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  Second Sunday after Easter [Good Shepherd Sunday]
Posted by: Stone - 04-18-2021, 06:44 AM - Forum: Easter - Replies (6)

INSTRUCTION ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. [GOOD SHEPARD SUNDAY]
Taken from Fr. Leonard Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year 36th edition, 1880

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3...%3DApi&f=1]


BECAUSE of the joyous Resurrection of Christ, and the graces flowing to us on account of it, the Church sings at the Introit of the Mass: The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord, alleluia; by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, alleluia, alleluia. Rejoice in the Lord, ye just: praise becometh the upright.  (Ps. xxii.) Glory be to the Father, &c.

PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. O God, who in the humility of Thy Son hast raised up a fallen world; grant to Thy faithful a perpetual joyfulness; that whereas Thou hast rescued them from the perils of eternal death, Thou mayest bring them to the fruition of everlasting joy. Through.

EPISTLE. (i Pet. ii. 21 — 25.) Dearly beloved, Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, did not revile; when he suffered, he threatened not; but delivered himself to him that judged him unjustly; who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were healed. For you were as sheep going astray: but you are now converted to the shepherd and bishop of your souls.

Quote:EXPLANATION. St. Peter teaches the Christians patience in misery and afflictions, even in unjust persecution, and for this purpose places before them the example of Christ who, though most innocent, suffered most terribly and most patiently. Are we true sheep of the good Shepherd if at the smallest cross, at every word, we become angry and impatient?

ASPIRATION. O Lord Jesus! grant me the grace to follow Thee, my good Shepherd, and not to complain and make threats whenever I am reprimanded, reviled or persecuted for justice' sake.

GOSPEL. [John x. n — 16.) At that time, Jesus said to the Pharisees: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth; and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep: and the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling, and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me. As the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for my sheep. And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.


How has Christ proved Himself a good Shepherd?

By sacrificing His life even for His enemies, for those who did not yet love Him, (i John iv. 10; Rom. v. 8.) and could not reward Him. He has besides given Himself to us for our food.


How are we to know if we are among the sheep of Christ, that is, His chosen ones?

If we listen willingly to the voice of the Shepherd in sermons and instructions, in spiritual books and conversations; are obedient to it, and especially give ear and follow the rules of the Church through which the Good Shepherd speaks to us, (Luke x. 16.) "for he," says St. Augustine, "who has not the Church for his mother, will not have God for his father;" if we gladly receive the food of the Good Shepherd, that is, His sacred Body and Blood in holy Communion; if we are patient and meek as a lamb, freely forgiving our enemies; if we love all men from our heart, do good to them, and seek to bring them to Jesus.


Who are the other sheep of Christ?

The Gentiles who were not of the fold of Israel, whom Christ sought to bring by His disciples, and now by their successors, into His fold. — To these sheep we also belonged by our ancestors. O how grateful we should be to God, that He has brought us into the fold of His Church, and how diligently should we conduct ourselves as good sheep!


When will there be but one fold and one shepherd?

When, by the prayers of the Church and by her missionaries, all nations shall be converted to the only saving Church, constituting then one Church under one head. Let us pray that this may soon come to pass.


PRAYER. O Lord Jesus! Thou Good Shepherd who on the cross didst give Thy life for Thy sheep, grant us, we beseech Thee, by Thy death, the grace to be faithful to Thy voice and teachings like obedient lambs that we maybe one day numbered among Thy chosen ones in heaven.



INSTRUCTION ON HOPE.
I lay down my life for my sheep. (John. x. 15.)


What has Christ obtained for us by His death?

THE remission of our sins, the grace to lead a life pleasing to God in this world, and eternal happiness in the next, for which we now firmly hope, with secure confidence may now expect, and most assuredly will obtain, if we do not fail on our part.


In what does eternal happiness consist?

In the beatific vision of God, which includes the most perfect love of Him, by which those who are saved become, as it were, one with Him, possessing in this union every- thing that they can possibly desire.


What are the necessary means of obtaining eternal happiness?

The grace of God, that is, His continual assistance; the practice of the three divine virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity the keeping of God's commandments; the frequent use of the holy Sacraments, and constant prayer. These means must be diligently employed, “For as God who," as St. Augustine says, "created us without us, will not save us without us," that is, without our cooperation.


What may especially enable us to hope for eternal happiness?

The infinite mercy and goodness of God, who from all eternity has loved us more than an earthly mother, and because of this love did not even spare His only-begotten Son, but gave Him up, for our sake, to the most bitter death. Will He then deny us heaven, He who in giving us His Son, has given us more than heaven itself? The fidelity of God: He has so often promised us eternal happiness, and in so many texts of Scripture so clearly explained that He wishes us to be saved, that He must keep His promise, for He is eternal truth and cannot deceive. (Heb. vi. 18.) He says not yes today, and no tomorrow, there is no change in Him, nor shadow of alteration. (James i. 17.) The omnipotence of God, who can do all that He pleases, whom no one can oppose or prevent from doing what He will; if we have confidence in a rich and honest man who assures us he will assist us in need, how much more should we hope in the goodness, fidelity, and omnipotence of God!


When should we make an act of Hope?

As soon as we come to the use of reason and are sufficiently instructed concerning this virtue and its motives; in time of trouble or of severe temptation against this virtue; when receiving the holy Sacraments; every morning and evening, and especially at the hour of death.

The same thing is to be observed in regard to acts of Faith and Love.

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  Ontario to enforce some of the strictest lockdown measures yet
Posted by: Stone - 04-18-2021, 06:36 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - Replies (1)

Ontario police can stop you just for being outside: Inside the 'strictest' COVID-19 measures in North America
The new orders, which carry a $750 fine for a first offence, effectively confine Ontario's 14 million people to their home, save for a handful of permitted activities


[Canadian] National Post | Apr 16, 2021 


Citing rising COVID-19 case numbers, on Friday the Province of Ontario enacted one of the strictest lockdowns yet seen in the Western world, including empowering police to stop and question any person seen outside their home.

“Moving forward, police will have the authority to require any individual who is not in a place of residence to, first, provide their purpose for not being at home, and provide their home address,” said Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones in a livestreamed Friday news conference. She added, “police will also have the authority to stop a vehicle to inquire about an individual’s reason for leaving their residence.”

In a question and answer session following the news conference, Jones clarified that anybody who refused to answer police questions about why they were outside were “breaking the law” and could be fined $750 for a first offence.


The new orders effectively confine Ontario’s 14 million people to their home, save for a handful of permitted activities. “It is imperative that everyone limit their trips outside of the home to permitted purposes only, such as going to the grocery store or pharmacy, medical appointments, outdoor exercise, or for work that cannot be done remotely,” said Jones.

It’s also a departure from January, when Jones’ office had specifically assured the public that police would not be stopping Ontarians simply for being outside. “On its own, being outside is not sufficient evidence of a failure to comply with the stay-at-home order,” a spokesman had said at the time.

Although the new measures would not pass Charter of Rights muster under any conventional circumstances, they are made possible thanks to wide-reaching provisions contained in the Canadian Quarantine Act. The 2005 act specifically empowers warrantless arrests, and allows peace officers to detain anyone they “believe has refused to be isolated or refuses to comply with a measure.”

Accompanying the expansion of law enforcement powers was what Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the “strictest measures in all of North America.” This included a full shutdown of outdoor amenities, including golf courses, basketball courts and playgrounds. Under the prior provisions of the Reopening Ontario Act, anyone caught on a jungle gym until the lifting of the measure can face fines of $750, to an individual maximum of $100,000 and up to a year in jail.

While Ontario had previously allowed outdoor gatherings of up to five people, that has now been limited to “members of one’s own household.”

Jones also announced the partial closure of Ontario’s borders with the rest of Canada. Starting at midnight on Monday, roadblocks at the Manitoba and Quebec borders will now turn away any traveller who can’t prove they are travelling for work, medical care or the exercise of Indigenous treaty rights. “Should an individual not have a valid reason to enter Ontario, they will be turned back,” said Jones.

Although this marks the most consequential intranational border closure since the arrival of COVID-19 to Canada, it is not without precedent. The territory of Nunavut has imposed strict restrictions on the arrival of non-residents during the pandemic. As well, the “Atlantic Bubble,” a travel-restricted area enacted by Canada’s Atlantic provinces, was enforced in part by peace officers stationed on land crossings from Quebec.

The enforced stay-at-home orders are indeed the broadest COVID-19 restrictions yet observed in the Western hemisphere, although they do echo the hard lockdowns observed by New Zealand in the first weeks of the pandemic. Italy has also returned to strict lockdowns following a rise in cases and hospitalizations, and have mobilized 70,000 additional police to enforce it.

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  St. Alphonsus de Liguori: Preparation for Death
Posted by: Stone - 04-18-2021, 06:17 AM - Forum: Resources Online - No Replies

By St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church 



An audiobook excerpt from the above book, entitled: "Perseverance"

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  The Recusant: What Is Uniformitarianism?
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 06:53 PM - Forum: General Commentary - Replies (2)

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 55 [Eastertide 2021]

What Is Uniformitarianism?

Let us turn to the anti-creationist ‘hostile witnesses’ Wikipedia and National Geographic for our evidence, in the hope that it will be less easily dismissed (emphases ours throughout).


Quote:“ ‘Theory of the Earth’ was a publication by James Hutton which laid the foundations for geology. In it he showed [!?] that the Earth is the product of natural forces. What could be seen happening today, over long periods of time, could produce what we see in the rocks. It also hypothesized that the age of the Earth was much older than what biblical literalists claim. This idea, uniformitarianism, was used by Charles Lyell in his work, and Lyell’s textbook was an important influence on Charles Darwin.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Earth)


Quote:“ ‘Principles of Geology: being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation’ is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell that was first published in 3 volumes from 1830 - 1833 … The book established Lyell’s credentials as an important geological theorist and popularized the doctrine of uniformitarianism (first suggested by James Hutton in ‘Theory of the Earth’ published in 1795).

