimes it can feel like Heaven uses dates in a providential way.

[Image: https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama...7x676.jpeg]

Image from Wiki Commons


S.D. Wright/WM Review [slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included]| May 13, 2022

Editors’ Notes

13th May 1917 was the date of the first apparition at Fatima, in which Our Lady brought a vital message to a suffering world.

On the same day, Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII, was made a bishop by Benedict XV.

But there is a third thing that makes this date interesting: 13th May is the feast day of St Robert Bellarmine, the “Doctor of Ecclesiology” and the chief authority cited by those who hold Francis and the recent claimants to have been false claimants to the Roman pontificate.

Is there a link between these three dates?

This alignment of dates is at least suggestive of a link between the message of Fatima, the position of Pius XII and the ecclesiology of St Robert Bellarmine. There are indeed parts of the message of Fatima that become a lot clearer when considered in light of Bellarmine’s ecclesiology.

As for the exact nature of this link: I think we can have ideas, even if the truth does not become clear until the future. But let’s consider a few points about Bellarmine himself, before turning to Pius XI and his making Bellarmine a doctor of the Church.


St Robert Bellarmine and ecclesiology

St Robert’s teaching on the Church herself and the Roman Pontiff is highly authoritative. To some extent, he could be said to be “the” doctor of controversy and by extension, ecclesiology.

Although he by no means invented his own theory of ecclesiology – which is very evident even in early catechisms and before – it was his systematisation that was adopted by the Church at Vatican I, in encyclicals such as Satis Cognitum, Mystici Corporis Christi and elsewhere, and by the general body of theologians.

It is well known that St Thomas Aquinas’ theological synthesis played an extraordinarily important role in the Church’s decrees through history. At the Council of Trent, the Summa Theologica lay open on the altar. Leo XIII and St Pius X both talked as if he was present or presided at all the councils since his death.

His importance for the first Vatican Council is clear from the text of Pius XI below. As Fr James Brodrick SJ writes:

“At Trent, the Bible and St. Thomas ruled the debates; at the Vatican , the Bible, St Thomas and Bellarmine.”[1]

In the text below, Pope Pius XI writes:

[i]“He appeared even up to our times as a defender of the Roman Pontiff of such authority that the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council employed his writings and opinions to the greatest possible extent.”


Even the excommunicated Döllinger, the great nineteenth century enemy of the papacy, recognised this, condemning Vatican I for “doing nothing but defining the private opinions of a single man—Cardinal Robert Bellarmine.”44

Fr John Hardon SJ, one-time writer at the American Ecclesiastical Review before the Council, said that Döllinger’s idea was “false but suggestive”, and observed:

“Most of the Council’s business had to deal with the origin and nature of the one true Church. Moreover, Bellarmine’s ecclesiology was the main source from which the Fathers of the Council drew their decrees and definitions.”45

From this he concludes:

“We should not overlook what St. Robert Bellarmine has to say about a subject [ecclesiology and the Mystical Body of Christ] in which the Church herself considers him the outstanding authority.”46

As an example of this, Hardon writes:

“Pope Pius XII, in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis, confirms this authority when he quotes St. Robert to support his explanation of why the social Body of the Church should be honored with the name of Christ.”47


The question of a heretic pope

It is common today to hear some speak of Bellarmine in either a grossly disrespectful way. Principally, this appears in portraying his considered discussion on the heretic pope question as mere “musings.” On this question, the same sorts of people like to point to theologians such as Cajetan or John of St Thomas – or even to authors of minor, one-volume introductions to canon law – as if they were of equal or higher worth.

However, if we must compare St Robert Bellarmine with others on the “heretic pope” question: St Robert decisively refuted Cajetan’s arguments on this question. As Cardinal Billot puts it, “the reasons wherewith Cajetan dismisses his adversaries’ manner of speaking are hardly of any weight.” More importantly: although St Robert treatment focuses on the case of a heretical pope, the principles he basis himself on are not about heresy in an isolated way, but rather membership and the visible unity of the Church. Disputing his conclusions here leads to serious problems with those more fundamental principles.

And we should not need to recall that it is Bellarmine who was canonised, Bellarmine who was made a Doctor of the Church, and Bellarmine whose ecclesiology has been adopted by the Church in Vatican I, Mystici Corporis Christi and elsewhere – and not Cajetan, great though he may be.

We could also add that Cajetan himself seemed to change his position on this question later in his life, in a lesser-known work.

The difference in value between Bellarmine and others on these subjects is very great, and we do not do well to neglect his contribution to ecclesiology – especially during this especially ecclesiological crisis. This is seen all the more clearly when those diverging from St Robert’s conclusions on ecclesiology try to claim him as their authority.

Let’s now turn to Pius XI. A short reading list follows this text.


Quote:Providentissimus Deus
Acts of Pius XI
AAS 23 (1931) 433-438

Translated by “a Catholic layman“, with paragraph breaks added. First published at The Bellarmine Forums, 2002.

Further edited by S.D. Wright, adding headings, some punctuation and more paragraph breaks.
Reprinted from The Bellarmine Forums with permission.

Saint Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal of the Roman Church, of the Society of Jesus, is Declared Doctor of the Universal Church.

For a perpetual remembrance of the matter.

God in his great providence has from the beginnings of Christ’s Church even up to more recent times continually raised up men distinguished by learning and holiness to defend and illuminate the truths of the Catholic faith and opportunely to repair the damage inflicted by heretics on those same Christian truths.

Among these men [i.e. distinguished by learning and holiness], Saint Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal of the Roman Church, of the Society of Jesus, is without the slightest doubt to be counted. Even from the days of his most holy death he was called “an outstanding man, a distinguished theologian, an ardent defender of the faith, the hammer of heretics” and he was also declared to be “as pious, prudent and humble, as he was generous to the poor”. No wonder then that, with all canonical processes having at last being fulfilled, in our own times and by a particular counsel of Divine Providence, the man himself was elevated to the honours of the altar.