The book is notable for being one of the first to use the term ‘evolution’ in the context of biological speciation. In Lyell’s work, he described the three rules he believes to cause the steady change of the Earth. The first rule is that geologic change comes from slow and continual procedures that have been happening over a long period of time. This rule is the basic ideal of Uniformitarianism […] Lyell’s interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time, a central theme in the Principles, influenced the 22-year-old Charles Darwin, who was given the first volume of the first edition by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, just before they set out (December 1831) on the ship’s second voyage. […] 

Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology was met with a lot of criticism when it was first published. The main argument against Lyell is that he took an a priori approach in his work. This means that Lyell was pulling from a theoretical idea instead of pulling from empirical evidence to explain what was occurring in the geological world. One opponent of Principles of Geology [on] this point was Adam Sedgwick [who argued] that the evidence of geologic events points to a catastrophic event.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Geology)


Quote:“The principle of uniformitarianism is essential to understanding Earth’s history. However, prior to 1830, uniformitarianism was not the prevailing theory. […] Among the scientists who agreed with Hutton was Charles Lyell. […] The combined efforts of Lyell and Hutton became the foundation of modern geology. Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, looked at uniformitarianism as support for his theory of how new species emerge. The evolution of life, he realized, required vast amounts of time, and the science of geology now showed Earth was extremely old.”(https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyc...itarianism)

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  Helpful Info For Those Being Bullied By Employer!
Posted by: Scarlet - 04-17-2021, 04:20 PM - Forum: COVID Vaccines - Replies (1)

VERY CRUCIAL: Help If Your Employer Is Trying To Force You To Take A mRNA or JnJ Jab Against Your Will:
 
source: https://www.exposelockdowns.com/
Hi! A lot of people are coming to me about an employer threatening to fire them if they don’t take the Emergency Authorized inoculation. I’m not a doctor, medical advisor or legal advisor, but I have compiled these resources to help you defend yourself — at least verbally & logically — in explaining to your boss why you don’t want to be forced:

1.) These companies are not liable! The government isn’t liable. The employer trying to force you to take it will most likely not be liable. So who will be liable? No one. You! If you want it, do your thing! But if they’re trying to force you against your will, present them this article & it does a fantastic way of explaining it. 
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html


2.) So far, they are NOT FDA Approved.  It has emergency authorization, but they specifically say it “has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA-approved or cleared product.”  Research & feel free to present this to your employer:

Moderna Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download

Pfizer-BioNTech Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download

The Janssen (J&J) Fact Sheet For Recipients & Caregivers: https://www.fda.gov/media/146305/download


3.) These companies have a history your employer should know about. If your employer is trying to force you, guilt you or financially control you into injecting one against your will — while taking NO LIABILITY for an injection that isn’t FDA Approved, ask them if they’ve heard of this:

REUTERS: “J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder” https://www.reuters.com/investigates/spe...on-cancer/

REUTERS: “Johnson & Johnson sets aside almost $4 billion for talc verdict, filing shows”: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johns...SKBN2AN07W

CNN (2011): Johnson & Johnson settles U.S. Bribery Charges: https://money.cnn.com/2011/04/08/news/co.../index.htm
Department of Justice (2013): “Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/johnson-j...stigations

REUTERS (2012) Pfizer settles foreign bribery case with US government: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfize...WM20120807

Does your employer want to be liable if they force you to take the jab?  These companies aren’t going to be liable. 

I believe in freedom & personal choice when it comes to this inoculation. If you want to get it, do your thing! Good luck & God Bless. But this is a resource for those being bullied, pressured or financially forced by their workplace against their will. Please let people know to follow me on Telegram or point a friend/family member to this if they need articles, resources, facts, proof & a sound three step explanation to stand their ground.

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  Biden-Harris Administration to Ramp Up Experiments Using Aborted Baby Body Parts
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:43 AM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Biden-Harris Administration to Ramp Up Experiments Using Aborted Baby Body Parts

[Image: Human-Fetal-Tissue-640x480.jpg]

In this photo taken Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, Cate Dyer, chief executive officer and founder of StemExpress, poses at the company's office in Placerville, Calif. 
StemExpress is a broker in human tissue, which includes the fetal tissue that is at the heart of the Planned Parenthood video controversy.


Breitbart | 16 Apr 20210

The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it is reversing the Trump administration’s decision to end taxpayer funding for experimental research that uses fetal tissue derived from aborted babies.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency under the authority of HHS, announced Friday an “Update on Changes to NIH Requirements Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research”:
Quote:On June 5, 2019, HHS announced that NIH intramural research that requires new acquisition of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will not be conducted. Simultaneously, HHS announced new requirements for documentation and review by an Ethics Advisory Board of extramural research applications for NIH grants, cooperative agreements, and R&D contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions.

This notice informs the extramural research community that HHS is reversing its 2019 decision that all research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board. Accordingly, HHS/NIH will not convene another NIH Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board.

The announcement refers to the fact that, in addition to ending internal research with fetal tissue from elective abortions, the Trump administration applied a rigorous ethics review protocol in considering funding for research outside of its department – both of which the Biden-Harris HHS is overturning.

According to the Hill, on Thursday Planned Parenthood ally Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, indicated during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing the announcement of the reversal of the Trump administration policy would be forthcoming.

“We believe that we have to do the research that it takes to make sure that we’re incorporating innovation and getting all of those types of treatments and therapies out there to the American people,” Becerra said.

The announcement comes on the heels of a letter this week from abortion industry allies and Democrat lawmakers Reps. Suzan DelBene (WA), Jan Schakowsky (IL), and Mark Pocan (WI), who urged Becerra to “immediately revoke the Trump Administration’s policies restricting fetal tissue use in biomedical research.”

“Fetal tissue is an irreplaceable resource for research that has led to numerous scientific and medical advances and contributed to the development of new therapies for many devastating diseases, including COVID-19,” the pro-abortion members of Congress wrote, adding the Trump administration’s bans on taxpayer-funded research using the body parts of aborted babies “continue to threaten scientific and medical advances.”

“The Trump Administration’s policy was politically motivated and unnecessary,” the lawmakers said, claiming as well that tissue from aborted babies is required to create treatments for “Zika, HIV, and COVID-19,” as well as “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), spinal cord injury, and Parkinson’s disease.”

As AFP reported, in March 2020, Becerra, the former attorney general of California, organized a coalition of attorneys general from 14 other states to lift the Trump administration’s ban on taxpayer-funded fetal tissue research under the guise tissue from aborted babies would be required to develop vaccines for the coronavirus.

National pro-life researchers and leaders have long warned of the co-dependent relationship between abortion industry leaders such as Planned Parenthood and Democrat politicians.

Dr. Tara Sander Lee, senior fellow and director of life sciences at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement the Biden-Harris administration’s “decision to resume experiments using the body parts of aborted children defies both the best ethics and most promising science.”

Lee asserted the claims of Democrats that tissue from the bodies of aborted babies is essential to develop essential drugs are false:
Quote:Exploiting the bodies of these young human beings is unnecessary and grotesque. Fetal tissue was not, and has never been, used for polio or any other vaccine, nor to produce or manufacture any pharmaceutical. There are superior and ethical alternatives available such as adult stem cell models being used by countless scientists worldwide to develop and produce advanced medicines treating patients now, without exploitation of any innocent life. All scientists should reject the administration’s attempts to prey on fears related to the pandemic to advance the practice of harvesting fetal tissue.





Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser also said in the statement that Biden and Harris are “working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra” and are “moving rapidly to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration.” Dannenfelser added:
Quote:From day one they have sought to expand abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, against the will of the strong majority of Americans. Now they would force Americans to be complicit in barbaric experiments using body parts harvested from innocent children killed in abortions, with no limits of any kind.

Last week, legal watchdog organization Judicial Watch provided a nearly 600-page report that included uncovered emails of conversations between Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees and the California-based biomedical company Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). The emails revealed the U.S. government had been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts.

According to the report, the FDA purchased the body parts, which were derived from babies aborted at up to 24-weeks’ gestation, in order to engineer humanized mice and perform experimental drug research.

The Federalist reported on the Judicial Watch revelation:
Quote:Emails between FDA officials and ABR employees reveal disturbing conversations as they collaborate to buy and sell aborted fetuses. Records indicate ABR was paid $12,000 upfront per baby, some survivable out of the womb, between the gestational age of 16-24 weeks. Most purchases are for intact thymuses and livers shipped “Fresh; on wet ice.”

With the callousness of picking a cut of meat from a butcher shop, an FDA doctor requests tissue samples be procured from a baby boy, as they claim “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.”



In August 2018, a report at CNSNews.com noted FDA signed a contract with ABR a month earlier and paid the company $15,900 for the fetal tissue from abortions, according to a General Services Administration contract.

The report followed several years of congressional investigation into the abortion industry’s alleged complicit relationship with biomedical companies, such as ABR, that purchase the body parts of aborted babies.

The U.S. Department of Justice was supposed to have launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s practices with regard to the sale of fetal body parts last December 2017, but further information about the investigation never materialized.

In December 2016, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter to Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI director James Comey, informing them he was referring “the paid fetal tissue practices of the following organizations…to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and potential prosecution.”

ABR was among the organizations named:
  • StemExpress, LLC;
  • Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.
  • Novogenix Laboratories, LLC
  • Planned Parenthood Mar Monte
  • Planned Parenthood Los Angeles
  • Planned Parenthood Northern California
  • Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest

Grassley said in a statement at the time:
Quote:I don’t take lightly making a criminal referral. But, the seeming disregard for the law by these entities has been fueled by decades of utter failure by the Justice Department to enforce it. And, unless there is a renewed commitment by everyone involved against commercializing the trade in aborted fetal body parts for profit, then the problem is likely to continue.


The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), with project lead David Daleiden, conducted an undercover investigation exposing the alleged illegal practices of Planned Parenthood and its partners in the fetal tissue procurement industry.


“This type of experimental research is a gross violation of human dignity and is not where the majority of Americans want their tax dollars being spent,” said Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action. “The government has no business creating a marketplace for aborted baby body parts.”



Family Research Council President Tony Perkins also said:
Quote:As expected, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fanatical advocate for abortion, announced the Biden administration will now force American taxpayers to pay for barbaric experiments using the body parts of aborted babies. Instead of using ethical and effective alternatives, Biden is choosing to reinstate a policy that traffics in the grizzly remains of what would have been our next generation.

“The fact is that the remains of aborted babies have not been used to create the cure of a single disease,” Perkins added. “It’s clear that the NIH under President Biden means to do the opposite of ‘follow the science.’”

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  Argentinian pro-abortion leader dies during abortion procedure
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:31 AM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Argentinian pro-abortion leader dies during abortion procedure
After Argentina legalized abortion, the abortion activist's death is the first recorded since the pro-abortion law was passed at the end of 2020.

rmx.news | April 15, 2021

Spanish language media reported last Sunday that radical pro-abortion supporter Maria de Valle Gonzalez Lopez died during what she labeled her “dream” abortion operation. She was 23 years old and was the leader of the Radical Youth in the La Paz municipality in the province of Mendoza. Her death has sparked a fierce debate about abortion in Argentina and led for calls for women to know that the procedure can sometimes carry serious risks.