For in an Apostolic letter published under the ring of the fisherman on the 13th of May 1923, we bestowed upon Robert Bellarmine the title of Blessed. Then, when we were celebrating the fortieth year of our priesthood, together with the Blessed martyrs of the Society of Jesus who were put to death for the faith in the regions of North America, and Blessed Theophilus of Corte, of the Order of [Friar] Minors, in the sacrosanct patriarchal Vatican basilica last year, on the sacred solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles, we inscribed the same Blessed Robert into the catalogue of Saints.


St Robert’s Career

That was right and fitting, since the Saint himself was the most brilliant glory of the Catholic episcopate, of the College of Cardinals, of the famous Society of Jesus which produced for the Church so great a man and most diligently cultivated its student. For upon entering the same fertile Society, Saint Robert was so adorned with the peculiar virtues of a true comrade of Jesus, that he seemed altogether to be the ornament and glory of his companions, and the stimulus and model for them too.

In the same order he ascended and held nearly all the ranks; he was a student in the Politian College, then in the Society a novice, a scholasticus, religious, master, sacred preacher, professor, spiritual director, rector, provincial: in discharging all these duties he is perpetually to be cited as a model; in the same manner did he carry out the offices of the church entrusted to him, so much so that in all of them he proved himself to be outstanding: as a man devoted to studies, as a writer, as a theologian and consultant for the Roman Congregations, as one appointed to the pontifical legations, as a bishop, and finally as a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, he showed himself to be endowed with integrity and force of heart and mind, with sanctity of morals, with the highest consciousness of his duty.

Our predecessor Clement VIII who desired to make him, though “unwilling and reluctant to no avail”, a Cardinal of the Roman Church, praised him greatly; since at that time “with respect to learning, the Church of God had no equal” [to St Robert]. But the rich fruits of this singular learning Saint Robert gave back throughout his life even unto old age. When he was still a youth he wrote The Elements of the Hebrew Language and he also composed in a very learned manner a book On Ecclesiastical Writers, although this was published somewhat later. Afterwards and throughout his whole life he worked painstakingly on the Sacred Scriptures so that, in preparing an edition of the Septuagint and an edition of the Vulgate, having been called upon by the popes for that purpose, he achieved a success [marked by] greater refinement and carefulness.

He pursued all the departments of sacred teaching with the utmost constancy even up to his death. Even in the exchange of letters with acquaintances – letters which were sent throughout almost the whole world and of which a great number are extant today – he exerted himself in these departments of teaching most fruitfully. And it was with great zeal that he lent his aid to the Apostolic Congregations, and in the handling of the gravest matters, even of the Eastern Church, he exhibited shining testimonies of his learning and prudence. That is also confirmed abundantly by the same documents most of which still lie hidden and unpublished in the archives of the Congregations. The same vota – as they are called – “pertain to questions of faith, of the sacred rites, of the understanding of the Scriptures and of other controversies of that kind”, in which Saint Robert was continually engaged.


The Controversies as his most noble work

His Disputations on Controversies of the Christian Faith against heretics constitute “clearly the most noble” and arduous work. Saint Robert, at the command of the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, first published them from 1586 to 1593, first in three, then in four, tomes. Indeed, after a long course of study and teaching, Saint Bellarmine had in a certain way already prepared them when earlier at Louvain in the College of the Society of Jesus he had delivered for six years from the year 1570 onward lectures on the Summa of St Thomas to a large audience of students of the university. After 1576 he had closely worked over them when after the establishment of a “Chair of Controversies”, he was entrusted by his superiors with the task of teaching theology and carried this out in this City in order to defend the Catholic dogmas against the errors which were then traversing over many nations in Europe.

This, the greatest of Bellarmine’s works deftly refuted the new attacks which the Magdeburgians had but recently carried out with their “Centuries” as they say, by means of which, especially by employing speciously historical arguments and the testimonies of the Fathers and the ancients, they had attempted to destroy the Roman Church.

Thus Saint Robert, being conscious of the needs of his times, resolved to keep wholeheartedly the Ignatian rule “of holding in the highest esteem sacred doctrine, both that which is commonly called ‘positive’, and that which is called ‘scholastic’”. This norm laid down by his father Ignatius, Bellarmine in fact persistently pursued, especially in disputations of controversies of the faith against all heretics: so much so that , especially in this matter of controversies, not unjustly is he to be regarded as the foremost model and to be cited as the most illustrious example of wedding together in a happy marriage, positive theology (as they call it) and scholastic [theology].

But in attaining the end that he proposed to himself, he was not lacking in suitable gifts of intelligence and genius. Already from his youth he appeared to be endowed with the keenest intellect, to be adorned with a unique intellectual liveliness toward his studies and with so great swiftness of mind and prodigious force of memory that whatever he read or heard once, all of it he both immediately apprehended and powerfully remembered. Furthermore the Saint naturally spoke and wrote his books with a ready and brilliant eloquence, eschewing the useless inclusion of subject-matter and literary embellishments fashionable in his age – and yet his refinements included familiarity with the more polished literature, and in his youth he was steeped in music, poetry and all the liberal arts [omnique humanitate] – the style he employed was lucid and plain;

“being of versatile genius, he was equally adept at the sublime scholastic speculation and at historical and philosophical inquiry which was so necessary in that age when the reformers boldly claimed that they took their chief arguments from the dominion of positive theology”.

No wonder therefore that as soon as Bellarmine’s Disputations on Controversies of the Christian Faith were read in the City [i.e. Rome], in the Gregorian University, they abundantly surpassed all expectations of them that they had aroused: that they were printed and published again and again, being desired and sought after continually by everyone; that their author was regarded by very many Catholic theologians not only in his own times, but even in our own, as the Master of Controversies.


Ecclesiology and the Papacy

But in addition to the same, very famous Disputations which cover in their massiveness nearly the whole of theology, they excellently recall [us] to the same defence and demonstration of the ninth and tenth article of the Creed, “one holy Church, the communion of Saints, the remission of sins”; many other works, of differing length according as the subject matter demanded, he wrote, and many labours he took upon himself for the promotion of the faith and for the guarding of the rights of the Church.