On April 11, the woman underwent a legal abortion procedure in a local hospital. The operation turned out to be fatal for her. This fact came as a shock to the public as this was the first recorded death following the approval of the country's controversial pro-abortion bill passed on December 30, 2020, which legalized abortion in some cases. Previously, abortion was illegal in the predominately Catholic country.

Dr. Luis Durand, an Argentinian surgeon, told ACI Prensa journalists that “while some believe that the death of the young woman could’ve occurred due to some misconduct, in reality abortion is not a medical practice. Just a few months ago, it was a crime under Argentinian law. In the case of abortion, the death of the child is always brutal. It is burned through injecting substances into the uterus, or it is removed through dismemberment, or it is subjected to extreme uterus spasms which asphyxiate it.”

Durand added that an infection or sepsis may appear in women who take the drug Misoprostol when doctors fail to complete extract the child and his or her remains linger in the woman's uterus.

“This is why it is false premise to believe that such a procedure is truly safe,” he said.

Walter Sanchez Silva, the author of the ACI Prensa article, wrote that the silence of feminists surrounding Maria del Valle Gonzalez Lopez’s death is striking.

Some are pointing to what they believe is a double-standard in the case. Pro-life leader Guadalupe Batallan posted the following entry on her Twitter account on Monday, writing, “If Maria had died as a result of an abortion carried out in the abortion underground, the feminists would’ve razed the town. But since Maria died as a result of a legal abortion, her death has been erased.”

There is no such thing as a safe abortion for women.

Despite what women may believe, the pro-life leader says there is no such thing as a safe abortion.

Argentina's pro-abortion movement has offered inspiration to Poland's pro-abortion movement, with activists drawing parallels to the fact that both countries are very Catholic yet Argentina's movement was able to end the country's restrictions on abortion.

The slogan of a left-wing Polish group known as Manifa was: “Argentinian women are giving us an example of how we can prevail”.

Meanwhile, the manifesto of the Polish Abortion Dream-Team was, “We should be victorious like Argentinians!”

Those in the Polish pro-life movement indicate that any such "victory" always amounts to the death of a child, sometimes deep trauma for the woman, and in rare cases, can even lead to the death of both individuals.

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  New study puts COVID infection fatality rate at only 0.15 percent
Posted by: Stone - 04-17-2021, 11:29 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

New study puts COVID infection fatality rate at only 0.15 percent
The evaluations in the report find their basis in seroprevalence studies, that is detecting the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the blood serum of a population.

STANFORD, California, April 16, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A new study released by Professor John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford University, California, has found that the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 is significantly lower than previous studies indicated. According to Ioannidis, a medicine and epidemiology professor, the virus is less deadly than once thought, registering at a mere 0.15% fatality rate.

Ioannidis’ research, published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, considered data collected from six “systematic evaluations” of global infection with the novel coronavirus, each one taking account of between 10 and 338 individual studies from 9 to 50 countries around the world. The evaluations in Ioannidis’ report find their basis in seroprevalence studies, that is detecting the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) in the blood serum of a population.

Seroprevalence studies differ from typical national statistics of PCR-based “confirmed cases” of the virus inasmuch as they do not simply detect active traces of SARS-CoV-2, but rather the presence of COVID antibodies, thus counting those individuals infected with the pathogen at some point but who may or may not have active viral material in their body at the time of testing.

As such, individuals who would not have been counted by PCR testing as a positive case — the discredited method used in the daily COVID infection count by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as many international government health agencies — ­will be picked up by seroprevalence analysis, which identifies the spread of the virus in such cases, painting a clearer picture of viral spread within a population.

In producing his own estimate of the infection rates and related IFR of COVID-19, Ioannidis highlighted the importance of an overview of the relevant estimates globally, given that such estimates “feed into projections that influence decision-making,” including public policy. In order to avoid the “uncertainty and unclear generalizability” arising from single studies, Ioannidis took six large-scale evaluations, spanning numerous countries and including many hundreds of studies.

Aggregating the six systematic evaluations, Ioannidis found that all “seroprevalence data converge that SARS-CoV-2 infection has been very widely spread globally,” resulting in a global IFR of “approximately 0.15% with 1.5-2.0 billion infections as of February 2021.” The IFR calculated in Ioannidis’ latest research is a revision of his previous findings, which concluded that COVID-19 had a 0.23% IFR, making COVID-19 around 1.5 times less deadly than previously thought. In concrete terms, the revised IFR puts COVID-19 a bit higher in fatality rate than Influenza, which generally sits at 0.1% IFR.

Ioannidis did admit, however, that despite garnering data from over 50 countries, the studies lacked an even global reach overall, with 72% to 91% of seroprevalence data originating in Europe and North America. A disproportionately small pool of data was collected from Africa and Asia.

According to Ioannidis, the majority of the evaluations used in his report reached “congruent estimates of global pandemic spread.” These estimates show around 600 million people were already infected with the virus before the end of November 2020, not taking account of infections in the bulk of Africa and Asia. Adjusted to include national statistics of viral infection from these regions, Ioannidis concluded that around 1 billion people worldwide had come into contact with SARS-CoV-2 before the end of November.

“By extrapolation, one may cautiously estimate [approximately] 1.5 – 2.0 billion infections as of 21 February 2021 (compared with 112 million documented cases),” Ioannidis said. “This corresponds to global IFR [of approximately] 0.15%,” a figure, he noted, that is “open to adjustment for any over- and under-counting of COVID-19 deaths.”

Although Ioannidis provided a generalized estimate, he noted that large discrepancies exist in the actual IFR in localized areas, such as specific countries, and even inside regions within a nation’s borders. As an example, he pointed to the disparity in fatality rates related to COVID-19 between disadvantaged New Orleans districts and the affluent Silicon Valley.

“Differences are driven by population age structure, nursing home populations, effective sheltering of vulnerable people, medical care, use of effective or detrimental treatments,” he explained. “IFR will depend on settings and populations involved. For example, even ‘common cold’ coronaviruses have IFR [of approximately] 10% in nursing home outbreaks,” almost 67 times greater than the average global IFR of COVID-19, per Ioannidis’ study.

Among his findings, Ioannidis flagged a “problematic” reliance on “[c]orrection of COVID‐19 death counts through excess deaths” to show COVID as causing widespread mortality. Ioannidis noted that excess deaths reflect “both COVID‐19 deaths and deaths from measures taken,” to wit, the deadly impact caused by lockdown measures.

Ioannidis went on to explain that “[y]ear‐to‐year variability [in excess deaths] is substantial,” especially when adjusted for age categorizations. On account of the widely varying death toll, such comparisons with the multiple average year-to-year fatality rates “is naïve, worse in countries with substantial demographic changes,” Ioannidis claimed.

As an example, the eminent professor pointed to Germany, which recorded an excess of 8,071 deaths in the first wave of COVID-19, from week 10 to week 23 last year. This excess, when adjusted for demographic changes, “became a deficit of 4926 deaths.” In other words, the death rate dropped far below what might otherwise have been expected.


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  Federal Government Caught Buying ‘Fresh’ Flesh Of Aborted Babies Who Could Have Survived As Preemies
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 05:07 PM - Forum: Abortion - No Replies

Federal Government Caught Buying ‘Fresh’ Flesh Of Aborted Babies Who Could Have Survived As Preemies
Americans should be outraged their government participates in the wide-scale human trafficking operation that created a market for harvesting the organs of murdered infants.


The Federalist | April 15, 2021


This article contains disturbing information about human dismemberment.

Last week, legal accountability group Judicial Watch dropped a bombshell: a nearly 600-page report proving the U.S. government has been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts. These body parts, purchased by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “humanize” mice and test biologic drugs in scientific experiments, came from babies up to 24-weeks-old gestation, just weeks from being born.

While Americans may be used to hearing pro-lifers beat the warning drum on abortion groups harvesting baby bodies and selling them for research, (who hasn’t heard of the lawsuit against David Daleiden, who exposed Planned Parenthood haggling over baby lungs and livers at dinner parties?) this time, the U.S. government was the one trafficking baby parts.

Recent emails uncovered by Judicial Watch between FDA employees and the California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) prove the agency spent tens of thousands of dollars buying aborted babies for unethical scientific experiments between 2012 and 2018. In 2018, the Trump administration terminated the contract, halting government fetal tissue research due to concerns the contracts were unlawful. Judicial Watch’s new FOIA Request adds 575 pages of records to its existing 2019 lawsuit against the agency.


Caught Red-Handed

This is not the first time ABR has been in the spotlight, as the company was under congressional investigation for its long-standing involvement in fetal tissue trafficking. One of the oldest fetal tissue procurement firms, the company makes millions every year by harvesting organs like lungs, livers, eyeballs, and brains from aborted babies and re-selling them at a profit.

Emails between FDA officials and ABR employees reveal disturbing conversations as they collaborate to buy and sell aborted fetuses. Records indicate ABR was paid $12,000 upfront per baby, some survivable out of the womb, between the gestational age of 16-24 weeks. Most purchases are for intact thymuses and livers shipped “Fresh; on wet ice.”

With the callousness of picking a cut of meat from a butcher shop, an FDA doctor requests tissue samples be procured from a baby boy, as they claim “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.”

Even more appalling is an ABR employee complaining about the difficulty of identifying the sex of aborted babies. “We only check external genitalia and if it’s not there … we have no way of telling.” The fact techs are unable to identify the sex of aborted babies is no surprise to those familiar with the barbaric nature of abortion procedures, which require clinic staff to piece together mangled remains of babies after their limbs and organs are torn apart.

As if these casual orders weren’t horrific enough, more emails confirm that the FDA bought organs of babies who were aborted well after 20 weeks gestation, after the time a baby usually can survive outside the womb. If nothing else, this confirms the reality of late-term abortions in the United States, which pro-abortion cheerleaders have denied for decades.

When an ABR employee reassured the FDA they were working with doctors who performed late-term abortions, he admitted some tissue was unusable from a procedure that injects a poison called digoxin into the baby, destroying its cells and tissues. Once the chemical has done its work, an intact, dead baby is delivered. This method makes fetal tissue specimens unusable in experiments; with digoxin off the table, the likelihood partial-birth abortions were used is sickeningly high.

These conversations should shock even those who are pro-abortion, most of whom believe in significant term restrictions. Babies at this level of development possess all characteristics necessary for surviving life outside the womb and premature children born as young as 21 weeks go on to lead healthy, thriving lives.


An Atrocity Against Human Dignity

These gruesome excerpts are just a sample of records substantiating the 2019 lawsuit Judicial Watch filed against HHS, which houses the FDA. In March this year, a federal court ordered the agency to release records it withheld about purchasing organs of aborted babies, saying it found “reason to question” the transactions violated federal law.

The court’s decision found that the U.S. government bought second-trimester livers, thymuses, brains, eyes, and lungs for hundreds of dollars apiece from ABR, stating ABR could collect “over $2,000 on a single fetus it purchased … for $60” and “the federal government participated in this potentially illicit trade for years.”

Americans should be outraged their government participates in the wide-scale human trafficking operation that created a market for harvesting the organs of murdered infants. In no humane society could such a violation of the human body and dignity occur, in which babies’ eyes are “harvested immediately upon death,” organs marketed based on sex, and personhood attributed to mice but not children.

Until demanded otherwise, our society is complicit in the unchecked abuse and commodification of preborn children. Moral urgency is incumbent on us to condemn these atrocities sanctioned by the federal government’s lead medical researchers and fight to stop them. We may lose more battles before we win, but we cannot say we never knew.

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  Garcia Moreno
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 12:54 PM - Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith - Replies (1)

Gabriel García Moreno

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Ecuadorean patriot and statesman; b. at Guayaquil, 24 December, 1821; assassinated at Quito, 6 August, 1875.


His father, Gabriel García Gomez, a native of Villaverde, in Old Castile, had been engaged in commerce at Callao before removing to Guayaquil, where he married Dona Mercedes Moreno, the mother of the future Ecuadorean martyr president. Gabriel García Gomez died while his son was still young, and the boy's education was left to the care of his mother, who appears to have been a woman of unusual ability for her task; she was, moreover, fortunate in securing as her son's tutor Fray José Betancourt, the famous Mercedarian, under whose tuition young García Moreno made rapid progress. A great part of his father's fortune having been lost, it was not without some considerable sacrifices that the youth was able to attend the university course at Quito. These material obstacles once overcome, he passed brilliantly through the schools, distancing all his contemporaries, and on 26 October, 1844, received his degree in the faculty of law (Doctor en Jurisprudencia) from the University of Quito.

In less than a year after his graduation young García Moreno had begun to take an active part in Ecuadorean politics, joining in the revolutionary movement which eventually replaced the Flores administration by that of Roca (1846). He soon distinguished himself as a political satirist by contributions to "El Zurriago", but what more truly presaged the achievements of his riper life was his good and useful work as a member of the municipal council of Quito. At the same time he was studying legal practice, and on 30 March, 1848, was admitted advocate. Immediately after this the deposed Flores, supported by the Spanish government, made an attempt to regain the presidency of Ecuador; García Moreno unhesitatingly came forward in support of the Roca administration, and when that administration fell, in 1849, he entered upon his first period of exile.

After some months spent in Europe he returned to his native republic in the employ of a mercantile concern, and it was then that he took the first decisive step which marked him conspicuously for the enmity of the anti-Catholics, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the Liberals. At Panama he had fallen in with a party of Jesuits who had been expelled from the Republic of New Granada and wished to find asylum in Ecuador. García Moreno constituted himself the protector of these religious, and they sailed with him for Guayaquil; but on the same vessel that carried the Jesuits and their champion, an envoy from New Granada also took passage for the express purpose of bringing diplomatic influence to bear with the dictator, Diego Noboa, to secure their exclusion from Ecuadorean territory.

No sooner had the vessel entered the harbour of Guayaquil than García Moreno, slipping into a shore boat, succeeded in landing some time before the New Granadan envoy; the necessary permission was acquired from the Ecuadorean government, and the Jesuits obtained a foothold in that country. How soon the report of this exploit spread among the anti-Catholics of South America was evidenced by the fact that within a year Jacobo Sánchez, a New Granadan, had attacked García Moreno in the pamphlet "Don Felix Frias en Paris y los Jesuitas en el Ecuador", to which García Moreno's reply was an able "Defensa de los Jesuitas".

In 1853 he began to publish "La Nación", a periodical which, according to its prospectus, was intended to combat the then existing tendency of the government to exploit the masses for the material benefit of those who happened to be in power. At the same time García Moreno's programme aimed distinctly and professedly to defend the religion of the people. He was already known as a friend of the Jesuits; he now assumed the role of friend of the common people, to which he adhered sincerely and consistently to the day of his death. The Urbina faction, then in power, were quick to recognize the importance of "La Nación", which was suppressed before the appearance of its third number, and its proprietor was exiled, for the second time.

Having been, meanwhile, elected senator by his native province of Guayaquil, he was prevented from taking his seat, on the ground that he had returned to Quito without a passport. After a sojourn at Paita, García Moreno once more visited Europe. He was now thirty-three years of age, and his experience of political life in Ecuador had deeply convinced him of his people's need of enlightenment. It was undoubtedly with this conviction as his guide and incentive that he spent a year or more in Paris, foregoing every form of pleasure, a severe, indefatigable student not only of political science, but also of the higher mathematics, of chemistry, and of the French public school system.

On his return home, under a general amnesty in 1850, he became rector of the central University of Quito; a position of which he availed himself to commence lectures of his own in physical science. Next year he was active in the senate in opposition to the Masonic party, which had gained control of the government, while at the same time he persistently and forcibly, though unsuccessfully, struggled for the passage of a law establishing a system of public education modelled on that of France. In 1858 he once more established a paper, "La Union Naciónal", which became obnoxious to the government by its fearless exposure of corruption and its opposition to the arbitrary employment of authority; and once more a political crisis ensued.

García Moreno was on principle an advocate of orderly processes of government, and that his professions in this regard were sincere his subsequent career fairly demonstrated, but at this juncture he was obliged to realize that his country was in the grip of a corrupt oligarchy, bent upon the suppression of the Church to which the whole mass of his fellow countrymen were devoted, and disposed to keep the masses in ignorance so as to sway them the more easily to its own ends. He had, years before, attacked "the revolutionary industry", a phrase probably first used by him, in the prospectus of "La Nación"; it now became necessary for him to descend to revolutionary methods.

Besides, the little Republic of Ecuador was at this time menaced by its more powerful neighbour on the south, Peru. García Moreno, if he was sure of opposition at the hands of the soi-disant Liberals, was also, by this time, recognized by the masses as a leader loyal to both their common Faith and their common country, and thus he was able to organize the revolution which made him head of a provisional government established at Quito. The republic was now divided, General Franco being at the head of a rival government established at Guayaquil.

In vain did García Moreno offer to share his authority with his rival for the sake of national unity. As a defensive measure against the threat of Peruvian invasion, García Moreno entered into negotiations with the French envoy with a view to securing the protection of France, a political mistake of which his enemies knew how to avail themselves to the utmost. He was now obliged to assume the character of a military leader, for which he possessed at least the qualifications of personal courage and decisive quickness of resolution. While García Moreno inflicted one defeat after another upon the partisans of Franco, the latter, as representing Ecuador, had concluded with Peru the treaty of Mapasingue. The people of Ecuador rose in indignation at the concessions made in this treaty, and Franco, even his own followers being alienated, was defeated at Babahoya (7 August, 1860) and again at Salado River, where he was driven to take refuge on a Peruvian vessel.

When his adversary had been forcibly driven from the country, García Moreno showed his magnanimity in the proclamation in which he sought to heal as quickly as possible the scars of this civil war: "The republic should regard itself as one family; the old demarcations of districts must be so obliterated as to render sectional ambitions impossible". In the reorganization of the Constituent Assembly, which was summoned to meet in January, 1861, he insisted that the suffrage should not be territorial, but "direct and universal, under the necessary guarantees of intelligence and morality, and the number of representatives should correspond (proportionally) to that of the electors represented". The Convention, which met on 10 January, elected García Moreno president; he delivered his inaugural address on the 2d of April following. Then began that series of reforms among which were the restitution of the rights of the Church and a radical reconstruction of the fiscal system. In the immediate present he had to deal with the machinations of his old adversary Urbina, who, from his retirement in Peru, kept up incessant intrigues with the opposition at home, and still more with the governments of neighbouring republics. García Moreno soon came to a sensible and honourable understanding with the Peruvian government.

A violation of Ecuadorean territory by New Granada, though it led to a hostile collision in which García Moreno himself took part, had no serious consequences until the Arboledo administration gave place to that of General Mosquera, whose ambition it was to make New Granada the nucleus of a great "Colombian Confederation", in which Ecuador was to be included. Urbina was not above writing encouraging letters to the New Granadan or Colombian dictator who was scheming against the independence of Ecuador. An invitation to García Moreno to confer with Mosquera elicited a very plain intimation that, so far as the national obliteration of Ecuador was concerned, there was nothing to confer about. But in the meantime the Republic of Ecuador had ratified a concordat with Pope Pius IX (1862), and the discontent of the Regalista party at home with the provisions of that instrument gave Mosquera an excellent pretext for encroaching upon his neighbour's rights.

The Regalistas were, without knowing it, a kind of Erastians, who claimed the appointment to ecclesiastical benefices as an inalienable right of the civil power. The President of Ecuador was charged with "casting Colombia, manacled, at the feet of Rome"; Urbina issued "manifestos" from Peru in the sense of "South America for the South Americans"; while the proclamation of President Mosquera recited, with others which seem to have been introduced merely for the sake of appearances, his three really significant grounds of complaint against García Moreno: that the latter had ratified the concordat; that he maintained a representative of the Holy See at Quito; that he had brought Jesuits into Ecuador. It may be remarked here, in passing, that if Mosquera had added to this catalogue of offences those of insisting upon free primary education for the masses, upon strict auditing of the public accounts, and a considerable bona fide outlay upon roads and other public utilities, his proclamation might have served adequately as the indictment upon which García Moreno was condemned and eventually put to death by those whom Pius IX ironically called "the valiant sectaries".

Mosquera was determined to have war, and all the efforts of the Ecuadorean government were of no avail to prevent it. At the battle of Cuaspud all but two battalions of the forces of Ecuador fled ignominiously. It is a matter for wonder, considering the grounds upon which he had declared war, that Mosquera, in the Peace of Pinsaquí, which followed this victory, should have left the Concordat of 1862, the delegate Apostolic, and the Jesuits just as they were. In March,1863, García Moreno tendered his resignation to the National Assembly, who insisted upon his remaining in office until the expiration of his term. Nevertheless he had to face, during the next two years, repeated seditions and filibustering raids. After sparing the lives of the leaders in one of these movements, though they had by all law and custom incurred the penalty of death, he was severely criticized for ordering the execution of another such when it had become evident that an example was necessary for the peace of the republic. In a naval battle at Jambelí (27 June, 1865) at which García Moreno was personally present, the defeat of the Urbina forces was complete, and tranquillity reigned until the presidential term expired on the 27th of the following August.