But it is an outstanding achievement of St Robert, that the rights and privileges divinely bestowed upon the Supreme Pontiff, and those also which were not yet recognised by all the children of the Church at that time, such as the infallible magisterium of the Pontiff speaking ex cathedra, he both invincibly proved and most learnedly defended against his adversaries. Moreover he appeared even up to our times as a defender of the Roman Pontiff of such authority that the Fathers of the [1870] Vatican Council employed his writings and opinions to the greatest possible extent.


Catechetical Works

Nor to be passed over in silence are his sacred sermons and catechetical works, especially the famous Catechism, “which has been approved by its use throughout the ages and by the judgement of very many of the Church’s bishops and doctors”. Indeed, in this Catechism, composed at the command of Clement VIII, the illustrious holy theologian expounded for the use of the Christian people and especially of children, the Catholic truth in a plain style, so brilliantly, exactly and orderly that for nearly three centuries in many regions of Europe and the world, it most fruitfully provided the fodder of Christian doctrine to the faithful. In his book expounding the Psalms he conjoined knowledge with piety.


Ascetical Writings

Lastly, by his ascetical writings famous everywhere, it is agreed that St Robert became the safest guide for very many people to the peak of Christian perfection. For whether it be in his Admonition to Bishop Theanensis, his nephew where he taught what pertains to the apostolic and ecclesiastical life, or his Domestic Exhortations where he inflamed his companions to all virtues, or his Good Government where he conveyed precepts to Christian princes and explained what are their duties, or whether it be in his exciting of the piety and devotion of the Christian faithful by those short but rich works based on the Sacred Scriptures, the teachings of the holy theologian Fathers and on the annals of the Church and the acts of the Saints, we see that St Robert carried out his ascetical teaching efficaciously and with expert zeal.

The illustrious monuments, therefore, that he left of his genius, readily show that there was almost no branch of the ecclesiastical disciplines in which the Saint did not fruitfully engage.


A Guiding Light

As a lamp placed on a candlestick to give light to all that are in the house, he illuminated by word and deed Catholics and those straying from the unity of the Church; as a star in the firmament of the sky he laid bare the truth which he promoted above all else to all men of good will “by the magnificent rays of his knowledge, rays as wide as they were high, by the splendour of his outstanding and brilliant genius”; the first apologist not only of his own age but of subsequent ages as well, by the strenuous defence of the Catholic dogmas that he took upon himself he commended himself to the memory and admiration of all those who follow the Church of Christ with genuine love.

Accordingly Bellarmine even up to this age has enjoyed with the most famous men of the Church, and especially writers, as many as have flourished, so great authority that already he has been regarded and reverently invoked by them as a doctor of the Church. On this matter let it here suffice for Us to mention the saints who on account of their eminent learning conjoined with heroic sanctity have already been declared doctors of the Universal Church; we speak especially of Saint Peter Canisius, of Saint Francis de Sales, of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. But there have been other saints, blesseds, venerables, Servants of God as well, whose high opinion of Bellarmine’s learning and knowledge is attested by unambiguous evidence.

No wonder then that many ardently desire truly to hail St Robert as a Doctor of the Church. That is a desire and wish fostered not only by those who share common principles of living with him in the Society of Jesus which has continually and everywhere served well the cause of promoting and defending the Catholic Faith, but also by the most illustrious men from all the ranks of the Church’s hierarchy. For the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church and nearly all the Archbishops and bishops of the whole world, as well as the superiors of the religious communities, the officers of the Catholic universities, and lastly very many other illustrious men support such desires.


The Process of Elevation

Wherefore we have deemed it opportune to commit the matter of so great importance as a wish and earnest desire to the Sacred Roman Congregation for the protection of Rites. This Congregation by our Special Mandate delegated the most eminent and reverend men to examine the matter: Alexius Henricus Lépicier, titular Cardinal of St Susanna of the Holy Roman Church, Francis Ehrle, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, deacon of St Caesareus in Palatio.

So having sought and obtained the separate verdicts of these cardinals and even had them printed, the only thing that remained was to ask those in charge of the Congregation of Sacred Rites whether, all things being considered that are usually required in a Doctor of the Universal Church, they thought it was possible to proceed to the declaration of St Robert Bellarmine as a Doctor of the Universal Church. In an ordinary meeting on the fourth day of August just passed convened in the Vatican, after a due account of the matter had been given by our beloved son, the relater of the cause, Cajetan Bisleti, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church in charge of the Congregation of Sacred Rites declared with unanimous consent their affirmative opinion.


The Elevation Itself

Wherefore, having listened also on all these [matters] to our beloved son, Promoter General of the Holy Faith on the sixth day of August of this year, we, yielding of our own accord and gladly to the wishes of so many and so great proposers that have been laid before us, do by the tenor of these presents and in virtue of our own certain knowledge and mature deliberation establish and declare St Robert Bellarmine Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Universal Church; we decree therefore that the Mass and Office under the Double Minor rite, which have been assigned to the feast day of the same Saint on 13 May every year, be extended by Our authority from now on to the universal Church.

Whatever other Apostolic constitutions and ordinances may have effect to the contrary are not to impede this. We decree the present letters ever to be and to remain established, valid and in effect: and to receive and obtain fully and unimpaired their effects; and that it is thus rightly to be judged and defined that if anything with regard to these matters should happen to be attempted differently [= contrary to what we have decreed] by anyone, of whatever authority, whether knowingly or in ignorance, that would be from now on invalid and to no avail.

Given at Rome at St Peter’s, under the ring of the Fisherman, on the 17th day of September, in the year 1931, the tenth of our pontificate.
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  First Time: Layman Elected Abbot in USA
Posted by: Stone - 08-01-2024, 07:19 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism - No Replies

First Time: Layman Elected Abbot in USA

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gloria.tv | August 1, 2024

Isaac Murphy was elected the sixth abbot of St. Anselm Abbey in Manchester, New Hampshire (June 17).