In the following year began what may be considered as a connected series of attempts which terminated, nine years later, in the assassination of García Moreno. The dispute between Spain and Peru over the Chinchas Islands had led to a war in which, following García Moreno's advice, his successor Jeronimo Carrión had cast in the lot of Ecuador with that of the sister republic and its then ally, Chile. The ex-president was sent as minister plenipotentiary to Chile, with a commission to transact business with President Prado of Peru on his way. On his arrival at Lima an attempt was made to assassinate him, but it ended in the death of his assailant. His diplomatic mission resulted excellently for the friendly relations between Ecuador and its neighbours; the sojourn at Santiago also inspired García Moreno with a high admiration for Chile, and he even made up his mind to attempt a change of the Ecuadorean constitution so as to make it more like that of Chile, a project which he carried into effect in the National Convention of 1869. On his return to Ecuador he found himself a second time in the uncongenial position of leader of a revolution. To anticipate a plot which the Liberals, led by one of Urbina's relations, were known to be forming, the conservatives of Ecuador had risen, declared Carrión deposed, and made García Moreno head of the provisional government. The justice of the grounds on which this extreme action was taken was established by the attempt of Veintemilla, at Guayaquil, only two months later, in March, 1869.

Having been duly confirmed as president ad interim by the National Convention of May, 1869, García Moreno resumed his work for the enlightenment, as well as the religious well-being, of his people. It was in these last years of his life that he did so much for the teaching of physical sciences in the university by introducing there the German Fathers of the Society of Jesus. The medical schools and hospitals of the capital benefited vastly by his intelligent and zealous efforts. In September, 1870, the troops of Victor Emmanuel occupied Rome; and on 18 January, 1871, García Moreno, alone of all the rulers of the world, addressed a protest to the King of Italy on the spoliation of the Holy See. The pope marked his appreciation of this outburst of loyalty by conferring on the President of Ecuador the decoration of the First Class of the Order of Pius IX, with a Brief of commendation dated, 27 March, 1871. It was, on the other hand, notorious that certain lodges had formally decreed the death of García Moreno, who, in a letter to the pope, used about this time the following almost prophetic words: "What riches for me, Most Holy Father, to be hated and calumniated for my love for our Divine Redeemer! What happiness if your benediction should obtain for me from Heaven the grace of shedding my blood for Him, who being God, was willing to shed His blood for us upon the Cross!" The object of numberless plots against his life, García Moreno pursued his way with unruffled confidence in the future — his own and his country's. "The enemies of God and the Church can kill me", he once said, "but God does not die" (Dios no muere).

He had been re-elected president, and would soon have entered upon another term of office, when, towards the end of July, 1875, the police of Quito were apprised that a party of assassins had begun to dog García Moreno's footsteps. When, however, the chief of police warned the intended victim, the latter so discouraged all attempts to hedge him about with precautions, as to almost excuse the carelessness of his official guardians. It came out in evidence that within the fortnight preceding the finally successful attempt, the same assassins had at least twice been foiled by the president's failing to appear on occasions when he had been expected. Finally, on the evening of 6 August, the assassins found their prey unprotected, leaving the house of some very dear friends; they followed him until he had reached the Treasury, and there Faustino Rayo, the leader of the band, suddenly attacked him with a machete, inflicting six or seven wounds, while the other three assisted in the work with their revolvers. On hearing of the death of García Moreno, Pope Pius IX ordered a solemn Mass of Requiem to be celebrated in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The same sovereign pontiff erected to his memory, in the Collegio Pio-Latino, at Rome, a monument on which García Moreno is designated:

Religionis integerrimus custos
Auctor studiorum optimorum
Obsequentissimus in Petri sedem
Justitiae cultor; scelerum vindex.

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  Pope St. Pius V: Regnans in Excelsis - Excommunicating Elizabeth I of England
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:56 AM - Forum: Papal Documents and Bulls - No Replies

Regnans in Excelsis
Excommunicating Elizabeth I of England


Pius Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in lasting memory of the matter.

He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and earth, has committed one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon earth, namely to Peter, the first of the apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the pope of Rome, to be by him governed in fullness of power. Him alone He has made ruler over all peoples and kingdoms, to pull up, destroy, scatter, disperse, plant and build, so that he may preserve His faithful people (knit together with the girdle of charity) in the unity of the Spirit and present them safe and spotless to their Saviour.

1. In obedience to which duty, we (who by God’s goodness are called to the aforesaid government of the Church) spare no pains and labour with all our might that unity and the Catholic religion (which their Author, for the trial of His children’s faith and our correction, has suffered to be afflicted with such great troubles) may be preserved entire. But the number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gather with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom- which had already been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits- to a miserable ruin.

2. Prohibiting with a strong hand the use of the true religion, which after its earlier overthrow by Henry VIII (a deserter therefrom) Mary, the lawful queen of famous memory, had with the help of this See restored, she has followed and embraced the errors of the heretics. She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics; oppressed the followers of the Catholic faith; instituted false preachers and ministers of impiety; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fasts, choice of meats, celibacy, and Catholic ceremonies; and has ordered that books of manifestly heretical content be propounded to the whole realm and that impious rites and institutions after the rule of Calvin, entertained and observed by herself, be also observed by her subjects. She has dared to eject bishops, rectors of churches and other Catholic priests from their churches and benefices, to bestow these and other things ecclesiastical upon heretics, and to determine spiritual causes; has forbidden the prelates, clergy and people to acknowledge the Church of Rome or obey its precepts and canonical sanctions; has forced most of them to come to terms with her wicked laws, to abjure the authority and obedience of the pope of Rome, and to accept her, on oath, as their only lady in matters temporal and spiritual; has imposed penalties and punishments on those who would not agree to this and has exacted then of those who persevered in the unity of the faith and the aforesaid obedience; has thrown the Catholic prelates and parsons into prison where many, worn out by long languishing and sorrow, have miserably ended their lives. All these matter and manifest and notorious among all the nations; they are so well proven by the weighty witness of many men that there remains no place for excuse, defense or evasion.

3. We, seeing impieties and crimes multiplied one upon another the persecution of the faithful and afflictions of religion daily growing more severe under the guidance and by the activity of the said Elizabeth -and recognizing that her mind is so fixed and set that she has not only despised the pious prayers and admonitions with which Catholic princes have tried to cure and convert her but has not even permitted the nuncios sent to her in this matter by this See to cross into England, are compelled by necessity to take up against her the weapons of justice, though we cannot forbear to regret that we should be forced to turn, upon one whose ancestors have so well deserved of the Christian community. Therefore, resting upon the authority of Him whose pleasure it was to place us (though unequal to such a burden) upon this supreme justice-seat, we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ.

4. And moreover (we declare) her to be deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever.

5. And also (declare) the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths to her, to be forever absolved from such an oath and from any duty arising from lordship. fealty and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents , so absolve them and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the above said matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

6. Because in truth it may prove too difficult to take these presents wheresoever it shall be necessary, we will that copies made under the hand of a notary public and sealed with the seal of a prelate of the Church or of his court shall have such force and trust in and out of judicial proceedings, in all places among the nations, as these presents would themselves have if they were exhibited or shown.

Given at St. Peter’s at Rome, on 25 February 1570 of the Incarnation; in the fifth year of our pontificate.

Pius PP.

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  Elizabethan Catholics and the Mass
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:53 AM - Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith - Replies (2)

The Angelus - October 1982


Elizabethan Catholics and the Mass
I. The Gathering Storm
by Philip Caramon, S.J.


The article which follows (and two subsequent which will follow) originally appeared in 1974. The manuscript was written and put to one side before the changes which came to the Church in the wake of the Council. It is important to note this, for those who read these moving articles will be struck by certain parallels with our own day, which are the more powerful for not having been intended; they should cause us all to pause and think. As an historian of the Elizabethan period, Father Caramon, of course, needs no introduction.  It is a privilege to publish his work. Acknowledgments to Christian Order.

Queen Mary died on 17 November 1558 while Mass was being celebrated in her bed-chamber. No day had passed in her adult life without her hearing Mass. When the priest came to the words, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, she answered distinctly Miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem; then, as he took the Host to consume it, the Queen adored it. Afterwards she closed her eyes for the last time.


Elizabeth proclaimed Queen

Between eleven and twelve o'clock the same morning Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, was proclaimed Queen by the heralds of arms. In the afternoon the bells of all London churches were rung for joy; that night bonfires were lit and tables set out in the streets; there was plentiful eating, drinking and merry-making. The next day, Friday, being a fast day, there were no public rejoicings, but on Saturday, 19 November, the Te Deum Laudamus was sung in all the churches of the kingdom.

During her last sickness Queen Mary had sent messengers to Princess Elizabeth to examine her on her religious beliefs, for no one was certain exactly where she stood. "Surely the Queen must be persuaded that I am a Catholic, for I have protested this time and again," Elizabeth assured her. Then she swore and vowed that she was a Catholic. She said she believed in the Real Presence and would make no alteration in the principal points of religion.

Today people are free to profess whatever religion they choose; then it was different. Until Henry VIII, the father of Mary and Elizabeth, came to the throne, the only religion of Europe was the Catholic one. It was thought that anyone who did not believe in it was wilfully wrong. If he persisted or tried to propagate his beliefs, he was imprisoned as a heretic and sometimes burnt at the stake. Queen Mary had done this; earlier still the English soldiers in France had burnt Joan of Arc; she was thought to be directed by the devil, though, in fact, she was a saint. It was accepted by all that the State was bound to save the souls of its citizens from contamination by false doctrine, just as much as it was bound to protect their lives and property from murderers and highwaymen.

No one thought it possible for different religions to exist side by side in the same country. So it happened that, when Martin Luther and others started the Protestant religion and converted to it German, Swiss and other rulers, the entire area governed by them became Protestant. If any individual felt in conscience that he could not fall in with the new religion of his country, he left his home and went to another city, which adhered to his own religion.

On Mary's death the question that concerned everybody was whether the new Queen, Elizabeth, (and with her the whole of England) would remain Catholic or turn Protestant. Elizabeth was astute and did not show her hand at once. The truth is that she did not care very much about religion, but wanted to be secure on her throne, and thought she had more chance of this if eventually she declared herself a Protestant.

It so happened that, within twenty-two hours of Queen Mary's death, there died also the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole. And nearly at the same time, there died no less than thirteen Bishops and a great number of the clergy from Quartan fever, which was then raging like the plague. Thus, by chance, a great barrier to a change in religion was removed.