NcrOnline.org reports that he is the first layman elected as abbot in the USA. Pope Francis announced in 2022 that lay brothers can lead religious communities of priests with Vatican approval.

The positive decision by the Dicastery for Religious took six weeks.

"I'm happy and proud to be the abbot," said Murphy, who will also serve as chancellor of St. Anselm College and chair of the members of the St. Anselm College Corporation.

The newly elected abbot has a Ph.D. in political science, joined the abbey in 1993 and served as prior from 2005 to 2013.

St. Anselm Abbey is part of the American Cassinese Congregation, a group of Benedictine monasteries located primarily in the United States.

The abbey is now figuring out how to handle liturgies like its Christmas Eucharist, which the abbot presides over.

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  ‘Really chilling’: Five countries to test European vaccination card
Posted by: Stone - 08-01-2024, 06:18 AM - Forum: COVID Passports - No Replies

‘Really chilling’: Five countries to test European vaccination card
Belgium, Germany, Greece, Latvia and Portugal will test the new vaccination card in a variety of formats, including printed cards, mailed copies and digital versions for smartphones. Critics called it a 'direct threat to freedom.'

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Children's Health Defense

Michael Nevradakis Ph. D., The Defender
Jul 31, 2024
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.

(Children’s Health Defense [adapted - not all hyperlinks included]) — Five European Union (EU) countries in September will pilot the newly developed European Vaccination Card (EVC), which “aims to empower individuals by consolidating all their vaccination data in one easily accessible location.

The pilot program marks a step toward the continent-wide rollout of the card, according to Vaccines Today.

Belgium, Germany, Greece, Latvia and Portugal will test the new card in a variety of formats, including printed cards, mailed copies and digital versions for smartphones.

The program aims to “pave the way for other countries by harmonising vaccine terminology, developing a common syntax, ensuring adaptability across different healthcare settings, and refining EVC implementation plans,” Vaccines Today reported.

The plans will be made public in 2026, “extending the EVC system beyond the pilot phases and enabling broad adoption across all EU Member States.”


According to Vaccines Today, the EVC program seeks to leverage “the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic” and foster “innovation in vaccination management,” with the goal of “taking crucial steps toward a more resilient and health-secure future.”

The EVC is based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN). The EU and WHO co-launched the GDHCN in June 2023 to promote a global interoperable digital vaccine passport, based on the EU’s digital health certificate launched during the pandemic.

Vaccines Today described the GDHCN as a “citizen-centered method of storing and sharing data,” rather than a system that relies “solely on public health systems.”

Greece was the first European country to propose the implementation of a vaccination passport, which was eventually adopted as the EU’s “Green Pass.” Greece later became the first EU member state to adopt a digital “Covid passport.”

Greece’s University of Crete is coordinating the EVC project alongside 14 partners from nine countries — and with 6.75 million euros ($7.3 million) in funding from the European Commission’s (EC) EU4Health program. The EC is the EU’s executive branch.


‘Direct threat to our freedom’

Experts who spoke with The Defender said that plans for the EVC pose a direct threat to personal and health freedom and national sovereignty.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician, biotech consultant and former director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund, said:
Quote:The proposed vaccination card reflects an increasing effort to utilize public health tools as a means to concentrate wealth and provide a means to control populations. It is very reminiscent of approaches in parts of Europe pre-World War II, and essentially serves a similar purpose: to exclude individuals who do not follow government instructions from society.

The trial in Europe is an obvious next step after the recent widening of surveillance under the IHR [International Health Regulation] amendments, which greatly increase the likelihood of recurrent lockdowns to enable mandated vaccination as a way to force mass use, and profit-making, from vaccines.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst also criticized the pilot program, calling a digital vaccination passport a “direct threat to our freedom and also the sovereignty of any state.”

“All our powers are handed over to the globalists, the group of bankers and investors,” Terhorst said.

Catherine Austin Fitts, founder and publisher of the Solari Report and former U.S. assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said plans for the EVC represent “another step toward asserting control of labor and travel, with a goal to controlling resources and assets.”

Fitts said:
Quote:The goal is financial control. There is no legitimate public health purpose. The central bankers are hiding behind a health narrative — policies like lockdown are a way to manage inflation and resource demand when monetary policy is highly inflationary.

Experts also tied the rollout of the EVC to warnings from government and health officials about the “next pandemic,” potentially caused by the bird flu or a still-unknown “Disease X.”

According to Fitts:
Quote:Many steps are underway to prepare for a bird flu pandemic. Chicken is the most significant source of meat protein.

So far in response to the current bird flu claims, I am told by experts who follow bird flu claims that 99 million birds have been killed in the U.S. and 500 million worldwide. Bird flu vaccines have been shipped to Europe. A vaccine card can be used to try to pressure or force people to take another unnecessary injection.

French science journalist and author Xavier Bazin told The Defender, “For the time being, a vaccination card in Europe is meant to ensure that most children get their vaccination.” However, he said he believes the next step is to try to mandate the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine across Europe.

“Even if they do not succeed with MMR, this kind of card will be perfect when the next ‘pandemic’ hits and they want to mandate an emergency vaccine, like they did with COVID,” Bazin said.

Similarly, Bell said:
Quote:WHO and other agencies are clear in their intent to link compliance with centralized health dictates with the ability of people to go about their daily life.

Whilst directly against post-WWII conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the spirit of the Nuremberg Declaration, they have the backing of major international agencies and the corporate interests that have become enmeshed with them over the past two decades.

Experts also pointed out that plans for the EVC have been in the works even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The digital vaccination passport is a technical means to override personal freedoms, such as the right to say no to a vaccination,” Terhorst said. “It is a means to turn free human beings into ‘slaves.’ This digital vaccination passport has been planned many years in advance by the globalists.”


Plans for EU vaccination card began in 2018

Development of the EVC began in 2018, according to official EU documents.

That year, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announced at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), that it would become the first international nonprofit to partner with the WEF’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“In my opinion, [the EVC] is linked to Gavi’s project of mixing digital ID and vaccination proof,” Bazin said.

In 2019, the ID2020 Alliance, along with Gavi and the Government of Bangladesh, announced a new digital ID program, for which it was later announced that it aimed “to provide biometric-linked digital IDs to infants when they receive routine immunisations.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a partner of Gavi, which, in turn, closely collaborates with the ID2020 Alliance, which has promoted the development of digital ID.

According to Vaccines Today, the EVC is necessary because zoonotic diseases — those transmitted from animals to humans — “continue to pose a significant threat to global health.”

“As Europe transitions from emergency measures to long-term COVID-19 management, there is a critical opportunity to strengthen resilience and increase preparedness for future health threats,” Vaccines Today reported, citing the EVC as one such project.

Other EU-level projects in the works, according to Vaccines Today, include “a clinical decision system that provides vaccination recommendations, a screening tool to identify and invite vulnerable populations, an electronic Product Information Leaflet (e-PIL) to enable the transfer of vaccines across countries without having to repackage them, and a modeling and forecasting tool to assess the impact of public health interventions.”

But for Bazin, such efforts have little to do with protecting public health.

“For those who think vaccination is a medical procedure that should always remain a free choice, the European Vaccination Card is really chilling and should be opposed,” he said.

This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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  Louis de Bourbon: "The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, a distorted spectacle!"
Posted by: Stone - 08-01-2024, 06:09 AM - Forum: General Commentary - No Replies

Louis de Bourbon: "The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, a distorted spectacle!"

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Louis de Bourbon is a direct descendant of Saint Louis, Henry IV and Louis XIV.


The Remnant Newspaper |  July 29, 2024

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games deviated from its founding principles and traditional elevation, mocking part of France's centuries-old heritage. This heritage deserves respect and veneration," says the Duc d'Anjou, head of the House of Bourbon, with regret.

Surpassing oneself, respecting others. This is a fine lesson that we can draw from the Olympic Games for the whole world in general, but of course for France in particular. In the great tradition of antiquity, the Games celebrate what is good and beautiful in man. The athletes we will see compete will arouse both our admiration and our enthusiasm, in a welcome festive atmosphere after a year punctuated by international and national crises. I therefore hope that the Paris Olympic Games will be a moment of healthy communion for all French people, a break from our daily worries.

However, despite this enthusiasm in which I take part, as an elder of the House of Bourbon, as a descendant of the forty Kings who made France, I cannot remain silent in the face of the distressing spectacle of part of the opening ceremony. While the artistic and technical performances during the ceremony were worthy of what France is all about, some took pleasure in distilling a mortifying and abject ideological content. Departing from the Olympic Games' original aim of bringing people together in a respectful atmosphere accessible to all, young and old alike, some scenes were deliberately offensive and provocative. Once again, the current regime has shown its true face, profoundly anti-Christian, oblivious to France's long past, of which the Christian monarchy is a part, and eager to put the spotlight on troubled times when only terror and division reigned. While the ceremony was intended to be inclusive and respectful of all, both the Catholic religion and the dead - what did the massacre of poor Queen Marie-Antoinette have to do with it? - were branded with the seal of infamy and derision.

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Louis de Bourbon on the Chartres Pilgrimage 2024, with Cardinal Gerhard Muller, 
celebrant of the TLM in Chartres Cathedral on Pentecost Monday

I refuse to let France conform to the model that has been presented. Our country is worth more than blood and raucous burlesque. Before it was the mother of revolutions and wanton progressivism, France was the Eldest Daughter of the Church and the home of Letters, the Arts and refinement. As long as my House remains, and with the support of many French people of good will, we will never cease to show that another path is possible, that greatness is better than sarcasm, that Beauty is better than ugliness, that Truth is better than lies.

To all the French people who have felt humiliated and scorned, to all the sportsmen and women with a sense of the sacred and religious, to all the other peoples of the world who have been outraged, I say to you: France is not the spectacle you witnessed. It was the brainchild of ideologues who trampled on a thousand-year-old heritage to which they are indebted. A ceremony of this magnitude can only be planned and thought through in advance. Nothing is left to chance or clumsiness. Our country is under increasing attack from this profoundly unnatural and destructive ideology. So, with every passing day, it's up to us French to choose the model we want for France. We must rebuild our beloved homeland, and build a solid, credible future, anchored in tradition, respect and union. May Saint Louis protect France, and give strength to our athletes, so that genuine French pride shines forth as a model for other nations.

From Louis de Bourbon : La cérémonie d’ouverture des JO, un spectacle dénaturé ! (lejdd.fr)

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  Marcel De Corte's 1970 Letter to Jean Madiran “On the New Mass”
Posted by: Stone - 07-31-2024, 11:15 AM - Forum: General Commentary - No Replies

Marcel De Corte's 1970 Letter to Jean Madiran “On the New Mass”
First Translation into English - "Paul VI is a man full of contradictions"

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(The following text was published in no. 140 of Itinéraires, February 1970. It was translated by Gerhard Eger for Rorate Caeli.)

I must admit to you, my dear Jean Madiran, that I have been tempted more than once to leave the Catholic Church wherein I was born. If I have not done so, I give thanks to God and to the good peasant’s common sense with which he has blessed me. The Church—I murmur to myself at this moment—is like a sack of wheat infested with weevils. However numerous the parasites are—and at first glance, they are swarming!—they have not sterilized all the kernels. Some, no matter how few, remain fertile. They will sprout and the weevils will die once they have devoured all the others. Bon appétit, gentlemen, you are eating your own death.

Meanwhile, we suffer from famine, starving for the supernatural. The number of priests who distribute the bread of the soul to us dwindles at an alarming rate. In the hierarchy, things are even worse. And at the very top, whence we might expect some solace, they are disastrous.