The first weeks of the new reign passed and the people were still puzzled. Elizabeth delayed at Hatfield in Hertfordshire before taking possession of London. In preparation for her entry all the streets of the city were spread with gravel. Then, finally, she came, riding a horse apparelled in purple velvet. She passed through Cripplegate and along London Wall to Bishopsgate, then up Leadenhall and Fenchurch Street, turning down Mark Lane into Tower Street and so to the Tower. There was great shooting of guns, such as had never been heard before. At certain points along the route children made speeches to her; in other places groups sang songs to the accompaniment of portable organs. However, the uncertainty about her religion continued.

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First Signs of Protestantism

On 9 January 1559, just seven weeks after Mary's death, a statue of St. Thomas of Canterbury, patron of England, which had stood for centuries over the door of the chapel attached to the Mercers' Hall in London, was thrown down and broken. The offense went unpunished and some persons took this as an omen for the future.

The coronation was fixed for Sunday, 15 February 1559, in Westminster Abbey, which was decorated for the event with the most precious tapestries ever seen, representing on one side the whole of Genesis and, on the other, the Acts of the Apostles, from designs by Raphael. The rooms off the Church were hung with the history of Caesar and Pompey. On a table at the buffet were laid out a hundred and forty gold and silver drinking cups.

After making her entry into the Church the Queen ascended a lofty tribune erected between the high altar and the choir, in view of all the people, who were asked if they wished her to be crowned. When they shouted, "yes," the organs, fifes, trumpets, and drums played, and it seemed, as an eye-witness reported, that the world had come to an end.

Then the choristers began the Mass which was sung by the Dean of her chapel.

As senior prelate in England, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, had been asked to crown the Queen. He had refused, for he suspected there would be innovations in the service. All the other bishops had refused also, except the Bishop of Carlisle, not because he favored the Protestant religion but for fear that, if the Queen was angered that no one would anoint her, she might be more easily moved to overthrow the Catholic faith. The rest of the bishops were present at the ceremony until the point of the Mass when the host is elevated, for adoration. This was not done, for the Queen had forbidden it.

Other changes ordered in the days following the coronation confirmed that Archbishop Heath had been right. On 25 January Elizabeth was once more at the Abbey, with all the peers of the realm, for the Mass of the Holy Ghost, before the opening of Parliament. The Benedictine Abbot John Feckenham, and all his community, each of them carrying a lighted candle in his hand, met her in procession at the West Door. When the Queen saw them, she said angrily, "Away with those torches, for we can see very well." During the service, Dr. Richard Cox, a married priest, who had been an exile during Mary's reign, preached a sermon in which, after saying many abusive things about the monks, he exhorted the Queen to destroy all the images of the saints, the monasteries and all that went with Catholic worship. He tried to prove that it was a very great impiety to endure such superstitious survivals.

Nevertheless for a time the administration of the sacraments continued in all the churches, though the litanies of the saints were no longer recited and parts of the Mass were said in English. Plays were performed in derision of the Catholic faith, but no one was persecuted: placards were posted at street corners inviting passers-by into taverns to watch them. Churches were broken into, windows shattered and chalices stolen. In March the same year rogues raided St. Mary-le-Bow's, in the middle of Cheapside, burst open the tabernacle and smashed every sacred object on which they could lay their hands.

About the same time the last public Catholic funeral was seen in London. On 12 April the corpse of Sir Rice Mansfield was brought from Clerkenwell for burial from Blackfriars Church; two heralds went behind the coffin and twenty-four priests and clerks before it, singing the Office of the Dead. The church of the friars was draped with black cloth and coats of arms. The next day the Requiem was sung and, after it, the knight's standard, coat, helmet and target were offered up at the high altar as had been done for centuries past. For it was the customary manner of a knight's funeral. London was never to see this ceremony again.


Plea from an Archbishop

Meanwhile, Nicholas Heath, the Archbishop of York (he had opposed the burning of heretics under Queen Mary and was considered the most prudent man in the kingdom), had an audience with the Queen. As soon as he was alone with her, he fell on his knees and invoked with tears the name of Jesus Christ. He begged Elizabeth, being a woman, to refrain from tampering with the sacred mysteries. He said that he had been through the English schools and universities and had attained the highest honors; he had been a bishop under her father Henry VIII, and her brother, Edward VI and Lord Chancellor under Mary, and that from his experience in the course of a long life, to say nothing of his own studies, he had learned that the State suffered great harm from frequent changes, even in the laws relating to the administration of justice. How much greater harm, he argued, would result from alterations in religion, where antiquity was held at such great account.

It was a wise and moderate speech. The Archbishop, recalling all that had recently happened, said that it was now proposed to make changes, not simply in ceremonies, but in the highest mysteries of the Faith, which (as the name implied) should be reverenced in silence rather than made the subject of popular debate. To call in question the sacraments of the Church, after such a length of time and in a kingdom which had only recently recovered from schism, would be disastrous in the extreme.

Finally, asking the Queen's pardon for his freedom of speech, the Archbishop concluded;
Quote:"But if (which God avert) the Catholic religion should unhappily be overthrown in England, I warn, I proclaim and I declare beforehand that I will not recede a nail's breadth in the least thing from the decrees of the Catholic Church, and in that quarrel I will resist every suggestion from others, and even from your Majesty, by every means in my power, to the last moment of my life."

The Queen bade him rise, comforted him with many words and ended by promising the Archbishop that she would do nothing that was not approved by her Councillors and by the whole nation assembled in Parliament. She gave him to think that in some measure she still wished to profess the Catholic Faith.

On 23 April, St. George's Day, the patronal feast of the Knights of the Garter, the Queen attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. During the procession not a single cross was carried. The following day Mass was sung as usual for the souls of the deceased knights, but the Queen, who was to have been present, altered her mind, and the Mass was said without the elevation of the Host.


Returned Exiles Strike

On 25 April, the feast of St. Mark and the last of the three rogation days, there were processions in the London parishes, and the citizens went with their banners through the streets, singing the litanies in Latin in the old fashion. On Ascension Day, while the parish procession of St. Paul's was going round the Cathedral precincts, a servant-lad, an apprentice to a Protestant printer, violently snatched the cross out of the hands of the bearer, struck it on the ground three times, breaking it into many small pieces. Then he took the figure from the cross and went off, saying as he showed it to some women, that he was carrying away the Devil's guts. In another London parish, on the same day, when the procession was about to come out of the church, two scoundrels with drawn swords in their hands placed themselves at the gate, swearing that ecclesiastics should not carry such an abomination, and that, if they left the church, they should never re-enter it.

This was the work of the men who had been in exile in Germany and Switzerland under Queen Mary. Now, one of their number, Richard Cox, boasted in a letter to a friend at Zurich:
"We are thundering forth in our pulpits, and especially before our Queen, Elizabeth, that the Roman Pontiff is truly antichrist and that traditions are for the most part blasphemies";
but he went on to admit that none of the clergy had changed their beliefs. "The whole body," he said, "remains unmoved"; that is, loyal to the Old Faith.


Parliament and the Mass

Meanwhile, in Parliament, a Bill laying down a new service of common prayer to replace the old Mass was debated. When it was read in the Lords for the third time all the Bishops, as before, dissented; and among the chief peers, they were supported by the Marquis of Winchester, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Viscount Montagu, and Barons Morley, Stafford, Dudley, Wharton, Rich and North.

True to his undertaking, Archbishop Heath spoke out firmly:
Quote:"The unity of the Church of Christ doth depend upon the unity of Peter's authority. Therefore, by our leaping out of Peter's ship, we must needs be overwhelmed with the waters of schism, sects and divisions which spring only from this, that men will not be obedient to the Head Bishop of God."

The Archbishop asked the Lords whether they thought the Church of Rome was not of God, but a malignant Church, and then went on:
Quote:"If you answer yes, then it will follow that we, the inhabitants of this realm, have not as yet received any benefit from Christ, for we have received no other gospel, no other doctrine, no other Faith, no other sacraments than were sent us from the Church of Rome."

Cuthbert Scot, Bishop of Chester, spoke twice. He pointed out that as God had sent one Holy Ghost to rule and govern His people inwardly, so he had appointed one governor to rule and lead them outwardly. And he asserted that no temporal prince had any authority whatsoever in or over the Church, since the keys of the heavenly kingdom had never been given to any of them, but only to Peter. Abbot Feckenham of Westminster, who also sat in the House of Lords, compared Queen Mary's days to the present. Then no churches were spoiled, he said, no altars pulled down, nor was the sacrament ever trodden blasphemously under foot and the knave of clubs hung in its place; there was no defiant eating of meat in Lent and on prohibited days. Now all things were changed and turned upside down.

But these protests were of no avail. Things got worse. At the end of May the Queen's Councillors, who were the men responsible for the alterations in religion, summoned to their presence Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London, and gave him orders to do away with the Mass and Divine Office at St. Paul's. The Bishop answered intrepidly:
Quote:"I possess three things: soul, body, and property: of the two last you can dispose at your pleasure, but as to the soul God alone can command me."


Last Public Masses in London

A few days later, on 11 June, St. Barnabas' day, the last Mass was said at St. Paul's. By the end of the month there were no public Masses anywhere in London, except in the houses of the French and Spanish ambassadors. All the friars and monks of every order received their passports to go abroad; the Franciscan friars from Greenwich, the Blackfriars from Smithfield, the monks and nuns from Sion and Westminster. The Carthusians refused to leave until they were compelled by force, which was soon used. Under the Queen's father, Henry VIII, they had resisted the King's attempt to claim headship of the Church, and had suffered death for it, some at Tyburn by hanging, others in Newgate by starvation. John Houghton, their prior, had been the first martyr of the Reformation. His community, re-established under Mary, was proud of its fidelity to the Church, and rather than give up their religion went into exile.


New Bill of Supremacy

Now a new Bill of Supremacy, making the Queen Head of the Church, was passed in Parliament; and in the same session also a Bill of Uniformity that permitted only one form of worship, namely, the new form. Commissioners were sent out from London to visit the universities, the cathedral churches and the city parishes throughout England with the task of enforcing these measures. This was in the summer of 1559, less than a year after Elizabeth had given a solemn undertaking to her half-sister, Mary, that she would make no change in religion. There was great opposition in court to the new services and also among the clergy and people, and had it not been for the persistence of Sir William Cecil, the Queen's Chief Councillor, the reformation, as it was called, would certainly have failed.

The Queen's commissioners first visited the London churches. On their orders the rood screens and altars were pulled down. The Lord Major, returning on St. Bartholomew's Day from the fair at Clerkenwell, where he had been watching sports and wrestling, saw in Cheapside two great bonfires made of statues, missals, crosses, copes, censers, altar-cloths, banners and other ornaments from Catholic times. The same was to be seen in other parts of London.