I confess that I was fooled by Paul VI for a long time. I thought he was trying to preserve what is essential. I kept repeating to myself Louis XIV’s words to the Dauphin: “I fear not telling you that the higher the position, the more things there are one cannot see or know except when holding it.” Being neither a pope nor even a cleric, I told myself, “He sees what I cannot see, because of his position. Therefore, I trust him, even if most of his deeds, attitudes, and statements do not sit well with me, and his constant (seemingly constant) manœuvering makes my head spin. Poor man, he is to be pitied, especially since he is obviously not up to the task… But still, with God’s help…”

However—and this is to the glory of mankind—there is no example in history of a deceiver who does not eventually unmask himself. By trying too hard to be what one is not, one ultimately reveals one’s true nature. Too much cunning backfires. Men are willing to tolerate a bit of trickery, especially when it has an Italian flair. But there is a limit, and beyond it one stops being a good actor and becomes a prisoner of one’s own charade, entangled in one’s own feats of illusion.

The turning point for me came with the controversy over the Holy Mass. Until then, one could be fooled, deceived, and duped. That was the price of the honours owed to established powers. But now the time for “playing games with me,” as my old teacher used to say, is over. It is a phrase he used when we were in the countryside, where such bluntness comes naturally, and he was much more energetic. Father Cardonnel, filled with literature and spewing it out at everyone, lacks this delightful spontaneity of language, that proud and manly assertion of one who can no longer stand being deceived for even a moment. “It’s over. It’s. O. VER. OVER,” he would go on to say to the imprudent fellow who had pushed things too far.

I say this very calmly and thoughtfully, with all the confidence of a man of peasant stock, where Catholicism is passed down from father to son, where the supernatural is itself tangible, who has moved from cultivating fields like his ancestors (of whom he is quite unworthy) to cultivating minds, from whom God has taken a son dedicated to the Church, and who feels himself, from head to foot, deeply rooted in the Church. I say so firmly, without the least hesitation: “NO. I have had enough. I will not be taken for a ride. I will not be led up the garden path. I will not pretend that Paul VI is a new Saint Pius X, profoundly transformed, for the better of course, as befits our progressive era.”

How dare one proclaim that there is no “new Mass,” that “nothing has changed,” that “everything is as it was before,” when nothing or almost nothing remains of the Mass that so many saints cherished with love? When the “experts” appointed to work on this demolition project for reasons of public utility have described it time and time again as a veritable liturgical “revolution”? When the simple consciences of the ordinary faithful have been shaken by this upheaval? As an old lady exclaimed when leaving church on the first Sunday of Advent, crushed by the “new rite” (the adjective is Paul VI’s, who likes to play with contradictions), “That! A Mass? You can’t recognize it anymore!” That was so evident that the celebrant, either by distraction or haste, had omitted the consecration of the wine! But what does it matter in a Mass where the concept of sacrifice is, by definition, absent?

I will not repeat here the case against this new liturgy. Others, who are well-informed, competent, and reliable, have already done so and done it well. When expert opinions line up with the common sense of an ordinary Christian, there is no need to add one’s own comments. Everything has already been said by illustrious specialists, experienced theologians and canonists, priests and devout religious, and even by that good common woman who expressed the deepest and most heartfelt protest of the Christian masses against this “transformation”: “You can’t recognize it anymore!” That sums it up perfectly: “You can’t recognize it anymore.” The faithful sense it by instinct: “There’s nothing Catholic about it anymore.”

“This Mass represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass, as it was formulated in the twenty-second session of the Council of Trent, which, by definitively fixing the ‘canons’ of the rite, erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy that might attack the integrity of the Mystery.” Cardinal Ottaviani’s stern words can hardly be disputed by anyone of good faith who has studied the new Ordo Missæ and considered all its details. No one of good faith can ignore their grim reality after having heard, as we did in Belgium after 30 November, every Sunday and on Christmas, “the new Mass,” prefabricated by technocrats of the faith. Squeezed between a pompous and theatrical Liturgy of the Word and a “self-service” Liturgy of the Meal, the HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS, in other words, the ESSENTIAL, is dispatched in the blink of an eye by a cleric who, nine times out of ten, in my experience, does not seem to believe in what he is doing for a single moment.

I repeat: this has been thoroughly demonstrated, and against this evidence and arguments nothing has been offered in response but serpentine rhetoric and jeremiads.

*

This “new Mass” MUST BE REJECTED with all the energy and courage of Father Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P. and according to the guidelines set by Jean Madiran, even if they need to be adjusted individually as needed, with due caution and depending on the circumstances, with the twofold intention, always present in mind, to reject what is heretical in the Office and to accept only what is orthodox.

*

For my part, I carefully block my ears with wax. I hide at the back of the church behind a curtain, which screen I thicken by sitting in the lowest chair I can find. I read the Holy Mass in the Missal my saintly mother gave me after the previous one she had already given me had been used to shreds. I read the Imitation of Christ in Latin during the drivel that now passes for a sermon. I participate with all my heart at the renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary. I force the priest who distributes communion into the hands of the “sheep” he has been instructed to domesticate to give it to me at the communion rail, where I kneel. And during the final racket, I go outside to meditate, praying that the Lord might make me even more deaf to the world’s clamour, both literally and figuratively.

*

I must say that I sometimes rage when I hear some idiocy reach my ears, like this one, whose authenticity I guarantee: “Let us pray, my brothers, that among young men and women gathered together by their similar hairstyles and clothing, there may be no longer any difference of sex.” But one can get used to anything, even to the most ridiculous nonsense. As Léon Bloy rightly said, one must be sparing with one’s contempt, because there are so many who deserve it.