To show greater contempt for Our Blessed Lady, the official birthday of the Queen was now kept on 7 September, the eve of the nativity of Our Blessed Lady, which was marked in the calendar in small black letters, while that of Elizabeth was in large red capitals. In St. Paul's and elsewhere the praises of Elizabeth were now sung at the end of the public prayers in the place where the antiphon of Our Lady had been sung in former days.


Catholic Bishops Removed

One by one the Catholic bishops were removed from their sees. In a last brave attempt to change the Queen's mind Bishop Tunstall of Durham, who had been excused from attending Parliament because of his great age, came riding on horseback to London to see the Queen. In spite of her prohibition he preached to the people on his way. Everywhere he exhorted them to remain constant in the Catholic Faith. When the old man was brought into the presence of the Queen, he reprimanded her severely, because she had taken on herself to meddle in religion and had removed all the bishops, whose equals, he said, were hardly to be found in the Christian world.

"I confess," the Queen said, "that I grieve for York and Ely."

"But," replied Tunstall, "how can you grieve, when you have the remedy in your hands?"

The Councillors sat with the Queen. They urged Tunstall to change his religion. 
Quote:"Do you think that I, who as a priest and a bishop have taught the Catholic Faith for more than forty years, would be doing right, after so many years of study, after such practice and experience, on the very verge of the grave, to accept a rule of faith from laymen, my juniors?"

The Councillors flushed. They then demanded that he should take the oath acknowledging the supremacy of the Queen over the Church.

The old man refused, and he was deprived of his bishopric and put in charge of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, a married man. After a few weeks of imprisonment Tunstall died at Lambeth.


The Old Priests Removed

Almost all the clergy were on the side of the Catholic hierarchy. For as long as they were permitted, they spoke from the pulpits against the new form of service; they protested that it was iniquitous to do away with the Mass, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, allegiance to the Pope and all that had been part of the English Church since the time of St. Augustine and before him. One by one, as the Commissioners went their circuits, these old priests were removed: most of them refused to be ministers of the new religion. Many continued to say Mass secretly, hear confessions, and baptize children, either in their own homes or in the houses of gentlemen.


The Country Folk Stay Loyal

For many years still the country people, particularly the shepherds and farmers, remained loyal to the old Faith. In large towns, like Norwich and Bristol, the artisans, weavers and shoemakers for the most part fell in with the new form of worship. But in the remoter parts of the kingdom, the population as a whole stayed Catholic. Hence the reformers, writing to German friends, continued for many years to talk always of their "little flock." One of them, John Jewel, now Bishop of Salisbury, complained:
Quote:"The papists (as Catholics were now called) oppose us spitefully. Thus it is to have once tasted of the Mass. He who drinks of it is mad."

For the first time in the history of England, indeed of any country, fines were imposed for non-attendance at church. This was the beginning of the persecution. In Winchester, which was strongly Catholic, the poor people who could not pay these fines were sentenced to be dragged through the streets, stripped of their clothes and cruelly whipped.

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School & University

The old school there, founded by William of Wykeham, remained Catholic in sympathy. When the headmaster was imprisoned and a Protestant put in his place, the boys refused to attend public prayers and shut themselves in their dormitories. The headmaster was compelled to summon the military commander from Portsmouth, the nearest seaport, to restore order. About twelve boys took to flight; the rest, terrorized by the troops, went most unwillingly to church. As one chronicler wrote:
"In this persecution there is no order, or sex or age that has not nobly defended the Catholic Faith."

The universities, which formerly had been the training places of the clergy, did not take to the changes. Nearly all the heads of Colleges and the Fellows gave up their posts rather than subscribe to the oath of supremacy. By comparison with what it had been in the past, Oxford, particularly, was now somnolent. At New College, founded at the same time and by the same Catholic bishop as the school at Winchester, the old customs were slowly destroyed. On holidays after dinner the students no longer gathered around the fire in the hall to sing hymns. Many eminent university men crossed the sea to get a livelihood in foreign universities. Among them was Dr. William Allen, who was to become the chief adversary of the new religion.


First Arrest for Saying Mass

The first arrest of a priest for saying Mass contrary to the Queen's orders occurred in Fetter Lane, London. Treated as a traitor, the poor man was dragged violently through Holborn, Newgate Market, and Cheapside to the Counter Prison, with all his vestments on him, for he had been caught at the altar. A crowd followed him, mocking, cursing and wishing evil to him: some said he should be set in a pillory, others that he should be hanged, or hanged and quartered, or burned. All tried to pluck at him or give him a thump with their feet or spit in his face. Some shouted at him Ora pro nobis, sancta Maria, because it was the feast of Our Lady's Nativity (1562), though the day was not kept holy; they also sang mockingly Dominus vobiscum and such like phrases from the Mass.


Rosaries, Crucifixes, Statues—Out!

So things continued. Every year saw new measures of suppression. No person was permitted to carry beads or use them for prayers, to read the Book of Our Lady's Hours, or to burn candles on the Feast of the Purification. It was forbidden to pray before a crucifix or statue or picture of a saint, and it was thought superstitious to make the sign of the cross on entering a church, or to say the De profundis for the dead, or even to rest at a wayside cross while carrying a corpse to the grave: and to leave little crosses there. All altars were taken down in the churches. The places where they had stood were now paved, and the wall into which they had been set whited over. The altar stones were broken, defaced and turned to common uses.

But the people clung hard to the old customs. In some places, after the Rood had been taken away, they drew a cross in its place with chalk; and when the crosses in the graveyard were uprooted, they painted small crosses on the church walls inside and out, and on the pulpit and the new Communion tables. They still brought their primers to church and used them all the time the lessons were being read. In many churches the chalices were hidden away in readiness for the return of the Mass.

Finally, in 1570, the Pope, acting on his own counsels, issued a Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Elizabeth an heretic and excommunicate. Many Catholics at home judged this an unwise measure; for they feared it would enrage the Queen and lead her to retaliate with still severer legislation against them. However time proved the Pope correct. Now, for the first time, after eleven years of Elizabeth's reign, it was clear to all that none could practice the religion enforced by law and remain a Catholic. Henceforth if any man went to the state church he was no longer considered a Catholic; to receive communion there was a sign of submission to the new doctrines.

In reply the Queen imposed heavier fines for non-attendance at the services. Division now between Catholics and Protestants became sharper than ever before. Catholics, called Papists until this year, were now known as Recusants, for their refusal to take Communion from Protestant ministers.

In England only one man, Mr. Edward Aglionby, dared to raise his voice against the enforcement of conscience by legal penalties. In April 1571, in the House of Commons, Aglionby made a noble speech. He argued that it was not lawful for the State to compel any man's conscience, for the conscience of the individual did not concern the lawmakers: it did not fall even within the power of the greatest monarchy in the world. And he showed that neither the Jews nor Turks had ever required more than silence from their subjects, when they were unable to accept their people's religion. If the Catholics were wicked, as the law made them out to be, it was strange and against Christian practice to force them to take the new Communion; rather they should be forbidden it.


The Coming of the Sects

Meanwhile, as Archbishop Heath had warned the Queen, a large number of sects sprang up and spread throughout the kingdom. The largest of the many strange congregations was the Anabaptists, who called themselves Puritans, or Unspotted Lambs of God. Some of their adherents made mad assertions. In 1573 one Mr. Bloss was arrested for proclaiming that the Queen's late half-brother, King Edward VI, was still alive, that the Queen was married to the Earl of Leicester in 1564 and had four children by him.

The most curious of all these sects was "the family of the mount." It denied the existence of both heaven and hell, teaching that heaven existed wherever men laughed and made merry, and hell, wherever they were in sorrow, grief or pain.

The "family of essentials," a split or subdivision of the "family of love," believed that there was no such thing as sin. Their adherents used to ask, "Sin? What sin, man? There is no man sinneth at all." Their leader compared the altar to a cook's dresser-board. He had many meetings up and down the country.


To be continued

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  Audiobook: Purgatory By Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J.
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:45 AM - Forum: Resources Online - No Replies

Purgatory 
by Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J. - Part 1 of 2




Purgatory 
by Rev. François Xavier Schouppe (1824 - 1904) S.J. - Part 2 of 2

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  Vatican to host conference w/ COVID jab developers, Big Tech leaders, Fauci and Chelsea Clinton
Posted by: Stone - 04-16-2021, 06:16 AM - Forum: Pope Francis - No Replies

Vatican to host conference featuring COVID jab developers, Big Tech leaders, Fauci and Chelsea Clinton
Vaccine developers, Mormon elders, pro-abortion Chelsea Clinton, population control advocate Jane Goodall, a New Age activist, a prominent UK Muslim scholar, and a pro-abortion American actress known for posing nude, are all speakers at an upcoming Vatican conference on ‘health.’ There are only two Catholic clergy listed amongst the 114 speakers.

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VATICAN CITY, April 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican has announced its fifth International Health Conference on “Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul,” and will host scores of globalist and abortion-promoting speakers such as Chelsea Clinton, the CEOs of abortion-tainted vaccine companies Pfizer and Moderna, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

The conference, entitled “Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul. How Innovation and Novel Delivery Systems Improve Human Health,” is due to take place May 6 through 8. 

An incredible 114 speakers are set to appear at the event, which is hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture, the Cura Foundation, the Science and Faith Foundation (STOQ), and Stem For Life (SFLF).

The speakers include prominent and diverse names such as the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, the former of which produces abortion pills; the Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, who advocates using fetal tissue in research projects; the head of Google Health, David Feinberg; and Dr. Anthony Fauci from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose advice to government officials played a major role in shutting down American churches last year. 

NIH director Francis Collins has a long history of anti-life policies, and has previously acclaimed the “scientific benefits” which come from fetal tissue research, claiming that such work could be conducted “with an ethical framework.” 

He is joined at the Vatican conference by Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who has firmly aligned himself with the globalist, liberal elite, by banning emails from Republicans and the Trump campaign in the wake of the January 6 Capitol protests, as well as prohibiting all clients from even questioning the 2020 U.S. election. Benioff has a history of promoting LGBT issues, and is described by Time as “one of the most outspoken executives,” for LGBT affairs.

Also speaking at the conference will be United Nations representative and conservationist Jane Goodall, who supports population control; new age activist Deepak Chopra; rock guitarist Joe Perry; Mormon Elder William K. Jackson; executive chair of the British Board of Scholars and Imams, Shaykh Dr. Asim Yusuf; pro-abortion model Cindy Crawford; and disgraced ex-prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Monsignor Dario Viganò.

Numerous other medical professionals, representatives of U.S. federal agencies, university lecturers, high-ranking company officials, and musicians also form the number of speakers. There are only two Catholic clergy listed amongst the 114 speakers. 

Taking place within Vatican City, the event is being promoted with the social media messaging of “#UniteToPrevent and #UniteToCure.”