Let us not disguise the truth. Our refusal implies a judgement on Paul VI’s actions and words, and even on his person, with whom we are must, against our will, practise the virtue of “fraternal correction,” which Saint Thomas Aquinas considered an extension of the virtues of almsgiving and of charity, and which, he says, one must even carry out publicly with one’s superiors, after having exhausted all hidden means of doing so (II-IIae, q. 33). One can safely presume that an inferior as respectful of papal authority as Cardinal Ottaviani did not make his memorial letter to Paul VI public without having first exercised all possible diplomatic prudence. “If a superior is virtuous,” writes a commentator on the Summa, “he will gratefully accept any warnings that might give him clarity. He will be the first to admit that it is right to warn him and that he is not untouchable in every regard.” And he adds, following Saint Thomas, that the warning must be public “when, for instance, a superior publicly declares manifest heresies or causes great scandal, thus endangering the faith and salvation of his subordinates.”

Cardinal Ottaviani is certainly not alone in thinking that Paul VI, by his words and deeds, is “departing strikingly from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass.” It is indeed inconceivable that the Pope merely skimmed over such an important document and carelessly signed it. The Ordo Missæ and the New Mass we vigorously reject are willed and imposed by Paul VI upon all Catholics.

How can such an attitude be possible from a Pope during such a critical time in the Church’s history? I cannot help but ask myself this question. And I can no longer keep my answer silent. The stakes are too high for laymen to let priests of all ranks to fight alone, without the support of some of the faithful they have alerted to the danger, against the “scandal” of the new Mass.

The point is not to get outraged—however tempting that might be—but to understand.

*

Paul VI is a man full of contradictions. This is a man who extols the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in grand and traditional terms in his “Credo of the People of God,” but who downplays it in the new Mass he imposes on Catholic Christendom. This a man who signs and promulgates the Council’s official declarations regarding Latin, “the liturgical language par excellence,” and Gregorian chant, a treasure to be zealously preserved, and who, moreover, commits publicly to preserving them, but who reneges on his signature and word after consulting, in a matter as important the mode of expression of the worship offered to God, only liturgical experts, some of which are suspect while others belong to dissident Christian communities. This is a man who sees to it that the Dutch Catechism is censured, but who tolerates the spread of the dogmatic errors it contains. This is the man who authorizes the French Catechism, whose errors, omissions, and distortions of revealed Truth are all the more serious since it is intended for children, but who investigates deviations from the faith around the world. This is the man who proclaims Mary Mother of the Church, but who allows countless clerics of all ranks to tarnish the purity of her name. This the man who prays at Saint Peter’s and in the Masonic-style Chamber of Reflection at the United Nations. This is the man who gives audience to two actresses deliberately and provocatively dressed in miniskirts, but who then speaks out against the growing wave of sexualization in the world. This is the man who tells Pastor Boegner that Catholics are not mature enough for birth control with “the pill,” but who publishes Humanæ vitæ, while allowing it to be challenged by entire bishops’ conferences.

This is the man who proclaims that the law on clerical celibacy will never be abolished, but allows it to be questioned endlessly, while making it easy for priests wishing to marry to do so. This is the man who forbids communion in the hand, but who permits it, even authorizing certain churches, by special indult, to have laymen to distribute the holy Hosts. This is the man who bemoans the “self-destruction of the Church,” but who, despite being its chief and head, does nothing to stop it, thus letting it happen through his own consent. This is the man who issues the Nota prævia regarding his powers, but who allows it to be dismissed at the Synod of Rome as outdated and consigned to oblivion, etc.

One could go endlessly listing the Pope’s contradictions. The man himself is permanent contradiction and versatility, as well as fundamental ambiguity.

Hence, there are two possibilities.

A man who is unable to overcome his own internal contradictions and who openly displays them for all to see is unable to overcome the external contradictions he encounters in governing the Church. He is a weak and indecisive Pope, like others in the history of the Church, who conceals his vacillations behind a flood of the rhetoric that the emperor Julian, called the Apostate, called, speaking of the Arian bishops of his time who practised it so skilfully, “the art of downplaying what matters, exaggerating what does not, and substituting the artifice of words for the reality of things.” Sometimes, in a single phrase of a papal address, black and white are combined and reconciled by syntactical tricks.

The second hypothesis is no less probable: the Pope knows what he wants and the contradictions he shows are merely those that a man of action, driven by the goal he wants to achieve, encounters along his path and is not in the least concerned about, carried away as he is by the force of his ambition.

In this respect, one can presume, especially after the new Ordo Missæ and the new Mass, that Paul VI’s intention is to bring together in a single liturgical action clergy and laity from the various Christian denominations. Like any seasoned politician, the Pope knows that it is possible to unite people with fundamentally different “philosophical and religious opinions,” as we said at meetings in my youth. If this is the case, we can expect in the near future further manifestations of pontifical ecumenical action, modelled on political manœuvering.

It is true that the two interpretations of Paul VI’s behaviour can be combined. A weak man flees from his weakness or, more precisely, from himself, and plunges into action where contradictions are merely different phases of the changes essential to the action itself. Such temperaments are clearly focused on the world and the metamorphoses it implies, which influence one’s actions therein. One can then without any difficulty accept a “new catechism,” irreconcilable with the catechism of old, “because there is a new world,” as the French bishops say, and, in the language of the world, “a new world” has nothing in common with the previous one, just as a new fashion has nothing in common with a old one. “It is therefore no longer possible,” they add, “to view rites as permanently fixed in a rapidly evolving world.” We have been put on notice: the new Mass is akin to the permanent revolution that appeals to all adolescents and adults who have not yet moved past their crises of puberty, since it masks the contradictions they cannot overcome, precisely because these contradictions are integral to them.

Epigones manifest this trait most clearly, even exaggeratedly. Marx said that history repeated the tragedy of Napoleon I as a comedy under Napoleon III. Likewise, a certain Belgian bishop, who seems to me a sort of mini-Paul VI, has just been given the task of introducing the new Mass to the bewildered public. “This,” he declared in laughable terms, “marks the first final chapter of the liturgical reform ongoing since Vatican II.” We are assured there will be a second final chapter, and then third one, and so on endlessly. The man who tries to flee from himself through change never catches up, despite his sometimes comical efforts.

*

From this perspective, it is hard to find two popes in history who differ more radically than Saint Pius X and Paul VI.