The image promoting the conference (featured at the top of this article) appears to be based on Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam. In the new image two hands reach towards each other, with both hands covered by disposable gloves. 

Indeed, the logo for the conference is a circle of people linking hands, colored in the tones of the LGBT rainbow flag, and positioned next to the crossed keys and Papal tiara of the Pontiff.

The event is hosted by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, along with the General Secretary of the STOQ Monsignor Tomasz Trafny, and Robin L. Smith, who is the founder, president and chairman of Cura Foundation and Stem for Life, and vice-president and director of STOQ. 

However, the trio will not be moderating the event, as this role will fall to ten “world-renowned journalists,” such as the executive VP of Forbes Moira Forbes,, Katie Couric, and journalists from major left-wing media corporations such as CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal. 


Will Vatican conference ignore God?

Perhaps as a sign of the Vatican’s recent declaration of financial difficulties, the conference is supported by numerous large organizations such as Sanford Health, Akkad Holdings, John Templeton Foundation, vaccine company Moderna, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The first stated aim of the conference is to foster “open dialogue” and to nurture “an interdisciplinary approach to tackle major health care challenges around the globe.”

Another goal is to “Examine the mind, body and soul interaction and discuss what it means to be human, and how transformative medical technologies are raising new challenges around human enhancement and the interpretation of the mind, body and soul.”

Given the minute presence of Catholic clergy at the conference, and the moderation by secular journalists, it remains to be seen whether this goal will reference to Catholic teaching on the relation between man and God, and whether it will ignore Catholic theological and philosophical thought regarding the soul. 

Pope Francis’s recent environmental encyclical Laudato Si, is a guiding theme of the three-day conference. 

Quoting from the document, the conference aims to “facilitate a conversation…‘about how we are shaping the future of our planet (...) which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all’.”

In the ten goals listed for the upcoming 2021 conference, the Pontifical Council for Culture made no reference to God or the Catholic Church. 

As part of the conference, a smaller roundtable event will also take place, entitled “Bridging Science and Faith,” and is directed at the “relationship of religion and spirituality to health and wellbeing, including the relationship between mind, body and soul.”


Fauci to deliver conference’s opening address

The opening day of the conference will be headed by an intervention from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief health advisor, who recently assured the World Health Organization of the Biden regime’s commitment to funding abortion, and last year suggested that sex with strangers was safer than receiving Holy Communion during COVID times. 

Fauci has spent more than a year stoking fear in the American public over the Wuhan coronavirus, despite it only having an infection fatality rate of 0.15%, and able to be effectively treated using Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, and zinc.

Topics for the conference range from “Are We What We Eat?” and “Human Enhancement,” to “Living Healthily to 120 and Beyond” and “Sustainable Health Care: Protecting Our Environment.”

Only six of the topics are remotely connected to religion, and deal with themes such as “Religious Dietary Practices and Health” and “How Do You Define the Soul?”

The conference will also address issues related to the current domination of global affairs by governmental responses to COVID-19.

Aided by the presence of the CEOs of both Pfizer and Moderna, whose abortion-tainted vaccines are increasingly followed by deaths and serious injuries in the thousands, the conference will discuss the “revolutionising” of cell therapy, as well as “Comprehensive COVID-19 Solutions” and “A New Generation of Vaccines.”

Pope Francis will close the event by giving the participants a private, virtual “audience.”

With the first such conference taking place back in 2011, previous events have seen individuals such as pro-LGBT pop star Katy Perry addressing attendees on the subject of transcendental meditation.

This year’s iteration of the event has the largest number of speakers by far, and with its advertised line up of speakers and topics, looks set to continue the irreligious and anti-Catholic themes of previous conferences. 


‘Another body blow to the Church’s prophetic witness against the abominable crime of murdering pre-born babies’

Already, faithful Catholics have taken to social media to express their consternation at the conference. Commenting on the manipulated image of the Creation of Adam, U.K. commentator Deacon Nick Donnelly, wrote: “The Vatican’s pastiche of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam exposes their promotion of ‘a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God’ (CCC 675).” 

In a comment provided to LifeSiteNews, Deacon Donnelly said that Pope Francis’s condemnations of abortion are undermined by the choice of speakers due to appear at the event. 

Quote:There is a strange disjunction between Pope Francis’ words about abortion and his actions.  While Pope Francis has issued some very strong statements condemning abortion these have been gravely undermined by his actions.

In 2016 he publicly praised Emma Bonino who boasts about facilitating 10,000 illegal abortions and who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in Italy.

In 2018 he gave a major papal honor to the Dutch militant abortion activist Lilianne Ploumen, six months after she led a campaign to raise $300 million to fund abortions around the world. 

In 2020 the world’s media trumpeted the pope accepting the use of cell lines in COVID vaccines that originate from aborted babies. 

Now he’s welcoming to the Vatican, Chelsea Clinton, the vice-president of the Clinton Foundation that has deep ties with industrial scale abortionists Planned Parenthood, and the CEO’s of Moderna and Pfizer, experimenters on aborted babies.

The inclusion of prominent abortion advocates such as Chelsea Clinton as speakers at the Vatican’s Conference is another body blow to the Church’s prophetic witness against the abominable crime of murdering pre-born babies. 

In the case of abortion, actions really do speak louder than words.

Similar concerns were expressed by Restoring the Faith Media, who noted how “The COVID Religion appears to have eclipsed the Catholic Faith in Rome. Complete with its own liturgy (socialist distancing), sacramentals (masks, hand sanitizer), and even its own sacraments (unless you inject this tainted serum, you have no life in you), the overt mockery of the faithful is on full display.”

A representative of Restoring the Faith commented to LifeSite: “Rather than correcting course, officials in the Eternal City appear to be accelerating towards that Great Apostasy Our Lady warned us would someday be upon us.”

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  NIH awards $500K grant to General Electric to build COVID-detecting microchip
Posted by: Stone - 04-15-2021, 04:50 PM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

National Institute of Health awards $500K grant to General Electric to build COVID-detecting microchip
The project is to create a device, small enough to fit inside a phone or watch, that can 'directly capture, detect, and identify' COVID-19 virus particles.


BETHESDA, Maryland, April 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The National Institute of Health (NIH) has awarded a two-year grant to multinational company General Electric to develop a microchip that can detect the presence of COVID-19 particles.

The two-year contract began on December 21, 2020, and funding for the initial year amounts to $581,785.

General Electric has been awarded the grant by the government health agency as the NIH looks to fund development projects for “novel, non-traditional approaches to identify the current SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

The project is to create a device, small enough to fit inside a phone or watch, that can “directly capture, detect, and identify” COVID-19 virus particles. The idea is that the “bioreceptors” would be able to detect particles of the virus, and able to differentiate between them and other particles they come into contact with.

Once the sensors have determined the presence of the virus, they would “automatically” transmit this information “to a touchscreen or other digital device.”

General Electric’s New York based team is led by one of their principal research scientists, Radislav Potyrailo, who hailed the project as creating one of the “first lines of defense.”

“The holy grail is to detect a single virus particle,” he said.

Potyrailo’s team is thus designing a “digital bloodhound,” a “microchip smaller than a dime with nanowells, or tiny pores, that can only be activated by a particular molecule — in this case, a molecule from the coronavirus causing COVID-19.”

Each of the nanowells will contain “bioreceptors” which would only be activated upon recognition of the virus particles that they were designed for.

Despite the small size of the sensors, Potyrailo declared that they would have “the same detection capabilities as the high-end analytical instruments the size of a microwave oven.”

Although the initial focus is on using touchscreen devices to collect such data due to their exceptionally widespread usage in every day, the technology is not limited merely to phones. The NIH predicted that it could be “integrated into keyboard, mouse and other frequently touched surfaces.”

Additionally, the sensors could be built into “the surface of specialized virus detectors,” which would thus be used in public places to detect presence of the virus “in respiratory droplets in the air.” Envisaging the sensors being as commonplace as fire alarms or smoke detectors, the NIH proposed that they could be installed in locations like “senior living centers, hospitals, airplanes, and meeting spaces.”

The technology would thus become a part of daily life, and “other digital apps for health and disease conditions will capture the immediate impact of viruses or other pathogens on health and behavior in real-time.”


A new digital age of microchip tracking

While General Electric’s project has made the news headlines, the company is by no means on its own in being tasked with developing technology that could force people to have their surroundings and health constantly monitored. The NIH has predicted it would fund projects up to a total of $10 million.

A number of other, similar projects are being funded by the NIH, focussed on creating sensors for the detection of COVID-19.

The University of Washington, is also developing a “touchscreen-compatible,” virus sensing device, after being awarded $466,500 from the NIH.

Emory University has received $449,696 to develop technology for “automatic surveillance and tracing of airborne” COVID particles. This would be based on “‘Rolosense’ technology” which is a “DNA micromotor” to detect the virus, and can be seen by a normal smart phone camera connected to an app, providing “both geographical tracing and surveillance.”

Washington University in St. Louis has accepted a grant of $433,266 to develop an “electrochemical biosensor,” which would detect airborne particles of COVID-19, as well “other and future pathogens.”

These, and many others, are all part of the NIH’s “Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program,” which has been drawn up to accelerate development and roll-out of novel technologies for COVID-19 testing.

As a further sub-group of this initiative, NIH also launched the “RADx Radical (RADx-rad) initiative,” which is focused on using new or existing technologies in unique ways, including “unconventional screening, biological or physiological markers, new platforms, and point-of-care devices.”

The RADx-rad, whilst initially drawn up under the guises of detecting and sharing information about COVID-19, will also be used with reference to “other, yet unknown, infectious agents.”

Concerns regarding privacy and potential breach of human rights are not hard to imagine, as all data collected by the various projects are sent to a newly created “hub” - the Data Coordination Center (DCC) - and then in turn to the larger NIH framework. This would include information from the sensors themselves, but also data from “public sources” such as census data, electronic health records, and administrative data.

The DCC will additionally co-operate with other “large-scale COVID-19 research efforts,” by sharing its own harvest of data.

Such revelations come alongside the Pentagon’s own invasive technology in the state funded drive for the recording and tracking of individual’s health and daily life. Scientists from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have manufactured a gel tissue-like substance, which is to be inserted underneath the skin.

The insert would “continuously test your blood,” and react with substances in the body, to emit a low level light, visible to a sensor or a smart phone app.

Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, a scientific researcher based at the Pentagon, echoed the peculiar comments expressed in the various grants awarded by the NIH, claiming that they were working on technology and vaccines which would be universally effective: “We’re trying to not just make a vaccine for this virus, we’re trying to make a vaccine for the whole family of coronaviruses.”

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