I recently re-read the encyclical Pascendi. On nearly every page, I notice that what the former rejects, the latter accepts, tolerates, and endorses.

Saint Pius X was the rock of doctrine, a man who did not abandon his post or his people during the storm, and who evaded none of his responsibilities, as Paul VI admits doing in the remarkable speech he delivered on 7 December 1968: “Many expect dramatic gestures and energetic and decisive interventions from the pope. The Pope does not believe he should follow any line other than that of trust in Jesus Christ, to whom his Church is entrusted more than to anyone else. It is he who will calm the storm.”

Saint Pius X was not the man of solely pastoral government Paul VI claimed to be in his speech of 17 February 1979, where he said he was “open to understanding and indulgence.” Rather, he was a pope who heeded the example of his predecessors, who defended sound doctrine with extreme vigilance and unwavering firmness, committed to safeguarding it from any harm, “remembering the Apostle’s command: ‘Guard the good deposit’” (2 Timothy 1:14)

For Saint Pius X, “Jesus Christ taught that the first duty of the popes is to guard with the greatest vigilance the traditional deposit of the faith, rejecting the profane novelties of words,” against “those who disdain all authority and, relying upon a false conscience, attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.”. He would never have conceded, as Paul VI has often implied, that “truth is equally found in the religious experiences” of other religions, and that the same God is common to Jews, Muslims, and Christians. He never “bestowed honours on the teachers of error,” such as Marie-Dominique Chenu and his ilk, “so as to give rise to the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of merit, but rather the errors they openly profess and champion.”

Saint Pius X would never have suggested that “worship is born from a need, for everything in the modernists’ system is explained by inner impulses or necessities.” How many texts by Paul VI we could list here that state the exact opposite, especially his speech of 26 November 1969, where he justified his repudiation of Latin and Gregorian chant in the new Mass by invoking the people’s supposed need to understand their prayer and participate in the office “in their everyday language.” Saint Pius X did not approve of the modernists’ “great anxiety to find a way of conciliation between the authority of the Church and the liberty of believers,” as Paul VI constantly does. He did not profess “that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity a factor of progress in the Church” nor did he seek “compromises and transactions between the forces of conservation and of progress in the Church in order to bring about the changes and progress demanded by our times.” Similarly, Saint Pius X did not follow the “purely subjective” method that drives modernists “to put themselves in to the position and person of Christ and then to attribute to him what they would have done under like circumstances,” as Paul VI does when he affirms, having unilaterally decreed the use of the new Mass, that his will “is the Will of Christ, the breath of the Spirit calling the Church to this transformation,” adding, pathetically, to show that his inspiration coincides with divine inspiration (although he specifies that it is not the case in his Credo), that “this prophetic moment passing through the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, shakes her, wakes her, and compels her to renew the mysterious art of her prayer” (26 November 1969). “What is safest and most secure,” said Saint John of the Cross, “is to flee from prophecies and revelations, and if anything new regarding the faith is revealed to us [the lex orandi is also lex credendi, and any manifest novelty in worship is novelty in the faith] it should in no way be consented to” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, 1. II, ch. 19 and 27).

Finally, is it not evident that behind Paul VI’s interventions on the world stage there lies the conviction, which Saint Paul X rejected as pernicious, that “God’s kingdom has gone on slowly developing in the course of history, adapting itself successively to the different mediums through which it has passed, borrowing from them by vital assimilation all the […] forms that served its purpose”?

As John H. Knox noticed in a penetrating article in National Review (21 October 1969), there is no doubt that “there never was and probably never will be a pope who has tried so hard to please the liberals and who so sincerely shares so many of their beliefs.” And yet Paul VI, in an act of supreme contradiction, labels this progressivism as modernismus redivivus!

In any case, Paul VI evidently shares the modernists’ main goal of making the Catholic Church acceptable to non-Catholic churches and even to all atheist régimes, as his recent Christmas address (and many previous ones) suggests: China and Russia now deserve Catholics’ deference and esteem! Let us remember his enthusiastic support for the Chinese youth Mao mobilized in the “Cultural Revolution”!

This is a dream, an illusion whose vanity the Gospel itself reveals to us: the Church, no matter how appealing she might try to make herself, will never be loved by the world. As harsh as our assessment of Paul VI might be, we must say, in the final analysis, that despite the undeniable qualities of his heart, the current Pope consistently sees things differently than they are. His is a false spirit.

Like all false spirits, he is unconsciously cruel. While a contemplative is gentle, a man of action who, like Paul VI, views the goal of his action through a dreamlike lens, is pitiless towards the poor souls of flesh and bone he cannot see or, if he does, considers to be obstacles. This explains the inflexible nature of Paul VI’s character, seemingly at odds with his inability to govern the Church. A man of action is almost always inhuman, but when he moves in a millenarian and spiritually triumphant atmosphere, one must then be afraid… Paul VI will move forward, without looking back, crushing all resistance…

Unless God opens his eyes… That would be a miracle…

*

Nothing remains but to try to incorporate into our lives the obligation Saint John of the Cross mentions in one of his letters: “In order to have God in all things, we must have nothing in all things.” The Church has entered the Dark Night of the senses and of the spirit, the gateway to the Dawn. Her condition invites us to enter into our own.

This eternal fountain is hidden deep,
Well I know where it has its spring,
Though it is night!

Marcel De Corte
Professor at the University of Liège


(Marcel De Corte was born in Belgium in 1905 and died in 1994. Philosopher, heir to the great Aristotelian tradition, contemporary of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, and Gustave Thibon, he taught at the University of Liège until 1975. Frequent contributor to the Catholic periodical, Itinéraires, and author of more than twenty works on philosophical reflection, he was notably interested in social evolutions that stem from the French and Industrial Revolutions, principally regarding the moral and social disintegration of modern man. Two of his books have been translated recently into English: Intelligence in Danger of Death and On the Death of a Civilization, both published by Arouca Press.)

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